Mike Minutes Mastermind 03/01/2024

All right, we are live. Hope everyone is doing amazing. Let's get started.

Couple announcements. First off, I had stated a couple weeks ago that Whoever.

Made a.

YouTube video and posted it would win an iPad, an apple watch or 500 cash. Well, there's only two videos submitted, folks, so you had a 5050 chance submitting a video. So Brian hall wins it. Fixing my estimate system with scaling to 10,000 monthly revenue. Let's go. So, Brian, if you would like to comment on this post and tag me if you would like 500 an Apple Watch or an iPad and I'll need your mailing address. So if you, you want to just comment on this post from a couple weeks ago, that would be amazing. All right, let's see here. I had other announcements, other announcement. Last night we had a franchise advisory council and as I stated in the Facebook group already voted to basically make sure that the trucks are all uniform at some point an entire year. You can still put on the old ones if you would like, but starting January 1, 2025, you will not be able to put the old decals on a, a truck, a new one that you're. You've purchased. When I say new, it's new to you. And then, but still like almost three years away. So January 1, 2027, so it's almost three years away from now is when we would require the old decals to be removed completely and replaced with the new design.

So I think that was fair. Almost three years before it would be completely across the board. One year before it'd be taking root. And it's already. All the new locations have already started to put the new decals on. They just look so much better. But we want to make them uniform. We are going to be working on a car, sir, a sedan version of the decals designs so that if you do have cards, you can make sure those are matching as well. We just want to make sure that when people travel and stuff, they start to see Augusta trucks, they all look the same. They all are recognizable. And the whole reason we're doing the wraps is because the floating letters just are not uniform enough. That's that. That's water in the bridge at this point last year making the change over from the floating letters to the wraps, which are going to offer much more uniformity between locations. That had one more one second here.

Oh, yeah. On stripe.

You might get. I'm seeing across all stripe accounts pretty much that is an email saying you need to verify something inside your account in order to be able to get payouts. I'm not seeing this as a spam scam anywhere. So so far obviously use discretion. Some people can just make an email, set a button and then you're asking for something crazy. But make sure you're actually logging to your stripe account. You'll see it at the very top. There's a banner that usually says like payouts paused or payouts will be paused. If you don't verify this by this certain date, this is valid. I'm seeing this across the entire board. I have a feeling they were required by legislation to get more for verification or something because I'm seeing every single stripe account needing this. So just log into your stripe account. It'll probably be a banner at the top. Command center can't do it for you because it is asking for like Social Security number, etc. So again, just make sure you're inside of stripe before you start putting your Social Security number. Don't be just putting into it because you clicked it on the email link a button and then it's asking for your social. Don't do that. You need to have logged in, see all of your account information, see all of your revenues, etc. And then you should be fine.

But command center wanted me to let you know because they can't do that for you. They don't have your Social Security number and stuff like that. All right.

Question where we at? Where we at? There we are. Present. Share screen what are we working with today? Three questions. Coach Connor. All right, I'm not sure who coach Connor is now. I'm always confused because we have Brian Connor, we have Connor Hutchinson and we have Connor Stead. I'm gonna guess that this is, this is coach Connor. This is Connor Stead. I'm just gonna guess, but I don't know. So we're about to find out. Okie dokie. Coach Connor. So one of the many Connors. There's multiple. There's other Connors in Augustination too but I'm gonna roll with this is probably Connorstead is. I'm trying to figure out a command service and how we can essentially separate a service into two segments. For example, payroll and onboarding should be two separate services that command center used to offer. I don't need help filling out the payroll information on a bi weekly basis. However, I do need help with setting them up on P4P, setting up the tax information, setting up all the.

Dowsing, I'm guessing housing, housing information, dowsing information, handbook, job offer, etc. I really just need or want the help getting Set up. But once set up, I can take over. This used to be an option but is no longer an option for a reason that Jaden has explained to me but still doesn't really make sense on the concept of how there would be error. Okay. For example, same with categories. It's rather simple to categorize information and then only need Command center for reconciliation for the reports. We're the only ones who know the pattern of the expenses. The back where the questions released increases our price. It makes it inefficient for Command Center. I feel like command setting up the account is 90% setting up onboarding info and reconciliation of the work and sets up us up for success and where we truly need the help and not the 10%. Doing normal payroll and categorization on both of these. Yeah. So the part that I am information I do not have is the reason Jayden gave you. And if, if there's been a reason why they have combined these services.

That'S the explanation I would rule with. I just don't know these departments specifically. But for example, when you reconcile, if the categorization has not been done correctly, you can't reconcile. So like it makes sense to me that if they're, if they are not in your account and knowing where things are going and ensuring that those are all done like they know where everything's supposed to be, it's gonna be hard for them to reconcile because they're going to end up asking you a whole bunch of questions anyways that they would otherwise if they were doing like the regular expense categorization because they would have been out of your account for three months and they, they will have no clue in terms of whether things are mis categorized or whatever. When there's a reconciliation, there's like $5,000 difference. It's difficult to know where those should be going and if there's errors. If you haven't been in the account and actually knowing what's going on and they have a cheat sheet of like where stuff should be going and all the rest of it. I'm guessing it's something along those lines. But if they have combined and made certain parts of payroll or cookbooks etc as combined services, I would imagine it's for that reason it's harder to do reconciliation after that. In terms of the payroll thing. Same thing like just, you know, it comes down to what's the explanation? Like they're not going to change stuff at Command center simply for the fun of it. They're doing it because either a, the, the accuracy needs to be increased by consolidation of services and making sure that we're more accurate on things. Or secondly.

There'S just too much variety for them to be able to serve somebody. So like there's too many variations, like they have to use the same way every single time. So I don't know what she told you there in terms of the reason for that, but I would assume it's somewhere along those lines. And so feel free to, if it doesn't make sense to you, ask again. Like could you please, please explain and reply to get more clarity on those.

Oh, we have a second one from coach Connor. Gonna assume this is the same coach Connor. I feel like it sometimes is impossible to pay off debt and save money at the same time. What do you think would be the best priority? Having the war chest or a operating one month of cash or having less than that and then paying off debt instead? Trying to get up to 50k in the business bank business account and have no less than that at all times would also like to pay off and be a debt free business sooner rather than later just as a personal goal. Yeah.

It really comes down to.

If you're in profit mode, you're going to be able to do this faster. Right. And so if you're trying to, what a lot of people say is they want to grow, they want to be profitable and they want to pay off debt, that's difficult because growth is going to suck the cash. And then the fact that you want to have more money, the bank is going to suck cash so you're not going to have as much to throw towards debt. And so I would first and foremost make sure that whoever's saying this is inside of profit mode. And if they're not and they're like, well I'm also trying to grow the business. It's just like realiz realizing that doing all three of those things is be difficult. If the question is okay, I am in profit mode and now do I create a war chest and have money in the bank or do I go pay off debt? A lot of times like the debt snowball is really good from a psychological standpoint and that is pay off your smallest debts first. But if you actually have discipline when it comes to spending money.

You should be attacking anything with higher interest rates first because it's actually costing you money. So if you're paying interest of like 10, 12, 15, if you're doing credit cards 20 plus percent, I would be attacking those a whole lot sooner if those are five or six grand than the $500 that you owe zero percent interest to your local dealer. So the reason for that is because there's actually hard cost of interest.

Being accrued by having the interest rated debt. So.

For me I, I just, I just hate paying interest in general. Like even on my mortgage. You know when you get like your mortgage statement the end of the year it's like seriously like 20 of this went towards the principal. Not even. It's all debt or interest payments. That stinks. Hate that because you're technically not getting anything for it. So I know that hurts. I would say though, match your operating cash flow to the demand. So for example, you know that there are certain periods of the year where you're going to be skinnier on cash. Before that, I would say three months before that. Make putting money in the bank war chest. Operating one month cash in the bank a priority. Going into the summer and fall and typically you have much more cash available because you've had the spring rush, you got work coming in and you're trying to like you're really, you're collecting and being much more profitable in terms of on paper then you could be like okay, now I'm going to start throwing that money towards debt. So for example, what you might do is say okay, anything above one month of cash I am throwing in the bank are throwing towards the debt during the off season, during, let's just call it June through September though any I'm going to, I'm willing to go lower than that and just throw every single dollar at the debt up until say two weeks of cash flow, which is risky to your point. However, you know that you have at least two or three months to recoup any sort of low, how low you go on, on the bank balance before you go into the off season. So yeah.

Nick from Marysville, I've been thinking about this. Why are trash companies monopolies and why is this allowed? To my understanding they sign contracts for X years with the municipality and that everyone living inside that municipality is forced to pay whatever they charge and there is no competition. I have a personal problem with waste management. Haha. At my apartment, out of all the people in all the units, I still pay $80 a month. I take one bag a week, so $20 every trash bag I fill. It's just amazing the con consolidation that occurred in that industry. Could you ever see that happening in lawn care? I know that could get. Decades ago there were trucking and trucks, truck and truck garbage guys that would have a route and a couple trucks. So similar to our industry. But now it's for public services and waste management that run the country. Also a bigger question. Anti monopoly laws were created because of Rockefeller and the rampage he went on eating his competition alive. But why are those laws not enforced anymore? What's the difference between a monopoly and a company that became the best by the free market choice? Okay, wow, there's a lot of questions in here. Okay, so first off, crash companies, monopolies and why is this allowed? Every municipality is different. Some municipalities do not have a.

Quote unquote monopoly or they don't have the contracts and you can just there's a whole bunch of random people and you will see a whole bunch of different random garbage bins. So that's one thing. Like every municipality and city is different typically because this is seen as a public health issue. That's why it's regulated. So public health issues are different than things like oh, we want all the grass to be cut, Is that a public health issue? We could argue it for it, but it would have to be like feet tall before it's actually a health crisis for your local community. If the trash didn't get picked up for two weeks in your local area, it would literally be a crisis. If the lawns weren't mowed for two weeks, it'd be like, you'd hardly notice. Like we would notice because the grass is slightly shabby, but it's not going to create health crisis. And so when it comes to garbage, like waste sanit, waste and sanitation is part of the health, is part of most public health.

Planning proposals. So for like the city planning and so it is in the best interest of the city to know that, okay, we know that 100% of every single household requires waste removal. Let's go ahead and just operationalize this and say that this, this service is going to hit every single house. You know that that's the most efficient way of doing waste management.

And then usually there's, there's contracts and things like that. Every single city's no different. Some still allow where like based upon the bin you're gonna have different providers depending on, you know, certain states are more pro, you know that versus other people. It's like, hey, we want a system in place and the city will sometimes use trash removal again is to be able to like standardize who is using. It's funny, I was thinking about command center like the same way that the city will be like, hey, we're going to standardize who can choose. Like you can't choose other people because they Want the, the trash gone. Ultimately the city just wants the trash gone and that not to become a health crisis and there not to be any sort of public health issues where trash is laying around, etc. And there is statistical differences of cleanliness of, of cities that have a regulated one provider. I think it's called like universal collector or something versus cities and municipalities that, that allow anyone because it enforces like it requires that one provider pick up every single bin. It requires like it, it just standardizes things to make it more, more cleanly. So from the city's perspective, it's better for them because they have like one provider. It's like standardization of services and you opt in or you go do it yourself and take it to the dump.

So in most, like a lot of urban areas, they do that because they want the waste taken care of. Like it can very quickly spiral out of control. And honestly, like the AM systems and procedures behind waste management is incredible. But yeah, there's like four major players in terms of, of trash in the U.S. and yeah, they, they buy out everyone essentially. So it's not a monopoly. It'd be called an oligopoly, which means there's multiple players. If you had two players, it's a duopoly. And so.

You know, it's assuming you have more than two, like more than a duopoly, you typically have a pretty competitive market, right? So like for Examp.

Really when it comes to cell phones, you have iOS and you have Android, I'd call it a duopoly. Anything outside of that, you're, you're on a fringe of society, honestly. So that's why they can still retain such great margins on their app stores. So, you know, Apple's still taking 30% of the, everything from the Apple Store from, from the App Store. But you can see already how much pressure that's under. If they were by themselves, like if only Apple existed, essentially, I, I guarantee you that would be like 45, 50, potentially 55% more aligned with what YouTube takes from its creators, which is 45%. So. But if I want to, if I want to monetize my videos As a creator, YouTube is the only. It is, it is basically a monopoly. And that's why they can get 45 of all the revenue I make. They get to keep it. So here's the bottom line. This is the beautiful thing about a free market. And unfortunately, we don't really live in much of a free market, but if we did, this stuff gets resolved. Because if the, if the margins are juicy Enough people will come after it. So for example, like right now with Nvidia, they're making these massive amounts of profit margins on all their server, on all their products that won't last in the long term because other people, those are juicy margins and look at the multiples they're getting. We will enter that market and they will have AMD and Intel and TSMC and everyone jump in and do their product to get after the margins. And so in a free market, monopolies are very difficult to actually sustain.

Because I would argue there were certain laws in place, for example Rockefeller to be able to do his thing. But, but in the real free market, when you have someone who makes tons of money, if it's a massive target on their back, which then allows more competition and competition brings down price. So.

Yeah, like, like I, I just generally believe that.

If there were, if there were, if more companies started to produce.

The, the chips that.

Nvidia makes, the, the price. That's where I was going, sorry, Tesla. So for example, their gross profit margins were almost 30% just a few years ago. Now they're under 20. Why? Because they had to lower their price. Because there's a whole bunch of electric car makers that come into the market now. Some people would say they're playing 40 chess, taking lower profits, wipe out a lot of the electric car competition and then be able to expand and get their profit margins back through scale. Makes perfect sense. But in general, in general, when you have high enough profit margins, it will increase competition because more people want that money. So that's why in an open market, in a real true free market, I don't think a monopoly can last for more than 10 or 20 years. There's very few businesses that can have a monopoly by themselves for more than 20 years. Because in a capital efficient market and in a free market, there'll be a new competition and a smaller player will come in and be able to out innovate and they'll, and it'll cause them to either lower their price, I. E. Lower their profits or B give up market share. And in terms of having lawn care, I don't think it'll happen lawn care because to based on my memory, it's like 40 to 44% of homeowners have their lawn care cut by a contractor. I think it's like 12 of them have weed and feed or like spraying chemicals put on by a contractor. A lot of them do it themselves. So because it's not one, a public health crisis and two a public health or a Public health issue. And two, because it is not every single household requiring it like it is with waste management. I don't think it'll be ever where there's contracts being handed out, cities and things like that. I just. Yeah.

Also because the standardization of it, right. So for example, you know the bin, everyone pays the same amount for the bin. The Lawn, you have one neighbor that is 20 times larger and what you're saying is it essentially become exacerbated because you're saying like it's not fair that I have to pay $80 to my, you know, HOA or whatever for my, for my, my bin of garbage. But the garbage guy, he gets the same amount for the big big dumpster. He's hopping in every single a week. So he doesn't like that. That, that seems fair to society. What wouldn't seem fair to society is.

If everyone's. One person's Lawn was like a 20 lawn, the next one was a hundred dollar lawn. But we're all gonna pay the same amount. That wouldn't fly.

Just wouldn't. Because what would happen is the hundred person, $100 person would opt out because they want freedom and they would go choose someone else. But then that would drive the price up on the $20 guy. Because now you can't have the average to, to average things out of the hundred and the $20. So that's why eventually assuming you don't, every single customer doesn't need service because every single home needs waste removed. So because of that you're able to standardize a little bit more mercy. That was a long answer question. Sorry.

Let's see here where we at. What is your recommendation on when to start dustin from champagne? When is your recommendation when to start the Facebook ads for instant quotes on your website? Money is tighter than normal and can afford to waste two, three weeks of running ads with no return.

We start mowing April 1st. We are also doing door hangers to supplement the lack of money going into the, into the season.

I would start if you're tight like no more than a few days before.

Ideally you're doing a couple weeks before but you're not going to have the return. Like as soon as you start mowing and people start seeing your trucks, the rest of competition starts mowing. People start seeing it like the, the customer acquisition cost will dive so quickly comparatively. It's just if you're trying to maximize leads, there's a very hard way like there's. It's hard to measure but seeing getting in front of them prior to the mowing season is helpful. It's just not going to be potentially the best bang for your buck if you're tight.

This is from Marysville, Tennessee. Terrell figured ask here since I happen to be watching live. How does profit sharing work again for the guys? I thought I remember the quarters were different. Like it wasn't January through March, April through June etc or where can I find this info on the dashboard maybe along with the recommendations for their commissions, selling jobs, getting leads, gas cards, et cetera. Yeah, on the dashboard there's a download of how to make money outside of P4P. There's like a whole document that Marcus made about the local shop and a lot of people adopted some of those like a hundred dollar gift card stuff, et cetera. Secondly is we basically make sure that their Q1 starts when we start mowing. So for example, at the local shop we had our off site meeting last night. There's like 25 people and so their Q1 starts March 1. Not January, February, March, but March 1. The reason is so that as many as possible are eligible for Q1 profit sharing because they have to be there for the entire season. So just make your Q1 start when you start when you start mowing so that the majority of your team is eligible from day one. Otherwise a whole bunch of your team, if you start hiring them later, aren't going to be eligible for Q1 at all.

Cool. All right everyone have a fantastic Friday. Fantastic Friday. I like that. And we will see you on Monday. Happy spring rush. March 1st. Let's go. I think about a third or so of Augusta Nation starts mowing today. Only a little more. So let's hit it hard and let's get after it. Take care guys.