Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/01/22

Good morning Augusta Nation. Let's go ahead and jump in. I just realized I said hello Augusta Nation just like Brian Connor does on his viz. Okay, let's jump in. I got quite a few things to go over on myself and then I got a couple questions that did come in. So that's great. So first and foremost, thank you all for your patience the past week. Like I mentioned, we have now got caught up at Command center as of today we'll be back to where we're getting everything done back inbox back to zero by the end of the day. So yeah, we are already starting to send estimates out from this morning today. So we're caught back up. And so the goal is obviously to always be there. And so thank you for giving us this past week to catch up and we are caught up now. And so estimates should be able to be sent out within a matter of hours, et cetera. And also the if a few of you have been doing your estimates yourself so you might find now that when you go to do them yourself they're done, which is fine. Or you could potentially, if you have taken the automations back for follow up calls or anything, feel free to put them back to us. We can take the workload now that we've been able to catch up. So I appreciate the patience the past week but that we have caught up in terms of sending out estimates, emails, follow up calls. We're back finally on track with that. So feel free if you have been taking them yourself, feel free to direct us, direct them back to us if needs be. Next thing, a couple of notes that I have noticed while I've been here at Command center a lot and that is one dispatch and your wiki notes not matching when it comes to estimate availability. Okay So I had this happened two or three times yesterday where I was training somebody and they were confused, rightfully so because the wiki said they were available for.

No scheduled estimates. But then on their dispatch board there was a note that said you can schedule estimates between like 10 and 2 or whatever it was. And so just know that if you're going to change in your wiki or on your dispatch board, do the other one, okay? Because those are two places they're going to look and try to get information from. And inside of your wiki is estimator availability. So if you're going to change that on your dispatch board as a permanent thing, do it in your, in your wiki as well. So let me just give you a quick example. Let me share my screen here. Share.

And when it comes to your estimator availability I would recommend trying to make that as simple as possible to be able to for them to quickly do this on the phone. And so for example I'm inside the local shop.

If I go to my wiki, this is over here for service autopilot users, for Zooper users this is something that you would just send into solo. Augustalongarservices.com when you want to make changes they have a separate file for you. Right now we're getting wiki added into Zooper. But here for example estimator availability, this is the local shop. It's like okay, Wacom has a full time estimator. Estimators can be scheduled from 8 to 5pm max of 15 drive bys per day. Set up those for tomorrow until next day or two. So drive bys and then scheduled estimates. Here we go. So, so just try to make it as simple as possible. And then also when it comes to drive bys, don't be overwhelmed if someone. In my opinion I would not limit your drive bys on a daily basis. I would not say only four drive bys a day because at the end of the day a drive by means you can just push it off to tomorrow. The reason I say this is because I saw yesterday where someone was limiting us to only putting five drive bys on per day and I realized that we put it on the next day because they said that however that drive by was right next to one that they were doing today, like literally right next to it. And so that's a waste of time. So I would, I would highly recommend when it comes to your estimated estimator availability for drive bys, just tell them to put it on the schedule for the next day and then you are able to move it off. If you can't get to it, it's a drive by. It's like when you get to it, you get to it. So I would recommend that again if you're going to make changes to your estimated availability on a long term basis, not like I, I'm off for from two to four today. Obviously I need to be going to your dispatch board. But when it comes to your wiki and your dispatch board, if you want long term availability change, just make sure it's in both spots. If those are contrary, they have to guess based upon what they've seen you doing in the past. And so for example yesterday in that specific account I made the call to listen to the dispatch notes because I saw that they had scheduled estimates during that period of time in the past, which was contrary to their wiki though. So please just keep those both the same. And it allows command center to be much less second guessing themselves. Or worse yet, having to hang up on the customer and then confirm it with someone else, figure it out and then call them back and confirm an appointment. So just leads to less mistakes. Next thing, this was mentioned in the Facebook group yesterday and that is about should, should we contact a someone who submits an estimate request form and they want to drive by estimate and it's for something like property cleanup for example. And they say hey, we want property cleanup or leave cleanup. Cleanup the leaves. You can do a drive by estimate. So the thought process from yesterday is, well, should, should command center call every single person and just confirm that we got their information and that we're going to drive by and give them an estimate next couple of days. I don't feel like that's necessary. Here's why. First and foremost we got to remember that 70 to 80% of those calls are going to literally just be a voicemail and we're going to be saying, hey, just letting you know I got your form and we're going to send an estimate over. Now I don't feel that's necessary because when someone fills out that form it tells them we're going to be contacting the next couple days and sending them an estimate. So they're expecting the next step of that life, of that journey to be estimate in inbox. That's, that's what they're expecting. And so what I would recommend to prevent someone being freaked out by someone walking around their property because they forgot that yesterday they filled out that form. You just knock on the door of every drive by. This is what I would always do. I just knock, go up the door. I already know their name. I know a lot about them already. So it's not weird. Knock on the door. I already, I would have like a, you know, some sort of literature in my hand in case they did open the door. Like, hey, my name's Mike, I'm from Augusta. You guys asked for a drive by yesterday. I'm gonna just walk around. The property office is gonna send that estimate over tomorrow. If you have any questions or anything you wanna add, let me know. Otherwise I'll just be outta here. So that's a great way to do it again. 90% of those, they're not gonna be home. If you're doing a drive by in the middle of the day, they're working, whatever it might be. So I don't really wanna take two to three minutes on every single drive by estimate for command center call. Cause that costs you money. And furthermore it's, it's already implied when you say drive but that we're gonna come by whenever we can and going to drive by the property. Now I do recommend knocking on the door though of every drive by just so that they are not, they're going to forget that they fill out that form yesterday evening while they're watching tv like they're just going to forget. So I would recommend knocking on the door, hey, we're going to walk around the property, we'll get the estimate out to you tomorrow. I would recommend that instead of us spending, you know, literally two to three of your dollars on every single drive by estimate, just to call, confirm the appointment. We will call them if there's insufficient data. And that happens a lot on estimate request forms. People leave out numbers, people leave out digits, people don't spell things correctly and we have to go in and call them. But if we have good information and it's a drive by estimate required, typically we're not going to. So.

Last thing, I think that's all I had for stuff that I had noticed from yesterday, last thing I wanted to cover, and that is about a couple people had asked me last week about buying a house like for your personal use or for buying land right now, you know, what should you be thinking about in terms of what's happened with interest rates and all the rest of it? So just kind of my personal prediction is that we are going to have a softening of real estate prices not because of lack of demand, but. And it's not going to be like a crash like we had in 2007, 2008. That's not happening because everyone that has had a loan the past five to 10 years is very qualified, has a high credit score and we're not, we're not doing NINJA loans, you know, no income, no job like they did back in 2006, 2005. So that's not happening. We're not going to have a 30:40 correction in real estate prices. I don't believe that. But I think we'll have it soften a bit, maybe 10, 15%. And the reason for that is because interest rates, like I mentioned on my public video a few days ago, every, every interest 1% of interest that is charged on mortgage, you basically increase the cost of your monthly payment by 10%. So if I go from what was just a few weeks ago, 3% mortgage to a 5% mortgage. I just increased the cost of my mortgage monthly payment by 20%. Right. So when you do that, you effectively, because again, when people go shop, houses, especially first time home buyers and people that are buying their houses, residential house, they're not looking at the dollar amount equity, they're not looking at that. They only care about one thing, what's my monthly payment. So when you increase that interest rate, you essentially take away 20% of their buying power because they simply cannot afford that higher priced house. So when you do that, that is going to create downward pressure because people will not sell as fast and they will not be able to sell out. So in my personal opinion, in terms of buying houses right now, I think there's gonna be a softening. But keep in mind, if interest rates are going up at the same time, you might have prices going down of the houses. But if mortgage rates are going up, you're still going to pay the same per month for your mortgage, if not more. Because I think that mortgage rates will go up. They already have gone up, you know, 2%, they go up another percentage. We're to going talking about like a 20 to 30% increase in your mortgage payment against, let's just say the prices of housing go down by 10 or 15%, you're still net paying more. So whether or not you should buy now is a matter of like, well, I'm probably going to pay more in interest, but my purchase price might be going down a little bit. So don't get caught off by either of those like, oh, like the prices are going on, I should buy. Well, theoretically maybe you shouldn't because if, if mortgage rates are super high, quote unquote At 6, 7% compared to 2 and 3%, you might get a 10% off on the purchase price, but you're paying 30% more in your monthly payment because interest rates are higher now. So keep in mind when it comes to residential houses, FHA loans, first time home buyers, they're not thinking about the purchase price, they are thinking about the mortgage payment. And that's why over the past two years we've had this boom in the real estate market. It's yes, there's a certain amount of supply and demand dynamics and with COVID and everything and people moving the suburbs. But also it's a matter of when you cut interest rates from 5 and 6% to 2 and 3% that you just allowed someone to pay 30 or 40% more, they can afford it because their mortgage monthly mortgage payment dropped that much.

Question here. I Called Command center yesterday, heard a voice message that stated my schedule was booked. I called, asked what he was seeing, and he said an ongoing issue where the computer changes the franchise. Either full, in fact, I'm looking for one. Yes, Lots of customer, not us. In that moment when they call them that I recommend not mention if you're booked or not. Let me just check one second. Let me see who this is. Rose, I have context. Sorry. On my streaming thing, I can't see the name of you until I go back to here. Jonathan Johnson. Okay, let's see here.

All right. Boom. Called commands, and I heard a voice message that stated my schedule was booked. I called asking what we were. He was saying.

Ongoing with a computer changes the franchisee they're looking for, making them think I'm full and in fact, looking at the wrong one. So, yeah, this is something where I'll have to check on this one specifically, but this one is pro. This is what's. I know this. What happened in the past. I just didn't know this was still an issue. And that is when they're in one account and someone calls the computer basically, like for service off, for example, you have to log out. You cannot have two different windows, two different locations open. If you do, it literally might say in the top right hand corner, like a specific location, but then be showing us someone else's dispatch board. And so what would have happened in that situation is they did not log out and then log back in or close out the other account. And so they think they're looking at someone else's. Your dispatch board, it says that, but really look at someone else's. So the reason I'm semi confused on this one, Jonathan, is because Zooper should not be having this issue. So let me dig a little bit on this one and see what the problem is on this one. But in terms of service autopilot, the problem with that is a matter of, for example, someone calls. It's a big deal. We've switched accounts really quickly. If we have two windows open with two different service autopilot locations, like, it can literally be looking like we're putting something on your schedule. And it literally says everything on yours. Everything looks like it's yours. And. And it will go to someone else's. And so what happened in this case, it sounds like is someone called, they picked up, they went to your account or what they thought was your account and said it was your account, but really they were looking at someone else's calendar. So I'm a little confused why this would be happening, though, with Super. So let me dig a little bit on this one. I'll get back to you directly on this one, Jonathan. So, yeah, because inside Zooper, when someone calls and we switch accounts, it switches everything over and we actually have like a bar that says a different account and starts a timer separately. So, yeah, Jonathan, if you could actually email me the customer's name on that one specifically, that would be really helpful. So I can dig into super and see what happened specifically. But that's most likely what happened is having two different accounts at the same time. Everything looks like it's yours, but actually it's still recording as someone else's account or vice versa.

Okay. We often get estimates scheduled for other locations. Yeah, this is the one. Yeah. One message to Eli will get it fixed. But is there a way to stop this from happening? Yeah. So let me see who this is. Sorry, I have to. If you guys use YouTube, I can see your name. So Logan. Yeah, exactly. So this is what happens. It's one of those things. It happens like one out of a hundred times. And it's when we have two different windows open with two different locations. Unfortunately, it does not work. And like, literally, we think we're putting on your. Your location. Everything looks like schedule looks like it. The wiki looks like it. And because that other page is open on the browser, it will put on a different location altogether. So we're trying to fix that inside Zooper. That's why I was a little confused on Jonathan's to where it doesn't allow that you have to be in one or the other. When servers autopilot, it can look like you have two different accounts open. You save something, and all of a sudden it's going on someone else's profile.

We train as much as we can to make sure they say, look, you got to log out of every account and switch over. The problem is when a call comes in and it's a desperate thing, we got to pick it up, you create a new tab, you go, you log into someone else's account, and that's where the mistake is made. So I apologize. And sometimes it's the thing. It's going to schedule it in both sometimes. So for example, if you're in Ohio, it's supposed to be for California. It very well, I've gotten California's, but because the tab was open for your account as well on their computer, it's going into yours too. So I apologize for that. If you can just make a note on the dispatch board, this is someone Else's. You're not getting charged for that, by the way, because you're not getting charged because that time is being put on that other account. So if you see an estimate pop in yours, that's for another location. It is a software thing. But you are not getting time tracked against your account, by no means.

Okay. All the questions I had for the day, besides one right here. Let me go ahead and share this screen with you one second.

Stop that. Share this one. Okay, so this is.

Question that came in here.

Bloomington. When you recommend discounting, when you recommend discounting services to close and grow, where would you take that money from? I'm nervous. If I take away. Take money off of guys won't hit P4Pmoney and get frustrated. Yep. So the first place, if you're trying to discount in order to close the deal, the first place I'd be looking at is E fees, dump fees, and anything that's not touching the budgeted hours. Right. Because if I touch that, it's not going to affect their P4P. And ideally I want P4P to be most accurate. So. And then it's a matter. Well, if I want to cut budgeted hours, just close the deal, then it'd be a matter of communicating with guys. Hey, we're going to, we're going to give you some tight budget hours because we want to make sure everyone has hours. And most, most employees would rather have, you know, 35, 40 hours a week at, you know, tighter budget hours by 10% than having only 20 hours or 25 hours worth of work because we're quote, unquote, slow because we're not closing enough deals. So I would first, though, look at no E fees, taking your dump fees out, because that's all stuff that's overhead, recovery and not touching their budgeted hours.

When you recommend an S corp, do you go off of revenue or profits? Profits is what I go off of. And when you're consistently doing, you know, 50, $60,000 in profit, again, that's like, bottom line, after everything's paid, after you're paid, once you're doing that, then it's a good idea to go to S Corp. Again, reference a post I made a few months, about a couple months back about the fact that you don't actually need to go set up an S corporation with articles of incorporation and minutes with an attorney. You can literally set up your LLC at the end of the year when you want to be taxed as an S corporation. You can now fill a form an election. It's called on your tax return and be taxed like an S corporation, which means you have all the tax benefits of being an S corp without having to actually go through the legal process. So highly recommend that you talk to your CPA. And that would be my recommendation for 95% of people. And that is just take your LLC and then tax it as an S corp. And then you're going to get what's called a form. I want to say It's a Form 1120s on your tax return instead of putting that. That income on your 1040, which is your personal tax return if you're doing a schedule C as this single member llc. So, yeah, talk to your. Talk to your cpa. But when you're consistently making profit, you can make an election and then just be taxed as a. As a escort. Which is the only reason, in my opinion, to switch to an S corp is really the tax side.

There's really not a whole lot more of legal protection by switching to an S corp outside of an llc, assuming that you do everything right and keep everything divided. S Corps are great for holding companies, like actually making the articles of incorporation, having treasures, having equity splits. And then, like I said, a holding company between multiple LLCs. So sometimes S corp at the top with multiple LLCs works really well.

CC accidentally sent 2 million estimates with $0. Let me see who this is, because I likely know what this problem is, Jeffrey. Yeah, so, okay, I know exactly what this is. So this is new for you, Jeffrey, but everyone else is used to this. So let me explain. We've made this change yesterday, and I decided without even making note to everyone, because it should have been done a long time ago. So let me explain. So when a service is recurring and we have biweekly and weekly service, and we're trying to offer that to the customer, it's confusing to people when you have a weekly and a biweekly price and they check it off and then it goes in the subtotal. Now it's fine as long as the only thing we were selling was mowing. But most of the time we're selling mowing, we're selling treatments, we're selling a property cleanup. And so what would happen is it adds up the subtotal, and now they think they're like, why is it so much more money? Like, why I have to pay $1,000? It's supposed to be 900. Well, the thing is, it's adding in the weekly mowing price, when in reality that is a recurring service. So inside of Zooper in the past you had a parts and services or service called weekly mowing and biweekly mowing. We had a lot of people just being confused by that because what they would do, they select weekly and now they have a subtotal that man, do I have to pay? And they don't. You just accept service and you're on the, on the schedule. And so what I would recommend and really what we've, we've already switched to is what we're already using with service autopilot, which is we're going to have a mowing service with weekly and biweekly inside of that and then a zero for the subtotal. That way customers know I'm not getting charged right now and I just have to accept this estimate. And then that way inside of your brackets because of the parts most confusing for customers. If you put inside brackets weekly mailing required from March till April, for example, well then are they allowed to accept bi weekly? Well, if they do. But then it's like, well, now we're going to put them on service for weekly. So what we've done is just the same way we do in service all part now we're now doing in zooper. And that is there's a mowing service we're going to offer weekly and BI Weekly, a 0subtotal. So when they accept, they are going to immediately go towards weekly unless they clarify otherwise. And they can always switch to biweekly, but that price is there. We know what the price is for biweekly if they ever do switch to a biweekly service. It's worked well with service autopilot. There's pros and cons of giving both ways. And we've determined that it's the best thing to go with just having both inside of there, assuming that you add weekly and bi weekly to the quote. So if you have more specific questions on that one, Jeff, let me know.

Yeah, we updated this yesterday. Yep.

Yep. Man, that was literally yesterday. We literally changed this yesterday inside Zooper. It's just matching exactly what we're doing in service autopilot. And that is not showing a dollar amount as a subtotal for mowing. And that is putting it inside of just the notes. They accept it and then that from there you have all the information you need to actually schedule the job on a weekly, bi weekly basis, etc.

Cool. All right, that's all the questions I got going once and going twice. Just refresh here and make sure no one submitted a form.

Okay, let's See here, I think I got a couple more.

Max, my current here, let me share my screen here with you guys.

Boom. Max, my current. Oh mercy. Where I go. Ah, sorry. All these screens open. My current minimum is $40 per cut. A lot of yards are 1500 to 2, 000 square feet. I want to grow a lot. This year would decrease my minimum to be minimum be advantageous. For example, 35. Or should I just stick with 40? So I, I know I text you Max last night specifically, but I would recommend switching down to 30 or 35. The reason for that is because we're talking about lawns that are taking you five minutes to mow. And in your area, you're urban, you're not. You don't have a lot of drive time between customers if you have high density. So I would be focusing on density. I would bring that price down and sell a higher close ratio because I know your market is urban. You have a very small setup. You don't have no trailer. You have a van set up. I'd be definitely thinking about trying to just focus on density over profit per cut because you're so dense. If you, if you were driving, if you were in a, in a rural market where you were driving, you know, three, two, three miles all the time just to get from one property to the next, I wouldn't, I want your minimum price higher because you got to account for all that drive time. But in your market, when you get to 100, 200 mo's, you should be parking your truck and doing three lawns. Right. So that's what I would recommend.

There's this, there's no pressure, but are yellows going to be answered yet? They're answered on a weekly basis and Liz is handling those. So on a weekly basis you'll get a reply back to your yellow slips. That being said, keep in mind a yellow slip, if you need action taken on it, like, hey, this was, you know someone. This is misspelled on, on the address, whatever it is. Like if you need action taken, that's when you reach out to command center. A yellow slip is a matter of us reconciling your account as well as making sure that you're refunded for any mistakes that might have happened.

Give me one second. Someone just asked, would you recommend that for us, Isaac, as well as like for Max? Yeah. So in any market where you have a tight urban market, you have, you don't have a big setup, you have a lot of push mower kind of jobs. That's when I'M very much okay with bringing down your price because you want to focus on density over.

In high close ratio versus having them spread out more but having a higher profit because now you're just adding drive time in when you don't need to. So I like. That's why I'm a big fan of the push mower only setup. Because if I can bring my cost of overhead down and the cost of new setups down in those urban markets, you can just dominate. Like you just take lots and lots of people if you're in. Again, if you're a rural market, you can't do this. You're going to need to make sure each customer has a profit built in that is substantial enough.

Cool. I think I got one more question.

See here.

What is your favorite pomade to keep your hair looking fresh all day?

First of all, I don't actually know what pomade is. I'm guessing it's like some sort of product.

But I just use like this fiber stuff. I have really really thin hair. I'll definitely go bald one day. But for now we try to make it look like it has some volume.

Oh man. April fools. Gotta love it. Cool. All right guys. Oh, last one here.

See here. Eric had this. One more thing, one more thing. We'll get out of here. I concluded concluded with Kevin at Zooper a couple of weeks ago that estimate reminders were not firing because the automations are based on expiration dates rather than actual quote date. I let him know that for estimates we would likely want it to follow quote date and asked him to speak to admin team about this. Yeah, it could have accidentally gotten changed but it should never be based on your expiration date. It should be based upon when it's sent out. So yeah, inside of your it's going to be your quote reminders. It should be based upon when it's sent. It should never be sent based upon an expiration date.

I saw the same thing but in notes it said the weekly and bi weekly price. Yep. So these are those super folks that are commenting on this. You're basically falling into what we already in service autopilot. And because we've just had so many people commenting back and that is like they're confused why they have to do I have to pay right now? Why is there a subtotal if I select multiple things? Why do I have to pay for the mowing when it hasn't happened like that that there's so many questions about it. So it's like look, here's Your weekly and your bi weekly price. If you accept putting you on weekly and if you want to change the bi weekly you can. And that that is. Vlad, had a question. I did miss Miss. Aha. How does CC determine service areas? I got an estimate from outside my service area. Can we work to have my Google map and share with CC service area Vlad, So inside your, your wiki they have, they have a map I know your account specifically does with a, a circle like a tracing around it. Excuse me.

Your specific one Vlad, I think I might have emailed you about because you're really going after a very, very small part of your city name. So I think I might have emailed you about this. And.

The reason for that is because it is you're going like a 1 mile radius and or maybe 2 and your city name, Winter Garden is literally like 5 to 6 mile radius. So it's definitely a challenge because you're trying to zero or not, which is totally fine. Just keep in mind that like when they see that someone's like half a mile or a mile out of your radius, like they want to put it on your schedule just to see if you want it or not. So.

Honestly it's just a matter of your website ranking so well in that city, but then you're only taking a piece of it. So that one day I was in your account, I turned down like three or four estimates that same day just because they're outside of that territory. So it is there and we should be catching those. But it's also confusing for them sometimes. Right now we have to train better on this part when it says Winter Garden for example, and that customer's inside Winter Garden and your territory is Winter Garden. But we're not accepting this estimate and it's also sometimes confusing the customers. So but we do have that, it's in your wiki, your service area, where to keep customer. We do check that these times they're not going to check is when they're like on chat for example. We have to really keep them engaged and sometimes the biggest hindrance to that is we're trying to go so fast to keep them engaged if they might miss this part. And that is like double checking your service area because in their mind like oh, Winter Garden, they're in Winter Garden. Like I'm good and they're trying to keep the person engaged on chat. So like I've been working with the chat side the last. It's constant all day long. We're getting chats in. So anyways, but this specifically yes, there is a picture. If you need to update that, let us know. Vlad, we can put it on your wiki. Um, but it is a matter of if they're trying to go fast and they see Winter Garden and then the customer's in Winter Garden, they might be assuming, which is not a good thing, but it's usually because they're trying to speed up that process. I'm getting five or six months outside my area. Yeah. So I'll look at it again. Vlad, I know I'd emailed you about this, and I could. Just a matter of. It's just a small piece of a large city, so whether or not we need to zero in your SEO a little more or clarify on the website specifically what neighborhoods and target those instead of the city name. Because you've got this big city and you're targeting one part of it. And customers get confused, like, well, you're called Winter Garden. Like, why would you not service my property? And so that. That kind of pressure is probably why command says, okay, let's put you on and see if. But it should definitely be where that's declined. And I hope that we could do something. Your SEO, because that's what's driving this is people search Winter Garden. They're in. They think they're good. And if we're saying, no, we don't service you. You're inside Winter Garden, but we don't service you. That's what's confusing for them. But we could probably zero in your. Tighten your SEO up more to go after specific, like, areas of Winter Garden. So email me on this one. Vlad, I think I already emailed you back. Emailed you last week. So maybe respond to that one and that'll be good. All right, thanks, everyone. Happy April 1st. No April Fool's jokes today. I was going to do one last night, but didn't have the time. Take care. Bye.