Mike Minutes Mastermind 03/15/2023

Hey everyone, let's go and get started.

All right, couple announcements. Oh, I switched to announcements.

Boom. If you are new, I try to get the announcements done at the beginning of these. So please, every day if you can just check, at least listen for announcements. Very beneficial if you want to stick around for the questions in the mastermind. Awesome. But at least get the announcements in. All right, couple announcements here. Give me a second.

All right, we got three announcements. First one command center is not missing any calls, which is great. What might happen is if you do a direct extension to an operator, an agent at Commencer, you might get a voicemail. It doesn't go back into the main call queue if you go to a direct extension. So what we are going to do over the next week is if someone calls a direct extension, there'll be a voicemail that says, hey, like this is a direct extension, you need to call the main number. So whether that be. Most of this has been franchisees of when you've had direct contact with an agent and then you're trying to get a hold of them and you, you click on your caller ID and you do the direct extension back to them that's causing the issue sometimes and be like, oh, like they're missing calls. Like no, we're not missing calls. There was zero yesterday. But there was like five.

Miss ones because people do calling direct extensions. So we will make that as a voicemail to remind you, like, oh, I understand, like you're just going back in your caller id but like that shouldn't really happen. And so yeah, just FYI, no calls are being missed. It is a direct extension issue and we are going to try to button that up so it reminds you if you accidentally do call a direct extension.

Second thing, one click estimate emails. We do not validate people's territory if they click on the email. What that means is if you do not want to market to someone or get estimates from them, you probably put them as do not contact or just take their email out of their profile because we're not going to validate tons and tons of estimates when they do a one click estimate. Well, you shouldn't have them in your database if you don't want to market to them. That'd be my recommendation. Either take them out of your database or at least remove their email so you can send one click estimate emails out and not get estimates coming in from outside your territory or outside your service area. There you go. So if, if, if you have shrunk your service area, you might need to go in to the map feature and see, okay, which where are these, these clients? And then take their emails out or mark them where they don't get the emails because we aren't going to validate every single one. Like are they in there in their service area? It's just a wasted step that if you just remove their email that they'll never get the email altogether. So one click last emails. Command center does not validate every single one that comes in as to whether or not they are part of your service area. They're going to assume that because you're marketing to them that they're going to set up an estimate. Also very confusing to a customer. If we did try to validate them and we're sending emails to the customer saying, oh yeah, we know we like literally advertise that we would come do your property and you click on the S. But now we can't, now we can't do it. It's very confusing. So take them out of your database. I forgot to put this inside of the Facebook group. Give me one second. I have one more announcement. Hold your phone.

There it is. All right, paste.

Okay. And we're back. So yeah, number one, Extensions. Direct extensions. We're going to set up a voicemail to remind you to call your main number which will put you into the main call queue. You'll get an answer every time. Let's go. We had someone at command center for the first time ever answer above 100 calls yesterday. Let's go, Shelly.

One clicks. We don't validate any with territory. So if you do not want to market to someone, take, take their email address out. It is very confusing to customers if we have to cancel their estimates once they've just clicked on something that we said we were going to, we're going to, we, we can do estimates. We're advertising the service and then we're calling them like, oh yeah, you're out of our service area. It's very confusing to them. So please, please, please take them out. And we're just, we're going to set up estimates from your one click estimate email. So number three, when contact forms come in or people doing web chats, when they submit an estimate request form, it bounces them to the URL. It says we're going to get an estimate to them within a few days. The only reason we would contact them from Command center is if we need to set up an estimate in person. We're not going to do that. It's a wasted step. It's a wasted expense for us to do that just as come say, yeah, we're going to get an estimate to within a few days. Because we just sent them to a URL that says that. So if it's a drive by or a mowing estimate, we're not going to call them just to tell them we're going to get an estimate to them soon. The only reason we would call them is if it's an in person estimate. Now what that means is some people have been going to drive by estimates and then they knock on the door to say, just, hello, hey, I'm gonna be walking our property. And they're like, oh, no, I didn't ask for an estimate. You've got to remember, look at your notes. It says if it's an estimate request form or a web chat, there's a very good chance it's their spouse or someone else living in the house that has requested that. So you'll need to literally say, oh, someone requested this and their name was X and they requested these services. All right. The reason I'm saying that is because we don't call and confirm your drive by because we usually almost always get voicemail and then it puts the estimate in limbo. So what we do is we assume if it's a drive by or mowing that we can put it on, on your schedule. And they're being sent to a website that says, we're going to get an estimate to within a couple days. So let's deliver on that. All right, so if you get one set up, just yes, some people do forget, like 1 out of 10 will literally forget that they asked for an estimate. But usually it's a matter of like, well, is there someone else living in the home? Because we did get an estimate request form from our website specifically asking for these services and the name of the person's X. Oh yeah, yeah, that's my wife. Maybe she asked for that. Yeah, go ahead, walk around the property, send us the quote over. Like, that's, that's what you'll need to do. So if it says on your estimate notes that it's coming from a estimate request form or a web chat, they have not been validated over the phone because all we do if we got them on the phone is like, hey, thank you for clicking on it. We'll get an estimate to you within a couple of days. That's all we'd be saying. Right. So that's waste expense as well as waste of time. We don't want to get in limbo there. And we also the same thing. If we do call them for an in person setup of a quote, we might just get their voicemail and a lot of times we do. And you'll see if it's an estimate request form or web chat that that's happens quite frequently. Okay. So you'll, you'll just need to make sure you read your notes and come a little bit more prepared to that to push back and be like oh no, no like someone did submit this for these services and can I at least go ahead and walk around the property even if you they don't know about what it is. So we're seeing that happen quite quite often for spouses or other people living in the house, etc. So that's all I got those three. If you're just new to the live stream, watch the all three of the announcements again. All right, let's go ahead and jump into some questions. I just got to pull it up. Got five it looks like today. All right. Boom. Present share screen.

Questions. Very good, very good, very good. All right, number one from Nick from Marysville. Do you know anything about this cpic? All right, let's see here.

We are contacting because you are one or more of your conversions isn't using Google Ads default attribution model unless you take further or upgrade your model after Data driven Attributions machine learning model that attributes credit for your conversions based on how many people. Yeah, so this is just your your tag for Google. They're changing the way that they track these share this.

I would not be concerned about that at all. They are just upgrading it to their new method of the way they're doing conversions. This is something that happens quite frequently once you add your conversion tag because they're constantly trying to manipulate their way around privacy laws and privacy things. They're trying to keep them out from tracking conversions. So I'm not concerned about that.

Kyle Tarvin Would it be better to leave more money in the business bank account and take it out the end of the year to put into another location or just pay yourself owner's draw every month and keep it in personal Working on planning out our third location next year and just need help with where to store the money. Either way it doesn't really matter because you're going to pay taxes on the profits of the current business.

That being said.

You'Re probably going to keep it cleaner if you just keep it in the bank account. So that way you're not doing owner's distributions and then owner's investments back in to Start the third location. It's probably going to be cleaner if you just kept the money in the bank account if you don't need it, I'm assuming. And then at the end of the year just do one owner's transfer to the new bank account for the new location. That'd be like cleaner, I would say, than taking out owner's distributions all year long. Again, I'm assuming that you're going to spend the money in like December and you're going to spend the money regardless, right? So if you're not like going to start until like say March or April of next year and you're not going to buy things then taking the distributions like either way it doesn't matter because you're going to be paying taxes on the profits of the business. But assuming that you're going to take section 179s or take like deductions in December or November, buying all the equipment for next year, it. I would probably just keep it in the business account to keep it simple. But you know, again, I'm assuming you don't need the money personally.

Kevin from South Haven, Mississippi. How are things looking in European with the recent bank failures in the U.S. yeah, I talked about this a bunch with Lee on the Sweet Suite Unfiltered. So I think he's probably gonna update today or tomorrow.

In terms of my thoughts on this stuff. Yeah, Credit Suisse is. Let's go. You know, when you think about Swiss banks, you think about what's supposed to be super, super secure. And what we didn't talk about on the C Suite unfiltered is the reason that people like Swiss banks typically is because they're typically one to one backed, which means you don't have as much.

Leverage going on typically with fractional reserves. And so which fractional reserve is basically, if you put a dollar into the bank as a state in a savings account, they can go lend that dollar out nine times. That's fractional fractional reserve it's called. Whereas like the Swiss typically their banks have not been prone to fractional and it's very, very safe because of that. Well, Credit Suisse just blew up. I have not looked into Credit Suisse, but I know a lot of. I knew, I did a little bit of research on Silicon Valley bank and stuff. I have not looked into Credit Suisse. I. That happened mostly last night and yesterday tonight I'll probably catch up on that stuff. So. But yeah, with, with sky, with the Silicon Valley and everything like that. Watch the C Suite unfiltered we would talk about for like 20 or 30 minutes so should be helpful if that's interesting to you. Kyle Tarvin from Moore, Oklahoma we had a customer go off the rails on us this week over Winter Service billing. Her claim is that she never come to Winter Services and we have been fraudulently charging her card. I believe the total Winter Service charge have been 3 to 400. Going off of memory. She's also saying that we never showed up to do the work which is false because I was on the one property I guess she called CC and they explained wasting out emails after the about the Winter Services. I was looking back and she opened multiple emails from us regarding what services and start date billing info about when to services, etc. Showed a bad review and she reported us to the fec, Better Business Bureau clearance and other agencies for credit card fraud. She's now demanding we give her money back, but I'm not interested in doing that. We are in the right. We are in the right to bill her for the services performed. If she would have contacted us last fall, I would have no problem refunding us for the few weeks of Winter Services. But now that we are four plus months of Winter Services, I don't have any empathy for her. In my mind she has already done the damage of reporting us. I don't think refunding her would do any good. Plus I'm a little salty about the situation. I was a little shaken up earlier this week when John had mentioned what was going on. But now I just want to know if there's anything we need to do on our end to protect ourselves and the business. What would you do? I would make sure in your estimate that it actually specifically states in the estimate that you do Winter Services. This is going to come standard for all estimates. If you got started with Augusta in the past year and a half, we have it and everyone's estimates in the verbiage that says we do your own service and Winter Services are included. The fact is that you have evidence that she opened up all the emails regarding Winter Services and if she's three months deep. So I actually know exactly which call you're talking about, I listen to it. So the fact of the matter is she has received three to four invoices, all opened. She received the email about Winter Service at the beginning of the year giving her the option to opt out and explaining Winter Services that she also opened up. So you have a lot of information to kind of prove her wrong. What I would say is your response to all of this is extremely important as it is with any online review.

Here's how you attack this.

If you actually look at, if you look on my YouTube channel, I did a short on this video specifically. And there's always gonna be hate in the comments, people calling you scammers and stuff like that. But how you attack this is twofold. Number one, you.

In your responses, you're going to make it very clear that she was. She received X amount of emails about winter services and her billing prior to this review. So you can say she received four emails giving her the option to opt out as well as explaining winter services prior to this online review. She opened them, all of them. We have the receipts to show that.

And as well as that, you offer refunds for up to 30 days after someone, if someone ever doesn't want service, you offer up to 30 days refund. As well as the fact that the 3 or $400 that she was charged would likely have been a 7, $800 cleanup in fall and another 7, $800 cleanup in the in the spring. And that's far cheaper than her doing winter services. And so like the short that I made last night, it'll, it'll probably blow up. It has like 15 or 20,000 views now. It'll probably get to a couple hundred thousand. The goal of that there's always gonna be book call you fraud. However, it states very clearly that someone is saving 40 to 50% on the cost of doing two cleanups versus doing winter services. It is cheaper for the customer. And so you have to realize that this is, you're not trying to make more money from people. If you did you, what you would do is you would not offer winter services and you would charge them 7, $800 in the fall, 7, $800 in the spring. Their property looks good all winter long for a cheaper price using winter services. And the reason we can do that is because we don't have to go back to the property for two different estimates to set up two different jobs, have a video for every single one. It's more recurring and we're able to cut out a lot of waste. So I would attack this from all three perspectives. One, she received phone call, she received four emails, all of which were opened up about her services, about invoices and about the service, the ability to opt out of these services. We offer 30 days money back on all winter services. If someone does forget to respond back to us, even if they do get an email, we just still do 30 days as well as the fact that.

This is a cheaper option compared to a property cleanup on her specific property would have cost us $7 or $800 times two fall and spring. This service is much cheaper. Your response is what's really important so you know Better Business Bureau Just ask yourself when last time you went and looked on the Better Business Bureau for a contractor. It doesn't happen. Kyle Tarvin the Better Business Bureau is like a 1990s version of Yelp. That's what I would call it. Kyle Tarvin I forgot but the lady had reported us also owes us for a few mowing cuts and recurring bed mains service for 150. Still she said she is not paying it. I wouldn't worry about 150 bucks. I'd be more concerned about the online reviews. I'd probably just personally as much as I know you have the ability, you could just send her to collections. I would just leave it that part because otherwise she becomes she keeps going and going and going. Just your response. You tech those three things that we just mentioned there. I would leave the 150 honestly.

Because then she just keeps going Plantation.

I'm thinking of increasing my Google spend to $100 per day but I'm kind of nervous because last year I was spending $800 a month and wasn't getting any conversions. I realized what I was doing wrong. What are your thoughts? The first ad is the one you made just $10. The second is Google search $25. The last one is the new Google Ad $10. I want to ramp up to $50 and $25. For the other I would wait to ramp up your marketing spend knowing that next week, by next week hopefully we should have the new done for you ads that will be a lot more detailed and if you're seeing great results from this, I would go ahead and put some more money. Yes, but I think if you're going to spend $100 per day, that's when it starts becoming probably worth it to have someone else manage your account that is literally has 40 campaigns and optimizing them all across different platforms and is ranking them all and looking at every single keyword and doing that all day long.

When you're at fifth, you know, 20, 30, $40 a day it makes less sense to do that in terms of paying for an agency. So hold on till next month. Next week we should have the done for you ads which will improve overall performance I think by probably 10 to 25%. My hope is that just by having it more optimized and then secondarily if you're going to spend $100 per day, you should probably get an agency involved because, like, the cost of the agency is. Is going to be.

Warranted by how much you're spending.

No, I want to do all of them. Ah, there it is. No, it's not. What in the world?

I cannot delete all of them. Oh, there it is. Sorry. Okay.

What else we got here?

I'm loving the videos of Chuck. He's at. Yeah, those are great videos. Definitely. If you have not watched the video from.

Last Saturday and then Tuesday, definitely watch those. I would definitely recommend that.

If I reword everything, can I make a YouTube video for Google Ads? No, please don't do that. Please don't share anything of the done for you ads about Google Ads. Please don't do that. There are people that. That would pay thousands of dollars for just a tutorial like we do. Please keep it internal. There's obviously stuff on YouTube, but most of them don't specialize it and customize it to lawn care and landscaping with, like, the pictures and the titles, like, every single step of the process. And it keeps out probably 98% of lawn care landscapers from running Google Ads the way they should be doing it. Like, most people don't even have a clue what Google performance max is because they just run express ads through their Google account. They're super generic. So please don't. Please don't do that. I would. You would get a nice little call for me if that happened. So. All right, guys, have a fantastic rest of your day, and we'll see you tomorrow. Take care.