Mike Minutes Mastermind 03/31/22

Hello, everybody. Welcome. I'm gonna go ahead and everything is good on our end. I'm gonna post the link to this YouTube.

Video also to the Facebook group. Real quick. I did go ahead and stream it directly to the Facebook group, so that should also be helpful.

Let's see here. YouTube. I need verification. Seriously. Okay, cool. So today I want to talk about a couple things. I want to talk about acquisitions and then I also want to talk about on more of a personal finance level, a, you know, buying a home right now in terms of is that a good decision? Should you wait, et cetera. So sorry, I'm just trying to post this really quick to the Facebook group. Cool. Good morning. Yeah, so if you are on Facebook and you're having issues getting in on the live, sometimes you have to validate your thing through Streamyard. It's called feel free to do that. Otherwise, I'm just trying to post up to YouTube.

Here, verify my account. Seriously? Hey, Zach, are you getting a text message 29.

Yeah. To YouTube. Cool.

Yeah. Number one. Number one now. Sorry, everyone. We'll get this figured out, of course, when we do this. Perfect. Thank you, sir. Okay, so let me go ahead and post this to everyone has it. Cool. So a couple good questions came in yesterday about acquisitions. Get shareable link.

Sorry, I'll figure this out better in the future. Facebook, go ahead and drop this in. Oh, it shows me live right there. Oh, that's easy. Cool. All right. I'm not going to post the Facebook group because I'm already on there. All right, so good questions coming in already. So I'm going to answer those and then we'll jump into acquisitions as well as just some more general personal finance stuff about buying houses. Right now there's a couple people that are looking and kind of considering and even buying land. So we'll talk about that. Let's go through some of the questions first though.

Let's see here. This one comes from Nick Dennisbeck. So it says can we move estimates back to calendar events instead of jobs and essay. Now the automation start trigger is available again for calendar events. So it save command time by not having to go dispatch the estimate, delete the and streamline the workflow for commands so that CC calls and estimates are set up the same as calendar events. This would be also helpful for basic franchise not have estimate jobs on the invoice that we'd have to leave board. So I agree with this. The problem is we still are seeing issues with tickets and that's like, that's why we switched originally to just switching it to a job, as well as the fact that it's easier to route a job if you have multiple estimates. Multiple estimates in a day. You can route inside Service autopilot a job tickets. Honestly, like we don't want to make that switch again and have to switch back when we only have another 8, 9 months. Insert service autopilot. So honestly, when it comes to service autopilot, there's several things that I would actually I have a fix in my mind for. For example, actually one you posted the other day Nick was or Ryan Payne posted about the review process. There is a way to do that and still be able to get the information into Service Autopilot in a custom field. There is but us doing all that and all the accounts and everything when our time should be spent on focusing on Zooper, where our future is going to be at. That's really what I want to focus on and not having to change everything back over and back and forth. So we're going to stick with jobs for now. It's the easiest way to route them as well. And so I understand though that they have fixed that bug in terms of why we originally switched from tickets over into jobs for estimates. I know they have fixed that last year, but it's just a matter of that jolting back and forth is going to create inefficiencies if we're just constantly changing. Hey, now we're doing this right now we're doing this way. So we're just going to stick with it for now and then knowing that we're going to make a bigger change in January when everyone has to switch outside service autopilot. So I don't want to create, you know, back and forth, back and forth. Obviously I know we talk about change and adapting, but I also don't want to make it words jolting to all of you on a regular basis. So he's that can we get some Florida pics so we can edit some of our document pictures? Yeah, there's going to be quite a few because they were down there last month with in DeLand Florida. And so there will be a bunch of pictures coming up here in just a bit. So that will be updated and you'll have some more localized for Florida specifically because they're down there with Eric in Deland.

Start triggers for tickets and for calendar events. Please upload pictures packet to our drive. Sorry, I have to go back into the Facebook group to see who's posting these. Okay. This is Jeff Pendell. Please upload pictures packet to Our drive. Yeah. So when we do that, that packet, Zach, that picture packet for this quarter that's going up in like next week. Yeah. And that'll have Florida in it, right? Cool. Yep, it's gonna have a lot of Florida ones and then they've also been shooting a bunch here locally too, so. So yeah, every quarter we upload that new packet, you have 40, 50 in there at least. And there's a whole bunch of really, really good ones because they were both down in Florida. So how do we trigger the follow up Automations? Who is this answer asking this question? This is Jeff Dasilvio. So you're going to be inside Zooper. So in terms of that it's going to be depending on which automation you're talking about, it's going to be either inside of workflows, et cetera. So so if you have a specific question, feel free to reach out to me. Jeff, in terms of which specific automation you're talking about.

Inside Zooper and in terms of the trigger, if you click on the workflow you can see at the top which you know what kind of workflow it is and how it kind of goes through that sequence. So if you have a specific one you're asking about or you know what triggers it, typically it's so like when an estimate is completed, when a job is completed, when any status of a job has changed, that's when typically an automation is going to be triggered.

So all right.

Could automations be sent automatically on sa? Yes, they can be. So let me actually show you really quickly. I know for some of these is massive review but let me just show you real quick. So what this is is inside service autopilot. There is the ability to make sure that a automation does not go out prior to it being. Let me just share my file, share my screen with you. There is a way to absolutely do this. Service autopilot share. Okay, cool. So inside service autopilot, this down here, these automations are requiring me to look at them prior to sending them out. If you want to disable that, if you just want them to go out and you're like hey, once in a blue moon I might accidentally send an automation to someone that doesn't need it because I didn't, you know, look over it, that's fine. What you would do is you'd go to automations, let's just say overdues for example you say hey, I don't want to review them, I just want them to go out automatically. Like and if I mess up occasionally because I have the check sitting on my desk and I never inserted the payment. If you want to do that, it's totally fine. You can just go into here and then take off approve email. Okay, so I think in the over to invoice one, for example, that first email we don't have the approve email button on because very, very simple, like very nice to them. Just like, hey, you might have forgot. But then after that we do have the approve email as the default just because it gets a little more aggressive like, hey, this is overdue, you need to pay or else we're going to have to start, we're going to stop service, etc. Etc. So those ones we make where you do have to validate them and just like check them, but if you want to take it off, that's where you would do.

I'd say every two to three weeks I'll get an email with a ticket that has the Ferndale address. Is this just CC doing tests and making sure. Who is this? One second. Sorry, I have to keep going to Facebook group to see who this is. Connor. So, Connor, we are not doing tests inside your account. Let me see here. This happened yesterday. Some Ferndale thing is going weird. I don't know if it's because we're inside of our command center address and it's using ours occasionally inside of our certified Advisor account of Service Autopilot. So this happened yesterday too. It pulls a Ferndale number and it has nothing to do with Ferndale. And I have a feeling it's pulling in the address from.

From our local like a certified advisor inside Service Autopilot. But if it keeps happening, I'll have to contact service off directly. But they're just so slow in getting back to us that like by the time they Honda get us back, we would. It would have been resolved. So if it is a glitch, I saw this happen twice yesterday, like random Ferndale addresses coming in, but it still was inside someone else's account. And so I don't know if it's defaulting the city of the Certified Advisor, which is us, but keep an eye on that. Connor, let me know if you see that happen a few times because then at least I have some screenshots to send to Service Autopilot. But they're not like super in terms of speed of just hopping on and helping us immediately. Like they was great yesterday. As soon as that started happening or all the estimates were going to spam, they immediately got on the phone. Like within an hour. We got it figured out. Unfortunately, it's not my service, but I'm assuming I'm just going to guess right now there's a glitch that is causing the the profile to grab an address from Ferndale because it's a certified advisor account instead of yours but I only saw it twice yesterday so Connor, please let me know I saw at least one in yours and so keep me updated on that, please. When will Automations for callback glitch to be fixed with phone number working and being. Okay, who is this? One second, Sorry, if you don't accept the thing, I can't see who it is. Okay, so this is Tim. When will Automations for callback glitch be fixed with phone number working again? Been a long time since it worked. I'm not sure 100% sure which one you're talking about here, Tim.

The callback be fixed with phone number working again. Oh, I see what you're saying. You're saying inside of here. Okay, I see what you're saying. Now let me see here.

General, let me share my screen and just confirm. So what you're saying is the phone number inside. This is a good point. Let me share this window. Boom. Chrome tab. Here we go. All right, so we're inside Automations. What you're saying is on the estimate, follow up. So if I go to Automations.

On the callback, the call one, the phone number is not showing up. Here we go. So on the estimate, follow up again, this is service autopilot.

So you're saying on the call part here the phone number is not showing up right inside of here.

Let's see here. Personalization.

Okay, let's see your personalization client.

All you'll need to do. Okay, yeah, so this is probably what you want to look at here, the client phone part. This is I unfortunately this is drawing from a certain form inside service autopilot and unfortunately there is a work phone, cell phone, home phone and other phone. So the problem is if they have a cell phone, it's not going to pull this information in. Right. So what you could potentially do, Tim, if this is a big deal for you, is go like this, go bam. And then add in home phone slash work phone, et cetera. Obviously we would always love to put them in the same form, but if someone has a cell phone it's going to go in the cell phone one. And so that would be the most efficient way to make sure you get it every single time in that automation because otherwise it's just gonna be blank. If there was nothing in the Home phone category and unfortunately it's not smart enough to scan all three and like which one should I draw from based upon which one's filled? It's not that smart. So. All right.

Is there an automation for survey after first service in Zooper? Yes, there is Vlad, and we actually just changed that this morning. If you go to the custom app, you can now change how often that sent out. Right now it's defaulted to 90 days for everyone and super is putting that across the board today for everyone. But you can change that directly there. So yes, it is absolutely going out automatically and now you can limit it how many days it will wait before sending it again. But that does go out and it's more integrated than Service Autopilot where the email has to link them to Google. That one is great because all integrated on this on the web.

I sent you four examples of the tickets to your address on WhatsApp. Thank you Connor, I appreciate that. Let me make sure I got those.

Connor. Yes, thank you. I appreciate that. I will take a look at that. I appreciate that. I can at least send those to Service Autopilot. Unfortunately, yeah, because we have at Service Autopilot we have a certified Advisor account and then we have all of the Service Autopilot accounts that we access underneath us. The problem is it still looks at a Certified Advisor as the company when we log in. So that's something that big, big reason again why in Zebra we were able to change that and we will log in separately to different accounts and there's a notice that tells us that we're in a different account and a timer like so if we add credit cards or bank accounts, do we contact Lisa or link ourselves? You can absolutely link yourself if you would like. Or you can send the picture into QBGustAlongerServices.com and they can connect the account for you. And what we have found is actually somewhat random but also somewhat dependent on the bank or credit card you use whether or not you need an account. You need to to connect every single employee's card. So for example, Connecticut, I have manager there. We had one account and all employees transactions comes through that same One account inside QuickBooks, the exact same bank. I have credit card for Chuck over in Mooresville and we have to add in every single employee's card to the different account inside QuickBooks. We have tried to see if there's a sort of parallel between like making a sub account and there just wasn't. So I don't know why. But yes, if you need, if you have it. If you determine, hey, I have to add my every single employees card in separately. The new account inside QuickBooks, you can absolutely do that yourself. Or just send a picture of the credit card to QBGustAlongerServices.com and ask them to add that account in for you.

All right, great questions. Let me go ahead and pull up the ones from the other day that were about the acquisitions.

All right.

Well, there's some more that came in this morning. All right, let me go through these really quickly here.

All right, first one is recommendations about leadership books, YouTube channels, et cetera. I'll try to work on that. Unfortunately, I can't see who wrote these in, but I'm just gonna go through the questions.

Is there a way to link up P4P to Zooper? Is there a need to? Yes. Part of our contract with Zooper, obviously we don't own Super. Part of our contract, though, when we signed it, is that they would connect to P4P. I don't think it's going to happen this year because there's so many things in our pipeline that we want to get done custom from them. For example, snow dispatch and service auto. Put in my mind is an absolute pain in the butt. Very complicated and it can be simplified. This week we're rolling out contracts. A new thing that we're doing with Zooper as well, which is much more simplified. And so I'm focused on those things throughout 2022. So when we all switch over in January, it's as close to service autopilot as possible. We try to make it like the verbiage is closest by like. For example, we have a wiki, right? Like that will be inside of super and we'll call it Wiki. Right? So we're trying to make it as seamless as possible. And that's what I'm focused on right now. Next question, what is a good rate for line of credit? I have also been asked how much? I'd like 25k, 50k, but never know how much to tell them any help. So first off, good, good rate of line of credit is typically going to be if it's a revolving line of credit, which means you can use it and then you pay it off and use it again. It's back and forth. Then you're typically going to pay prime plus a percentage. Usually 1 or 2% is pretty standard. Honestly, going from bank to bank, you might save up a quarter percent. It's more about the qualification process. And that's why I said yesterday, dealing with Your.

Like a local credit union or someone you do banking with now is usually the best because about qualification and if they already have history with you, they know your deposits, your withdrawals and your behavior, it's going to be better typically. So in terms of asking them, I would ask for high and they'll always come down if needs be, but that's what I would focus on. If you're doing 25 or 50, I'd do 50 and just see what they come out. They might say, hey, we can't do 50, but we can do 40. It's going to depend on your financials, your tax returns that you send in, some stuff like that. All right, I apologize because right now I do not have it where your question is matched with your name because a lot of you did put your names in here. So I'm just going to read the questions as they come in here on the form, feeling the ups and downs. One week it's too many guys, not enough leads and next week it's lots of leads and losing guys. I know this is inevitable. Will there ever be a balance? I'm either bidding jobs too low for P4P just to have stuff on the schedule and then that comes across as false promises the team or I am firm on my prices and I cannot close enough work to keep work on the schedule. Such a push pull very new to me and I am figuring it out. Any advice on this matter is greatly appreciated. Yeah, so great question. I wish really badly I'll try to figure out something so you guys can see these questions as they come in. This is from the Google form and again, this is a great place to submit stuff as you're thinking stuff throughout the day, just post on the form. So yeah, this is absolutely the balance of a growing business because growth never happens linearly, right? In the perfect world, like, okay, I'm going to have 30 estimates, then 40, then 50, then 60 each month. And I'm going to hire one person here and one person there and one person there. That would be like the ideal world. But growth never happens, Happens linearly. It's going to happen like this. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And what's going to happen is when you're at the peak, a bunch of estimates in. That's also the week when people leave, right? And then when you go drop down like all of a sudden, like, man, last week we had 20 estimates, this week we had five. And that's also the week where like, man, I don't have enough work for my guys. So the balance is how do I get the average of that and somehow create the balance between those two things in terms of supply and demand. Demand is how much work is coming in. Supply is what's the supply of labor that I have. So that balance is very difficult in a growing business because it's going like this. As you reduce your growth rate, that will become less and less.

What's the word? Volatile. Right. Because if I'm not growing and I'm just like, hey, I'm growing a tiny little bit, but not much like the Bellingham shop, really not growing, you're going to still have ups and downs. Because the natural demand of a seasonal service, because we're not advertising and therefore not the whims of the climate, the whims of what's on the news, doesn't affect my response rate. I might have more of this happening. So it's easier to predict how much labor I'm going to need. So this is very, very common. Growth, like I said, sucks cash and creates chaos. And part of the chaos part is scheduling, because you don't know exactly how much work you're going to have in three weeks. Because for all you know, you get a bunch of leads next week if your ad just takes off or if the weather becomes nice. And if you're at advertising, your. Your response rate will just go way up. So it's very difficult. This is very hard. This is exactly what we're working with right now in terms of command center. Right. You know, when you're growing that fast, it's not a matter of like, do we have enough labor? It's a matter of, do we have enough labor when it's high? But then what about when it's low? Because now we don't have enough. Do we lay people off like, so that's the struggle we're going through too. It's our second year, we're doing the same thing. And so the feeling, the ups and downs. I am right there with you. And it is not uncommon is why all the time I say third to fifth year of business is when you start to determine that what that growth rate is, or you start to stabilize your growth and therefore the predictability of supply and demand becomes more correlated. Is there a way in super. To see which are over the phone mowing customers versus customers who rejected a project who requested a project?

Is there a way in zebra to see which are over the phone mowing customers versus customers who requested a project? You could just basically filter out the estimates that had projects versus recurring mowing.

I'm not 100% understanding this question, so feel free to email me. Is there a way in zebra to see which over the phone mowing customers versus customers request a project? I know we're working on some filters for the estimates a little bit more, but you should be able to filter it out by mowing versus project based work.

But basically you'd know if it's over the phone, if when you go to that customer's profile, you've never been there and there's a price and it's been sold and it's on the schedule. And the custom fields have their square footage already in there. Obviously if it's a drive by, you're not going to have square footage in their custom fields. How do you feel about startup business loans? Excuse me?

Yeah, like at the end of the day, when it comes to loans in general, this is the equation that you really want to think about. And this, this is this sort of equation I'm going to share with you now. Here's a very, very pro debt approach in terms of looking at debt because at the end of the day, let's just assume I have an 8% interest rate. Interest, great. So if I have an 8% interest rate, in theory, I should.

I should theoretically take all that I possibly can. As long as my ROI, my return is gonna be greater than 8%. This is the problem. When you're growing.

You'Re probably going to have requirements for more capital expenditures. Trucks, equipment, bigger shop, more employees, command center is starting to cost you more because you're growing, you're growing. And so what's going to happen is you take out a loan that spurs growth and then that growth takes even more cash because you got to go buy equipment, you got to hire people. And so unfortunately, I can't say, okay, I'm going to spend a hundred dollars and get a loan, get a hundred dollar loan. And so therefore I am going to pay $8 in interest. Okay, it's great. I take that $100. The question is, can I make $10 in profit from that hundred dollars of loan? Because if I can, theoretically I should do it. And so the pro approach to debt is can I beat the return of that interest rate? So if I can get higher than the interest rate, I should theoretically keep taking on debt forever, right? And if you look at even great businesses like Apple and Google, they have tons of debt, billions and billions and billions of dollars worth of debt. They have really good interest rates because those are bonds that they sell, corporate bonds at like 2, 3%, it gets incredibly good debt. But ultimately the reason for that is because they know they can take what's called return on equity. So roe, return on equity. If they can take that cash they get from debt and they can get it for 2 or 3% and deploy it against something else, that can get 15, 20, 30% returns, which is common in your small business, once you've established Capital Cap X, then that's when there's really good returns on getting debt. Like most Fortune 500 companies that pump out tons of profit get has to have tons of debt and some of them have more debt than they do have cash. And that's common on their balance sheets. At the end of the day, when, when debt it's cheap enough, then they borrow more. So this is why like people like, why is the Fed raising interest rates? The reason is, is because when they do that, these, these big companies, like we're not going to take any more debt out. That is, we're not going to spend more money on capital expenditures and buildings and hiring more people. So that slows the economy down by increasing interest rates, making it therefore less appealing to go out and get debt, therefore slowing the economy down, hopefully reducing inflation. That's how that kind of works. But in terms of startup business loans, I'm a big fan. As long as you have the confidence that you're going to be able to beat that interest rate and have a good plan of action of okay, if I have $50,000 loan, I'm going to spend 30 of that on equipment and trucks, I'm going to spend 10,000 on that on marketing. My payment is going to be $700. That means that I need to get, if I'm doing a 20% margin, I need to make at least 35 to $4,000 a month in revenue and then that extra profit would then pay off the mortgage. So that's how I look at it. I like to look at it as like, can will this loan raise my revenue to the point where assuming a certain profit margin, I'm going to be able to cover that loan and then some. In that case, you should take on debt forever. It's just a matter of you're increasing your risk by taking on debt because especially if it's variable. Definitely if it's variable. But regardless, even if you're taking on debt that's fixed, you are extending and increasing your level of risk.

In your business. When do you suggest employees clock in for the day when they get in their truck and start driving to their first job or when they arrive at their first job. Okay, so that's first question. When do we always have them clock in? Right when they get there. Most states legally, if they are on your property, if they're loading up stuff in the morning, they should be clocked in. They, they shouldn't be doing on their way, they shouldn't be doing at their first job. The only reason you could do it where it's when they get to the first job is if they're subcontractors. And yeah, but at the end of the day, again, the clock in, clock out, time punching only matters if they're hitting base pay on P4P. So ultimately, I don't really check time clocks unless someone's constantly hitting base pay because that's when it actually is going to move the needle for their pay. Their payout, their paycheck is not going to be affected by their clocking clock out time unless they're hitting base pay. So typically your lowest performers are the only ones you actually care about when they clock in and out, to be perfectly honest. So. But we still do make sure our guys have accurate punching punch in and outs, mostly due to the fact, honestly on the back end that I've told the managers is those hours are still. It predicts their paid time off because it accrues based on how many hours they've worked. So. But if you don't do paid time off, like, honestly, if they're above base pay, it doesn't matter when they clocked in and out, but we do it right when they get there. Right when they leave, we do it right next to the keys. It's like when you show up to work, you punch in. When you're leaving, you punch out. Next question. When it comes to base pay, our employees making hourly when they are driving from job to job or only when they're on the job site, that for that allotted amount of time. Okay, so ultimately this is something that everyone thinks about too much because it's like, well, are we paying someone when they're driving? Theoretically, no. At the same time, yes, you are. The reason is, is because you got to remember all you're doing every single day is you're calculating P for P. What is my daily P4P? 1/3 of labor revenue. What is that amount? Okay, I'm determining that. And then every single day I'm looking at their hourly wage and this is their base pay. So hourly base, what is that amount? Again, daily. So ultimately, according to your question, they theoretically aren't Making quote unquote money if they're above base pay while they're driving because they're only earning revenue for the business when they are on the job site making money. And so, yes, there is a point to say, well, we're not paying them when they're driving. That is correct. If they're above base pay. Because now driving doesn't move the needle. Now, if they're hitting base pay when they're driving, they're going to do a yellow slip. If they're clocked in, then, yes, you are paying for that. That's why P4P does not move the needle until your guys are consistently above base pay.

When you fall short and don't deliver on what you say you're going to do, how do you maintain a healthy image of yourself? I struggle with this affecting all facets of my life. Cool. Good question. So let's just be honest. Like, this is where I'm at right now, right? So I feel like we fell short again this spring, and part of it is that I fall back on is I did everything in my power to make sure that it wasn't going to happen. We overhired in the spring. We thought we were in a good spot. And there's some things I can't control. And extreme ownership is a matter of know. Read the next book that, that Jocko wrote. And that is the dichotomy of leadership. And that is you can't control everybody. Right? Because we had everything ready to go. And so, you know, I feel like I let a lot of you down and I made that clear. And so how do I maintain a healthy image of myself? I have to step back and realize that everything inside of my control, I did the absolute best my, my abilities and that my intentions are right.

And so when you fall short to, like, a customer and you don't deliver what you're saying you're going to do, the bottom line is you've got to first, first of all, accept ownership that you, you could have fixed it, Right? And so there's that dichotomy of like, well, I did everything in my power, but yet it didn't. I let them down. Like, I did everything I possibly could think of. Like, that's very frustrating because you actually care. The first thing, you have to step back and realize that when you disappoint a customer, when you let someone down, you don't do what you said you were going to do. If you actually care, that's when it hurts you that much. So what I always Kind of like am checking is if I feel really, really bad because someone down, it's actually a good thing because it means I really, really, really care. So the first thing is, if you let it on a customer or employee or whatever, and you're like, man, that just like a gut punch, I feel bad about that. That means you care. That's a really, really good thing. And that's what you should drop back to when it comes to sales. Cause on your next customer, you. You can tell, you sell yourself on the idea that, hey, look, I just let someone down. And a lot of times people will. Will suffer on sales because they. From a service standpoint, they're like, man, I just let this other customer down. They're complaining, I'm not gonna be able to service this next customer. But what you gotta. You gotta convince yourself of so you don't have a slump in your sales, is the reason why I feel so horrible about this last service that I did with this customer or someone I let down is the fact that I care so much and my competitor that I'm going up against right now and selling up against doesn't care that much. And that kind of level of conviction is when you go into that sale, you're like, okay, I care more than anyone else about this customer. And I know that because of what just happened. And so that's what you want to fall back on. How do you maintain a healthy image of yourself?

I don't know. Fortunately, I don't necessarily struggle with depression and things like that, but I know exactly. You know, like, I'm. Like I said, like, this is last week, right? So just I fall back on trying my very best. There's nothing else I can do. I've done everything I can do. I'm doing everything to make that. To deliver on those promises. And if I fall short, I have to apologize, take ownership, and then hopefully adapt and keep growing. So. Yeah, how would you. How would you cap how far you book out? Okay, good question. Would you cap how far you book out? Booked out one month and sending out estimates to book further. Have two concerns. Oh, this is. I love this question. Two concerns. We get to the jobs, and the workload has doubled over time. Oh, yeah. This is brutal. Yeah. Cleanups, like, you go there, you do an estimate, and then you schedule them for four weeks out from now, and you get there and it's double the work. Let me just make sure. Because I'm not looking at the stream. Let me just make sure we're still connected and everything. Okay. We're good. If this is helpful, let me know. Um.

Okay. When you fall short. I don't know. We got this one. Okay. Number one is we get to the jobs and the workload has doubled over time since stuff grows. Yeah. So that's horrible. Number two, my crew is incredible, but I know if I'm scheduled far out, I'm vulnerable to a rug pool. If employees leave, have four employees right now. Okay, great question. So this is kind of what I alluded to at conference. You want to schedule right now when you're four or five weeks booked out. When you start hitting above three weeks, that's when you start getting some people starting to cancel because they do need things done right away. But what you got to ask yourself is what needs to be done right away? It's going to be cleanups, it's going to be mowing projects. Usually people are okay with four or five, six weeks booked out. Pretty common that unless someone needs sometimes a sod install going into the summer, they don't want to wait till like it's hot. But most of the time, most project based work, they're okay with waiting the three, four or five weeks. The people that need it done this week or next week are the people that either A, it's going to get overgrown or B, you know that by waiting three or four weeks, it's going to double your workload. And that's going to be usually cleanups. And then when it comes to weeding and bush trimming, mostly weeding. Honestly though, so what I would recommend when you look at your schedule, let's say after three weeks, like reserve time on your schedule for things that are going to need immediate attention. So for example, you're three weeks booked out. You're starting to book in your fourth and fifth week with projects. Great. Start booking your fourth and fifth week as if you're going to have a cleanup or two that will need done that week. And at the very worst, if you don't sell any that week, you're going to pull forward and bring those jobs forward. No one will ever complain about that. So I would just reserve time during your spring rush because everything's growing so fast. You're 100% right. Even two weeks booked out on a spring cleanup can double the amount of time if they haven't been weeding. And now everything's overgrown. And now instead of just hand picking little weeds or weed whacking it down and spraying it like it's a whole other level of, of care. So. And then also keep in mind, when you're estimating for things right now, ask yourself, what will this property look like in three to four weeks? And bid based upon that? Okay, that was something I had to learn back in the day. Literally. Just ask yourself, okay, so in three or four weeks, will these weeds be twice as tall? Yeah, they will be. Will it take twice as long? Yes, I'm going to bid for that. So in your videos, your estimate, project management videos, say that to the crew. Like, hey, guys, they're small. Now, when you get here in two weeks, they're probably bigger. I'm making sure you get enough budget hours to get those done. Okay, last question here. I have a meeting with guy Friday morning about possibly acquiring his business. Oh, I just realized that these questions are all flipped, so I just answered the ones that were asked this morning. I'm now answering one from yesterday. Here it is. I have a meeting with a guy Friday morning about possibly acquiring his business, which does in the high six figures. Cool. So probably like 7, 800,000. Great. What are some less obvious questions I should make sure I ask? During our initial meeting? I have the typical question so far. Level of owner involvement. If they have contracts, residential versus commercial employees, revenue, how much debt he has. Great. So get those and then we can go dig deeper because that's going to be the determining factor. Those numbers will be the determining factor of what other questions I ask or would want to know. And that is, for example, when I take the customers, what percentage of them are going to stay with me. And that's usually determined by pricing. So I'm going to want to do spot checks of their pricing. So, hey, look, Mr. Jones, and you're selling your business. I know you got 300 mowing customers. Let's just make it easier. Numbers, 50 mowing customers. I want you to give me five addresses. Not names, not emails, not phone numbers. I don't need all their contact. Just give me five addresses that I can go spot check the pricing to make sure we're at least in the ballpark. As long as you're in the ballpark, you'll retain customers. It's when you go. When you're like 50% more, they're going to. Most people are going to switch when you switch the name of the business. So. But get those answers to that question, those ones that you mentioned, like level of owner involvement. If they have contracts, residential, get all of that information and then we can have a discussion about what further questions you need to peel back based upon those numbers he gives you.

Okay, that's all the questions from the form.

How to address field workers that understand their day a week will be hitting base and you notice they are sandbagging their jobs when you know they could work faster. This, this is resolved only when you have more employees because the employees are going to force other employees that are sandbagging to work harder and they'll call them out if they don't. So this is honestly a growth kind of fixes this problem. Also, I would not hold it over someone's head. So if you know on Monday that they just did a massive yellow stuff and they're not going to get any yellow, any P4P, I would wait until you've solidify what that dollar amount is. And you know, I would not tell them like Monday, hey, you broke a window. Just so you know, you're not gonna make any P4P this week. Like don't say that. Wait until you actually have a bid confirmed you have it fixed and then let them know afterwards and you could honestly just put it on their paycheck as a deduction. So when you're smaller, this is gonna be a more difficult thing. At what point do you think an office person is necessary? Yeah, like obviously there's still things that command center can't do for you. And so you're gonna have to do, you know, scheduling, invoicing, etc. And so I would say like right now at the local shop, Marcus is out doing estimates all day long, but then throughout the day he's also addressing the crew and then in the evening is going to do the scheduling and routing. So I would say though that you're going to need someone full time doing that once you cross a million dollars. Until that point, I'd be trying to do that. I'd be trying to do the estimates throughout the day. You're outside of the field, you're driving around doing the estimates, but then you're also handling the crews questions or whatever like that throughout your day. It's when you start getting like 20, 30 estimates in a day where you're going to need some help. Now what we're doing at the local shop to even that out is getting the crew involved to be able to do drive bys and you can do that because the estimate process is so simple. If you have a complicated estimate process, if you have a whole bunch of things we got to click around inside service autopilot and add in things from rate matrixes and all the rest of it, they're not going to create those, they're not going to understand the processes of like square footage and price. They understand one thing, budget hours and materials. And so if you stick to that they can do a lot of drive bys for like the cleanups, bush trimming, mulch installs, like the basic those things. We just route them into their job and we give them a flat dollar amount per estimate. As a bonus on the P4P in next month I'm going to go over what we're using specifically what I just mentioned there about the per estimate pricing. That's probably new to all of you hearing this because I haven't, we haven't ironed everything out but we're testing this out at local shop where to take essence off of your plate. You can get your field crew to do the estimates for you for those simple things and then they just get a dollar amount fixed dol amount on their paycheck as a bonus on P4P.

You say the best use, you say the best to use your local bank for business line of credit. That's better than say fund backs or blue buy. Yes. Typically your, your interest rate's gonna be much, much better. Should be slow. Should we slow down growth to pay down debt faster for possible recession or make standard payments on debt and keep growing fast? I think this comes down to risk tolerance as well as your goals for the business. So let me double check, make sure I'm not missing a call here. Give me one second guys.

Cool.

Yeah. So I would be in the camp of this Gary Vee train is still going to last for a while but we're already seeing a dampening of consumer demand and people are, you know, again like I mentioned on the videos, like if they got to spend an extra few hundred dollars on gas, they're probably going to let go of their lawn service before they do driving to work. Right. So there's definitely already a downturn of leads comparatively. But I would be trying to get ahead right now if you're in hyper growth mode because I'd rather have a $500,000 business in a recession than a hundred thousand dollar business in a recession because the person I'm competing against at 100,000 is chucking a truck, has no brand.

And is doesn't have a bunch of trucks driving around. If you're a 500, 600 above thousand revenue, you have trucks driving around, you're getting leads regardless of whether or not people are searching for lawn care on Google and Facebook etc. Like you're getting brand penetration especially if you're in a Tight market. So I would, I would still be in growth mode if I was just getting started, to be perfectly honest.

Started buying some trucks under ten thousand when I joined. Engine blew up in eight. In three months I may need to get back. Yeah, yeah. Eight thousand dollar repair man. Yeah. We had the same thing happen at the Bellingham shop. Bought the truck I think for six or seven thousand dollars and just put a new engine in it for like eight grand. But I'm not gonna go buy another truck. That's 20 grand. Right now we work five, four tens, say Friday for jobs that are time sensitive and bid higher. Yep, exactly. Yep. This is a good, good call if you're booking that far out this back to that question and that is, you know, leaving Fridays open, booking four tens and then if you there's immediate things needed, you try to get guide to come in. But sometimes if they've already worked 42, 43, 44 hours, you might, it might be a challenge. Not a matter of paying them more, but just getting them to come into work honestly. And we had this last year like we talked about conference. It wasn't a matter of the money, it was a matter of they didn't want to work more. So that might be a challenge.

Make sure you can buy his business phone number when you buy the business. Yeah. Or just have them routed to you. So we had it like when we purchased one is like hey, for the first, I think it's 90 days. They had to have a phone routed to us and actually sat down with them and set up their phone number to route to our phone number automatically. So hope that was helpful everyone. If it is, let me know in the comments or something like that so I can know if it's helpful and I'll see you tomorrow.