Mike Minutes Mastermind 02/28/2023

Hello, guess nation. Let's go and get started. Let me just copy this.

Over into Facebook.

Boom.

Right.

The form announcement. We start number one March first thing is tomorrow is if you are wanting to submit people services to full service, you want command center do full service tasks for you. Definitely want to get in before March 1, which is tomorrow because after March 1 we do not guarantee that we'll be able to put it on the next week because as we enter in spring rush we can't have a gazillion people dropping things on us immediately. So if you, if you need full services done, submit the form today. It's right on the main augustafranchise.com page. I'll show it to everyone right now. You guys submit the form and they go into effect the following Tuesday. So let me just log in, I'll show you guys how to do this Again. This is view our full service and you are if you are a growth model and you're wanting things taken off of your plate, you'll need to submit this. If you want it done immediately or like done.

The most expeditiously way, modify your command center services task and fill out this form. Okay, so if you need command center services, this is what you'll need to fill out and submit. And you can definitely do this during spring rush. It's just that we cannot guarantee it's going to be done the next week because we can have people piling up and a lot of people asking to get stuff done. We can only onboard so many people into things like QuickBooks and Payroll, etc. So just know if you have, if you need us to do full services for you, please submit this today to get that process started and then these go into effect every Tuesday. Once a week we can make modifications inside of Command Center. So that is today.

Webpage editor I made a post in the Facebook page Facebook group. Make sure you look at that. If you just came to training or if you're brand new. We are still working on the back end portal for support for all of you to add banners, add services, things like that still being built.

We've made a quick form for you to be able to fill out to get things done like that for now, hopefully the next week or two all of those will be done but we're still building them. Once they're done then you can have the usual login right from the main page which is.

Boom. Typically accessible right through here. Edit your webpage. But if you're on the Facebook group you will see that I made A list this morning. Mercy Goodness if I can find it.

I made this list right here.

Of everyone that we are still working on your backend site. So if we're still working your backend site and the support.

Dashboard, you can use this link to submit support requests for now. Things like changing forms or service pages, things like that. So check it out. All right.

Jump in some questions.

Sorry. Let me pull this over here. Oh, there's ten of them. Mercy Goodness Marathon Tuesday.

Share the screen. There we go. All right, Window. All right, we are in business Number one Thomas Littleton we have jobs lined up and ready to go 115 budget hours and building. However, the snow accumulation keeps us from being able to show up and complete jobs 100%. The previous years have been more favorable for us to get things done with better job site conditions between snow events. I did not account for multiple visits on these jobs since they are relatively small projects. We will not be profitable. Most likely lose money if we start jobs that return at a later date once snow melts in order to complete. On the other hand, if we wait for perfect job site conditions, we may not get rolling until April or beyond. Our plate is going to be overloaded from even more demand once snow has finally melted. Could lose new hires. Getting ready ready to get going. My questions are, would you move forward and just start all of the jobs on the list, then explain to customers will be back after snow melts to finish solving all the concerns above. B. Sit back and wait in order to complete the jobs in one single visit not solving any of the concerns above. Which of this is a bad or worse customer experience? Personally, I would probably wait until we can finish the jobs in one fail swoop. And it sounds like for some reason that that could be like a month away.

My question is like is there period where it melts for a few days and you can get a bunch of work done and get your crew on board and be like, hey guys, we're going to work crazy hours when the snow is gone. I don't know if that's happening or if you're saying like it's going to slowly melt over the course of March, but it's super ineffective. You're going to lose money on this if you're going back to the jobs multiple times. Customers usually aren't happy and they're also usually pretty understanding if you need to push them off a few days or a week in order to get a job done because the snow. So I would push more for that. Get your guys in the habit of looking at budget hours and then being accurate and not going back and forth to jobs. That would be my recommendation. The goal though, to keep them busy is valid. I think it's more a matter though if it's if where there's three or four days where it might be nice and you can get work done, it's okay guys, we're going to work crazy hours. We're going to be really packing it in. So. But sounds like more a matter of it slowly melting and that's a little killer because in that case then I would just schedule all your projects one once you know that it's going to be done that the snow will be gone and then if it happens sooner, you can pull those jobs forward because customers aren't going to care. They're usually happy when you pull jobs forward. Max from Burnaby We've had some unexpected snow which may interfere at the start of the mowing season on March 1. Would you recommend continuing winter services for all clients who are already subscribed for the winter? Smaller number of overall clients or service all the mowing clients but perform winter services instead? Larger number of clients. I wouldn't do the second part servicing all mowing clients because they're gonna be super confused they didn't get winter services. They might have even opted out of winter services. So I would if you're in the Pacific Northwest, you're getting snowed on today. I'd probably start next Monday. The snow will be hopefully gone pretty quickly. So that's what I would probably recommend doing. Just do winter services this week because on winter services you're able to do shoveling and salting etc and stick with those. But then just start your mow mowing next Monday. Nick from Marysville Quick question. What is a good efficiency score when your P4P percentage to the crew is 40% and what is a break even? How do you calculate that side thought can you post a Google Doc in the dashboard that has all the relevant equations for the business and how do you calculate them? What do the different scores mean? I get confused sometimes when I'm thinking of efficiency score, effective hourly rate and max metrics. They all so similar when they. When you calculate them very easily. When you calculate them very easy to get confused. I know other franchisees are confused as well. I'll see if I can't make a kind of an equation sheet that be fine. In terms of efficiency score, you're looking at budget hours divided by clocked hours. 40% is going to be what is typically in like the winter when you're super ineffective and inefficient. If you're not typically above 70%, your guys aren't making P4P, or at least they're not consistently making about P4P. There's always gonna be higher performers and lower performers. If you're around like 50%, probably none of them are making above base pay. When you're about 90%, almost everyone's usually making above base pay. You can just do the math based upon the fact that we're giving one third of labor revenue. So effectively, if everyone was at 67% efficiency, then they would be at base pay, right? But again, you have a distribution. So even if you're at say 70% efficiency, it means that probably about half of your crew is going to be above base pay. Right? So but then you have guys who are way above and then guys who are lower. So if the average is around 70, you're probably like half your crew is in In P above P4P and half is below.

Yeah, but it can be skewed by people that are way outside the averages. But yeah, I'll try to figure out a document for this. Ultimately though, this is exactly what Copilot's going to become and you not only will it explain the equation, it will show you your numbers.

Nick from Marysville when sending the Mowing season startup schedule email as well as a price increase email for select clients only, would you recommend combining the two or send one? I would definitely just do one and don't make it a price increase email. This is a matter of your your service is going to be starting next week. Here's your prices for the upcoming season. That's all I would do. 90% of people won't even bat an eye. The other 10% will ask you, did this go up, what was our prices last year, etc. Just do it in one email. Do not do it in two emails highly recommend you do not do.

Audience.

That's hilarious. Hiring Karen has set up an ad with Indeed and Craigslist. Concern is that as it has been talked about, the ones on Craigslist aren't necessarily serious. What are some good qualifying questions particular for Craigslist? We've attempted to put an ad on Facebook. I'm sure that there's a video on the dashboard for this, so you can definitely do Facebook jobs right now. But Facebook jobs is going away. They're taking that away. So Indeed and Craigslist, probably where you want to stay and focus on. In terms of qualifying questions, you could literally just qualify them based upon if they show up to an interview. And so if that's a big concern of yours, like you're getting a lot of leads and people applying, but you don't know if they're serious. Set them up for interviews every 15 to 20 minutes over the course of several hours and text them several times leading up to that moment. And then if they show up, you have a decent candidate enough to be able to at least do an interview for. Right. So.

Josh lee from Lufkin, Texas, hello. @ training you said y' all use Team up for scheduling. Is that in place of essay or in conjunction with it? Is in conjunction with it. My reason in asking is I have a real estate business flipping and renting apartments as well. And also I have six kids, so the schedule can get a little wild at times. And I'm trying to find the most efficient way of scheduling everything. Yeah. So definitely with your trainer, you need to go over this on your coaching call and figure out what how many budget hours per week you're able to do with your accumulated schedule. Because what you do is build in flexibility with mowing to be able to move them around based upon if you have six kids, you're going to need, you're going to need that.

But you should the budget hours part needs to be consistent, right. So maybe you don't have 35 budget hours on maybe you have 30 budget hours per week for you to be on the schedule. So you have a little more flexibility there. But I would use Team up just for your projects and calculating the budget hours each week that are on the schedule simply because the calendar view of service ipod is not great for that. So just for projects and then overall budget hours, that's what I'd be tracking on there. Again down the road with Copilot, our goal is to be able to do this for you so you can quickly look and see how booked you are out for the next several weeks and know when your next available appointment is. But it's the fastest way to do it is just to very quickly know your budget hours for every day and week of the month and then be able to look at okay they in three weeks on this day, that's when next available spot is for our projects and you pop a spot in there. So definitely go over this with your coach. That's going to be the best way to do it. Landon from Tallahassee, what is the easiest way to look at the total budget hours you have on schedule for a day? Using Zooper, I go through on the job calendar and manually add them up. Then determine where someone should be scheduled. Is there an easier way or is this what you all do? There's a video on this. On the training for Zooper. I've been trying to work with them, seems like for six months to try to get this on the bottom of your screen. And they do have it. It's just not in the most clear way. But check out the video on the Zooper training inside the academy. Basically at the bottom of the screen they have budget hours that's on that day and then for each person too.

Feel free to put on the Facebook group. I know some of the power users will be able to point in the right direction as well. But there is a training video on the academy for that.

It's the one about running P4P using Super Dustin from Bloomington. In your opinion, at what point in the business is it time to buy land for a shop space to operate of, even just land with containers, but something that the business owns. This is a tough one. Mostly comes down to whether if you can't find a place to rent, like I'm considering buying land now for my locations in North Carolina. I don't want to. I'd rather just rent, but it's just hard to find places. And if we buy a shop space, I could potentially have like five locations run out of it. So that makes a little more sense.

But I would say if you can't find a good rental that is in a good spot and the. And you got really good land for cheap, that's when I would be buying. But like, where I'm looking at North Carolina is insanity. Like you're looking at three quarters of a million dollars for a blank piece of land. That's commercial. It's insanity. So. And that's very hard to get financing for, by the way, because no one wants to put financing against land because there's no collateral.

There'S no depreciable assets. So it's just you're mostly gonna have to pay with cash. Like you could get an SBA loan, but then you're gonna have to do some sort of development like building on it. They typically won't just do it for land. Even a 504 they won't do it for. So it's tough. Really, really tough. I would be. I'd say, like if you can't find a shop space to rent in a good spot and there's land for cheap, that's when I'd be thinking about it. But even land for cheap, like let's say you get cheap land for 2, $300,000 a commercial for like an acre or so. Like that's cash. That's the equivalent of like starting two or three more. Two or three more locations. And so if I can find rent for a decent price right now, I'd rather do that. So you know, Chuck was sending me videos of a spot he was looking at the other day for land out in North Carolina and stuff. And that was fine, but just like, man, if I can find a place to rent, I don't want to fork over three quarters of a million dollars just for land. Super unproductive asset. So anyways, Dustin from Bloomington, we work for an HOA that's got a big pond. Long story short, we have mowed them two, three years and I've always had to be careful who I schedule for it. They all. They are wanting an estimate for some extra work we no longer offer. And I feel like this is the best opportunity. Opportunity to get rid of it. 1 thought I had was to rain.

I'm guess raise, raise mowing price into oblivion. So they cancel, but there is a chance they accept. What would your recommendation be? I ultimately do not don't want to want the job.

I don't know, man. I like raising prices to oblivion. Hey, if they doubled, if you doubled the price and you could get the work starts to make a little more sense, you know, I don't know. Like, yeah, if you really just do not want the work. That's when you say we will not be renewing our contract this upcoming year. We are no longer doing the services at your facility. And like you stop after the end of the contract. I'd be more inclined if like price has now doubled and to see what they do because if it doubles, I'm able to put up with the, you know, the hassle. However, I don't know this. I'm sure this, the long story part is probably what tells me there's a lot more to it. It's not just the price. So in that case you just tell them, hey, at the end of this contract, we are not going to be renewing the contract and then move on. And then if you really want to, you could say look, we can do everything, but not around the pond. You could say something like that. If that's, if that's a part of the big story, you can say, hey look, we, we are willing to do the property, we're willing to renew, but we will not be able to do around the pond. You have to find someone else to do that. You could do that and then if they cancel, you don't care. Logan from grand island, where can we find the new and current Photoshop files? The print marking that's on the Photoshop. I want to combine two yard signs front and back and use a local vendor that can do smaller, cheaper orders than Vistaprint. Very good. I have this. Okay. This is the file. Most of what I want is here, but I attach a screenshot of the piece. I'm wanting this. Okay, send this to mediagustalongerservice.com they'll send you specifically what you're looking for. But this is updated. I'm assuming this is the one that is on the academy, because on the academy there is a.

Okay, send this over to the media team. I'll send this in a copy of this too. They'll make sure it's all updated because I know there's new ones in there, but they'll throw it in that same folder eventually.

Emailed media.

Update.

Cool.

All right, I think that's it. All in a day's work. Boom. Delete all fonts. Okay. Bam. All right, see what else we got here. Should I send out new mowing price if I'm year round Mowing price increase email. Should I send. Should I send out new mowing price if I'm mowing year round? Yeah, absolutely. If you're at capacity, go ahead and raise those prices. Especially after your question yesterday. If you're at capacity, go ahead and raise prices. If you're not at capacity, you might want to blitz in terms of like doing everything you can to fill up your trucks, fill up their schedule. So that way you feel a little bit better about raising prices. But if you're doing mowing year round, this is. It's always a good time to raise prices. If you're at capacity, is always a good time to raise prices. It's when you're not at capacity that you need to be more time sensitive. Spring fall, when it's really, really busy and everyone else can't find a contractor, that's when you'd probably want to raise. But if you are at capacity and you can't take any more customers without like overtime, more trucks, or more employees, you need to be raising prices. It is always a good time to raise prices. And how you do it is really inconsequential. Whether you do it like, hey, your prices are now this or you give it a long explanation letter, I don't care. You're at capacity. It does not matter. So. All right, guys, hope you have a great day. We'll see you tomorrow. Last reminder, March 1st, full service deadline. Okay, if you want those. Want full services to be like, right away next week, you need to fill out that form today. Anything that goes on after tomorrow, you are. It's possible that you're waiting a couple weeks or more because we had in the spring rush. We just can't onboard 20 people in the same time in the payroll. Like, we just can't do it. So if you. If you know you're gonna want full services during the spring rush, I highly recommend fill out the form today. They'll get you set up. And on that for next month.

We're still one month from mowing starting. Considering limited time with two locations, what would you recommend doing now to get customers on the schedule? I would be putting all of your. All of your mowing jobs on the routes, like getting everything set up inside of your. Your CRM. I'd be ironing out what days of the week you're gonna use, certain areas. I would be doing massive amounts of one click estimates for spring cleanups to your existing database and telling them that, hey, we are prioritizing all of you to just what we talked about a couple months ago. Like, and that is our last month. And that is like, tell them, hey, look, we're trying to prioritize our existing customers before we get a deluge of new customers. So please get on the schedule this month in February or, sorry, in March and get your spring cleanup done now, because when we start mowing in April, it's going to be crazy. And we want to make sure we prioritize our existing customers and let you guys have first dibs to our schedule. That's how you want to do that. Focus on getting. Pulling forward demand from your existing customers by using that pitch. All right, guys, have a great day.