Mike Minutes Mastermind 03/14/2024

All right. I tried to wait long enough for the text to go out, so I didn't have a lot of time, though. All right, I'm going to switch over to my Ethernet instead of my wi fi. Give me one second while I copy this.

Okay. Copy YouTube, Facebook. All this up. Is it live? Why does Facebook keep doing this?

There you go. Cool.

Sorry to all the Coloradians that got a bunch of snow tonight last night.

That is very annoying. This is the worst thing when you have spring rush. You're like, let's go mow. And it's like, no, it's going to snow. So sorry about that. Stinks. Let's see here. I have some announcements I am going to hold on to until next week actually.

So I'm looking forward to sharing those with you. I ran one of them by the franchise advisory council last night, got their feedback. So I'm gonna make a few adjustments and then next week I will announce those things. All right, I guess we'll jump right into questions.

All right, we're rolling. Oh, I'm not sharing though. We're present. Share screen. Boom.

All right, first one is from Nick from Denel's back. My guys don't speak English much, so that being all in English is a challenge for them. Anyhow, I know the Kopi is bears endless request, but I like to ask your help to push something a little closer to the front of the line. Tone gets lost in text, so please read with a super upbeat happy in it to win it. Let's go, tone. Oh, man. Can we get the okay happy upbeat in it to win it? Let's go positive. Can we get the app to show budget hours as a time, not a number. To ask the guys to convert the budget hours to minutes themselves, make them not want to do it or care as much. Seems small until it two man crew has to do winter services and make the calculation 14 times a day every day. Big picture argument. Our entire business can be boiled down to one KPI P4P winning or losing budget hours is the bedrock of every estimate, job and coaching call. Going over whether we were profitable or not. Shouldn't it be a number one priority to give the guys on the ground the most basic and number they need to know? 52 minutes, not 875 budget hours. Okay, I get what you're saying.

Cool. Let me make a note here because I agree with you. The thing is having the budget hours is actually the fastest way for them to calculate the revenue on the job. And so what I want to do is show both. And, like, they can see both of them quickly. Because the complaint we always had in service autopilot is they're converting minutes into budget hours. Then they have to multiply that by their hourly rate to get how much labor revenue is being earned on the job.

So let me add. I have a list that once we get. Once we get through the bug stuff, it'll be prioritized after we have the current features that are pending. It's our Augusta list. Where did I put it? There it is. All right.

Show BH and min ID used to be hours. Men's on job.

The Spanish part thing, Nick, that is going to be later. I know, I know it's not what you want to hear there, but it is going to be later this year. But the budget hour, minute thing, I agree. And when, like in service Alpha, everyone always was saying, hey, we want it in budget hours, so it's easier to calculate. And now we put it in budget hours and people want minutes. And I see both sides of this coin. So we can. We can accommodate. I think we can do both. So cool. Let me see here. Sweet.

Cool. All right, Got that added in numero 2. Matt from South Salem. With regards to consistent brand, is that tailgate design okay, or is it right. Ryan's tailgate. The official design background I gave the tailgate design is on the.

Is on the dashboard now. And the media team took Ryan's. He had sent it to us, and then they just modified a few things, I think. And, like, you're good to go. So all the color CMYKs were matching and things. So if you want to use it, you can. You don't have to, though. The main thing is the sides. Like, most people aren't going to see your hood, especially if you have a bigger truck. They're not going to see your hood. So just keep that in mind. However, if you're doing a full ramp again, you're not painting the truck, you might as well do something with the front and the back, right? So.

Background. I gave the local graphics guy this PDF and this is what they gave me. Looked good to me and thought tailgate skate was more of a suggestion. You don't have to use the tailgate and the. The. The hood one. You don't have to.

So that's totally fine. I'm just gonna show this one. Share. Share. Share this instead. Very good. Yep. As long as your CMYK's match, you're good to go. Every. Every bed's gonna look a little different too, because if you have a Ford versus a Silverado versus the gmc. So for example, if you have a Chevrolet, you're gonna Chevrolet stamped on this entire thing. So you have to play around it, right? So use the elements of the design and move it slightly to get around those things. Like forward has this big thing in the middle. You can't put anything over unless you take it off. Chevrolet, you have a massive stamp over the back of it. Dodge has a little bit of a more square like with a Ram. So every truck's gonna be a little different, but you can use that boom and then just make sure that the colors are the same. You just don't want the. If you're doing a full wrap, the blacks and the greens and the yellows, like they look different than the ones on the sides. So if you're gonna make modifications and move things around, just be careful of that. But it is all on the dashboard if you want to use it. It is optional for the tailgate and the hood because some of us don't have tailgates because we have ramp racks and hoods. If you're painting the truck, you're not going to see it a lot, but if you're doing a full wrap, you might as well. Connor Hutchinson why do we send a thank you welcome email + credit card ask email? Why not have the credit card also built into the thank you and welcome email? Well, technically we shouldn't be asking for a credit card ask email unless there is no card on file. So I would assume that you have an automation that if there is no car on file, it sends them the credit card ask email.

And I would only be doing that if you weren't requiring credit card file when they accepted the estimate. So personally what I would probably be doing is I have my thank you welcome email and then I would have an automation that like several hours or the day after checks and make sure they have a credit card on file just in case they somehow got around the credit card requirement on the front end. But I require credit card in the file. If you don't require a credit card on file and you're allowing people to accept the estimate, that's when this would probably make the most sense. And coming over from service autopilot, we sent both emails, one credit card ask, then you'd send the thank you and welcome email. You can eliminate the credit card ask completely. If you just require cards on file in order to be on the schedule.

And then have something clean up behind it, like the automation being like, hey, let's Always just keep checking. Every 30 days, everyone has a card and file. If they don't, send them this email, or even 14 days or seven days if you wanted.

Mr. Anonymous. Okay. How do I learn to be a better leader? I have read a lot of books. Simon Sinek, Jocko, John Maxwell, Jim Collins, etc. And yet I have a hard time looking my employees in the eye and taking charge and leading. Something I'm learning about myself recently is I tend to see things very black and white. The business is booming or it is failing. We're making bank or going broke. This is a great question. Some days I'm proud of our service. And the next, I can't believe we have any clients.

I think this ultimately leads to I'm good as a leader or I'm a failure. Something you do well is keeping the sanctity of the overall mission separate from the ups and downs of the business. It's clear as you have went through bug hell with cp, that you still hold the overall vision ahead of everything and you execute and sell a vision based on that. I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to hold my head up in front of my team. If I'm honest, a lot of teams, I feel like a man on an island when dealing with the team at work. Not sure how to break that barrier. Any curious, any ways curious on your thoughts on these ramblings? Well, that's a good question, dude. All right, this is a little leap. Let me give this in two parts. So the first part I would say when reading books and things, it's like reading books on how to get muscle. Like, yes, you can read books and learn all about nutrition and health, but there's one way to get muscle, you know, it is pick up heavy things. And so.

Until you get the reps, like, reps are like the big thing here. This is why, like at conference, I don't know if I specified this already to everyone, but I didn't say that time is the only thing between you and where you want to be at. I said reps are. And so if you focus on getting more reps instead of just while I'm reading books and I'm putting in time, like reps are important. So more awkward conversation with your team, more interviews, hiring more people, this is what will get you the reps required to gain the muscle of, of leadership and making the hard decisions, et cetera. I would then say on the second part of your question, I feel like it's secondary.

Is just be honest with people. Like how you're feeling instead of trying to bottle up and hide it and appear different, trying to be perceived differently than how you are.

It is in my experience, just being raw and honest and saying how you're feeling with your team in the moment is super humbling. And in the long term, you'll get better buy in and you won't feel like an island out on your own or that you're kind of hiding things from them, etc. One of the chapters of the book I'm writing, chapter 10 currently at least, is, you know, the chapter names are why you don't build a million dollar business. And the 10th one is you hide things from your team. And it ties a lot into open book management. But also.

Overall, it just comes down to.

Here. Let me try to do this off the top of my head. I had wrote it down last night. I'm still working on it. So basically, if you hide things from your team, they will not trust you. If they do not trust you, they will not look out for your interest and therefore the business. And so.

Even when you're failing, just being honest about it, like, hey, I stink. And I. And I feel insecure about these things. That has been, for me, a big relief because then I don't feel like I'm having to put on some facade. Like, I generally believe if anyone came and visited me for a few days, they wouldn't. From Augusta Nation. That's been in for a year or two. Like, you wouldn't learn a whole lot of new things about me because, like, I try my very best. Just, like, what you see on these masterminds and, like, what I'm thinking and like, when I'm really low, I just share it. Like, hey, this is my insecurities. These are my doubts, these are my fears. And so the Persona that is garnered. Okay, so let me use this as an example. Give me one second.

Okay, So I was talking to somebody. You can fill in the gaps here if you like. I was talking to somebody that knows Alex Hormozi and then knows myself pretty well. And he said, the difference is that between the two of you is people look to Alex as like a God figure. Everything he does is perfect, and he's right.

And there's pros and cons of that. And then he said, the difference between the people that you surrounded yourself with is they all see themselves in you, and that's because you share your weakness and you talk about in the moment what you're insecure about. And he said there's pros and cons to both. He said your haters have more, more to feast on if you're sharing your weaknesses. And that's why if you share with your team how you're feeling and you feel like you share, hey, I'm not confident in these areas. Like sometimes I feel like we don't have enough money. Sometimes I feel like we're really letting down our customers. Sometimes I feel like I don't know how to run this, be an owner of this business. If you actually say those things, you will give them more, more, more.

Ammunition. However, what you'll also do is you'll get there that ammunition pointed in the right direction which is towards the enemy and not you. And so typically.

It'S a double edged sword being super transparent because you are giving people ammunition. But in general if someone shoots at you, you know which side of the, you know which team they're on. And so I'd rather just give people lots of ammunition, be super honest and transparent with them instead of hiding things from them. And then if they shoot against me, I just know which team they're right. And then it makes it really simple. I know what team they're on, they know what team I'm on, right. So that's generally how I have led. I wouldn't say that's the right way to do it. I know there are people that lead differently and that is that they, they come across extremely deliberate and as if they know everything and everything is calculated and if they're going through a low moment, they don't show anything and there's value to that.

You will be seen as a God figure. Like you will see like as if everything's together. And I just have a really hard time trying to live up to that, expect of people. And I don't think it for myself. First off, I know I'm flawed and secondly, I don't think I'll be able to in the long term sustain that level of expectation. And so if I, if I had that Persona like everything's together and everything is great, well then when I have problems like a co pilot or I do a rollout that I like I messed up or something like that, like everyone revolt and they would hate my guts. And so I would just recommend being more transparent with the team. In this case example, I would have a team meeting and be like, hey guys, sometimes I don't even know if like I'm good enough to be a business owner. Sometimes I really wonder like if I'm a good enough leader for all of you. And like I want to be that. I want this business to succeed. I want to take care of our customers. Like sometimes I'll be honest, like I feel like I, I have an imposter syndrome and I shouldn't be here. You'll probably get a lot of really good buy in. You're going to give ammunition to your, the people who might hate you on your team and then they will probably shoot at you and you will let them go. Right? So Eric from Largo, Florida. Hey Mike. Copilot question. I know you bought out Majority Satan. Patrick's a while back. Just curious if he is still involved in the operations at all. Nope, he's not in daily. Daily operations at all. It became pretty clear to him, himself, him and my and myself that like technically he was not the level that we needed at co pilot. We are already.

Five times larger than Lawn Pro. And so, and, and so it's. And like where we're going versus Lawn Pro is very different. So.

It worked out really good from a technical perspective for a while. And these, these are things we've talked about. And so it's not like I'm saying anything negative about him. We just needed to upgrade the talent on the technical side because I don't have it. So I needed that area filled. And so we have an engineering leadership team and I have a kind of a fractional CTO right now. Eventually I'll get a full time CTO that would be in house with me. But that is a hire that will go very slow because it's, it's my biggest weakness. So I gotta make sure it's, it's done well. So right now it's more of a, a team that leads the technical side. Hutch guys, that's gotta. Give me your name. I gotta get all these people's names wrong. Connor Hutchinson. All right. We have a client that is interested in continuing winter services all year round. How would you draft this up? I was thinking of putting them on a week, bi weekly or monthly property or essentially letting the crew do whatever is appropriate for the time of the year is a lot of time. I think this is good to fill a schedule. But is this a bad idea for P4P during the growing seasons? This is pretty cool. Let's go. I don't think this is a bad idea at all. Make sure that mo is needed, is removed from the verbiage. And then I would just do two different. Just like you do with mowing and you in winter services, instead of doing mowing, just do like property cleanup. And put the same verbiage in there and like make it very clear that hey, you stop and start. The exact same verbiage as winter services, minus the mowing part. Right? As long as they're on board with that, let's go. I don't think that's, that's a very interesting how this works, honestly. Because what you could do is you could sell, you know, property cleanup services year round and then mowing, you could do that.

It takes a lot of education and most people aren't going to want that right off the rip. But that's an interesting model. So keep us informed. Connor, how that does. Dustin from Champaign. Do you think we miss out on customers because we do not offer services? For example, for instance, we don't offer snow removal or weed control in champagne. Do you think we are missing out on customers because we don't offer these services? And how many do you feel we miss out on if we had to put a number or percentage on it? So I can guarantee you are missing out on customers? The percentage, I have no idea.

Because the reason I say is this is why it's the easiest way to grow is always adding more services and adding service area because you know you like it is a guaranteed way to increase revenue and get more customers is increase your service area and increase the number of services you offer. Guaranteed. And so.

I would be cautious of the feeling of missing out because yes, you will probably add 20% at least to your revenue by adding the services. Then it's a slippery slope to, well, shiny sprinklers because I could also add more revenue there and I could also do gutter repair and gutter cleanouts. It's just a slippery slope. So I'm not saying not doing it because I actually really like the idea of upselling other green services. Big fan. Especially if those services are outside of your spring rush.

Like then they get twice as valuable in my brain. But.

You know, I, you know, I'll give you a number because you're asking for it probably 15 to 20%. So is, is adding that complexity to the business with certifications, chemicals, sprayers, whatever it is it going to add, you know, is it, would it be nice to add an extra 20% of revenue to the business? Probably, yeah. And that would probably be without focusing on it because if you're doing 600,000, you probably could get $120,000 of.