Mike Minutes Mastermind 02/21/2025

Welcome to another mike minutes mastermind. Let's get this party started. We'll jump right into questions. I'm in Florida for a conference. A pool fence company, It's a smaller conference. They have franchisees, dealers, there's distributors here. And so mostly I'm speaking tomorrow at four different, you know, slash Q&Q's. I'll be recording those and posting them on the home service millionaire channel eventually. Let's go ahead and jump right into questions. First question is from Dustin from Central Illinois. I asked this in the group but wanted your take on follow ups. How much is too much? How quickly should the calls be together? I want to answer but don't want to get declined because of the annoyance. I'm sure this is not an exact science. As full time sales for both locations, I feel like I should be doing everything I can to close every job regardless of booked out date and growth or profit mode. As a sales position, would this be a correct assumption? Most curious for location three, we plan to open with an operational GM and a focused sales guy. Oh cool. When that location starts, it would be in growth mode out of the gate, but once turned in profit mode, hopefully after spring rush, would this still be the case for that position sales guy's job close everything that comes in? Yeah. So I don't have science or data to back this up. So my thought on it, there's kind of two schools of thought. One is a we spread out message over the first like five to seven days as much as possible. And then maybe you have like lifesavers like you, you're hoping grass mint straws like day 15 and day 21. They're just not. A lot of people are going to close at day 15 and day 21. There are though. I do it. It's just a matter of like when do you actually stop? So.

Your highest return is going to be within the first 24 hours. And so I think you put as much emphasis as possible on calling the person, on texting them and emailing them within the first 24 hours after that. There's two schools of thought. One is I text, email and call throughout the next few days individually and separately, meaning text on one day, email in the next, phone call on the next, text, email, phone call. So if you look at the first six days, you could simply just alternate through those three modes of communication twice. The other school of thought is I'm going to do all three at the exact same time. So I'm going to email them, I'm going to text message them and call them at the same moment. So that way I can then let them cool off for 24 to 48 hours without them feeling quote unquote annoyed. So I like that saturation point of view, which is like when I contact them I'm going to hit them on all fronts. They know I'm trying to get their attention and then I'll let them cool off for a day or two. But I don't have any signs to back that up or data whatsoever. So all I would say is if you're going to follow up, do it within the first 24 hours, then the next three days, most important, then you know, after that like you're the amount of people you're going to get just dropped off a lot. So you know, obviously when we send the estimates out, we're emailing and we're texting them. I would, I would be calling them within 24 hours or as soon as they see the estimate, I'd be trying to call them. Um, like the, the first 24 hours is the most important. So I know some people like handle all my follow up calls on the weekend. Great. People will answer your phone calls more. However, that means that someone could have got received an estimate from you six days ago, five days ago. I don't like that. I would rather be like if an estimate is sent within 24 hours, I'm calling, emailing and texting them. That's going to be the highest return right there. And when I'm calling them I, I have a reason to call them which is we've talked about this before. The list of different reasons as to why you would call some back. There's a whole document, it's four pages on the dashboard you can download for a cheat sheet of like what to say over certain objections and more importantly reasons as to why you should be calling them, offering them a certain date, giving them a choice between dates, offering them an upsell, et cetera.

Kyle Tarvin preface. This is not bashing this person, just objectively wanting to know your opinion. I actually really love this idea on trying to bump up conversations at any cost, especially in growth mode. I may just be looking at this as strategy all wrong. Okay, there's the preface. The other day Max Harwood posted a video about a follow up sequence for estimates that are marked decline basically emails and text a customer that decline the mowing estimate and attractive, increasingly attractive offer 50 off initial service, 50 off second MO, etc. I love the idea, just not sold on how this would be a good play in Regards to branding, if we are giving the customer such a low price that they can't make any money on it, they may always look at your company like a bargain company and only use you when there are sales going on.

First off the sale would deny. You already know you've pre qualified this person by not being a sales sales junkie because they didn't come into your organization because of a sale. So I mostly I actually like these because by not having a sale in the upfront, you're not attracting the person that goes from company to company trying to, which by the way is less than you think. You don't want that customer anyways like you want them out of your organization. But if you're, if you're concerned about people using like initial offers and then bouncing.

I don't think someone that joined like comes to your company because full price and declines the estimate. They, they don't see offers, they don't see discounts when they first come. So they're usually attracted because the instant pricing, they're attracted because the branding, the website looks good, et cetera. So it actually could be an ideal customer. They just might not be convinced enough that your value is where it needs to be to, to warrant the price. So all you're trying to do here when you look at the value price equation is in this case when you're trying to discount based on someone declining, you're hoping that the reason that they have declined is because of price. And then by reducing the price, you lot value is now higher than price and they let you lock them in and then you let the price slowly go back up over several visits before finally they realize your value and they still stay with you. That's how it's like, that's the mechanics of it.

This is why in the next couple weeks everyone will be having the ability to be able to actually know what the reason is for the estimate being declined. If it's price, this is the type of thing that you would want to do. Now version 2 down the road inside of the customer portal you will see us be able to make automation triggers around this thing. So if it's based on price, I would like to send them this email. Come down the road. It's not going to be done in the first version, but the first version is going to allow you to be able to know when you go to estimates it's going to have a field in that, in the chart of the reasons they declined. And so that'll be really, really good for this sort of thing. But you could also just every decline estimate assume it's price, but it's not always price. That's the thing you want to be careful of in this instance is just dropping price will make the transaction go through. But it could actually be nothing to do with price as why they're declining.

And so but as long as you keep in mind like the person joined because they did not see a discount, they usually are a higher value customer because they didn't. Great, they come in, they decline an estimate, which means if they decline an estimate, they either click submit on instant pricing or they.

Otp. Because if they were just gonna like scan and peruse your pricing, they would have just not clicked submit on the instant pricing. They wouldn't have scanned door hanger, for example, because they already saw the pricing on the door hanger. So they're not just skimming. I usually don't see that actually happening much. So I don't, I don't mind the strategy. If you're in growth mode, just know that you are basically adding to your customer acquisition cost because the customer acquisition cost is inflated by the fact that you're reducing your price for the first few visits. But what you're trying to do there is convince them that hey, you declined because price is higher than value. Let me just chop this prematurely so you can see that value is actually up here. And then when I bring the price back normal, the transaction still goes through because as long as value is higher than price, the transaction goes through. So I'm not opposed to this. I think it's a really good idea and this is something that we are building into Copilot in the second iteration of the customer portal. The first iteration coming out next couple of weeks will be to at least get the reason why and down the road, you know, tie it into the trigger on automations is really what we're looking to do.

Johnny, Denver, North Carolina. Hey Mike, I was watching the framework about improving your skills to get more at work. I personally need to work on my efficiency. In the video you said to follow and study people who have lacked your skill, who had the skill you lack. Sorry, is there anyone that you recommend to watch or listen to improve my lack of efficiency? Okay, great question. So if you are in the field, you are going to want to follow small YouTubers that do lawn care and landscaping. So like Christian from or sorry, Jonathan from Floor Turf Pros. Very good. Highly recommend efficiency hacks. Even people like Keith Calfus and Brian Longleans. I don't follow them anymore. But like I'm sure they have a lot of really good stuff on efficiency in the field. Little things that you can do just make your day more efficient and out being a laborer. So that would be where I'd start. If you're talking about efficiency at a larger business, that comes down to usually around software time blocking, meeting cadences, agendas.

Workflows in terms of tasks and to dos and all that sort of thing. So kind of the size of your business. But that would be my recommendation. Just look at someone when I say like super efficient, who do you think of? Right? Like whoever that person is, try to like hang out with them for a day, pay in a room, read their book, watch their videos. And I mentioned social media people simply because it's easy to get the content. If you find someone locally that's like super efficient, like you're going to probably have to pay them or if they're competitive, they're not going to want to be with you. And so that's why it's easiest like social media is easiest because they make the content available.

Mr. Anonymous.

Hey Mike, why does Advanced P4P use a fixed budget hour rate instead of pulling labor revenue per job from copilot when dynamically using real labor revenue, prevent mismatches and over underpaying. I was very disorganized before and I'm now moving everything to budget hours. In doing so I found my pricing was all over the place. My pricing per budget hour to the client range is 70 to $120. Should I set my client labor rate in advanced P4P so crews aren't overpaid or underpaid? Okay, I know what you're saying here. Base it on forex base pay and adjust over time. Use new pricing. I'll apply to new accounts. Thanks. Okay, this is a good question. So first off, if you are sync, if you're syncing P4P and Copilot, it does pull the P4P rate from your copilot items and services. So what you're asking the first part of this question it does do you do need to change it though for each item and service. So go you what you can do is go to your item and service go to P4P rate or it's like rate used for P4P or something like that.

And then there you would need to put different rate for each service if you want to do it that way. Now what you could alternatively do, what you're talking about is like hey what if I just came up with a rate that's like generally about the same. So for example, what I would probably do is like, is mowing. Like, is it organized? Yeah. Ideally you have like a mowing and like a projects rate. The reason I like to have one or two rates max is because then your crew knows the rates and they know how much they're making in the jobs. It's very easy to talk about P4P because they're getting a percentage of revenue. It's really easy to be like budget hours multiplied by the rate I know the company charges and I get a third of that or 30% or 25% or whatever the number is. And so as soon as you start adding in different rates for like all different types of services.

It gets more confusing for them to do the math in their head. However, with P4P, if you integrate it and they're in the mobile app of P4P, it wouldn't be so bad because now it's going to pull the labor rate for P4P, the rate for each service, and multiply it by the budget hours and give them the dollars and cents. So first off, if that first part doesn't make sense to you, like the integration and like where you put the PVP rate on every item and service inside Copilot, set up a call with LAEL on PVP software's support. She can help you walk you through all of this. But that absolutely is possible. And so if you know certain services are certain rates, I would do it that way. I would encourage you to try to bundle those together a little bit. Even if it was like, hey, I'm going to do 80, I'm going to do 110 or 80 and 100, for example, as the two benchmarks of like, projects and mowing. But if you're like, hey, even the mowing is like all over the place. Okay, great. Then I would, I would possibly just do, hey, I'm going to use 85, I'm going to use 90, and I'm going to adjust all my budget hours to 90, knowing that some of them might, it's going to take a little longer, someone take a little bit lower, shorter. But like, I would try to set that rate the same. And then down the road, when you want to do a price increase, just adjust everyone that's not hitting budgeted hours. So this is a really good question. Please jump on a call with a coach. They will walk you through what I just talked about because I don't want to spend too much more time on this. But I would recommend so first off, kudos to you for getting budget hours set up. Like that's a huge, like you're flying blind if you're not using budget hours. So awesome. Now you know your rates are all over the place. I would try to set a benchmark. Even if you're in the dead center of this, that's 90. Like hey, I'm $90 an hour. Assuming that when you're saying these are all over the place is one service. If it's like projects and mowing, you could do like 110 and 90 for example. But I would try to stick with 90. I would just set all my budget hours in my schedule and all my jobs based on $90 per hour. And then in six months when I need to raise prices, I'm at capacity. I would be looking at which jobs I not hit budget hours, I. E. The ones that are probably right now hitting that 70 to $90 rate. So great question. If I did not answer that in the way that was clear enough for you, please ask another question.

Kyle Tarvin. Is it okay to transfer money from one location bank account to another for marketing expense that would benefit multiple locations? Looking into billboards and signs and thinking about sharing the cost between locations. Just want to make sure this won't get me trouble legally or tax wise. No, that's fine. You just got to make sure that you, you know, owner distributions and owner's investment is how you can move money around pretty easily between locations. So if like ah, this location is growing faster, I want to put 20 grand over into it. Great. It's gonna be an owner investment from the one that is going out. Sorry, take that back. Sorry. The owner, the one that you're sending money from. Like okay, how do I make this better? Location1 is trying to send location to money. Location1 is going to have an owner's draw or an owner's draw like receiving dividends essentially of 20 grand. And then you're gonna have owner's investment of 20 grand into location number two. Now assuming you're doing a blended P and L or a blended tax return that's going to cancel itself out, it's not going to do anything to tax wise, but how you track it, it is going to be like an owner's distribution and owner's investment. So you know. Yeah, just as long as you keep track of it, you shouldn't have a problem. Next, Harvard from Burn Me. Can you share what kind of headshots command center is using what you would recommend for answering calls? In my experience using Bluetooth Headsets creates a bit of a delay versus corded, but I'm sure which corded to consider. Thanks in advance. I'll try to think of a more interesting question for the next one. That's good. We use corded. Wireless does add a delay. It can have a little more of a intermittent with bluetooth of your phones of other wireless devices like keyboards and mice. So we've always gone corded at command center. We they're expensive. They're like they, they kind of fluctuate the price Jabras over ear ones, they're like 280 bucks. During COVID they went crazy like 400. But we do find value in the fact that they can't hear a single thing. It has noise cancellation. It's over over the ear you want to go cheaper. There's one for like $80 that are on top of the earth. Not over but on top of other like 80. They seem to be pretty good too. But I personally still like wired for headsets. Even if it dies or something like crazy. It's a horrible customer experience. So we've always just gone wired. Mr. Anonymous.

New owner question. I never owned a business, so I'm not positive about putting money away for taxes in the year. What is a safe percentage to put away for the end of the year? How are you moving this percentage around in the bank account and when do you pull it from the revenue generated when it's hit your bank account? Okay. So you only need to worry about this if you're making a lot of profit. Okay. Reason I say this, if you're making like under $50,000 in profit by the time you hit a standard deduction, if you're married, you're not paying on taxes, we're talking about like less than you pay per month in gas, a couple thousand dollars. So the reason I say this because if you're a new owner and you're in growth mode, you're probably putting money back in the business to the point where at the end of the year you probably won't have much to claim your first year and your second year you start thinking about this. So I always like to like generally know I'm going to be profiting in a business for the year and then based upon that I'll do my quarterly payments. So even like putting money away for the end of the year, just do your quarterly payments. And usually when you do.

Brad, at least when I do my taxes, he says, hey, this is what I think you should be paying next year for quarterly payments. And I Just do that. And usually I should get money back at the end of the year because I've overpaid and estimated payments.

So that's just how I do it. The reason is because if you do at the end of the year, instead of quarterly payments, you have to pay interest on, you know, not paying them for every quarter because they're technically due every quarter you collect the end of the year. So I, I just, I would recommend doing what your accountant says in terms of estimated payments. That requires also less budgeting. But remember, if you're not profitable because you're pouring money back in, you're growing the business super fast, you're buying trucks, et cetera. Usually you're not going to have a lot of tax liability. So just be careful because sometimes I've seen people like, I got, you know, some books that I profit first, I got to put aside like 25% in taxes. It's like you just thought the business started and by the end if you keep 25% of cash out of the business, you won't have any money to grow and buy trucks, get more equipment, advertise higher, etc. So just be careful if you're in that hyper growth or kind of early stage that you don't deprive the business of cash wrongly because you're trying to save it for taxes that you don't actually have.

Can we find a standard PowerPoint presentation layout for our team off site meeting? Yes, it is on the dashboard. It is underneath the.

Video training framework.

Yeah, video training. I think it's video training framework. If you look that up in the dashboard, it'll come up. There's a CANVA document in there. If it's not up there now, it should be at any second. One second. I can check real fast. Boom.

Gustafranchise.com.

Let'S see here. Boom. Templates and downloads. Okay, we're going to.

Office documents.

Okay, let's go.

Video. Oh, that's my other one. Sick. Yeah. Okay. I'm not, I don't want to waste anyone's time but yes it is underneath the video training framework there is a CANVA document, a link that gives you access to a, the standard like yellow bar on the left hand side Max logo in black and white. And then have like 20 or 30 slides you can just duplicate in CANVA Commitment Automation where CC follows up on MAX calls when they call after and get a voicemail. Seems like we are losing contact. We lose contact. We follow up on every single one. Every single MAX call gets a Follow up every single one.

Like if there's like a missing digit, we don't have an address or they hang up for whatever reason. But over 70% do. All the way go all the way completion. But for the ones who don't, we are calling them back right away. There's no, there's no.

Automation required.

Do. What do you recommend we go over in our pre spring meetup? Really what you're trying to get them inspired so you're really wanting to go over what's in it for them. So instead of just thinking about like hey, these are the goals of the business this year I want to be thinking about like here's the opportunities to make more money. Here's how you do an upsell so you can make more money. Here's how you get reviews so you can make more money. Here's what the 3F program is so you can make more money. Here's how you can get ahead. Here's how you can become a general manager or own your own business.

I'd be trying to make it 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes. Tops, tops, tops, tops. In terms of sharing numbers, what the business did last year, what our goals are this year, how that works and what profit sharing is, what that means in terms of them making more money. Like you know that they came to your business for a lot of different reasons, but we know one of them is money. Why? Because if we didn't pay them anything, they wouldn't show up. And so I would recommend really pointing the direction of how do you advance your career? How do you make more money? How do you get to the next stage of your career inside of Augusta or outside? Learning paper performance, learning open book management, understanding the numbers so you can make more money. If you come to the position of just simply I want you to win in order to win, you want to be efficient. You'll make more money if you leave here after two years of understanding P4P and looking for waste and be able to extinguish it from any process. If you learn that P4P skill here of, of being efficient, you will make more money in the future, whether it be here at Augusta or elsewhere. If you learn what this P and L profit and loss statement, what it means instead of just a bunch of numbers you don't understand, you will make more money at your next job, whether it be inside of Augusta or whether it be out in another job.

Do we still follow up next day? Again, I know if you follow up when, when they get. Yes, we do. Yes, we keep calling. If someone we. We can't get a hold of someone ever, we're calling them again and trying to get a hold of them and usually what happens if they don't respond is Max does always have their phone number so we can usually text them. It's super beneficial. But yeah, just know like if, if someone ever contacts Max and then like it's after hours, for example, which is like four hours a day now. But if that happens and we need to contact the customer now, like it's not standard thing. It's like we need to contact the customer. If we don't get them on the voicemail, we're immediately calling. It's a constant. Like we're calling them again. So like eventually it has to stop. But it's not like, it's not like one call. Oh, we didn't get them and then it's done. All right, everyone, I hope you have a fantastic weekend and we will stay in touch. Love you all. Take care.