Mike Minutes Mastermind 02/19/2025

Hello, checkpoint. Okay, we are live everyone. First off, sorry for the audio. We're at the airport waiting for next flight here. So sorry for bad lighting. Wow, this incredible lighting. Yeah, bad lighting and some sort of like vortex here. Bad audio probably, but let's go and get started. I was going to skip today, but there's 10 questions that came in, so we'll just jump right into questions.

Here we go. If the audio is so bad you guys can't hear me, please let me know. I think it's at least bearable enough to where you can hear what's going on.

Why is it? Okay.

First One is from Mr. Anonymous. I was scrolling through YouTube reels and came across some guys on a college campus holding signs asking students, college students, to grab random stuff in their dorms or do some sort of random act for a certain amount of money. How legitimate do you do Google reviews need to be? Or could I send someone to a college campus with a bunch of $10 chick fil a cards in return for reviews?

It just takes one or two of them to say something like say what's actually happening to illegitimatize all of your reviews. So what I'm always actually most concerned about is someone in my 5 star reviews being like, hey, all of these are probably incorrect or invalid simply because they're giving out money for these 5 star reviews. Also, if you get them in bunches, a lot of times they'll get removed from Google. Like if you got 30 in one day, for example, also just super weird when you see that happen. So you can always tell if someone's scamming the system. I think like 30, 40 Google reviews in a day or two.

So I think Google eventually will get wise to this and I think good customers that are actually looking through, they see that a couple times and all of a sudden might invalidate all the other good reviews that are not that way. So I would just be careful with it. I think you can get enough without having to do this.

But yes, you can gain the system.

One of my key employees crashed his car a few days ago due to the icy roads and is now out of the vehicle. He's looking for a new one, but in the meantime cannot get to work. He lives around 25 minutes away from our shop and it would be a huge hassle driving to get him every day. I know you let an employee in North Carolina use a company vehicle for a while until it was crashed. Literally. I think like the second day I think I let him use it, he crashed it. I Want this employee to be able to come to work, but I also don't want to loan out one of our work trucks in case something happens. Knowing what you know now, how would you approach this situation? Honestly, I would probably get a rental car. Like if they're not a general manager, I'm probably not allowing this. Everyone's so different though, in terms of your policies, in terms of the employees specifically. But as a broad rule of thumb, I just usually don't see this work out well. Again, if they've worked for you for five years. Like my guess being a kind person. But if this person just started with you, I've just seen this happen. Negative things happen too many times. They go get in the dui, they get it crashed, they have someone else drive unlicensed, then you're going to call in the middle of the night. I've just seen this over and over. I'd be careful with it. But again, it comes down to the capital relationship you have with this person. Have I done this with other employees and worked out just fine? Yes, but as a rule of thumb, I don't. I don't do it for even my good employees that when another employer new one comes along and asks. It's just across the board. This is the standard and it doesn't matter who it is. It's the same thing.

Joel from Lafayette, tying into the PPP question from a day or two ago. Would it be possible for me, a team to put together a document that explains the effect of adjusting the PPP percentage, hourly labor rate, budget hours and a price to the customer, let's say for moe to the customer. Oh, President, let's say I gotcha. I always have to think through which ones change in different scenarios and why it's different for new and these two customers. It would be nice to have a sheet that how these play together in different forms. Like what do I do if my team is making too little or too much P? For P my team is making good PPP, but I'm not making enough profit. I want to increase or decrease my LEA rate but don't know if I should also change the other variables. It is a simple stable with an explanation of what's increasing or decreasing. Each variable does analysis of what to do in a few common scenarios.

Okay.

I could see that being useful.

I think this is more a matter of like.

Yeah, if you understand T4P enough, these should come pretty quickly. And yes, at first it might take some time. If you wanted to, you could really take these two questions, answer Them and then there's your sheet. Like, what do I do if my team is making too little ppp? Well, I'm probably increasing my percentage so that the majority of my crew is above baseball. But I'm making too much on P2P. I'm going to reduce that percentage now. If you're going to increase now, it's like, do you want to raise prices? If yes, do you want your team to make more money or do you want to make more money? There's actually a lot of different scenarios. It's more than just three. It's also like when it comes to price increases, when it comes to buying more equipment, for example, by buying bigger equipment or newer equipment, you're also giving them an efficiency increase. So there's probably 20 different variables. It would get pretty lengthy. There are a few major ones like you just mentioned here, like my team, but I'm not making a profit. Okay. It's a matter of you A. If you have good quality, you're probably not going to penalize on the other slips. I was talking with Connor today. He's a thing now with yellow slips where he's going to be, I think. And it's across the board as soon as yellow slip to get a negative $30 off of their P50P because just them going back just a few extra minutes is not enough to actually penalize them. So again, that would be like, well, if they're making a lot of people and they're making a lot of yellow slopes and they're doing poor quality, then I would take that action. There's a web. It's not just a few questions. There is probably 20, like equipment trucks, route density, starting new versus starting later. It's always a matter, a function of the things we talked about yesterday. So this definitely could be useful. It's just going to become like 20 or 30 variables. It's more, I think some kind of understanding PPP and like what. What actually affects the employees pay versus what affects their incentives, like yellow slips and percentages, what affects the customer's actual price. So I will think on this one, I think it'll become a web of information and usually when it gets more like three to five things, variables, people to spend, check out. Because like.

It'S much more nuanced than just saying, oh, I want to make more money because like, who doesn't want to make more money? It's also a matter of like, well, is there good quality? Do you have new trucks? Do you need to upgrade your trucks? Do you have larger Equipment. Do you have the same standard setup across all of your trucks and crews that allows them to make the same PPP across the board? Do you have distribution of density throughout your route that gives certain employees a bigger advantage to make better ppp? There's actually a lot of variables. Wow, my lighting is so messed up. Sorry everyone, I just. We're dealing with a random fluorescent light behind me.

Mr. Namas, in your opinion, why do some people seem to struggle and others seem to escape by in life and in business? Is this all just a facade?

Okay, this is not a deep question.

So to try to even escape by escape by is a get by. I don't know if you mean like be successful.

But why do some people struggle and others seem to skate by in life?

I don't know if you mean like getting caught because this is a scene that both of them are struggling but one of them will like get by, like skate by get by kind of thing or if this one's successful. So maybe give me a little more definition on that question. I can try to dig into it. It's just very, very vague. Mr. How granular do we need to be with estimates and budgeting hours for mowing? Is it standard to go up with 05, 0.7, 0.1 or 1 hour and then adjust price down the line if they are misquoted? I kind of answered my question while typing. Thanks Mike. So this is why when it comes to pricing for mowing, we are not doing by budget hours because we have a lot of decimals. 0.65069. You allow, you allow yourself a little more granularity by just sticking like say 5 dol increments for million than compared to just doing quarter budgeted hours which would be like 20, 20 increments. So that's why we stick to the, the actual dollar amount on those. Of course they translate to a decimal budget hours, but it's easier to keep track of like small, medium, large. And looking at a property, most of you kind of like oh, that's a $80 lawn or whatever it is.

Mr. Anonymous, one second here. Let me just call that a message.

Okay. Mr. Anonymous, when estimating am I estimated for a two man crew or one man, for example, I would assume that a solo yard can get done in 30 minutes, but I've never worked with someone else so I don't know how much faster it should be done. Yes, you're always doing budget hours as if there's one person on the job. So it's budget hours. Those are like budget man hours, which means if there's two, it's half of that amount that how long the job should take. Now, is there inherent inefficiencies by having two or three people compared to one? Yes, but from a budget hour perspective, it's the same. Marcus from Redmond, Washington. I was getting some quotes for commercial auto insurance. All are the exact same coverage deductibles to compare premiums. What I found was a wild fluctuation in pricing. Country financial quote 18,000 a year, progressive 30,000 year and farmers insurance 62,000 a year. With your experience in the insurance industry, do you know why they might vary so widely for the exact same coverage? I feel like I'm missing something. Thank you. Yeah, like this is why I think every two years at least I'm going to price shop my insurance. That being said, usually what you'll find is a certain carrier will be lower in your state. So for example, and for certain products. So for example, when I was a state farm, I knew we could never compete with.

Farmers insurance on renters and home insurance. We could just never beat them. The only way I could get someone is if we bundle them up with auto and like because simply in our state we were just so much lower. So these insurance companies will change the premiums based on state, which is usually based upon the natural disasters, chance of fires, etc. Well, they all have their different ratios and rates and whether or not they want to move into a state more or less is usually going to be determined by their premiums. Like if they want to be more aggressive, they're going to go lower. So the country financial, for example in Washington state is usually a pretty good one. It's more local, they're more regional in that area. They like Washington state, but it doesn't have as many fires in the west coast compared to like east Washington. So it's very, very regional. Always get three. And every two years I'm still going to check that.

Garrett Smith from Glendale, Colorado.

We have two mowing customers out of 170 who are sometimes very rude to our team. It can be bad enough to ruin someone's day or lead our team members to tears.

I should have handled this sooner, but I've been nervous because in the past bringing it up with the client has only made things worse. They're a fair and honest way to send an email letting them know we won't be renewing their service. This year we're focusing on profit mode and both customers are still in the middle of our service. Area. I'd even be happy to send them a gift card or small gift to thank them for being customers. I just want to handle this the right way because they're still seeing our trucks around town and at their neighbors houses. Yeah. So you know what you're trying to avoid here really is a bad negative review. Someone saying something horrible about you. If you did the gift thing you're definitely going to probably prevent that and then just say sorry, we won't be able to service your customer, your property anymore. Here are a list of several people we recommend and we're willing to service your property until this date so that in the meantime you can find someone else. That's what I would do. You don't need to give a reason if this is the way you're going now. If they're being super rude, I would just cut them probably honestly and not care about the downsides because they're going to need you to show how rude they are in the review. If they say something stupid and you're able to say like sorry, we have to let you go. I'm thinking about the response to bad review. Then you're able to say like sorry, we value our team and based upon several encounters on these dates, our team couldn't be at your property. Whatever. And most customers want you to stand up for your team and the good ones do especially. So it's all how are you going to respond to that review? And if you left a gift it'll probably prevent the bad review and it'll also be ammunition that you can use if needs to. So very, very nice if you can even do the gift thing. I do think it's a good idea to kind of prevent any sort of negative thing from them coming from other people locally. So you know, if you did a 50 gift card told hey, I'm going to service you for another month. Up until this point here's three people we recommend. You know that'd be great and you know what, get a local partner and Augusta needs program so that way you get you recoup the cost of your gift card. So get on you for thinking about it. Question from Tim. Would it be possible in automation where an upsell email is sent that is automatically sending a text either at same time or day after? Would it be possible to have an automation when upsell email is sent it automatically send a text either at the same time or day after? Yeah, you could just in the automation have an email and have a text. So when you're sending up the upsell you can just have it where there's an email and the text sent together. You can't do it necessarily based on the day after so that's not possible. So there's not really like a trigger. But you can do it in the upsell settings. Send a text and an email if you want at the same at the same time like immediately or if you approve from the dispatch board. That's when it would go out. But there's not like a day after you send it out. I think that it's most powerful when you are doing it like literally when you're on the property and then ideally within that day. So it's very fresh and the email comes across very personalized to the homeowner. Okay, we were just there by literally tomorrow they might forget you're there. Especially if it's mowing versus being like oh yeah, the long looks great. They walk in the door that evening, they get a message or like oh it's great. Open up their email. There's your upsell.

Another question from Tim. When when to do is no longer with to do no longer going to be checked is he's referring to the dispatch board department inside of command center. I discussed with Mick. Why do we have to respond to do and then always text CC about the note? Seems there may be a better way. Could we just have it set up to go to a certain email when it is to do is completed and it'll be handled just like an smoke. It would also help for things to not be missed.

I don't know what you're talking about. Oh, the reason is because if you respond to a to do it doesn't do anything that commands in it. It doesn't like let them know. So responding on a to do doesn't do anything. The to do is like a one way message to you to do something and it's tracked inside of copilot versus connecting. If you need them to take other actions you do have to go to connect team and ask them because respond if you don't know what to do. There's no way to like alert command center based upon the response so it's not possible to do that. So if you need them to take action would respond and connecting. If you don't need them to take action you just mark it as complete and you're good to go.

Next question Mr. Anonymous. Repost my question with more context. Thank you. Why do you think that some people struggle to be successful but others seem to be successful easily or like it comes natural Maybe it's just like me on the outside looking in, in reality, I have no context and can't see the nuances of their life. Yeah, like your last sentence answers your question. To think that anyone who is successful easily.

There are very few successful people that think that because like there's no one else that looks at no one else that's depressible, that looks at other successful people and says, oh, that was simple for them. It is only the people that look from the outside that say like, oh, it must be so easy. And yet underneath the water they're setting, they take the duck. The duck looks so calm and peaceful on top of water. Underneath the water they're treading like crazy. And so people look at lots of people, oh, they're super successful. And even people like Ivan, like the guy was in his 50s before he, he made all these companies he's now known for.

And he was on the verge of bankruptcy like literally 10 years ago. And so the vast majority of entrepreneurs are like that. And so to think that it's quote unquote easy is naive. Naive, naivetivity. Because anyone else that has done it themselves, they're self made, they realize that like the, the journey is so difficult. To say that anyone else got there because it was quote, unquote easy is like a discredit to all the pain they, they went through to get there. And so this is why you'll never see anyone that is bigger than someone else. Like who on someone else that's, that is lower than, lower than them. Like if someone ever is taking a shot at you, for example, they are never more successful. It's like no one more successful than me has ever like said, hey, you shouldn't work as hard. You know, you're doing X, Y and Z wrong in business and like really been super negative because they respect what it takes to get to where they're at. And they've gone, they've gone through the same steps and they realize how difficult it is and they respect it. Even if they think you're wrong, they will do it in a very tactical way. And so the only people that will usually criticize you when you're successful are the people below you. And one thing that's very hurtful is when you are struggling, everyone wants you to succeed and your family, your friends should do well. And one day you're going to make it and then one day you will. And in that moment, that's when many times the daggers come over and it's usually jealousy and most people want you to be successful up until the point where you beat them. Once you become more successful than someone else in the game of competition and EOs like, that's when they want you to stop. They want to be. They want you to get out of the bottom. They want you to not be scraping by and working 80 hours a week. But once you start becoming successful and you have money, all of a sudden you're working too hard. You should take it easy. You know, I don't want your life like all these other things come up when reality, it's like everything that you did back in the day is what led to what you have today. And so it's very important, I think, to know that, because you know, in 10 years when you look back and everything that you wanted to happen has happened. The same people that were encouraging you to work hard were encouraging you to get started. We're encouraging to get the business off the ground. We're encouraging you to quit your 9 to 5. We're encouraging you to work and hustle towards your goals. And like, super encouraging, those same people will turn against you and they'll say that you're changed. They'll say that you are lucky. They will say that you are egotistical there. So you have a lot of crying. And in reality, you achieved your goals and now you have more than they do. And as soon as you have more than someone else, then they want you to lose. So it stinks, but it's unfortunately the way it works. All right, I love you all. I hope you have a fantastic Wednesday. I'll see you all tomorrow and go catch this fight. I'll see you.