Mike Minutes Mastermind 03/07/2024

And we're back.

Cool. Get this party started.

Okay, announcements. Let me just make sure I paste this into Facebook this time.

Happy birthday to lee. Let's go. 30 years of age. What a guy.

All right, let's paste this in here.

Is that correct? Yes. Okay.

Announcements. I'm gonna wait on this announcement a couple more.

Okay. I don't think there's really anything crazy in terms of announcements. There's a couple ones I'm waiting on some improvements we're doing, but I will wait on announcing that one. All right, jump into some questions.

All right.

There we go.

All right, numero uno.

Present. No present. Share screen. This one. There we go.

Okay.

First one is from Joe from Lindenhurst, New York. Hey, Mike, I just wanted your thoughts on this. For reference. We are currently in growth mode. I found that I have pretty tough time closing jobs in Dix Hills compared to my hometown in Lindenhurst. Repeatedly, I found that customers in Dix Hills are extremely price sensitive. For reference, a property that I visited the other day that sits on an acre was having their lawn cut for $50. Bottom line, my question is, am I spraying myself too thin traveling to Dix Hills? I go back and forth on this since I have a large database of people in that area. It really just depends. Like, if your goal is down the road to have like a second location, it's outside of your service area, it can make sense. Because if you can have a full route inside of, you know, a small area and just serve them for a year and make a really efficient route potentially, then your second location starts with like a full solid 50, 60 long, longer clients. That's more ideal than starting from zero. You can save yourself a couple months of getting something off the ground if you do that. If you're traveling that far and it's like for 10, 15 client customers and you're not getting anything else to stick, that's when it's like, hey, let's just forget all about it. It's not worth traveling over there for drive by estimates. It makes it a little bit easier to do this sort of thing when you're doing max and you're doing OTP at command center. But when doing drive bys or in person estimates and you have to drive a long ways, that can be really, really annoying. So it just really comes down to what you want the future of that area to look like and how many jobs you have in the area. Because if you currently have a full route, it makes more sense to be able to do it. But if you only have 10 or 15. I'd probably say, hey, give those to someone else that can take care of them in Rock and roll Coach Connor. I submitted a feature request to atc. However, on the logistics side, I was curious to know your thoughts on if this would make our schedules a mess. I started using Calendly so applicants can confirm the time. That works for them. That's a good idea. Would there be a way later on that CCP can automatically populate the scheduled estimates into our calendar like Calendly or does that create a message creating a two way scheduling? We aren't going to have like Calendly where people can choose times because like that is a whole different software like Calendly built that just around that one thing. We'd literally be trying to create Calendly inside of Copilot, which would become like another disaster.

And so what we you can do though is you can use Calendly and integrate it directly with Copilot. So if you use Zapier, Zapier, whatever you want to call it, you can do this already. So you could create Calendly, have Calendly connect with Zapier. It would create a meeting for you for example and pull their information and etc. We actually have this on our docket for next month once the next version of the automations are done to actually show how to do this inside of Copilot University in terms of for customers.

Later on, CP automatically populate the schedule estimates into our calendar like Calendly. Or does that create a mess? Two way scheduling? Yeah, like down the road we will integrate the estimate request form directly into Copilot. I don't think for right now like we don't have on the horizon to actually have it where it's live looking at your schedule and actually allowing them to book slots because that can get really cumbersome because then you got to make sure everything's on your calendar otherwise you'll get all sorts of double bookings. But more importantly it becomes a technical issue because we are just basically trying to build Calendly on top of Copilot which you can do using the integration with Zapier. So that would be my recommendation for now. If you wanted to use Calendly is like you can connect it.

The two of them and like. So for example, if you're using it for applicants, you could technically put this like on a page. Like if you wanted to put this on a. A page that you send traffic to for like a Facebook ad and they book like scheduled estimates with you you could do that. The problem is it starts to become where they're going to be all over your area. Like there's not going to be any sort of rhyme or reason to them. And so like you could be all over the place and then you'd really have to hone in like your calendly events to make sure that you it's like the right times and the calendars are matching up, etc. Which is totally fine. You can do that. We're just not going to build that tool at Copilot because we'd be trying to build Calendly inside of Copilot, essentially, which they have kind of mastered it. I would just do the integration which is using Zapier, but you could definitely do it. And if you created one for estimates and you could send it to the web team, like hey, can I have a web page that just has my calendar? And it's like augustalongerservices.com your page, that'd be fine. And then you just send traffic there if you wanted to. All right, what do we got here? Question is weekly billing or line of credit? Cash is tight for us with a starting with starting a ton of mowing and hiring like crazy but not being able to collect on mowing till April. Also three pay periods in March, coming out to training, etc not worried about profitability but more so cash flow for the next two months till accounts are built up. The entire team is crushing it. I couldn't ask for a better group. We are selling lots of work, trying to get projects on the schedule and collect as fast as possible. CC cleaned up cleaned up a great bit of collections for the transfer so not a ton to scrape out of that. I believe that the answer is weekly billing. Additionally with the transfer, I assume line of credit will be tough to get at the moment because it's technically a new business, but I haven't tried. Weekly billing does give more points of contact, but great points brought to my attention were 1. Prevents people from billing up hundreds of dollars in overdue mowing invoices and really allows us to fill schedules with ideal card and file clients. 2. A lot of Americans don't budget and likely I live week to week. A small $50 change is easier to handle than $200 charge than when living paycheck to paycheck. P.S. i know this won't be a problem in two months and I'm not a fan of debt so I don't really want potential interest with anything credit. This is really just a matter of do you want to go weekly billing or do your monthly from a cash flow perspective, it's always going to be better to collect faster. 100% there's no doubt. 100% it'll be better for cash flow. Do the downsides are slightly increased in admin because you're billing people four times a month.

Them seeing four things on their credit card is they're going to be more inclined to cancel during periods of the year where it slows down in your market. You got to judge this because if you have a very consistent market, this is less of a problem. But if you have a market like for example in Washington, we know we make all of our money in mowing in June, July and August if we can keep them. So if I'm reminding them four to five times a month that I'm charging them and sending them a paid invoice receipt, they're much, much like we, we all got our cancellations happen within two to three days of sending an invoice and and collecting payment. So if I can reduce the number of those, it's very beneficial. If you have a more consistent market in terms of of growth for mowing, for example, you're less inclined to have people cancel due to weekly billing. And it's way better for cash flow. Way better. Like there's no doubt it's better for cash flow. It's a matter of are you okay with a slightly higher chance of people canceling when the grass doesn't really need it, I. E. The time you actually make the most money on mowing? And two, are you okay with diluting potentially their inbox? If you're sending receipts on every single payment and then your one invoice you really want them to open up and click on I. E. Your one click estimate email doesn't get opened up, potentially it will affect your open rate on one click estimate emails. It's not going to negate it. But if they have four or five receipts that are sent to them every single month, the one invoice or the one email you want them to open up could is going to have a lower click through rate. It's going to have a lower open rate. And so it's just there's a. There's pros and cons. Yes, you are 100% going to have better cash flow. You are going to have slightly higher admin, slightly higher churn and slightly higher, slightly lower.

Click through rate on your one click estimate emails. For a lot of people it comes down to your market. If you have a more Consistent market. That's when I'm like yes, go for weekly billing. It's not going to impact you as much if you have months like we do in our market where two to three months of the year, we know we can do the jobs in half the amount of time. And if we can maintain 70, 80, 90% of the customers on weekly, we make all of our profits there. That's when we, that's why in our my market we still do monthly but from a casual perspective it's always better to collect daily, weekly like you just as close as possible, ideally prepaying everybody. Right. So it's not really, it's really just a matter of which one are you willing to give up on and give up more on. I would also say Connor, what you could potentially do is try to just use your credit card like go deeper into your credit card. So for example, if you pay off your credit card every week like I usually pay them off like once or twice a week if, if you needed to though what you could do, just don't pay it off for the full month which might mean you could have no expenses outside of labor for the next three, four weeks and that would get you through your first payment cycle. If you're like me, I'm always trying to pay my credit cards off before they hit like a third of my limit to help with my credit score. However, there's times when from a cash flow perspective you can really use those for things like supplies, fuel, all of those, you can pay for them in three to four weeks. Right. So.

Vel Thomas from nocatee Is there a way to create an automation that will notify us when a customer cancels to get to do's and such when cc when they have other interactions with customer but nothing when there's a cancellation, sometimes we don't see it until the guys don't see it on their route. If there's already a process, I've not received one. I'm 90% sure. I'm not sure on this Vel. Let me make a note that there is a trigger for when a.

Series is paused. Let me see one second. Please make a note.

Trigger AUTOMATION.

Cancel So if you want to make this you are more than welcome to. It's just a matter of we're not going to create across the entire board because a larger location they're going to have a lot of these every single day, week, et cetera. And a lot of them don't like the multiple like they don't want to know every Time someone pauses, they don't want to sign. No, no. Every single time someone changes their card on file, et cetera. If you want to though, by all means, make the automation. And I'm 90% sure, Val, that there is a trigger for when someone gets paused or canceled. As an automation, you can just have it, like anytime that happens, it sends you a message. You could definitely set that up. So we just don't want to overburden you with a ton of communication, because if you're reading a message for every single thing that command center is doing, you might as well just do it yourself. Right?

Let's see here. We got some other questions that came in.

On here.

Not for the customer schedule. I was asking about scheduled estimates. SCC schedules them as they are not currently on my counter. They're on copilot. Okay, give me a second. Not for the customer to schedule. Okay. I was only asking about scheduled estimates as he schedules them as they are not currently in my calendar. They're on copilot. Oh, you mean like syncing it with your calendar? You can sync Copilot through Zapier also with your Google Calendar if you want. Like, it's a show. I think that's what you're asking. Not for the customer to schedule. Okay, great. So you're not trying to do that. I was only asking about scheduled estimates as CC schedules them as they are currently in my calendar. They're not currently my calendar, they're on copilot. Got it. Yeah. So if you wanted to sync with Google Calendar, you can. So I have not personally synced my accounts with my Google Calendar, but you can do that. If you want, like your meetings and stuff to show up on your calendar, you could do that using Zapier. So I have personally not done that. But you can. Do you think that extra level of billing, more cancellations will even out with less accounts going to collections, not going out as far on mowing charges? Definitely. Like, you're definitely going to have less. If you increase cash flow, you're typically reducing accounts receivable. When you reduce accounts receivable, you typically reduce bad debt. It's just a matter of the math. And so the bottom line is, if I'm forcing all new jobs to have a credit card on file, me charge them every week is going to be better because there's a chance that they don't have the money. And in four weeks, I try to charge them in a month. And at least I know that after one week instead of four, I still see most people still Do a second cut before turning off service on a failed invoice. Paid like a. Paid a failed payment because you don't want to lose a customer for them being gone for three weeks on vacation, right? Or two, even a week vacation. You don't want to lose them. And they come back like, why is my lawn over, girl? Like, you didn't pay like, well, I've been out of town and I didn't have my phone. Like, so you know, most people mow already twice. So that's where I'm like, look, if you're going to mow it twice, you might as well just wait. If like, if bad debt is the. Is the concern, you're going to three or four times in a month anyways you're going to hit them and oh, they're not paying. Now ideally they have a credit card on file. Everyone does. And you're still going to have some bad debt. But yes, you're right. Having weekly payments, weekly billing will reduce bad debt because you're collecting more often and assuming you have, you are actually going to pause their service if they stop paying. I see people all the time be like, oh, it reduces me out of bad debt. And then they do weekly billing and then they let it go five, six, seven weeks. Like, what's the point? You'd only say that it reduces bad debt if you actually stop it within a week or two of a bad payment going through.

Oh, Connor's getting ahead of us. Let's go. Is it possible to have the mowing instant quotes come from prices already on them? Would save a lot of time on the 39, 59 hangers.

So some of the door hangers do have that. We're trying to work with vistaprint to add more and more customizations. We unfortunately have to request every single one. So some of the instant. The mowing only. Oh, I see. So you're probably saying. Got it. Okay. You're saying that the.

The full like the all treatments are the. What's it called, all in one, three in one instant quote. Door here has it. The mowing only doesn't. Okay, I will send this over to the media team and see if we can get this done. One second.

Okay, so we will request this. Usually they take a week or two, but we'll try to get this done.

Add customization to the door hanger only instant quote.

Cool. All right, screenshot. Boom.

All right. Boom. Send that over. Very good. Yes, we will request that change and make it an optional thing for vistaprint. Which reminds me, vistaprint now should have it where most of the designs have paperweight options, so some people like the more card stock, some people like the more flyer type, thinner paper, which a little cheaper. So that should be now more of an option on a lot of the different designs that are flyers. All right, everyone, have a fantastic Thursday. We'll see you tomorrow. Take care.