Mike Minutes Mastermind 03/28/2023

Hello, guess the nation. Hope you're all doing super well. Let's go and get things kicked off. Happy Tuesday.

All right, let me just go ahead and drop the YouTube link in. Couple quick announcements before we kick things off.

Copy this.

To the Facebook group.

All right.

Quick change we made this morning on the dashboard. Just make sure you can see this present.

Okay, so on augustafranchise.com you're here. When you click edit your web page.

You will no longer have to log in. You're having people trouble with their login as well as the fact that the only reason we had the login was to make sure that your analytics were private. However, with Google Analytics 4 GA4, a lot of their analysts are not coming across very well and they're not allowing us to tap in. There's a whole bunch of changes as is with everything it seems like with Google right now. And so instead of just constantly updates, all right, we're just going to have you direct access. You just put your email address in, enter your Augusta email, and you'll go right into the support side of things. So, boom, you can immediately go into support. So it's way faster. And then if you want your Google Analytics, you can always save your Google Analytics account and actually see your actual analytics account with submit this, we'll get it set up for you and then give you access to.

In summer, we're actually making this standard.

Where we set up everyone's Google Analytics account and it just gives you, oops, sorry, that didn't take you there. Sorry. It's going to take you here when you open this up directly here. And if you ever wanted your actual Google Analytics account set up for you, just click here, submit it, and we'll get it done for you.

But yeah, no longer will there be a need to do any sort of.

Login. So again, just in case you missed it, edit your web page. It'll take you right into here, submit.

Your.

Email address.

And then you can go right into the portal for support. So that is that.

All right, let's jump in. Seven questions.

See here.

One second.

Okay.

Kyle Tarvin has a question. He says, are chargebacks worth fighting? We just got hit with 150 in chargebacks from that customer that went off the rails a while back on winter service billing. It really depends, right? So if you're using Stripe, their process for chargebacks is a little bit easier versus clearance. But over 150, you're probably not going to want to fight a whole lot and expend a whole bunch of time on it. That's what I'd be more concerned about, honestly. And so.

You know, submit the form.

If you'd like to kind of like file against it and then I personally wouldn't recommend over 150 spending a whole bunch of time trying to feed it. Obviously send invoices, time stamps of them being there, whatever you can in terms of tracking the guys being there, that they were clocked in there, etc, feel free. But chargebacks are a beast. They usually go to the customer, honestly. So.

I wouldn't waste too much time on it though, especially 150 bucks.

All right, next question from Kyle Tarvin. I need some advice from my gm. He's having some trouble with time and he gets super busy with tasks like caring for the crew, customers, equipment troubles etc that he is working late every day just to get his regular tasks done. I'm wanting him to do more follow up with customers and hunting for more work during the day. That has fallen by the wayside as he is too busy with other tasks. He is a working GM by the way, so he does work in the field too. We are currently working with him to figure out what his priorities for the day are to get those done first before anything else. Do you have any tips or advice for us in this situation?

Yeah, like this is the hardest part about working gm.

They have to be able to do time management, right? Because you got estimates, you have equipment, you have guys out in the field that you got to manage and route and schedule and you also need to be doing work yourself.

Managing two, three people employees is not extremely difficult, but it's that plus having to be out in the field working and making sure the equipment's good to go and doing dispatching and all the rest of it. Right. So it really does come down to time management. For a gm that's their biggest, I would say like looking for a skill from a GM or working gm, they need to have time management. And we let go one of our gms a few months back, five months back or whatever.

And it wasn't five, sorry, it was a few and it.

Was because of time management.

Like you can't manage your time, we're going to let you go. And we tried for months and actually financially we're doing pretty well. The location was profitable and everything. But yeah, we can't manage the time. So.

Yeah, I would say like in terms of figuring out that for them you'd want to say hey, the most. If you're wanting him to hunt for work, follow up with customers and that's like your priority. Then it's like okay, do we block off certain amount of time for you? You might just have to get familiar with what is their best way of time management. Whether you time blocking, whether it be checklists and then is matter. The question is like are they getting distracted throughout the day with other work that is not as relevant to what you want them to be doing and then just making sure you're communicating clearly what their priorities should be. Right. A lot of times we just don't communicate very well as managers in terms of like well I, yes, I need you to do X, Y and Z. But that's like half the amount of importance as you know A, B and C that I want you to do. So might just be also clearing your expectations for them as well.

Marcus from Redmond Will you allow us to post the growth will you allow us to post a growth based capacity and the monthly coaching call cards for employees to see? I have it laminated and posted on the wall so I can fill in the numbers every month and use it as education to employees. But I'm not sure if you if you want those cards to be kept to owners or GMs only picks attached. All right, let's see here.

Oh yeah, that's totally fine. You know, definitely, definitely I recommend everyone sharing those coaching cards if you if you're doing open book management, obviously 100%.

All right. Number four. Thomas from Littleton. Do we currently have a service where command center follows up the mowing estimates with a phone call? If so, could we have it? So when clients use prices are concerned we would then receive a job or something similar on our dispatch board in order to take a closer look at the property to see if any wiggle room exists. I suppose we could do this use this for all estimates rather than just knowing any concern the client refers to could then be dispatched and addressed by the estimator. Just looking for more ways to gather more promoting clients this year along with increasing close ratio. Your thoughts?

Yeah. So we aren't going to ever do.

Price negotiation at command center simply because every single owner is going to have so much difference of opinion of what they want done. Like we'll never be able to win that game.

Sorry.

There you go. That should be better. My bad.

Okay.

So we won't ever do price negotiation or like lower the price etc. I'd recommend the day after you as the estimator or whoever is your estimator, be the person that reaches out to the client and is going to potentially use the scarcity clothes if there's a price concern and I give them a date and try to actually sell them into it using, you know, decreasing the price etc. If the customer specifically said it's too expensive, like Command center is going to let you know with a note already. But it's very rare that the customer outright says that.

They'Re going to use a whole bunch of other things. And that's why I think the day after the estimator calling is the most effective because they remember everything in the estimate typically.

So yes, Command center is currently doing on their fifth day. You can change your automation if you want them to do that sooner. But I still recommend the estimator set aside some time the day after doing the estimate and call the quotes that they did the day before. Even if it is the quotes that commands that are sent out for you that are drive over the phone estimates.

I'd still call those just like hey, we sent out the quote the other day. The estimator over here, just checking in, see if you had any questions, see if we can't get you on the schedule for next Thursday. So I'd highly recommend that. But yeah, in terms of us doing if there's wiggle room, it just gets very, very gray and we're going to mess stuff up. So if you want to do that, absolutely recommend you do, especially when you're trying to fill your schedule. But you'll have to do that yourself. And I'd recommend doing the day after.

Champaign, Illinois. Dustin, I might have missed it, but how should we get in contact with Evergrow to get set up with them? Yeah, so right underneath that the oh.

Man, I have too many tabs open now. Mercy, let me show.

All right, so from this page.

Oh.

No, I don't want this Augusta franchise.

So if you go here, go to.

Deals.

And then.

At the very bottom.

I have their contact information and then also their phone number. So email and phone number right here. This is the free tutorial which is just the dump for you ads. And then this is the more information.

About their actual offer for management.

So contact, email, phone number right there.

All right.

Chad from Valparaisa, Indiana, Lila Hormozi recently posted about starting a landscaping company and what she likes about it. One thing she mentioned is making sure it's in a warmer climate so you can work year round. I sent the email stating we will start mowing next week, but half my customers replied stating they want to wait in the future when opening another location. Should this be a consideration?

Yeah, I Heard what Leila said. Obviously she's thinking from a very much of like scale, massive scale. Right.

And.

The thing is in, in everyone always has this thing like Mark. Other markets are better. In warmer markets that are year round, the cost per hour is typically lower because and that's why like people have a lot more pricing pressure in parts of Texas, parts of Florida, parts of California is because they're year round, it's an easier business. So yes, I would prefer to be able to have year round work that would be ideal. However in doing so.

It makes it easier to run a business in lawn care landscaping and therefore the price is lower. So like in a free, free market all this gets evened out. So yes you can, you're working around in a place in certain parts of the country but those are typically the, the markets where we're charging 60, $70 an hour. Whereas I can go to places that might, might only have mowing for seven, eight months out of the year, but I'm able to charge 80, 90, $100 per hour. And the reason for that is because there's less competition. And the reason there's less competition is because it's a harder business to run when it's seasonal. And so just keep that in mind. I'm not saying anything bad about lately. Obviously I like her but just like just keep that part in mind when it comes to different markets.

Right?

So like I'm obviously going to North Carolina market. There's months where we don't mow there. I'm in Washington state. There's, there's four months out of the year we don't mow here. When we send an email out the week before, we usually get customers also saying like hey, we'll wait until April for example just happens. But I'm happy that I'm in a market here where I can charge $90 an hour whereas we're charging 70 in North Carolina cause they have a longer season. You go to parts of Texas, Florida, California, it's tough to charge $70 an hour because there's so much pressure and the pressure is caused by more competition. The competition caused because easier marketplace.

And such as capitalism. Derek Duran Allen Park, Michigan when running Google search ads I follow the tutorial step by step. Thanks for the amazing resource. For the next few weeks I really need project based work and cleanups. My question is can I keep the mowing search ad with the title and everything is shown in done for you ads but just in add in spring cleanups, proper clips etc in the keywords board. Should I create an ad that says pre is highly focused on that instead of having. Okay, great. I hear you're saying, I would personally recommend doing two. That way it's easy for you to turn on and off them. So if you're wanting to do one for mowing, great. Sounds like that one's working well for you. Do another one with keywords more around and the verbiage and everything around. Property cleanups, spring cleanups, projects. And then that way you can pause when you're like, okay, we're booked out now five, six weeks. Pause the cleanups one, but then let your mowing one keep going, or vice versa, however you want to do it. Right. So that would be my recommendation. You can obviously just add more keywords in and then make them more of a blended approach. But if you did well and it's working well for you for the mowing, I recommend doing the same thing with a separate ad for proper clamps, so that way you can quickly switch back and forth down the road. Yes. It'll take you an extra hour to get it set up, but then down the road, you can just quickly toggle it on and off based upon your availability.

All right, that's all she wrote. You guys have a great day. Take care. We'll see you tomorrow.