Mike Minutes Mastermind 03/28/2024

All right, we're live. This is on YouTube only. This is not going to be on Facebook. It's like Facebook Live has been down for that reason. Yesterday I was not able to go live. So it is still down and I am going to do this on YouTube only. And here we go.

Some announcements. First.

Liz put up three new training videos inside of Academy on several different topics, including how to change items and services in Copilot, how to download things out of the marketplace. And in the marketplace they have created several new temp, three new templates for email and texting. So again, Liz made a video announcement on Facebook. Feel free to look at that. And then there are some. Several new training videos added. And if you haven't looked at Academy recently, there's quite a few have been added over the past few weeks to the Copilot section. So feel free to take a look at that.

Also.

In the Financial Advisory Council, they're talking yesterday and that was about.

Someone was saying that they have to watch all the masterminds to get updates. All of the announcements that I make here in this first couple minutes of these I do keep track of. And then I send out an email blast to every, usually every three to five weeks.

So, for example, like yesterday I mentioned the stipend for meetups, the new testimonials tab inside the dashboard, etc. And so.

Those will go out in email in a matter of a few weeks once there's enough things on my list. So if it's something that's immediate, I usually let everyone know via email if it's changing workflow, etc. But what I'd also do is all these announcements I keep track of and then when it gets like five or six, I'll make an email and send out to everyone. So if you don't get a lot of value out of the masterminds, totally fine. You'll still get an update in the email. Usually everyone you know every few weeks, every month.

With any announcements such as those things that I put in the Facebook group yesterday.

One thing we were talking about in the Franchise Advisory Council, I think is helpful for all of us, I'm going to use the franchise. And then when I first started, I guess that's kind of like examples and that is people will fall in love with whatever stage of your business that they joined in. So when my very first employee ended up leaving, and he was a friend of mine, and when he left, it wasn't about the money because I offered him $5 more per hour, even though I Couldn't afford it. And.

He'S like, yeah, it's not really about the money. Just like, when I first came here, we, like, work together, and you're always with me. And now we have, like, systems and procedures and employees and team meetings and one on ones and all this other stuff. And, like, I don't want to do that. Okay. And yeah, like, at the moment, in the moment, it's like, oh, man, maybe I should just stay small and just work with this one person. Like, they're really efficient and, like, work really hard and super dependable. And so it's tempting to do that, um, and just stay, stay at that size. And the same thing is true with the. With Augusta Nation. People will join and they will fall in love with that size of what Augusta Nation is. When we were at 15, 20, 30 locations, for example, like Command center, everyone had two assigned reps for every single location.

And as time goes on, like, we can't do that. There are times when two people are sick, and then all of a sudden their account is completely neglected. It doesn't scale. We'd have twice as many people at Command center if we did that now, even if we had one person assigned every account. So.

You know, whether it be your business, whether it be a destination, though, people will fall in love with what. What they started the relationship with. So, for example, when you get married, you. You fall in love with this person. Well, as they begin to grow, evolve, change, become a better person. Maybe they'll lose weight, maybe they make money.

That person's going to change, that person's going to grow, that person's hopefully for the better. And so with growth, there's. There's changes, whether it be in your business, and they're going to be like, there's going to be employees that will not stick around after a while. We actually had one leave the Bellingham shop just recently.

That had been working for like three or four years, and.

It'S just like, look, there's a new manager in town, there's a new sheriff, and they're not going to jive necessarily with them, and they're used to the old way, and so they're going to leave. And you know, that stinks, but it's part of growth. And so.

I encourage you for your business. So if you hit one or two employees and like, they're really good, and then you get five, six, seven employees, and those employees leave, it usually happens because those people fell in love with working with alongside you every day. They fell in love with you working alongside them in the truck all the time. And now you're managing, now you're screening systems, now you've instituted pay for performance. Like you become a different person. And it's same thing as a relationship is why people get divorced at like 40 and 50. Sometimes it's like you're a different person than you are back 20 years ago. I like the old, you know, get drunk every single day and, you know, sloppy, not taking care of themselves. And now you've changed in this. Like you've lost weight and you're trying to better yourself and become sober. And like, that's not the person I married. And sometimes that's when people separate.

And so even with, with August Nation, people that joined at, you know, 40, 50, 60 locations had a lot more direct access to me. And so they'll fall in love with that. And some people love the masterminds, other people do not like the masterminds too much time. So we try our very best to accommodate. However, as we grow in scale, there will be parts of what you fell in love with originally with Augusta, that change. And one of the members of the French Advisory Council was like, okay, so as we grow Augusta Nation and get to a thousand locations, what can we expect in terms of, for example, the one thing that they had stated as an example is like, will Command center become, in their words, quote, worse? I said, well, depends how you define worse. For example.

Will Command center going from where we're at now to a thousand locations become potentially less personal? And especially from when we were at 50 locations to now 150. Like, has it become less personal? I would say yes.

I would also say that this week, one year ago, we would have been just catching up on Monday's estimates today. And that has happened every spring rush where we come in Monday and we are 24 to 40 hours behind on estimate requests, voice voicemails and any contact forms. And we would usually get to like if we did, if we didn't catch up, which we hardly caught up during spring rush in the past because we would just come into Monday and have hundreds of voicemails, hundreds if not thousands of estimate request forms and contact forms, let alone all the emails in each department that needed to be figured out. And right now, because of all the systems I've been put in place, and we have way more people and we have grown. That's allowed us to afford max AI, allow us to afford instant quotes on the, on the website, those, the growth. So there's, there's pros and cons. Of growth. The same way that when in a relationship someone's growing, there's pros and cons to it. And if you want the relationship to extend with that person, you're gonna have to adapt. And there's going to be a give and take. Like, hey, this is good. This is a, like, can I have more of this? Like, I need more. There's a give and take. And so I think it's a healthy relationship and I think it's the same way in terms of Augusta Nation. People that joined will fall in love. Oh, did I put the wrong thing in the chat?

Did I put the wrong one in? I might have put the wrong YouTube link in. Did I?

Sick. Anyways, you guys have to see us afterwards. I just know there's notice there was no one live. I'll put this up later.

People will fall in love when they joined Augusta. Whether it be when it was smaller, Mike had more one on one with me. Whether that be when Command center was smaller, I had a direct rep. Whether that be there's just so many different aspects and elements of it, right? And there's pros and there's cons of growth. The bottom line is if we didn't grow, things like Max AI that we spent hundreds of thousand dollars on would not be available and we wouldn't have been afforded without growth. We wouldn't have been able to do things like the coaching program, the give back program, allow people to do come through the 3F program. And so all of that's added. Sorry, I'm just going back here.

I, I kind of wrote down some of the things like this past year that growth allowed.

We now have Command center open on Sundays, which allows us like literally on Mondays to not have any like where people, we are twiddling our thumbs by the end of the command center. And no, no, no, none of the owners of Gustane has to pay for that overstaffing. But that's like the goal during this spring rush.

And so, you know, growth of of Augustination allows us to do way better training. Like we've done it so many times now. I think the training is three times better than we first started. And you know, the first 10 location owners will testify to that. Right. So there's pros and cons. As you grow your business, you're going to have team members that might leave and the question is like, should I just stay in small so I can accommodate them? No, not if your business and your goals that you have.

Require systems and procedures to change so that you can Scale and grow. And so.

There are pros and cons to that. And the same thing is true with the gustination. So that was another conversation you're talking about inside the Franchise Advisory Council. All right, let's go ahead and start talking some questions. Something really. There you go. If I put there that'll work.

Cool. All right, there are. Let's see how many 14 questions. Mercy see if we can.

Get through these today.

Will this work now? Present share Bill.

Okay.

Okie dokie.

All right, 14 questions. Let's see how many of these we get through. That's from Charlotte. A few follow ups from yesterday's mike minutes. Mastermind, can you a little bit more on the 15 time. 15 minute time blocking and how you recommend we do this. I wanted to look at my schedule and start better understanding my priorities. Alex mentions the input output equation and once you know inputs you need to just crank those up to get more output. Struggling to know what my true inputs are versus what can be handled handed off. What makes sense for me to keep doing. Yeah, like this really comes down to are you trying to delegate? Are you trying to figure out where the. Where your time is being spent? The time study is really meant to be like where are you spending time where delegation isn't necessarily.

The first place I look at is like what tasks do I do? You can just list those off and be like which things can I hand off? That's like the fastest way to probably get a return on your time. And then it would be a matter of like you really want to drill in. It's like what am I doing for every 15 minute block of the day? And then looking and seeing which of those are highest priority or highest impact and then trying to delegate everything else out. That would be one way I think a lot of this very self introspective you can. You don't need to do the time blocking to necessarily get some big wins right off the bat. Right. Just like okay, like what did I do Yesterday? Okay, here's 15 things. Five of these I think I can delegate out pretty quickly and allow me to focus on these other ones. And you can drill in more with the time study potentially.

Hutch, from Charlotte, you mentioned needing to vary lead source for Augusta from just content. Does 3f not compare to one click estimates in the beginning one clicks 3f starts slow, but as a business matures and more people are in the system it compounds eventually becomes the main lead source. Just curious why you're ad why you'd add running.

Why you'd add Running ads as well.

Got it. Okay. Yeah. So the thing is, it's kind of like saying referrals. So referrals in your business, you. You can't control them. You can't. You cannot. Yes. Will they compound and grow over time? A hundred percent. As you get more clients, you will have and you work for them longer, you will get more referrals. The 3F program in my mind is very similar to that in Time. Yes, I do believe that a lot of the new owners of Gust Nation will come from the 3F program.

But I cannot control which employees are hired and I cannot control their desire to want to do so. I can't control referrals. So therefore, as you would when you're starting your business, you will.

Use marketing and ads to be able to grow quickly. And the hope is down the road that you have this stream of recurring referrals that you don't have to market as much. So that's how, if you're using that analogy, that's how I'd kind of think about it.

Again from Hutchinson. Charlotte, you said 10 to 1 is good for LTV to CAC. How does this not vary dramatically based on Profit margin? Isn't 30 to 1 but with a 15 profit margin like we have in this industry the same as 10 to 1 in another industry with 45% margin?

Okay, you said 10 to 1 is good. Has it vary radically based on. How does this not vary dramatically based on profit margin? Okay, I hear what you're saying. So what I was saying is first off that Alex was saying 10 to 1. Anything above 10 to 1 is good. The media ads guy@ acronym.com was saying anything above 3.5 is usually what you can keep doing. But anything above 10 is like what they're trying to get to. You're 100. Right. In terms of the 10 to 1. And typically things that are have higher margins are also going to have higher competition for marketing and advertising. Therefore your a cost per click will be higher, etc. So it usually balances out in a free market. So things like.

Info products, you're trying to sell a book or trying to sell a course, you might have a 3 to 1 or a 4 to 1 because everyone's trying to do that online. So you're going to spend a lot more to get that click. You're going to spend a lot more to get that conversion. If you're selling.

Roofing. Right. Not everyone's advertising for that. So you also have a massive ticket item like $30,000. So I'm willing to spend a thousand dollars potentially to get the customer $2,000 to get that customer and still get a 15:20 ratio of LTV to CAC. So.

I, I yeah, you're like it definitely varies based upon the profit margin. The thing is if you take high profit margin companies, typically they're spending more on marketing because they can't they have a higher to spend more on their cack and get away with it.

Kevin Cohen from Harrison, Virginia what would be your response if you had two employees ask off a month ago for this Wednesday and Friday to go fishing this week? They were told that we could not let them off on Wednesday but would make sure they didn't have to work on Friday. They we told again this week they couldn't have off. Oh then we told again this Friday they couldn't have off on today. This is Wednesday being what was scheduled to be was scheduled to be our first week of mowing for the season. So then last night they texted and said they were not showing up today.

That's tough. Especially because you told them so long ago to not that they couldn't a month ago. Mercy. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess this is not just a regular fishing trip. This is some sort of like planned with a whole bunch of friends or a boating thing because otherwise they just move the day a little bit. So they asked for, they asked for when asked for Wednesday and Friday off. And then basically they told you this morning, hey, we're going. Well now that it is Thursday, this has played out. So I'm really interested, Kevin, for a little update on what happened here.

What I do. Like in the perfect world. Yeah, I would fire them. Yeah. It stinks that it's your first week of mowing. You literally probably just train them all up and they're ready to roll. So that stinks.

I don't know, maybe fire the lower performing one.

I don't know. That'd be tough. Like how it was. It's how it said was said and done. And if they know I hate when like someone just like notifies you that you'll be off, like I will be off on this day. It's like no, it's not how it works. So I would lean towards firing him if you could.

And then there's just so much other context there. So looking forward to seeing an update on that one, Kevin. See what you did there? Nick from the peen. How would you structure compensation for 100% commission? Salesperson, door knock, follow up calls, call existing Customers, upsell, et cetera. I have a feeling you wouldn't won't be the biggest fan of a role like this, but amuse me as a mental exercise would be selling basic services, mailing treatments, cleanups. Okay, 100% commission would look like.

So basically the thing that you're afraid of is them going really low on price, getting a bunch of jobs that are unprofitable, and then you lose a bunch of money on them and then got to give them money because they're getting commission on everything. It's kind of like a sales for a realtor, you know, they don't really care if you sell your house for 900,000 or 1.1 million because they're still going to get their commission to you though that extra 200,000 is huge to them. They don't care. So what I would do, I had to 100% commission.

I would, I would probably try just to do like are they giving pricing? That's the thing. Would you. I'm assuming they're giving pricing. If they're not getting pricing, it's easier to do it by the lead. Like you could say, hey, I'll do it. Certain amount of projects for projects and certain amount for, for. For mowing and recurring services. I'll give you a cost, a straight dollar amount per lead or per converted customer. Because they don't, they don't really care about the pricing. They just got the lead. But even then, still they're gonna have some pressure to make sure that the price is low enough for them to close. So.

I would probably do something along the lines of.

They get a certain commission, like a dollar amount per converted customer. They get another dollar amount if on the first service for mowing or for the cleanup or any sort of project treatment, we beat budgeted hours. That would probably be my. It might be a little bit hard to track, but it'd be like in off the top of my head, what I'm coming up with is like I need them to close deals and I need them to be above budget hour. Like be sufficient number of budgeted hours. So I'd probably just do a combo of those two. Good question, Mr. Anonymous. Is there a point when our company can have too many reviews? Some potential customers, clients may want to support the little guy with 50 perfect reviews over the company that seems huge with 500. Is this something to consider or do you feel more is always better? I always feel more is better. Mostly because from a Google perspective, the question is when you go to Amazon and you see two different products. One has 4,000 reviews, the other has 20 reviews. Both of them have four and a half stars. Which one are you going to choose?

Are you like I'm going to support the little guy? Not very common if assuming you have a high value on making sure that product or service actually delivers.

Yeah, if someone's going to be getting someone else because they're smaller, great. I really do believe we all think this way too much. Like I just genuinely believe this because again we.

Like we talk about training, most of us are not in our target demographic and so because of that we think completely different than the people we are trying to serve. The people we are trying to serve are older and they have more money, therefore they're going to think about things very differently. And I genuine believe this notion that like everyone wants the small hometown guy is a notion that we have. If you have a million dollar house, if you have a $2 million house, if you have multiple houses, if you want, have no time in your day, you will want things that the same person, that another person will complain about. And I understand, I'm not, I don't, I'm not saying it is a negligible number of people that don't like talking to AI, that don't like automations, that don't like having a credit card file, those people exist. But 10 years ago getting credit cards on file was a pain in the butt, absolute pain. It was like unheard of that you would require that 10, 15 years ago. The same thing is going to happen with AI, with all this stuff as a, as someone who has a, has a lot of money, they're going to want dependability and reliability and no time of theirs being used. And so especially as like the baby boomers age and the baby boomers actually know how to use social media and talk to AI and they're used of automations and they're used of all, you know, measuring from satellite etc. They're looking for dependability and I don't think it like, like when I go get look for services I am looking for the biggest companies because I know there's a sense of security that comes with big, whether it be a franchise and I know I can go to the franchise or if someone says something stupid like the number one reason I would choose someone to clean my house and use Merrymaids is because they're a national brand. And so I think a lot of us, and it is true there is a section of people that want the small towns, small person. I don't I do not believe that that is the highest quality customer in terms of value. Like, the person accepts every single estimate that has a card on file, that never asks about invoice, that doesn't complain. I believe that customer values their time and their property and they're going to be looking for bigger companies.

Because if you're, if you're, if you are trying to appeal to someone that wants a small business, you just open yourself up to all the bottom feeders in terms of price. So, like, I'm trying to look small and local. I understand why you'd want that. I, I, and I agree with it. There's, there's a good chunk of people that want to support local, etc. My question is, what's your differentiation from the lowest bidders? They're all the small, local. That's their differentiating point. So do we compete at their game? Or you say accept the fact we are part of a bigger brand, we're a bigger business, we look more professional, we have trucks that look fantastic, we're insured, we have registered everyone, everything's legal, we're paying our taxes and people are willing to pay more for that. So I don't think, I don't think that trying to compete on what every, all the bottom feeders and like the lowest price competitors are doing is a good move. Like, I want to differentiate myself. If you want to, say, compare apples to oranges. If you're like, oh, I'm an apple too, I'm an apple too. Like, I want the customer to literally say, the reason this price is significantly higher is obvious because all these other things.

And so if I'm also trying to be the apple, like, oh, no, no, no. Like, we do a good job. Like, just like them. We're small and we're local too. Like, I do believe that the differentiating factor can't be understated.

I have no data to back that up. That is just a hunch of mine. And as.

My economics have changed in my life, who I choose for providers has dramatically changed. And it is because I am looking for bigger companies that are more established that if anything happens, I can go to. I do not have time to deal with small, small contractors. I don't have time. I'm willing to pay more. I'm willing to pay a premium price, but I need things done right. And I don't have to talk to people. I want things done fast. And so.

Yeah.

Forrest from Modesto, have a question? Our office manager in Modesto met with, filled out papers and hired A new hire yesterday for the Tracy location case. Your office manager, Modesto met with someone and hired them for Tracy. She had him start today with the GM being there today due to him having a pre planned day of absence.

Okay. Our other employee was there and worked with him for the day. An incident took place at the end of the day by the new hire. He decided to move the truck and dump trailer forward and then we went to back the trailer up. He ran into the. Oh man. The truck with that is only two weeks old. What mistakes are made? What should be done about this? Would you fix it or leave it? What should be done differently in the future to prevent this? Any other advice or insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a ton. See photo attached. All right, let's see the photo.

Ooh, that does not look pretty icky. Icky. It's two weeks old. That's not nice. Sorry, dude. That stinks. Well, I would prevent this. I don't know why this person is driving a dump trailer in a dump truck on their first day of work. Like in. In the checklist, the first thing I'm doing is a blower and a wee whacker for two days and then a push mower for day three and four. They don't even drive the truck I think till day four or five. They're not dump using a trailer until the second week. So I think that would be my first thing.

So I would recommend when your office manager hired them a little hastily. I think we've admitted that there needs to be a better onboarding process for them and going through what their checklist is for the first two weeks and jumping them right into a dump trailer and any sort of truck. Like you decide to move the truck and dump trailer, like that should be like you. You're not even getting in the truck. You're not permitted to drive yet. That would just be my two cents on that. But any. Anytime I've ever rushed a hire, it always ends badly. Like I've never been. Like, okay, you're starting right now. Here's a uniform. I'll set up your payroll like tomorrow. Or I'll get it set up. Don't worry about it. Like just hop in, let's go. It has never ended well. So I am a big believer of making the decision quickly to hire someone. But like rushing the onboarding process is always a bad idea. So sorry. I need stinks new truck. Nick from Marysville who is the correct person or department to ask about creating automations? I post in the Facebook group about not Being able to create a gate reminder automation, it sounds simple but I have tried multiple ways and I can't set up with the current option. So maybe it's not possible or most likely I am missing something obvious. Yeah, so the thing that's missing right now Nick, is there's not a dispatched.

Status of a job inside copilot to basically trigger off like in service autopilot, you go to dispatch. As soon as they dispatch it, trigger off the gate reminder. So what will actually fix this is the ability to bulk add tags from the dispatch board. And that is going to happen. And so what you'll do in the future, you won't have to do the whole like secondary status for dispatched. What you'll be able to do is just like select. Excuse me, you'll bulk select and just add a tag and you can then create an automation that whenever that tag is added you are going to fire off an email to someone about a gate reminder or whatever. And it could all be tied to like a dispatch tag instead of having an actual status that prevents people from seeing their job notes and things like that. So.

I would wait on that one. There are a few people have done some stuff around this and they have used just the date like the day before. So like you can, if you schedule your visits for the day at a certain, you know, on the schedule you can do like the day before service. But that's not ideal because a lot of people you're going to move those jobs around either forward or backward. So I'd be careful trying to use that one.

Garrett from Glendale. I'm considering subbing out our treatments for four reasons.

Hausers. Okay. To increase capacity for mowing clients and urgent. Okay, so you give me four reasons. Great, I understand those. I have. I have known the owner of our local weed man for a little while. It sounds like they have a pretty dialed system for subcontracting. They did $6.4 million last year so they have room to take on our treatment clients. Last season our treatments tremendously helpful cash. But we charged 10x the weekly mo price for an aeration 10 times.

And an initial fertilization we did for spring and fall after labor materials. We have a 50% gross profit margin. If we sub it out we need somewhere between 17 and 30 gross margin. What markup would we need in order for deal worth sub out? We've been only allows 20% markup but I feel like we would need 30 to 50% to make it worth it. I recognize that if you remark something up that's not the same number as your profit margin. For example, if our cost is $50 and we mark it up by $50 to create $75, that creates a $25 margin, which is 33%. Here's our gross profit margin, each markup. If we did 100k in treatments in a year.

Okay, I honestly think at 17 grand, this is gonna be making more headache for you than anything. Just, just my opinion, if you're only gonna make 17 grand on something.

It might not even be worth doing it. Like, you're close to almost just dropping it, to be honest. Like, if your time and attention was exclusively focused on other stuff, you're still gonna need to be the person that the custom, the customer's like gonna reach out to, they're gonna see on your, their property, et cetera. I'm not opposed to it completely, but why not just raise the prices more? Like, I know I. I'm guessing you're asking this, Garrett, in part because you're booked out so crazy far and you've already raised prices and everything for mowing. I would say, like, if that's the issue, raise your prices on your treatments and just keep making more money.

Because doing this, I feel like you're going to spend, yeah, it's 20 gross profit, but you still have time and energy like invested into like managing the per the customer, etc. Etc. And like the complexity of dealing with their. That relationship. So, you know, I don't want to give away that kind of margin. Like, if you're really profitable services, just keep doing them, make it more profitable. If you don't want to grow capacity, just make more money.

And if you literally raise prices and lost half your customers, you still make more than the 20% you're going to make. Cut from weed man.

Kyle Tar. Besides sba, what other funding sources would you recommend for starting up new locations? I'm pretty sure you used a HELOC once and maybe some personal loans, so. I've never used personal loans. I did use a HELOC back in the day.

That's the easiest if you have the heloc, because you can take money out, it's against your house, great terms, and then you can pay it back and it's revolving so it doesn't go away. There's no initial fees. Besides, like, if you already have the heloc, Helix, the best, honestly, in terms of rates, it's easy. You can use like a credit card, essentially.

Line of credit would be behind that.

Collateralize your line of credit with your equipment so that we get a decent term. But then beyond that, I'd probably go, you know, business loans from your local credit union. Usually there's funding around local credit unions and supporting smaller businesses that the SBA might be able to help but won't get done soon enough. Like the SBA process is long. It is very long. Like I literally think only a few people joining us have ever used the SBA to get in to join. Like literally only a few because it takes six months and usually you need so much money to qualify. It's like it's kind of stupid anyways. It's usually really good for vets, though. Vets usually. The SBA is like pretty dialed in Eric Largo, Florida have an employee that was sick over the weekend start with a cough. Last work on Thursday he called up Monday, went to the doctor called that Tuesday, Wednesday saying he was going to doctor again on Wednesday because he was still in rough shape. He showed up for work today, Thursday looking pretty rough. I asked what's been going on. He said the first visit he tested negative for Covid and they thought it should just be a cold. And he went today he tested positive. Reaction is why would you come to work after testing positive? But he said they weren't sure since the first was negative. Also felt bad leaving us shorthanded, which is appreciated. But I'm not sure. Not trying to get everyone else sick and make things worse. I sent him home but was not sure what requirements. I can or should have forgotten his return after a positive test. Also curious if these things, if there are things we can't ask when someone calls out against medical personal info, do you or should we require doctor's note of some nature when there are multiple call outs? I thought to ask earlier in the week if he did test for Covid but didn't want to overreach. Yeah. So look up your personal state. Each state has a little bit different on Covid specifically. A lot of those have been really relaxed since now. Covid is basically the common cold. And so.

In your handbook it should clearly state that if they're going to be calling out because of health that you have the ability to ask for a doctor's note and an ability to show that is an excuse unexcused absence. So we don't do that like day one, we usually do it day two, but someone keeps doing it. We are going to ask for a doctor's note and they cannot provide it. They're out. That's just how we've always done it. And it sounds like this person is genuinely sick and they tried to come in. I personally love that. I love the fact he tried to come in and he felt bad you were understaffed. I wouldn't be trying to push him away. I would probably, like, give him his own truck and be like, hey, sanitize it. When you're done. You can work. That's just how I am, though. And if you're more conscious about COVID and getting other people sick, then it's like, hey, I really appreciate it. I personally would probably give him 50 bucks just for coming in and like, hey, I need you to go home. I don't want to get anyone else sick. Once you have a negative test and you can come in, you can do that. In most states, that's actually what you're supposed to do is, like, require a negative test. But, you know, the government, after everything happened, really stepped back on this in terms of their. Their. Their dictation of what happens is really up to you as the employer. So I just recommend your handbook. Typically, Liz will either a say, hey, can you please?

Especially in the office, because it's tough. Like, everyone's breathing the same air. It's like, you got to have a negative test that you can come in, or it's like, hey, we'll have an office. It'll be in the corner, and you can deal with it over there. The nice thing about lawn care landscaping is you can give them their own truck, tell them to wipe it down. They're done with, you know, wipes, and they're away from everyone. So just a thought.

Dustin from Champaign. How often for frontline team members are you looking at resume and deciding whether or not they would be a good fit before hiring them? I'm thinking about extending. Every person applies for a job and interview and see what I get, rather than being picky out of the gate. Obviously, we want A and B talent, but is a numbers game. But is it a numbers game to find out? Yeah. So, like, I know Tim at the Mount Vernon shop. He always does day trials with them. I only recommend doing trials with employees if you are with them the entire time. Just my recommendation. From a liability perspective, they definitely, you should not be letting them drive the truck. You're gonna have to be watching them. So I know he does that. He's had pretty good success with that.

And yeah, if someone applies, they show up an interview and just want to hire every single one. It's fine. It's just going to switch from, I can't find anyone to everyone is frustrating me. And the problem is sometimes you don't pour into the person the same way you should because you have such a high volume so you don't share the vision. You don't share how they can get ahead. You don't do a correct onboarding process and so therefore a good A player doesn't actually show their colors because you never onboard them correctly. Just be careful of that when if you're taking that approach. Not to say that approach is wrong, just saying that I'd be careful of potentially losing great people because your onboarding process suffers from a volume that is unsustainable. To have a good actual onboarding process, it's like Corey, I had like 20 something people but he did it over the course like four weeks so he could have really a lot of one on one time with them. Had them come in to a couple team meetings like the whole nine and like some people never even made it to like their first day of work. But like he at least staggered them all out and gave them a really good onboarding process. Air for Argo from Florida if I have an employee wanting to do or if I have an employee wanting to do door hangers for more hours but there isn't a truck available, is it a bad idea to have them on the clock and use their own vehicle to do some? I just say hey, park your vehicle in a way in an area where no one can really see it. There's a lot of neighborhoods you can park and then walk or use a scooter or rollerblades or whatever. They're not going to see the car anyways, so I would not see as a big concern because they're not. It's not like you're driving the car to every single house, right?

Joel from Lafayette, Colorado.

In your Facebook post you mentioned you are going to test ads for Facebook, YouTube, Instagram. Are you also testing landing pages? I don't seem to have a problem of getting people to click on an ad though I'm sure there's room for improvement. The problem seems to be getting people to provide their information and commit to getting a quote after they've clicked on the ad. Unless it's an intent based Google search or local services ad I've read. Yeah, in general, like the more clicky you make the ad your conversion rate is going to go down. Just in general as a rule of thumb because you'll get more clicks to be more interested but their level of dedication to the click is less so sometimes the most boring ads have the best conversion, once people get the website, the problem is you pay 50 times more for the click because no one wants to click on it. I've read articles and watch videos on landing page design and copy for Facebook ads. I've tried lead forms, estimates, Augusta landing page and custom landing pages. I've even had someone review a landing page for feedback on improvements. In all these cases, no one submits their information when they hit the landing page, even if the form has just a name and email and the data shows hundreds of people going from the ads to landing pages. Also say I would find it more helpful to find about find out about results from landing page testing than new ads. If you're not testing landing pages, is the purpose of testing ads more for brand awareness than conversations?

Yeah, kind of like what I already said earlier is if you're not testing landing pages is the purpose of testing ads more for brand awareness and conversions. I want to get them to the form and just fill out the form. And if I, for example, I think if you change the button from Learn more to get estimate or get quote, you would have less clicks, but your conversion would probably double because the intent to buy if it says get quote is significantly higher. Now everyone's like, oh, I'm gonna change everything to get quote. Okay, you can just know you're gonna way less clicks. Learn more will get you way more clicks. So I'd really like even same with the phone calls, you can have it. Whereas I get call. Now you'll get way less calls. But when the calls come in, probably one out of two of them are legitimate. But you literally might get a tenth of the call like calls compared to clicks. So if I was you, Joel, I would really. Because ultimately the whole goal is to get them to get an estimate. They're going to have to give us information. And whether it be calling Max, whether it be submitting an estimate request form, a contact form, any email, whatever you're trying, they're going to eventually have to like give out. That's the part like I wish, I so wish it would be a matter of like more of a one click button type situation. But again, you'd get a lot of trash. You get a lot of people that like don't really want the estimate. They just click on the button. So it's like a filtering mechanism. Do you want a ton of leads? Because if you did, you'd have less forms like you said, or less fields, etc. But you're have less quality, quality leads. And so I would really testify as you like. Just as a thought process, Joel, potentially try running like four different ads with a different button name. So get quote, learn more, call now and then compare your conversions on that. I think I'm going to guess that what you're going to see if you do the copy and everything else the exact same is you're going to have like very little calls, less on the get quote, and then the most will be on learn more number of clicks, but it'll be complete inverse for conversions. Then I'm just gonna guess because then people have more. More intent when they're clicking on those other ones, which means their conversion goes up. But then by having more intent, they have less. They're less inclined to click. So in general, you're either creating intent on the ad or you're creating intent. When they fill up the form, if I pre qualify them by saying get quote, I'm gonna have less clicks, less people will get to my page, but there's a higher likelihood they're gonna actually fill out the actual form. So what I'm testing is more a matter of. It's actually nothing really to do with, like, how I'm doing the ads. What I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be doing, like, component parts. So what I'd like, I'd love to have done next spring is a whole bunch of component parts that you can put together for an ad. So, for example, I want this hook, I want this call to action. I want. And you literally could kind of like select and make the video however you want. And then you could test like 50 variations. Like, I know in the training, I say, like, hey, make a whole bunch of variations using all these different headlines and different images. I say that I'd like it to be where you can literally just like make a video by dragging component parts.

It's going to be probably something we have to build custom though, or something like that. So I'm going to test it though, and see if it even works the way I think it will.

And where for. So for example, you're like, hey, I want to make this video Great. Here's 20 call to actions. Here's 14 different types of hooks. I'm going to create all these different variations. I'm going to run ten tests for five bucks a day and see what works. Okay, I'm going to optimize for the top three. Great, let's take those three now let's switch out the hooks on those three and try to make this better and better and better. And better. So I want to test if it even works. I'm going to use Copilot. I'm going to use Augusta Nation and like, selling franchises for the first time ever. Because I know that's a cold audience. No one's ever. I've never ran ads for it before. I'm going to see if that works, the component part. And to be able to then just optimize, optimize, optimize, optimize. And then eventually you get an ad that, like, this thing is killer. So.

That'S what I'm going to be working on. It's not really like, I'm not going to be able to sell things. I don't care about the ad performance. I am caring about exactly what you're talking about. The clicks, conversions. And then if I start switching component parts, is it making a meaningful difference that I could then do the exact same thing for us next spring? And I was like, have all the videos, have all the component parts. You start mixing them up together, and then you start playing exactly what's going to work for you and your market.

Instead of just being like, what I'm doing now, which is like, hey, here's all the pieces of the puzzle, make a lot of variations. I want it to be like, here's all the pieces of the puzzle and here's the variations. And then here, like, match them all up. And then as time goes on, you can switch things out and see what the effects of it are. That's really what I'm working on.

I just don't know about the video part because the video part's tough. And that's why, like, in the. In the current Facebook stuff, I talk about, like, before and after pictures because all of us got. Got those. Let's go super easy. The component part would take some more serious work. Lee is going to be testing some videos at the Bellingham shop that are more like using all that same copy that we've been talking about. Like the value, like now value you're getting for this price, highlighting 247 phone calls, instant quotes, etc. But he's gonna make a video that's like, very personalized out in the front of their shop, him and Corey and see if that does well. Because, like, we. We just never put videos with that. And I haven't. Because it depends on. On the creative. It depends on you being able to shoot the video well and you presenting well. And that's a variable that's going to be like, skew everyone's results. Because some person will like, this works great. Someone will copy it and they won't be able to replicate it because they're not great on camera.

Or whatever. Right. And you can't use the same video because it's like, well, you're not local. You're not standing next to the main road. You're not standing in front of the sign that everyone knows. So in the perfect world, we make much more localized videos. And so if you're decent on camera, I highly recommend taking the copy of the. If you go to Facebook done for you ads, the Facebook ones and go to the one for instant quotes and Max AI like 24. 7 phones go to that use the same framework in terms of call to action, the you know what problem they have and what, how you solve it, et cetera. Use that framework for the text. And if you have the chops to do the video in a local part of your town, just basically saying, hey, this is Mike. The grass is growing, we are mowing. You know, we're going to show up in these yellow trucks and like we're standing in front of your truck and we answer our phones 24, 7. And whatever you want to say there, I think that'll perform well. The problem is I can't copy and paste it across locations because it won't work. So I want to make it where you can build the component parts of a video like that down the road.

I hope you all have a fantastic rest of your week.

I mentioned in the Facebook group last week, or yes, last night. I am working on several tracks for winter services and other services to do during winter. I'm going to create a very detailed plan for each. I'll be planning to present that at the end of Q2 in the roundtable what those are. And then I will expect each location to choose which track they're going to use. And I've seen several locations this past winter be profitable during their slow season. And I've tracked those. I've seen other locations lose their shirt and all their profits literally go down the tubes during winter. And most of them do not have a strategy. And I don't mean just like, oh yeah, we're trying winter services. Like, I mean, what are we doing day one? What are we doing two months before? How many door hangers? What's the plan? What's the sales? The script? Like, I want it dialed. So I'm gonna try to kind of create a like, it's like choose your own adventure between five different ways to handle the winter service winter. And you choose one and so I'm working on several different things in that regard. I'll present it at this Q2, not the one that's coming up in a couple weeks, because we're almost ending Q1, so in a couple weeks, we'll have a round table. But in an end of Q2's roundtable, I will have a. Which would be in July. I will have kind of all that training done. I'm gonna be working a lot on that. It's a lot if I'm gonna try to get done next few months. So I'll be working on that quite a bit because the.

Winter just crushes us. And when I talked to Alex about.

The franchise and things got feedback from him.

A lot of really positive things. But, like, the one thing is, like, the winter is gonna, like, if you could just fix the winter, you'll make these locations so profitable and you'll sell franchises like Hotcakes, because, like, the winter is where. Where all the problems are at. So we're gonna fix the winter, baby. That's what we're gonna do. So I have several plans. Talked with Dr. Cash about it.

In 12 weeks.

Alex is coming out with a new book, and Dr. Cash wants to sell the most books in one day ever. 1.5 million books in one day. And so it's to see if they pull that off. They're spending $10 million on the launch, so we'll find out.

So I'm looking forward to that. Because of that, though, I'm not. I'm not able to do coaching with him for the next few months because he's going black. He's going to monk mode, as he calls it, and just working on that. So. But I have my work cut out for my book. But then as soon as that's done, I'll be working with him on these tracks for winter. Exactly what we should be doing. And I really do believe it's like, choose which one of these five paths you're going to take your location down and execute on this. I want it step by step. So that's what I'm be working on, because I just saw this winter really crushed. Probably about 20, 30 owners, like, really, really had a tough winter. So that's my plan. All right, everyone have a fantastic. Well, it's 50 minutes. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your Thursday. See you guys tomorrow.