Mike Minutes Mastermind 03/20/2023

All right, folks, welcome. Happy Monday. Let's get started.

Real quick. Cool. All right, Marathon Monday is underway. I think I saw 12 questions. I commented on the form, but before we do that, I need to paste this into Facebook.

All right.

Rock and roll.

All right, we're in business. Let's do this. Number one, Connor from Huntersville. What is your goal for opening corporate locations? Will you continue to open a few per year like you currently do in New Carolina or there's certain number we like to stop at? I was thinking about this. Compared to real estate you mentioned, anything under 10 doors is no longer worth retirement money. I understand how this makes sense in the future to go for 100 plus door apartments or large complexes 10 years from now, assuming your current locations continue compound at some point, does it make better for you to go with a different investment vehicle rather than say open up 15 more locations that year?

I don't know. There's several. There's several things behind this, right? So one is I'm not, I'm not as passionate about real estate as I am about Augusta and business in general.

The only reason, like I want to learn real estate. That's why we got like 23 doors.

And I felt like that was helpful. And I would only ever use the money like because like you can only start so many locations, right? So eventually, if the numbers got big enough, I would need to use real estate as a.

Tax haven. Basically. That's all it is. So like the tax thing has really helped us. It's just going to allow us to pay for the headquarters is using the real estate and stuff and doing it pretty much all tax free. So that's super helpful. But honestly, I would prefer not to have to get into it. It's a bit of a distraction.

It's a lot of capital. You're tying up into something and I have no control over what they do with interest rates. So for me personally, why do I open up corporate stores? Several reasons. One is to create up the mobility for my GMs. So like Chuck became a regional manager, for example. I would like that opportunity to be able to be there for GMs to become regional managers.

If they want to. And I think a regional manager that's working for me also makes a really good coach for the franchisees because they have their hand in the business operations all the time. So I think it's a really good thing. I would like to. I don't know how long I could do this, but I would like to have it where the coaches are always still Somewhat operating inside of daily operations so they keep a pulse on things and are not removed from daily ops.

So that's another part of it. Another part of it is put partially some pride in the fact that I don't want the media side of the business to ever eclipse what I'm making in lawn care. So.

I want to always be able to say, like, I always love the comments when people are like, you make money from YouTube, it's like, dude, it's less than like 1% of revenue. So I like that. And I would like to be able to keep growing it just, just for that sake, honestly, in one part. But honestly, it comes down to just allocation of capital and where you're gonna get your best return. And I just can't beat the returns I'm gonna get in Augusta. So I, I would only do real estate if the number was so big where it's like, okay, I can't start 30 Augusta Lawn Care locations efficiently and so I gotta go do real estate for the tax of. For the sake of taxes and doing a cost segregation and trying to wipe out a big tax liability. That's the only reason I would do it. So that makes sense. Yeah. In terms of like how many locations I open down the road, I don't really have a number on it. Chuck and I have been pretty open about like the fact that we're just, we're seeing what comes our way kind of thing. It's going to really come down to, in my opinion though, if I have good regional managers, right? If I have GMs that work for two, three years and they're like, hey, I want more to chew on, I'd like to be able to give them a regional manager position and have that opportunity. Connor from Evansville to questions about credit cards on file and maybe a reality check if you think I'm wrong. I had about 5 to 7k worth of just rowing jobs not paid for last year. Well, that's a lot. Maybe because credit card on file was not a thing for me yet. In the beginning stages or early stages of growth, every penny counts. So as of June last year, I started to require credit card file for all clients going forward. I just happened to be going through a couple of accounts and noticed some people have called in to remove their credit card and command has allowed them to not have a credit card or I've allowed a few clients to sign up even through the clients said, even though the client said they don't do credit cards. I understand some cracks, but can we legally not Let them take their credit card off. Yeah. So this is a big problem with, with service autopilot is that allows people to take their card off. It's not even most of the time through command center. It's that they can go onto their account and remove it from the file. And there is no automation that is.

Built in service autopilot that would notify you or block that from happening. Now, you cannot block it from happening legally. There's consumer rights around this. But like we have an automation copilot, for example, that would immediately notify you and then it would also get them into an automation sequence of telling like, hey, you just took a card off file. You need to get this back on file within a certain amount of days. And if they don't, it would notify the office and then you take them off the schedule, for example.

And in terms of.

Should I refuse to do service without their cards on file? So the challenging part is when someone puts a card on file legally, you have to allow them to take it out. Like, you can't say, oh, we have your cart and we're going to like hold it hostage. You have to be allowed to take them off. Now you can take away service. But the thing is, we have franchisees that specifically request that we do not take people off service because of the credit card information stuff. So what I would say is if you get a call note that says someone specifically called in to take their card information off file, which rarely happens. Very rarely happens. It's usually people going in their profile and just taking off the service autopilot.

I would just at that point then address it. Just know that in Copilot we have an automation already built around this for the customer and for you. As soon as they remove bank information or credit card information, it immediately gets triggered. I guess I'm just a little frustrated with it and still trying to let go of some things that were. That's where you have. You may have to check me if my frustrations are misdirected. Yeah. So I would not spend a lot of time on this because the vast majority of these that are happening to everybody, first and foremost, it's a couple percent of customers that will do this. And that is you will say, hey, we require a credit card on file. They put a credit card on file, they literally go into their account and take it out. We can't prevent that and we have no way of being notified of that. The only way to prevent that from happening is literally would be like, check all your customers every single week. So I would personally recommend not spending time and energy on this. There's a very, very small amount of people that will call in the commands and remove credit card information. And if they did you would get a call note saying that and then you could follow up with it. So I would not be too concerned. We originally were saying like no one can take card information off but we had specific franchisees like very unhappy about that because.

Then want to be like a property cleanup for example where something like that and the customer is mad that we required a credit card on file and they lost the job, et cetera. So yeah, that's what I would do is if you get a call that says someone specifically called them to do that then you address it. But unfortunately right now in service autopilot there's no automated way to do it. And the bulk of these people are doing this by going into their account and then taking the card off there. And again we're talking about 2% of people max.

What you can do though is make sure your automation is on that says if a credit card is not in file every 90 days they get an email. You can make that email more pressing and so they don't have any card information on file. It really pushes them towards it. You could like right now it's more of like a suggested type thing. I would recommend making that email a little more pointed. Like we probably have I don't know, 95% plus of our car cards on file and we don't require it. It's just simply the verbiage of the automations that pushes people and pitching as a hit is a positive thing. And then if you wanted to, you can make it more pointed though and just be like hey, you have to do this kind of thing.

So that's in your automation. There's one for that every every 90 days. Meridian I want to make sure I really know my numbers but I'm not sure what numbers I should be focusing on. It seems like there are so many different metrics and numbers that I could be tracking. One of the most important ones that I should always know at any given point about my business. And there's a great point, this is why Copilot exists is trying to build the cockpit to where this information is actually accessible. Things like attrition is actually pretty tough to track in, in service auto or super and like customers lost, most people are just doing it manually. I know Ryan Payne is doing it in Excel if anyone wants asking for but he's. He shared it while back with The Franchise Advisory Council. But I know several people are doing that because just, it's just the most accurate way of doing it. Honestly. That being said, in terms of most important metrics, your close ratio is like the only one I really care about. Like, that you must, must have, like we talked about conference, it's a trickle down of so many different other things and it indicates about your pricing, indicates about how fast you're getting to estimates, a lot of things. So your close ratio, you got to know that. Like, I'm just trying to. I would definitely know your close ratio for the sake of pricing, for the sake of how far you're booked out, et cetera. And the second is like knowing exactly how far you are booked out is important.

Those are two really important metrics. All the other ones are important and they're extremely valuable.

And the problem is people spend. So they spend so time long trying to find out these numbers, they would be better off in that time in their business. And so the goal with COCKPIT is to hopefully make all these numbers very, very clear and then actually tell you what you should be doing based upon the numbers. So trust me, I feel your pain. But I would just, I would just recommend, like, there's a reason I would say that the metrics on your.

Scorecard, your max metrics, those are the ones you need to know, like all the time. Like, wake up in the middle of the night, you should know what it is. Hi, Mike. Sometimes our employees forget. Ben Collins. Arnold. Sometimes our employees forget to clock in and out, and we end up having to dig back through various messages trying to locate their text. We're eventually hoping to run it every day, but haven't gotten there yet. How do you solve this at your locations? Is there a way you could add a comments feature inside the P4B app for employees use? So there is already a comments part for the employees. I am 99% sure of that. Unless it's just in my development app. Give me a second.

I didn't put in his phone.

Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm pretty well known. 95% is already in production and that is they have the ability to make a comment on their time card. Yeah, there's comments for employees and comments for managers. So you can make a comment, but they can also make a comment. So if they forget to clock in, they should be able to make a comment. How we solve this issue very quickly is we tell them, if you forget to clock in, when you clock in, that is when you're gonna start.

And all of a sudden, people start clocking in on time. Same thing with clocking out. It used to be a big problem. People would always forget to clock out. We said, hey, look, if you don't clock out, we are gonna take the time and last you were at a job, add 30 minutes to it, assuming you get back to the shop and that's it. Which is usually pretty accurate. But like, if you spend a bunch of time at the shop or doing other things, it's kind of all wasted now. So all of a sudden people got better at clocking out. You got to stick to your guns on that one because otherwise, as you grow the company, you're just constantly going to have 5, 10, 15 people a day, every single day, forgetting to clock in and out. So, yeah, I would just highly recommend, say, look, look, if you don't, if you don't clock in on time, we're going to add 15 minutes or 20 minutes to your first job when you clock into your first job. And if you forget at the end of the day, we're going to add 30 minutes, whatever it is, at the end of the day, and that's going to be your clock out time. And there's just no going around it. There's no reason to be digging back to things. However, doing this on a daily basis will save you a massive amount of time. Um, I just can't overemphasize that. It compounds. And when you start doing P4Pmultiple days in a row, it compounds the amount of time it takes. Whereas if you just do it every single day, this is goes way faster. You remember when they clocked out? Almost always they remember.

Highly Recommend Running your P4P every single day. Like I can't overemphasize that enough. Especially because the reports become irrelevant to the employee after you skip a day. Like, they don't even remember what they did two days ago on their jobs. They only remember the day before. Garrett from Glendale. What do you think about adding a gift card bonus or large check bonus for a team member completing landscape business or get rich slow. Get rich Slow is only a couple hours. I would probably say landscape business course. Maybe I like landscape business course a little better because they have tests they have so you could track whether or not they understand the material. If someone was wanting to move up to become a GM or go through the 3F program, is their time better spent watching the actual Augusta training?

I know all of it, right? I think if someone's really hungry, they're going to want to go through all this stuff as much as they can.

And so the nice thing about landscape business course is it's on teachable and so they can go through it.

And get a password and go on their mobile device etc. This is going to be a little harder the 3F program being on the dashboard, etc. I think watching the actual training I would leave that to when they actually become a GM or become an owner because they'll get live. It's pretty dry if you're just watching it without yet committed to being an owner or a gm.

Evansville From Connor.

When an employee quit, should we just write them a check and mail them after they turn in their stuff, their shirts, their car, et cetera? Or should we make them wait until payroll is due so we don't have to do a special payroll just for them? Just curious. Had both new hires quit on the same week. I would recommend just running it like you normal don't do a special one.

Yeah like there's no reason to do that. It's going to take extra time to use if they just quit or if you have to fire them. I wouldn't make exception to that rule. Especially don't write them a check because now you're gonna get in trouble. It's like not paying taxes, things like that. So I'd recommend just keep it the same if they quit or if they get fired. Hey, on the next paycheck just see your money go in at the usual time and that's just it.

Kyle.

Kyle Tarpon X Land Lord owes us for half month's rent due to us moving out before the month's end and us already paying the full months rent for February before we moved out. I texted her if I get a refund for half of February and she said yes, it would be $600 of rent. I haven't received the money yet and she is now ignoring my messages. It's kind of petty and I know I shouldn't pursue legal action, especially with the payment being so low and going in progress. My question to you is one. Should you consider pursuing legal action against something so insignificant? No, don't worry about it. You'll spend way more than $600 and your time and energy is significantly more important than $600 in trying to fight this. Number two, I know I'm just going to have to use lawyers to defend myself at some point. My business career just now not sure how to justify it. How do you gauge taking legal action against someone versus just letting it go? Just looking to see what you would do if you were in my shoes. Yeah. So to actually bring a lawyer in this case, like a good lawyer, just to get them involved in the case is going to take several thousand dollars, like usually at least 2 to 3 at the very least, just for them to like actually show up to court and things like that. So there's just no point at this point. It's really just about communication with the person, negotiating with them, trying to get a hold of them, maybe sending them a letter if you're really into it. But again, it's like $600, like, and all that time and energy you could apply to that cleanup and that cleanup would have made you more than $600. Right. So I know it sounds horrible, but I would probably let it go. Focus on the business, Focus on string rush. Don't get wrapped up in $600, which is going to be less than a half percent of your revenue this year. Well, like less than a tenth of your revenue. Less than a tenth of a percent. Connor from Evansville, Is there a way that we can have CC put a date next to a note that has been made on a job? So job notes. I've had to go through some jobs and delete job notes as they were either old, outdated or new. Guys don't have context for them. This way, if they're dated, we know whether or not to reach them or move on. Just wondering if that's a thought or concern or if it just needs to be something I need to do from time to time. Sometimes the crew calls and asks what the job notes means or if it's for this week or something. I have no idea because command center takes the calls. So sometimes even I am missing context.

Although I would, I would agree with you. Like, having dates on there would be nice. It's going to get cluttered, especially for customers that call in quite often and there's like five notes on it. It's going to get kind of cluttered with all the. All the dates.

I would just tell your crew, like, hey, if it doesn't make sense or if you think this is an old note because now they've. They finished the right side of the house and there's no longer chickens there. Whatever. Like they can just tell you and they make a note on the job and then you remove it from the job notes. I'd probably just stick with that. As soon as you start complicating with names, dates, et cetera in the job notes, we see the guys not reading them. It looks too cluttered and they stop reading. I would keep it as simple as possible. And I just tell them, like, look, if you ever think a note needs to be changed or it needs to be. It's old and should be taken off, just make a note. That's what I would personally recommend, because the biggest challenge is getting them to read the notes. And so as soon as you start adding dates, numbers, times, timestamps, names, they stopped reading the notes. And so.

What also happens is command center will get a call, they make a note based on what the customer says, and it's valid for like two or three weeks, and then it stays on there. And I don't like that. The problem is the customer doesn't tell us it's only gonna be for two or three, three weeks. So if it was, we can set it towards the jobs are only on there for a few. Few weeks. But typically they're like, oh, like, this must happen. Like, do not edge my property case. Right. Okay, don't edge property. Great. Well, that was only for the three weeks where they were painting their house. Right. So it's going to happen. I would probably just tell your crew, if you think job notes can be updated, if they're. You think they're old, make a note and we can get those edited. It gets. Also keeps them staying reading the notes.

Also, what happens, like, a note that is on there for five years now that they're starting, like, oh, maybe it's an old note. In reality, like, that still needs to be done. I don't want them making the judgment call in the field as to whether or not a note is good or bad. I want them to follow the notes and they have questions about it. They can make a note on the job and specifically ask you about it for us, what happens when someone calls Modesto? Location, phone number, their location, Tracy, where other location is at. Yep. So basically, what's going to happen? They're going to call in, we're going to think they're from Tracy. We're going to search in the database. They're not going to show up. We're going to. We're going to ask them for their address. When we pull up their address in the map, it's going to pull up, oh, this is in the Modesta location. And then we switch accounts. So it's. It probably.

Say like, it probably is like 15 to 20 seconds of us realizing they're not inside this account. They're actually their address based on their address we can see inside immediately tells us, oh, this is in Modesto. And we'd switch over the other account.

Forest. How do you keep track of employees targeting unexpected absences, etc. For profit sharing? How does your new quarterly profit sharing work? We haven't changed anything other than the fact that at the end of the quarter we only we divide the profit sharing by the people who have been there for all three months. We used to do it by how many people were there currently, but we decided we'd only take the people who had been there the whole quarter. That would be the number we divide the profit sharing by. That's the only tweak we made to profit sharing in terms of how do you keep track of employees tardy on their employee profiles? We're going to keep track of this inside service autopilot or super. We are going to be building this with Copilot where profit sharing is going to be integrated into P4P so really cool. I just started putting together the framework for.

Copilot, sorry Peak or P. And that is where the guys will see live their how much they're earning. They'll see on a thermometer how much they're supposed to earn for the day and then like how much they're progressing towards it and then also like a live scoreboard of like their whole team who's making the most that day. So it's pretty cool. If we can pull it off, I'd be thrilled. We'll see what happens. But I just started kind of like putting pen to paper on that stuff. Pretty cool. Wes Merdian I am one to sign up for launcher bookkeeper.com I just had Books Quickbooks do my initial cleanup. Is there a way to bypass having to do this through Lawn Pro and get started the monthly categorization? Yeah. No. So if you're a solo operator, the only way to become a client would be like anyone else. Because obviously as a growth model you have access to command center. But yeah, home service CPA is the equivalent of long hair. Bookkeeper.com it's the same stuff but you'd have to go the exact same way.

Set up as a new client, etc. Just the benefits of joining as a growth model is that you don't have to do that and you get direct access right to command center.

Kurt Kyler from Plainfield. When will Copley be ready for the franchise to start using? I think you said October after franchise. Yeah. So I'm not committed 100% to a date yet. I would love if we can all switch over right after conference, but I'm kind of thinking at conference we get everyone on the same page, we have a roadmap and then in like December and January we switch everyone over. I think end of, end of December would be nice because it's like you get the year and all of your books are from one. So I'm not 100% sure on this. It's depending on slightly just the feature sets being ready for it. But then two is making sure that it's a nice transition from a books perspective. Like December 31st to January 1st for example makes a lot of sense. So I think it's going to be ready by October. That's my goal at least in terms of feature set. But then actually having it where it is.

Implemented for everyone probably be like January 1st, but I don't know, don't hold me those dates. I'm not making commitments to that until probably August or September.

That being said, we will probably start onboarding new franchisees into Copilot before that. So it's not like it's going to be like we all switch. It's. And then like there's surprises. We already have been putting people in that are new into Copilot and then we'll be transitioning Command center and everything over. So there'll be a lot more details coming out. There's already a couple franchisees using Copilot that were not happy with super and they basically just got started. They're really small and they're okay with taking their own phone calls because Command center can't support that at all. So.

All right, let's see, we got here.

Okay, I'm trying to push for 200k. My.

Advantage.

Average average monthly income should be 15k this month. So so far I'm at 6k for this month. Should I be concerned that I won't hit my goals? I'm not going to down myself but I'm also not trying to get comfortable with whatever I'm making.

I worry about this too. Early in the season.

You can only control inputs, you cannot control outputs. So you're right now focused on output and that's where most people put their focus on when it comes to goals is like I want X amount of revenue. Revenue is an output. You can only control inputs. So just focus on more importantly, how many quotes are you going to get out? What's your close ratio going to be? You can affect those things. You cannot affect the output of the revenue on the other side of things. Right. So I just focus on that. Focus on your actual actions towards it and whether you crush a Goal or whether you fall short of it, it doesn't really matter. It's the fact that the action you continue to put in are aiming towards that goal. It's the only thing that really matters. Goals, in my opinion are not benchmarks. They're more a matter of alignment. Like am I going in the right direction?

Should we pause service if they remove the card and let them know they have to update before services begin or do we just trust that they will pay at the end of the month like they're promising?

Personally, again, like in my locations, we don't, we don't pause services over this again. The vast majority of our clients still put card on file the way we were the automations. That being said, the automation that what you could do is instead of it being every 90 days the automation that follows up with them if they don't have a card on file, it constantly asks them every 90 days to get a card on file. You can move that to like every 30 days and make that more pointed if you wanted to.

But yeah, like we just don't have a lot of issues with this. Honestly. If you have a really good invoice collections side of things, which cuts them off of service, if they haven't paid for three weeks and follow the automation sequence, they will get a cart and file. And that's just trying to actually scam you, right? Like you have to, you have to realize that like what we're assuming here is that if people are not trying to pay, they're actually trying to like thieves and rob from you. There's not a lot of people that do that. What you're trying to do is make this convenient for them and then whether or not you can take the few people that take a few weeks to pay, that's up to you.

But I would personally rely on the automations that every 90 days goes out that if they don't have a card on file, it's reminding them the one that right after they accept a job, it's trying to get them to set up their client portal, et cetera. And just know that right now putting a car on file in service offline is dramatically more difficult than what it is in Copilot and even Zooper. Just because Stripe is so much more better integrated and just easier to set up. And like yeah, even the account, like you can see the password, like we can't change people's passwords and if they can't get in, we can't change that command center in service. I'll apply in Super Whereas in copilot we can change it. Say, hey look, now your password's going to be X. Go ahead and log in. It's just way better than right now. We have to like send them a link. They have to go through all the security questions and things like that.

Potentially too early. A very weird cold spell is coming through. I heard Florida was in the 30s and 40s in some parts this week. Very weird.

Can I get a small breakdown on how you're going to do the 30 day 30k challenge? I want to do the same. I was thinking of doing maybe 100 clients in 60 days. I did the full breakdown video a while back. Kind of how I plan each week sort of to be. Who knows if that'll happen. A really cool come down to if I can find team members and then what the uptake is. The fact that I'm starting in the middle of the year is not great but I just didn't want to do it during spring rush. It should be here.

Connor Head. It's making my head spin and I'm not hitting these goals.

Can we offer a working DM position while under 200k? I would not recommend that unless you were growing extremely fast. I have a good guy that I want to keep on hand. He's a good person, motivated every day about helping the business grow. But I know we're still small. It's so much I can offer you offer as like, hey, this is my plan. This is what I would love for you to grow into. This is the opportunity to grow into. But definitely don't offer as a job position like starting next year or anything because you don't have any idea of what's to come. Also reading stage two of growth which is where you're at, which is that 100,000 to $200,000.

Read that because in there you will see it says that your first employee like man, they are great. They're amazing. How am I ever going to find anyone else like this first person and they'll end up leaving. Like I would put money on it. I know it sounds horrible. I would put on money in the fact that next year he won't be with you. Just be based upon the numbers, based upon what happens to almost every stage of growth that goes through. Number two is you're like man, this employee is amazing. How am I ever going to find anyone like this? They end up moving on and then you have to find new people. Right. So don't lock in on unemployment. Oh, I'm building the business around them. I did that for my first employee. Probably cost me six to 12 months of just the business because I was like, oh, I got to build around. I almost gave him 10% of Augusta. If I would have done that now again, this, that would be worth a lot. Today would have been a massive mistake. So anyways, hope you all have a fantastic Monday. Great marathon Monday. Let's go. 30 minutes on the nail. Let's go. Take care, guys.