Mike Minutes Mastermind 03/13/2025

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mike Mintz Mastermind. Just pulled up here. Oh, no.

There you go. Okay.

All right, couple announcements. If you did not get it yesterday, you got via text, email and on Facebook the response from Nick and Liz to the feedback from the quarterly.

Feedback surveys. So thank you all for those. Again, they didn't read every single one. They just focused on the ones where there was critical feedback and their responses to it. So if you didn't hear yours, just probably grouped together, et cetera. So thank you to everyone that submitted the feedback. Very helpful. I know they're having meetings about action items, et cetera. Couple other things. Um, looks like next week we will have this available and that is transcribe transcripts made via AI of all the Mike Mintz Masterminds on the Coaching Dashboard. So Joel Hexman worked with Nick on this and that is making sure that you can actually search via words, text, any Mike Mintz mastermind. And so should be more details on that next week, but it will be on the Coaching Dashboard, not on the augustafranchise.com that from a technology. Technology perspective, we have to do it that way. So it'll be on the Coaching Dashboard. All Mike Bennett's Masterminds transcripts that are searchable via AI. So kind of like the way it works in the dashboard with all those videos, but the 3M ones will be on the Coaching Dashboard. So we'll show it to you next week. Nick will probably make an announcement and I'll walk you through it. The Facebook group, et cetera. So very fun stuff.

Make sure that's all I had.

Yes. Based upon actually some feedback the other day, one of the Mike man's masterminds. Last couple of days I've been testing something with the web team and that is making it clear instead of just saying get a free estimate, it's now going to say, don't quote me verbatim do. Off the top of my head, it's gonna say something along the lines of get an get a mowing price instantly or fill in this form to get a free estimate for other services. So the reason we've never put get an instant price all over the front of the page is we don't want to discourage people when they fill out for a property cleanup or a landscape job or something besides mowing, and they don't get an instant price. And so we're making that distinction. We're just making sure from a conversion perspective this is still working, but I do believe it'll help for mowing, we've just always made sure we don't jeopardize one time projects, cleanups, et cetera by just talking about instant pricing all over the place. So the wordings we've been just playing with, like what words work best. Like for example, we know instant quotes are. Customers don't. We know instant pricing is. They don't know that. So it's better to say get a mowing price instantly than saying get an instant. Get a instant price mowing or mowing price. Instant price. They don't know what instant prices are. They know what a mowing price is instantly. So we've been playing with the words to make sure the conversion stays good. But I do think it'll help with mowing. So thank you to whoever brought up that idea. And as I was like walking through our past logic, I was like there, we could probably delineate this using good verbiage. So we're testing it and I would assume within the next week or two we will roll that out, assuming that the metric stays strong in terms of conversion. So thank you for that.

All right, I think that's all I had for now. I will probably be sending an email out this weekend of a lot of updates. We've had a whole bunch of updates. New owner training is now inside of the dashboard. All in again, transcribed and searchable via AI. That was from a couple weeks ago. There's some updates that I guess the leads partners program has been much more improved. We have a full time salesperson working on just setting up partners for you based upon the leads that come in. That's been working really good and it's just a slow, steady uptick in partners and the adoption of that program. This is the door hanger PDF that the media team put out. I put on the Facebook group, so just lots of stuff happening. I'll put a Facebook or an update of everyone's email this weekend with updates. If not this weekend, maybe Monday or Tuesday because I want to make sure the AI transcripts are in the coaching dashboard by then. So expect that in your inbox shortly. Okay, let's jump into. Questions, questions, questions, questions. Boom. All right, this one needs to be shortened up.

Okay. Oh, quick shout out. I think tomorrow. If it's not tomorrow, it's going to be next Friday, but it's probably gonna be for tomorrow. Connor Hutchinson's video is going up on my main channel. I want to say thank you to him for just being super open, honest, transparent with his turnaround video. And we kind of were at the lowest point there with him. And so I just want to say thank you. The level of humility to have us come in, it's obviously a large business and you know, acquisitions.

Things that happen, it's tough to talk about on camera. So thank you for Connor doing that. And we are going to be visiting a couple locations here in the near future that are in the breakthrough show which is going to be, they're doing good and they just want to go to the next level. So a couple multi unit operators. I think we're visiting Dustin Biernick, I think next week out in Illinois and just trying to get to the next level, making sure GMs are set up correctly. How do we do the third, fourth location, etc. So those will be really good. That's the breakthrough.

Show that's coming out. But shout out to Connor. I know it's not easy to, to go through.

So much pain of growing so fast and having been doing it in a leveraged manner and also having to have a lot of skills to be gaining throughout that time. And so yeah, I appreciate him being honest and just being for the community, for all of Augusta Nation, but also publicly it's not easy. So thank you to him and you know, I think it'll be a good, good representation of the hustle that he's put in to essentially go from pushing a lawnmower to in a couple years having now, you know, they're shooting for 2 million. So. But that's not easy. There's a lot of skills. You have a huge deficit of skills and you know, you make mistakes and when you have that much leverage and.

The mistakes compound a lot more when you're growing that fast. So just want to say thank you to Connor for his whole team, the Open, and I know they've taken huge action based upon the turnaround going out there. And so I just want to say thank you to him. It's just not easy to have such public losses talked about. So present share screen boom. Let's jump in.

Question, numero uno. First one, we will be raising prices from $30 per mo to 40 to $45 per mo in the summer. Given that price increases, a 33 to 50% increase, would you hesitate to be raising prices that much come summer? Is there a cap on how much you would raise prices? We are in growth mode.

Okay.

So why are you in growth mode and raising prices? Right, so I would assume you're, you're in growth mode now and you're trying to get to capacity where you will then raise prices.

Again.

Price increases are not a guessing game. You will want to raise your prices once you get to capacity and you will need customers to leave. Yes, it's a 33 to 50% increase, but it's really 10 bucks, 10 to 15 bucks. There are multiple accounts of last year where people raising prices by 15 to $20 per cut and still only losing 5 to 10% of their customers. I raise prices by 20, 27, 28% at the Bellingham shop last year and we lost about 10% of our customers. I think we were one of the worst in terms of losses because we've raised prices in the past. So like we're already higher on the high end. You're, you sound like you're pretty low. So would I hesitate? No, I would not. If I'm hitting capacity, I need to make room on my schedule. So I would focus your growth mode, get to that as fast as possible. And then when you hit there and you're getting two, three new customers a day, you're like, oh, sick. We gotta raise prices enough to lose enough customers and make some space here. So though.

Joel from Lafayette under the Augusta Business model Command center handles admin. I like cc will no longer do scheduling invoice admin tasks. Would you put these tasks on a GM or a regional manager owner? Assuming these are GM handling operations and estimates, would your answer depend on whether the location is in gross mode or profit mode? It kind of depends on the skills of the, of the gm. So if you're in growth mode, and again, remember we talked about the two different types of GMs. You have a sales operation, sales GM and you have an operations GM. If you're growing super fast with a GM and their sales and they just love sales and they hate operations, you are likely going to just handle the, the.

The dispatching, scheduling, et cetera for them.

Because they hate it and you want them to be focused on selling because you're in growth mode, the opposite would be true. If you have an operations heavy GM that's been with you for a long time, they understand the systems. They like tweaking, making things better, improving route optimization, optimizing pricing, very, very valuable skill set. If you have that kind of a gm, then I would be letting them do the scheduling, et cetera. As time goes on and they learn that skill.

I believe that scheduling down the road will become automated. I also believe that invoicing, especially if you're doing daily or weekly billing, even monthly, can pretty much be automated. Inside of Copilot, there's several locations I've seen do this. I have not yet even done this though to be honest with you where it's all done automatically but you can set it where it creates, sends and charges card an invoice completely automated based upon a certain schedule. So the invoicing part, whether you're doing it weekly, daily or monthly, can pretty much be automated. And so the scheduling part again I do believe down the roadway I'll automate it. So all of that to say even with the wait list that's coming out this summer, same thing. It's going to really help with scheduling in terms of like seeing the estimates that need be on the schedule. Very clear understanding of what needs to be on the needs to be scheduled. Still on a related note, it seemed like a regional manager who is not the owner wouldn't have much to do most of the time if they had good GMs running locations or at near profit mode. Would you have the regional manager take on more admin responsibilities from CC in this scenario or was there something better for them to be doing? I know there are regional manager task docs in the dashboard, but those tasks might take one day a week to complete. Yeah, so I I see for most locations that we currently stand inside our destination the the owner is serving as the regional manager. I would also say that the regional manager in this case the owner is probably going to be the starter, the person doing the sales, getting the location up to speed and then getting an operational GM to take over. So what they're really going to be doing is serving as a sales GM at the next location and then handing it off to an operations GM once that's happened in addition to their other regional manager tasks like managing GMs. This is also why I don't believe you really need a full time regional manager until you're at five or six locations in addition to the owner. The reason I say that is because where their where their full time job is very regional managerish because at one two locations, assuming that you have two good GMs, there's not a lot of regional manager tasks to do. That's why I believe this the regional manager will serve much more of a starter or a sales GM for the next location until they have 56 locations in which case the regional manager now has a full time job of just covering for GMs that go down. Training new GMs, refining meetings, going over numbers with the GMs even if they spent one day per location for example with the GMs, that alone is now a full time job, but they don't have a full time job. When there's 1, 2, 3 locations, they still need to be operating as a GM. And usually that's a sales oriented GM. Again for most of us right now, if you have two, three, four locations, you are the regional manager and you're also the owner. And as the owner, you're the person that gets one location off the ground and then finds an operational gm. And so when you hit five, six locations, you have five, six general managers. There's always one general manager at least that's struggling or needs help and you need to jump in with them or they they're out sick and you literally have to jump in and do their job for a week. So a regional manager becomes the bumper for the owner to not have to be jumping in two locations. When a GM goes down, their stuff happens, life happens. That regional manager, that's their full time job. But until you can have five, six locations, you can't afford a regional manager as fully overhead to be that liaison for all the GMs. Now again, if you wanted to be in the business all the time, you could be that serving as that regional manager role. That is the go between for the GMs if they fall out, if they need training, getting new ones onboarded, etc. Mr. Anonymous, besides having to put to invest more money in infrastructure, is there any reason why it would be a bad idea of instead of putting two men on a truck as you grow continue buying vehicles and operating solo routes, Is it typically just a capital constraint on why you recommend doubling up employees on trucks before buying more vehicles? Yeah, so it's a matter of the efficiency per crew member goes up when they're on solo on mowing route. But what goes down is capital efficiency. And so if I can spend half as much money but have a 90 or 85% boost in efficiency, 80% increase in revenue by having a second team member but not have to spend 100% more capital. That's where the capital efficiency gets better when you have more people like the two person crews. So that's why there are some locations that actually have a different percentage of P4P if they are with a double crew. Because you're now giving, you'd rather give it in P4P than having to pay a fixed asset for for another truck. So this simply comes down to do you want to be if you have plenty of capital and you want your guys to make more people and be more efficient and you're going to be like hey I want more profits in the business. Great. You're probably going to buy the trucks and equipment, assuming you can use them all the time. They're always out in the road and they're at capacity now. Capacity gets very much constrained from an asset perspective if you're assuming solar routes because now all of a sudden you will need twice as many trucks to hit the labor capacity that you could otherwise hit. So the question is, do I want three trucks each with two, two employees in each or do I want six trucks with six employees? Both of them are six employees. So my labor capacity is the same, but my asset capacity is completely different, like doubled. And so you're going to have, let's just call it the cost of maintenance, payment and storage and insurance on a truck is let's say $1,1200amonth. So an extra 3, $4,000 a month in overhead to get those extra trucks. The question is, do I make more than 3 or $4,000 extra in profit by having that extra efficiency? And so from an asset efficient from a capital efficiency perspective, you will make more a return on equity or return on invested capital. ROIC is really the term roic return on invested capital. You will have a higher return on invested capital if you go with one truck and two people inside because you'll need half as many assets, half as much invested capital to get almost double like 80, 90% more revenue per asset, per dollar of assets. So it just comes down to do you want more efficiency and higher margins because you will do that with, with a your.

With having solo routes or do you want to play a much more like hey, I could start two locations if I have with the same amount of money as long as I now have two employees in every truck. So but their efficiency a little bit lower. So maybe their PVP is lower, but your margins are slightly lower. So it's, it's a game of do you want to maximize profit for the location and efficiency or do you want to maximize the return on invested capital.

So it's much more of an asset play.

Mr. Anonymous, when is the millionaire multi unit scheduled for? When did you send this? Okay, so you sent this yesterday morning. You probably got an email yesterday afternoon. If you did not get an email yesterday from Liz inviting you to the seven Figure Club and you're like I should have, should have been invited. Check your email might be in here.

Archive if you have like a unsubscribe filter or something like that. But if you think I should have been invited and I wasn't feel free to email Liz Gustan longest residents.com and they'll check into your numbers etc but everyone should have got their invites yesterday afternoon with a form to rsvp. That's be happening in July and we're moving on getting things scheduled for that. Mr. Anonymous I've been looking into SMMA since my knowledge of Google Ads and meta ads is very limited. Do you think the return of investment you would get by having someone knowledgeable manager advertising outweighs the amount of time to learn how to do it effectively. So it all comes down to comparing what you get cost per lead versus what they are going to get cost per lead. And so what I have seen across the board in most locations in Augusta that if you can't beat someone else's cost per lead, um, like let's just say you're getting a cost per lead of 40 to $50 on Google. Could that be optimized by someone that's constantly watching it, setting it up with a whole bunch of other things? Get down to say $35, $40? Yeah, potentially. The question is they're going to also add an extra cost for managing it. So you have to add that into the cost per lead and most of the time I'm seeing a location that just follows the done for you ads that nick makes every six months for Google Facebook. Even though it might be 10, 15% less efficient because you know you're not watching all the time, you're not optimizing all the time like an agency does. Usually it's still cheaper than going out and paying 50% of ad spend on a agency. So I think Evergrow is $650 a month. There's a setup fee. I think Evergrow is great. But if you're not spending ads money on ad this month or your ad spends 500 bucks, you got to take their cost per lead that they're getting and double it because there's management costs associated. So I'm not against it. It's much more a matter of like do you want to deal with it? If not, do the done for you ads. Follow along with the tutorials. If you don't understand how you hit a roadblock, schedule a call with Nick. He'll walk you through it. He does this over and over and over again and I'm seeing those usually be within 10 to 20% less efficient than an agency that's analyzing and tracking every single day versus you checking every two weeks and just making the changes based upon what's in the dump for you Ads, again, if you want just like, I just don't want to deal with it, totally fine, hire an agency. But I do believe the dump for you ads will get you 90% of the way there. And the savings of not having an agency will outweigh having to, you know, not having it perfectly optimized. But again, I'm not against those agencies. I'd say one out of five are pretty good. Evergreen, Evergrow. I trust them and they'll be honest about what they're actually making in terms of cost per lead. And they'll be, they usually set people up inside Google and say, hey, expect $100 to $200 cost per lead. Like that is actually what it usually is. During spring rush. You might be at 30, 40, $50, great. But like that's the expectation they set. And that's actually a big reason why I trust them is because they don't try to undersell it based upon what you can get during peak season. So I, when it comes to agencies, I'm looking for trust because if they're not open with me with the numbers, if they're shady, like, it's just not good. So. But you are paying for it, right? There's cost of management, they spend time on it, they set up accounts, there's a lot of back end stuff. And if you just don't want to deal with it at all, use that, pay them. But you're looking at probably around, you know, between 600 to $1,000 a month in management that otherwise could just spend on ads. And if that's literally what you're spending on ads, you're literally doubling the cost per lead because the management costs. So I would, I would personally say follow the dump for you ads. If you're completely lost, book a call with Nick and then if you're still like this is way too much, then consider an agency.

Morgan Latimer. What is the ideal age range to hire from? Does Augusta have an age minimum? We do not have an age minimum. This is really up to you. It's your entity, you're hiring them. I've really gone back and forth this over the course of time. I seem to really like, like as a happy medium, like in the past, like I want young guys super hungry, willing to work like crazy hours. As time went on, started realizing as it kind of like work ethic changed. Maybe I could just be an old person now. I was like, okay, I want someone older that needs the job. It's not like an option to show up to work. They have to provide for a family. So I want someone older. Well then you have your own set of problems willing to get off to help with kids kids they have health issues, stuff like that. And so like I kind of like that late 20s that seems to me like my like like go to they usually have commitments in terms of significant others, a house payment, a car payment. They're not living with mom and dad so like they still need to make money but then they are young enough from a physical perspective to do the hard work. So that's kind of like my 2 cents but like I've always kind of been back and forth on this also as like I aged I wanted more older people when I was younger in part I probably wanted younger people. I didn't feel as weird when you're 18, 19 years old so and usually I, I tend to see as an owner ages their, their crew kind of ages and I think you know there's dynamics in the labor market that kind of change too like if there are people are getting a bunch of stimulus money like what's happening younger people living at home don't need to work and that was happening a lot so that probably changed my perception there but that'll change as time goes on. Mr. Anonymous the Google search ads tutorial on dump for you ads I try to follow it and it doesn't look like what Nick is doing doing I'm assuming because of new updates I don't know how to do it properly. Can we get updated again? Every time I do it done for your ads it look never looks like the video so I don't know how to do them so it doesn't be changing that much. We we are doing them every six months they do change buttons occasionally here and there but every six months is usually pretty good. So I don't know who this is. This is Mr. Anonymous book a call with Nick. He will share the screen with you and walk you right through it. He sees enough of these on a daily basis and if he ever saw a big enough update he would expedite the six month thing and just like hey let's make a new one because he's doing this so frequently. He's in my accounts. He's in his account for his his location. He's in lots of different owners accounts and is able to see what's changing and if he ever thought there was enough changes he'd probably make a new done for you ads video. But if you're hitting up a roadblock please book a call. I can guarantee you. It's very small. Nick will help you figure it out. You can also contact, by the way, if, like Nick can figure out something, you can contact Google. Like, they have ads managers, account managers that'll help you, walk you through stuff like, hey, I'm trying to do this. Like, why is this not looking the, they can help you too. So, and they, that doesn't cost anything. It's part of being in the ads program. So keep that in mind. But I would definitely book a call with Nick if you're hitting a roadblock in that. And if there was ever something that was like so formidable to get past, he would make a new, new video. So he's, he's aware of that.

All right. I hope you all have a fantastic rest of your day. We will stay in touch and we'll talk tomorrow. Take care.