Mike Minutes Mastermind 02/27/2024

Hello, destination. Hope you're doing amazing. Let's go ahead and get started.

Just drop this into Facebook real quick.

Announcement. March 10, not this Sunday, but the following Sunday is the first day that command center will be open on Sundays.

And that'll be for basic service only. So just like Saturdays, it'll only be for estimates, phone calls, chats on the website, etc. It'll not be for full service. So don't expect connecteam chats, emailing, payroll, etc. To be accessible on Sundays.

Whoa, there's a lot of questions. Mercy. All right, let's jump in. First one comes from Corey from Augusta Lawn Care Services of Whatcom County.

General Media Question. I've noticed a lot of your recent solo uploads have been some overlap with their talks last conference. I was just wondering if the recordings for those are now exclusive to your business course or otherwise planned for a later date. I found a few of your memos particularly compelling. Compelling? Yeah, the ones for conference, like the actual recordings of conference, they're only in the. In the courses. Everyone has access to them. If you don't have access, let me know and we'll make sure you get access. Actually in the.

Which page is it on? On the. I think it's franchise conference page, there's at the very bottom, there's links to the courses and the Augusta Nation discounts or like they're free for you. I'm trying to assemble a healthy mic diet content pack for the new Wacom Fuel crew ahead of time and I've been a little lazy waiting for those to be released before bringing your talking points to my crew. Should I give up on that approach?

I think a lot of times, especially like a second channel where it's mostly education, most of field crew isn't going to be super compelled to watch that stuff. They'd probably be more inclined to watch a little bit more of the drama and the entertainment and stuff on the main channel. I would say if you go to the Facebook group, there's a pinned post, I think it's still on there of the video I specifically made for team members a couple years ago about finances. Yeah, it's in there. It's called. It's just View to the featured or the pin post in the Facebook group, there's a video in there. It's like an hour, hour and a half long. I literally made it for the team members of Augusta Nation. So I'd share that one like as I like the first one because it's directly made for them and not business owners. That's the challenging part about sharing like the secondary content is they're not owners, so they might not really care much. On the dispatch board, is it possible have the titles read Drive by or Scheduled appointment versus Landscape cleanup, quote from a newsletter and so on? Because the titles sometimes look like actual jobs performed that day becomes confusing when planning the route.

It would be by the those would be meetings. So if it's a scheduled appointment or a drive by, it's a meeting, it's not.

A visit. So what you might want to do if it's looking the same is potentially change your coloring scheme where the visits and the meetings are further in terms of color. If they're just looking the same.

In terms of the titles like the meeting, do you you should be able to add like the the if it's a meeting or a visit or whatever so you can tell faster. If you have a screenshot you wanted to share with me, feel free to do so. Print in Utah I want to fully utilize our Instant Price features on the website you mentioned in yesterday's Mastermind. You're seeing good things so far with Facebook ads leading to them. Is there any certain copy or specific call to action you recommend? Do you recommend men to following the existing Done for you ads? I want to do what has proven to work for others before spending a bunch of money figuring things out myself. Thank you. Yeah, so if you go to the Done for you folder, use the instant price forms. That's the one I just recently made specifically for that one. The thing is, this is our first spring rush, so I don't have like data say which ones are the best. And that's why I said in that video.

To share on the Facebook group. And that being said, I should have actually said this before. Joel made a folder and I pinned it. I pinned it in the Facebook group as well. He made it a couple weeks ago. It's a Google Drive folder where you can share your best performing Facebook ads. So you can put it there, you can make a screenshot of however you want to do. But us sharing right now is probably the fastest way to see what's working. And then after the spring rush I'll be much more informed in terms of like hey, these are the ones that work the best, etc. Etc. In terms of which offers. I also expect those to be extremely regional and local in terms of which ones are working and which ones are not. So I won't be surprised if some people are like this one worked in my market and someone else doesn't it doesn't. And then vice versa. So. But sharing that in that, that group in that folder would be helpful as well as the Facebook group.

Next question. Nick from the pen for the instant price on the website, none of the images really represent the size lawns we're dealing with. Are we able to email in custom images for these forms? Not custom, but I, what you can do is send an email to web GustAlongerServices.com and then see, you know, say hey, these are what I'm thinking and you know, just, just let them know they're not going to make it custom, I can guarantee you that. But if there's, if there's several people asking for specific type of.

Image or whatever, they can facilitate that. But I would, I would try to focus on the size of the lawn instead of just like you know, does it look like the house is my area or is there trees or not, things like that. Because we will have infinite numbers of variations otherwise. And we want the, the customer to focus on like the property generally size and a lot of times they'll look at the house too. So keep that in mind. But you can send an email web gustalongerservices.com but we are not doing custom photos for every single location. Dan from Lexington I had a customer accepting estimate. They went ahead and made their account first and put their ACH on their payment. Then they went back and tried accepting the estimate but couldn't unless they had a CC on file. They contacted me and I took CC requirement off of their account specifically is there a workaround for this so that if they do put ACH it will automatically not require them to have a credit card on file. We are going to have this in later in the year. A lot more so far on ACH even allowing like for recurring payments to come off of ACH automatically. It's not there yet. In terms of the reason, the main reason is this because if you make that as the standard for getting their credit and file or sorry, getting the estimate accepted is it usually takes two to three days to get the ACH.

Approved and like authorized. And so the whole point is that you have a payment method to charge before the estimate is accepted. And so really ACH doesn't do a great job of that. And you're kind of just like hoping and praying that they actually validate their account and the car that the bank information is correct. And so that's why we haven't. It wasn't a priority on the first go around but eventually we'll make this an option. Just know you are taking a risk in that.

It takes two to three days to authorize that account, whereas a credit card immediately knows if it's valid or not, if it's expired, things like that. So that's why we didn't do it right off the bat because it's really not a great way to pre authorize someone payment ability when you're using ACH because it takes a few days to validate.

Kyle Tarvin While doing Follow Up Estimates Follow Up Calls on Estimates it is a little tedious in copilot to open the customer's profile and their estimate at the same time to get the customer's phone number. Is it possible to list the customer's phone number in their estimate somewhere so we don't have to convert continually switch back and forth from the estimate document to the customer profile anytime we make a follow up call.

When.

Probably by summer is when there'll be like the customization of the estimates in terms of like formatting so you can kind of do whatever you want and you'll be able to move this however you want in terms of fields, merge tags, moving things around, colors like the whole nine yards. It'll almost look like an estimate template builder essentially. So that'll be coming later on basically exactly the same thing that Surface Autopilot has. They have the exact same one that we the plugin that we use Kyle's having Oklahoma I can see what some people are confused and upset with the email system. I think it would result tremendously if CC would move anything for a four local review folder that they mark it as unread. So I'm not going to address this because this was just talked about and they had a call about this with Liz. I think it's more of an aspect and trying to save time being the day. Even saving 10 minutes is because yeah so feel free. Like I said before, contact liz@augustalongerservice.com they had a call with this with a bunch of the owners the other day and they came to a conclusion on this and so expect an update from Liz if needs be but she made a video about this the other day too and took their their feedback and are working with with creating a good work workflow for everyone. So yeah, feel free to reach out to her. Eric from Largo Hey Mike, what is CC's SOPS for instant quotes from the website? I know this is a new process and it seems like it's being handled a few different ways so I'm Looking for some clarity. Have one, have one that a quote was created for market acceptance sent to customer which is what I thought I remembered you saying. Have another that a quote was created and sent but not mark accepted. Not sure if that was a mistake or to help get the card on file but also clunky for them to have to accept twice. I know you also mentioned the future of being able to get cards on file through the website after the copilot integration but also curious the ways CEC is handling that part process now. How should we handle it? So if a credit card is, if a, if an estimate is accepted from the instant quotes this is the way right now to where you can't get a card on file. The vast majority of times when we call a customer back we're going to hit their voicemail and so otherwise the estimate will be left in limbo. If your requiring a card being filed, if you want to call them repeatedly and you know, email et cetera and wait for a card on file that's totally fine but command center is going to still notify you even if they don't like, like hey this estimate is accepted. The estimate should be marked accepted when it is sent to the customer and if it's not then that should be a yellow slip. So if that actually happened Eric just submit that to yellow slip@augustalongerships.com but when, if the estimate was accepted, keep that in mind. If it's not accepted it can still be an instant quote but if they don't accept it on the on the website we will send it to them as a non accepted like we will make sure we redo it and actually send it to their email in hopes that they would actually accept it once they see it there. So keep that in mind. But if they if you know it was beyond the shadow accepted and then submit the yellow slip. But keep in mind that people can submit instant quotes that are not accepted and we will send them the estimate and it will obviously not be accepted. Hutch from Charlotte have you looked into school thoughts? Will you be converting any courses over Alex over to Alex's recent investment and could this change education and training?

I know a lot about the school thing. There's a lot of different, there's a lot of other competing products.

I don't see enough differentiation honestly between what they do and a lot of other companies. Course companies like Teachable that I use.

They'Re a little more community driven. But I think yeah I, I talked a lot about some other companies the other week when I was out of town. And.

I think directionally school is correct. Like more people will go online for education, less people go to college. And all the billions of dollars spent on college education will eventually be spent on places like school.

I'm not going to be converting my courses over. There's no differentiation enough for me to do that. And some of their UI is a little clunky. You can't upload videos directly. You have to use links. So they don't actually.

House the the videos. And I know why they do that. They're a cheaper product so that it's more mass, mass market. I think they're gonna have a problem with clutter. The amount of courses that will be created on there that are just kind of crummy.

But anyways, I could be proven wrong. I'm not saying they're a bad company. They'll probably be the leader in this space. I just don't see anything right now that is different than five or six other similar companies such as.

It's irrelevant. Jake from Rexburg. All right. Why are we not able to add square footage ranges next to our small, medium large options on instant quote forms? I feel like I remember you bringing this up in a mastermind saying that people won't know their square footage. Seems like an easy solution. That problem could be having something like the following in your box at the top. If you don't know the square footage of your turf, no worries. We can make adjustments as needed. Pros. It would make it very easy to adjust the price on customers who choose a cheaper price. No questions asked. It's clear written out what their price should be. When choosing a size option, customers are able to switch between the options to see the different prices for the different sizes of yard. If someone were filling out the form knowing that they're a borderline yard yard but saw that large is $20 more than medium, then most likely select medium. It just takes out the guesswork cons. Customers may not not lose square footage. Any others I'm not considering it is information overload because like there's 10 other different things we could potentially give them. I, I would venture to believe that less than 20 of people know their square footage of their lawn. And the ones that know their square footage, they will know their their lot square footage likely. And a lot of areas, whether you're talking about acreage where you have like pasture or you're talking about like downtown urban areas, a large chunk of your square footage is not being mowed. And so.

Ultimately people can look at Things and put pretty quickly identify, is that me? Like, is that close to me enough? And the whole goal of this is to be quick because if I start throwing in square footages in there, there's a chance that they're like, oh, that's mine. But I have no idea. If I'm between 3,000 and 5,000, I'm just gonna leave. And so our focus is the conversion of people getting this site to submitting a form. Because I can always change the price after the first visit. It's on my verbiage. I need them to submit the form and accept even if they go medium instead of large. Like, I'd rather them do that than be like, I'm not sure exactly which one. I'm just going to just X out of this form. So I understand, like, accuracy is being given up for the sake of speed. But every time I've seen that sacrifice made, I see people like it in the out, in the outcome. So, for example, you give up accuracy when you do estimates over the phone, but the speed is significantly higher. We give up accuracy when we allow the customer to be able to choose price at any point. Regardless of what we do. The faster we do it, though, I know the conversion rate will go up. So that would be like the long and short of it. And as soon as you start saying, okay, here's what it looks like, and then you throw this number in here. For the vast majority of people, they cannot visualize square footage. All of us speak square footage and yardage every single day. The vast majority of people don't know the square footage of their lawn.

And they would be like all over the place. And so just throwing another variable in there. It's like when you have a form and you don't know it, like a form that says, like.

Do you agree to these terms and conditions? Or like X, Y and Z and you're like, I'm not sure what that is. You might not fill out the form. And that's what I wanted to prevent. So it seems like this would beneficially areas wide range of yard sizes. We have lawns ranging from 35 to 120, so having more specific specificity would be helpful for now. We can put the size ranges in the description box at the bottom, but it's not ideal. Would this be a difficult submission to make for those who want it? Yeah, so I would, I would say keep the text in the bottom like you're doing, because the person that really wants to drill in and knows the square footage of their lawn, they'll read it. The person that just wants to get the quote as quickly as possible and can visually identify the properties and pump it in. Go. You know, great. In terms of having a wide range of $35 to 120, I would recommend trying to be doing like your $40 lawn, a $60 on an $80 lawn and then everything larger than that, you're gonna have to, you know, buy the bid because I would, I would venture to believe that 70 to 80% of your lawns are inside of that window. And then anything below above that you can still do over the phone. You can like if they submit the larger than this one or different size than this, the command center will still get that. Do the over OTP like usual and send the quote. So yeah.

Down the road we can test this. I just want to get through all of Spring rush before we start playing with the pictures too much because otherwise we're going to start having too many variables to actually know what's working. And so right now we are simply, we've simply, we simply know that having this form is increased conversion. And I just want to focus on that. Down the road we can start focusing, okay, like is it worth a little bit less conversion for the trade off of higher accuracy? We can make that determination down the road, but we throw too many variables into it, it's going to mess things up.

Southeast, one second.

So as far as like the goals that you have.

Definitely.

Why did this disappear? Thank you, Kirk.

Is there any workaround for one click estimates not working? I have already hired additional team members based off the success of last year's one clicks. Normally I would have sent them last week or the week before, have a team member starting next week and another team member starting the following week. With not enough work on the schedule, I already have one team member plus myself to fill work for and starting to get nervous. I started doing some generic door hangers that I still had left over, but I don't think we're getting them out fast enough to fill the schedule in the short term, short amount of time we have, I pretty much have no extra cash from the terrible winter we've had. Is there any workaround for one click estimates working? So first off, from what I know right now, I know we just sent one out, so I think they're working touch bases command center. If they're not, there's something wrong with your tags or something like that or if there is an issue.

In terms of.

In terms of like if, if for some reason you wanted to send this like right. Like the next 10 minutes. Do use text. I think you might actually have a better conversion ratio because you haven't done it used it in the past.

But if there is a problem, I know that they were working on something with tags the other day. But I also know that last week a lot of people were sending out their one click estimate emails just fine. So Thomas from Littleton, is there a way to have the client's phone number on the estimate itself or close by? It would make it easier to call the client as the same as one before.

Yeah, the. The customization of the actual estimate, how you want it formatted. It'll eventually have like a ton of options there.

Landon Smith, tall Ask Florida. I've heard you talk a lot about how you think here. One second. Make a note here. Let's see if we can move this.

See if we can do the number on the, on the estimate sooner separate from the actual design side things.

Smith, I've heard you talk a lot about how you think the connecting between Facebook ads and our instant quotes will get a good return. Is that just a feeling or you've already got some data on it? I'm not sure of my returns on my Google Ads or Facebook ads versus Google services versus every door, direct mail or anything last year didn't ever really understand how to track it. So I was just wondering if we had any data that would give me a little direction for this year. Thanks. So right now in what we've been using over the winter, I know that my cost per click getting to the websites dramatically lower because we're promising them a price immediately in terms of us testing actual pricing, instant pricing. I did this like several years ago in a much more janky fashion and like got a ton of leads. The problem is the form, the thing that we were using was where you measure the property and the customer has to measure it. And it was more a matter of like using AI like years ago. And it was wildly inaccurate. Like I'm talking like a 30 lawn was saying 150 and like 400. Like they had, they didn't have enough guardrails on it. And what is now estimate cart from simple growth or simple growth, I should say used to be called estimate cart. And that's when I tested it. And so I know there'll be a lot of leads. I know the conversion rate will go through the roof. And so I want the spring rush to be able to like really govern. Okay, what ads are working, what's the average cost per click? And then you know, what's the conversion ratio after that? It's going to vary dramatically across everyone's locations. It's just a matter of as a whole, which direction does it move? Land Smith. Is it normal for guys to sleep between stops? No, it's not. Do you all ever address this? I mean, when they are with me, obviously they never sleep or anything when we get to a job, but sometimes I've had them just fall asleep during the drive. Oh, I see. Is there a red flag to be addressed or. No, I see what you're saying. So if you're driving, they're sleeping. I'd probably say try to get them to drive so you can do estimates, do follow up calls, do other things like that. That'd be ideal. Like you're paying them now on P4P if they're above base pay and you're, you know, switching back and forth driving, I don't see a problem really with it. It's kind of like their breaks throughout the day so they can kind of do whatever they want. Like for example, in our state you have to have 2:10, like a 10 minute break that's paid for every four hours of work. So technically they get 20 minutes a day that's paid.

They're still clocked in, but they can have a break. And usually that just comes in the form of dries in between. So if they want to take a nap, I really wouldn't care.

So.

But I wouldn't like necessarily think that's like a super positive thing. When I worked solo and I had one guy, I still would drive occasionally just so he could take breaks.

So Papa Pain, here's their January report for my CFO break. Break it down and tell me what these numbers mean to you. Tell you. And what directions does it tell you to go?

Okay, share this tab instead.

All right, Cash flow. All right. Oh wow, this is long. Who. Let's see here.

Brian, if you wanted to, you could tell people maybe. I know people are going to ask what this costs for them, for them to kind of make it for you and what kind of the ongoing costs are. I don't know if this is an ongoing one or if this is your end of year. It's a month one. So KPI's cool.

They're getting their benchmarks. Those are pretty cool if that's internal or if that is industry wide.

So these are cool? Yeah, these are. This is really cool. This is a nice breakdown. Some. There's another software if anyone doesn't want to pay the money for the service. There's a really good software. Awesome. Trying to think of it right now. Oh, man.

What's it called? Give me one second.

And basically it'll take a lot of, you know, connect, reach. So there's several. There's Reach, there's Fathom, there's Grow. These are different softwares that basically plug into your QuickBooks and we'll take all the data and make it into just like cool.

Graphs like this. So if you're like, hey, I can't afford to get a CFO involved. A second.

If you can't afford to get a fractional CFO involved, sometimes getting some insights like this. If you're like, hey, I like this graphs. I like the way this is broken down. It can be helpful, those software just to plug it into your QuickBooks. So.

That'S cool. So this is like your monthly gross margin.

Oh, I remember that. It's crazy, actually. I remember in July, you specifically talking to me, Ryan, say, like that was that month thing is just dropped off a cliff. I wonder if that was why I have to look at. If you spend a bunch of marketing or something on that.

Oh, that's fine. That's like your most profitable month. What happened there? One second.

Why is your gross margin down? Oh, I see. Okay. You collected. Got it. All right, so net income 17. Very cool. Return on equity. Very good. Oh, this is for last month. Got it. Owner's compensation.

$273.

Labor efficiency, right around, what, 37%. Very good.

I see. So you get super efficient because you're not in this. Yeah, got it. And then winter is obviously less. That's cool.

Target. Very cool. Yeah. What I like is they have your. They basically have the.

The formulas here at the bottom. So if anyone's like, hey, like, how did that number come up? Just look at the formula here at the bottom.

So a lot of it has to do with coming with an accurate gross profit number. So for anyone looking at this, determining all of this comes down to do you accurately do bookkeeping? It literally comes down to that. Like, actually having that is so important.

Because otherwise your gross profit number gets completely skewed and then a lot of the ratios kind of fall apart. Where's your quick ratio there? 1.47, very cool. 1.07, very nice.

That's cool. I'm interested where they're getting that percentiles from. Is that internal or is that maintenance and lawn care benchmarks above? I guess it's probably at the bottom of the bottom. Ah, there it is. No, this is Just breaking down the metrics.

KPI's. I want to know where you're getting your percentages from.

That'd be my only question. I think these are great. I love these. I could spend all day long. I'm sure Ryan, you do the same thing. Just like looking over this stuff, it's so interesting. It's so awesome. And as the business gets larger and it actually is worthwhile to spend several thousand dollars figuring out these things and then making decision points on them.

You know, things like your leverage, what that is, you know what your zone certain times of year of your liabilities to your assets. Because you're usually going to have a higher debt ratio during the winter. If you have debt.

Yeah, exactly. Pairs of maintenance, 7%.

It's a little high. Oh, I see Your target is 2.8. Got it. I, I bet that probably has something to do with the having the dealership though too. Asset newness, that's kind of cool.

Break even analysis, very good. So basically you got to make 167,000 to make profit. Margin of safety. Very good. See 151,000 last month. Sweet. And this is going to be aircon. Very cool. That's cool. Yeah. So this, these are great. I could spend all day looking at this stuff. And I think the big thing, the takeaway whenever I look at these is it simply comes down to is someone bookkeeping correctly? Because all of those metrics and numbers are ratios. And unless someone has an internal finance department that will validate every one of the numbers.

The data is only, the reporting is only as good as the data. And so that's why it's just so important to have where at least once or twice a week you're going to your QuickBooks, your transact, you know, transactions categorization, you're at the end of the month reconciling with your bank statements and making sure there's nothing missing. Everything's lining up because otherwise you can't make up these, you can't come up with those numbers. And so for anyone watching that, like that is so cool. If you're doing under 500,000 in annual revenue, I think that there are more important numbers that are the actual drivers of performance. Obviously when you're doing at the scale of Ryan and you have, you know, millions in revenue, it's extremely helpful to know those things because spending five or ten grand to know what some of those metrics, you can go make decisions that'll like actually save you that much money. And so, but even the other day I was Talking to some people, and they're talking about their budget, and they have a $200,000 business, and they're talking about their projections, and they're working on this thing. It's been taking them, like, a week or two to work on. I'm like, look, if you just spent that time on focusing on how to get more marketing, you get so many customers, like, you increase your close ratio, you'd be able to increase your prices. You make far more profit doing that and getting $300,000 in revenue without increasing any assets or any employees because you're able to raise prices than trying to, like, squeeze out an extra couple thousand dollars in savings because of your budget. So. But yeah, it's very exciting, and it is a. A wonderful thing when you're able to afford to do this, the fractional CFO stuff, do an analysis.

Do projections, do budgets, forecasting, things like that.

I agree with the guy that gave a word of encouragement. Copilot would be everything we need. And if anything, anyone wants to give me a word of encouragement, I could use it. It's hilarious. I love it. Ken, if you need a word of encouragement, just go on the Facebook and be like, hey, I need a word of encouragement. The short O. Is there a way for CC to see where the clients are calling from? No, unfortunately not. I have a couple of estimates put on my schedule there in Yorktown, Virginia. It's a simple call to let them know the discrepancy.

I see. So they probably came in as Esther request forms. They say Yorktown. We literally see August along Yorktown. We're putting on your schedule. What I would do here is still submit as a yellow slip, because what they'll do is they're like, okay, we see what's happening here at the same city name. Let's go ahead and put something in your wiki or do something to prevent that from happening. Unfortunately, the problem is this. If people search Yorktown lawn care and you're ranking in another Yorktown.

That'S tough because they're not. If they're a secondary Augusta, Yorktown, we, like, really delineate, like, we're able to work on it a lot, and we rarely have that problem. But if you have a very common name and there's not another Augusta of that city name, that's a tough one. But. But please submit as yellow slip, because then what we can do is look at your account specifically. Okay, there's another one in Virginia. We're starting to rank it. Like, let's make sure we cap that and like don't allow for people in. But I'm guessing that's what's happening or people aren't putting their state in and they're just putting in their, you know, their city. And all of a sudden now you know we are going to assume it's in your city name and if, if it's a common city name it's large enough, a lot of the addresses will match up too. So but definitely subtiels because they can see they'll, if you have a couple of those especially it's super helpful for them and they can see if they can.

Just make sure that it doesn't happen.

All right, I hope you all have a fantastic day. I did make a note because there was a couple people mentioning about the phone number on the estimates. I'll see if before we actually focus on the full customization of the estimates if there's down the road something sooner that we can do in terms of the phone number being on there for follow up calls. So.

Cool. All right everyone, hope you have a fantastic day. We'll talk soon. Take care.