Mike Minutes Mastermind 03/03/2023

What's up everyone? You're doing super well. I'm on a layover. Flight's been delayed. Let's go. Finally catch up on stuff. So that's really good. Let's go get started. Let me just drop this link into the Facebook group. So there's a tornado in Evansville, Indiana. So doctor with Connor.

Check.

Couple quick things here.

Couple.

Reminders. If you're a new location, make sure that in your review email document asking for review that you change the link behind the yes button to be your Google business listing, not the one that's currently there. Okay. It's on your checklist. You leave training that you need to change the email or the URL of the Google listing behind the yes. Because if they it says are you satisfied? They click yes. It's going to go have them click or make a review.

So the Bellingham Drops got a couple of those.

Recently. We've also got some of the threes and five three and one star reviews which those make us very unhappy. So Dylan might pick a fight with you, but he might also email you and just let you know. So I know like North Augusta, you know, I'm really happy that, you know, Matt is such a great person and that the review said that. But Matt is a couple thousand miles away from the Bellingham shop and he'd probably appreciate that five star view. So, you know, might be a good idea. There is the last of the four or five locations that are waiting on your Google listing to be activated. I just got those reinstated.

We're now doing all on the process of getting your Google listing set up. Takes us way longer on the setup but then that way you guys don't have to worry about postcards and verification all the rest of it. So not promising anything after we verify it. And time goes on. Google's doing weird stuff. But we're now taking on that process just because it's been so hit and miss for so many people. We're doing that for you. So I think the last four or five locations be good to go. And then we're into the spring rush and we're good to go.

Cool, let's go and jump in starting at number 18 because yesterday we got to 17. Kyle Tarvin, what was your thought process behind making Chuck your regional manager? Was there a specific reason you chose him versus anyone else want someone like Lee? Obviously Chuck is a sharp guy and I can see why you chose him, but curious to hear your side of why you actually did. Actually we love Chuck. So no slight hand roll Just picking your brain, I would say. He was a gm, so I was able to. He was not only as a gm, he was a remote gm. And he also had not yet gotten to the sales side. Right. So for me, like internally, how I think about it is like when someone gets to a certain level, I'll probably end up making them a regional manager or I'll bring them into the corporate side in terms of coaching or sales. So Lee had already gotten involved in the sales side. So I figured Chuck would make a great remote because I can't do sales remote. They need to be here. You're here for training and things like that. Although Chuck flies in for that every month.

And he does the coaching, obviously. But I already had already been really deep into the sales side. That was something that, you know, we're taking a few months to train someone new on. So Chuck was able to move into the regional manager with relative ease because he was already a virtual gm. And so I trust him a lot already because he'd been a GM for a couple years and been really successful at it. So if he can be successful and pass that along to my GMs that I own that I hire will be successful. So that's why.

Oh wow, we got sun coming through. Let me try to move guys. One second.

Oh yeah, much better. Okay.

Flight'S supposed to be here pretty soon. Okay, let's go.

Ken from Fenton. My question is about how to make more customers sticky. You have said that contracts for long period, great friction and some new customers won't even sign up if the price is good because of a contract.

But you've also sent. You have a penalty for people that quit early. The reason we do that is because they don't need our team. So this is a great point here. Let me finish the question. Is there any way to combine the two or should they always be separate? Lawn care and gym membership. This is a great question, Ken. This is probably the best question you have ever asked. Kudos to you. So the difference here is that.

In a contract for the gym, we are requiring the customer to have the.

Self discipline and motivation to come into the gym. Like we, we capture the money and they have, they have to deliver. Like they have to come up with the gumption and the motivation to come to the gym. When it comes to lawn care, if you do a contract, you are signing yourself up for having to deliver every single week. So the difference there is that when you do a contract for, for the gym, it's sticky because I don't have to do anything else after the transaction. It's like it's up to them to show up. If they don't want to show up, there's no skin off my back. That's not the same thing with lawn care. When you sign a contract, you still have to deliver every single service and it's all on you. So that's a great question. I can make a whole video on that. It's a great question. But yeah, the delivery, the reason for it is because the delivery mechanism is from a company side instead of the customer side. And so anything that is requiring the customer to deliver every single time becomes very sticky because they're not going to. Right. That's why most gyms, the vast majority of gyms, the vast majority of their members don't come in more than five times a month. Right. So, yeah, like we literally only have out of, you know, 800 members, 900 members or whatever. We have about one or two members that will come in every single day of the month. And then less, less than 20 will come in 20 days ahead of the month. The vast majority of them will never come in more than five times a month. Right. So that's what makes it sticky is because it's all on them. So.

Caleb from their island. I believe it would be very beneficial to everyone in the destination. We can have duplicate home pages for our website, the ending Google slash Facebook and rename the lead page. So there's already this.

So if you want this, you can simply get like estimate one, estimate two. So that slash. We have different ones.

Yeah. So the slash estimate that's currently there now, we have multiples of those. So if you wanted to, you could have that. You just have to ask the web team. There's a lot of locations that already have that running. So you can email webgustalongcaservice.com and just say, hey, I want a duplicated, duplicated estimate form page. And they'll make estimate one, estimate two, estimate three for you. And a lot of locations already do that. So you absolutely can do that right now.

You know what, that's a good point. You could probably make it this in onto the dashboard, your website dashboard. Let me look in the tech side just one second. Give me 10 seconds.

Cool. I'll look at that stuff.

I think we can make that on the dashboard. I'm just trying to think about how it'd still be manual probably because like two days. Okay, I'll look into it. But I think we could put on the dashboard now I think about it Because a lot of locations already have like estimate 1, estimate 2, estimate 3. And then that way you can be like, okay, I'm going to do estimate one this month for this specific ad. I'm going to do estimate two for this specific thing and then you can switch them up. So that way instead of just saying slash Google, you can take the same two different Google Ads and run one against estimate one and one against estimate two. The URLs.

Kyle Tarvin would you let a customer be on a weekly schedule but call and skip 24 hours beforehand and on a weekly basis for mowing kind of feeling weekly prices? Would you let a customer get a weekly schedule but call and get 24 hours ahead on a bi weekly basis for mowing?

I'm not exactly sure what you're saying. Sorry. If someone's on weekly and they cancel 24 hours beforehand, we would charge them for the bi weekly.

But we wouldn't allow them to do that during the certain months of the spring rush. We wouldn't allow them to go bi weekly like that. But if they did call head canceled, we would then make sure that they were charged bi week on this on the second visit.

Cool. All right everyone, hope you have a fantastic rest of your day. Fantastic weekend. I will do a little bit of research and see if we can't add that. That's a great point. I don't know. I've never thought about that. Try and do slash estimates so you guys can add those in on your site. Some of our clients have postponed services mowing until. Until April after we sent emails to resume mailing in the same email we raised prices that, that you're always going to have that if you raise prices along with anything else you're going to have that we want to tell them skipping cause overgrowth charge, but not in a way to make them upset. What do you recommend? So you. Yeah, so this is a tough one. This is why when you raise prices you can even be at capacity. So if they, if they cancel or they do what they just done, you don't really care.

So you've done it prior to starting services, which is fine. It just means that you must be anticipating extreme amounts of growth in the spring rush because you know you're going to fill them up, which is fine. It's great, right? So I would not worry about this. Obviously Northwest got hit by some weird snow last week, so it's kind of delayed everyone by a week in terms of when to start mowing. And so that's why you got to Be very careful with emails that go out to customers one to two weeks before mowing season. If you don't time them correctly, literally on the right day, when it's sunny outside, you will probably get people saying, hey, starters in April or whatever like that. So if I was you, because you raised prices, I would hold back a bit unless you're willing to lose these customers. If you do put too much on them, like right off the bat like that, they're going to get mad at you. So I would personally try to focus on trying to sell spring cleanup during March. If you're going to have a little bit excess capacity there, just know that you'll be getting mowing customers throughout the and then by the time they get started back up in April, you'll be okay with it because it's a higher price. Just know that that first service, this is what you can tell them, no problem, we'll get you, we'll go ahead and get you scheduled for April. Just know that if it's overgrown more than three inches, you are going to get an upcharge. Otherwise we can get you started in March, right? So we're going to start everyone next week, starting with mowing. The Bellingham shop, for example.

That's why you want to minimize communication the couple weeks leading up to the mowing season. Because every time you communicate with them, especially if you're raising prices, you're going to get a lot of those feedback. And now what you've done, you totally fine, Totally fine. What you've done. It just means that you're probably anticipating a lot of growth and you're needing to raise prices. So in four to six weeks, you'll get any customers that you lost or that delayed, you'll get them all back. I would just focus now that you've done the damage has been done for March to just focus on spring cleanups to fill the schedule and just get as many of those done as you can so that when you hit April and all these months, customers come back, that you're able to.

Absorb that, no problem. But again, this goes back to only raising prices. Prices should be raised when you hit capacity, right? Would it be labor capacity, your personal capacity or truck capacity? Like asset capacity is when you hit those three things and customers leave, you honestly care less because you.

You don't want, you can't handle more work. And when you ever leave or cancels and delays doesn't matter. But for everyone, that starts in April, be very careful about emails sent out to people a week or two before mowing season, especially if you're raising prices. Because like, if you talk about, okay, we're gonna get started next week, and then like, okay, no, no, it's gonna. We're gonna push it off one more week because we had bad weather like that email will get a lot of people to do. It was just said that is, hey, we'll just go ahead and start a month after or we'll contact you when we want you to start. So you don't want to do that. You do not want to communicate too often. If someone opted out a bunch of services, it says right in there, please just come back and mow next spring. So they've given you the license to come back. If they're on winter services, you should be able to just roll right from winter services, keep going right until the season needs it, and go right into mowing. So there should be no communication there. Right. The only reason indicate is if you're raising prices. That's it. So.

This will kill. This will kill your buck, basically, if you do. If you fumble the communication leading up to spring rush.

All right, guys, have you a great weekend and we'll see you on Monday.