Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/05/2022

For well, while everyone's joining I wanted to go over one thing that wasn't necessarily a question but I, Logan had brought it up and I thought it was a really good point, a question and I responded back to you Logan. So if you're watching this, look at your WhatsApp. But it was a good question and that is about estimate follow ups. And when you call someone and you get a voicemail, should you mark that estimate as lost? It's a little bit challenging honestly because I, I would like to mark every single one as lost. If they don't accept on a follow up call. The problem with that is they might get that voicemail and 90% of your follow ups are going to be voicemails. They might get that voicemail like oh great, thank you for reminding me. Go onto the quote from your email prior days, open it up and now it says lost or they call in for questions and it says that it's been lost. And so.

In the perfect world and down the road with Zooper, what we will do is a estimate will become lost after it expires because we already have an expiration date inside service autopilot for every quote and usually it's 30 days, defaults to 30 days. And so.

You know, I would ideally like a quote to go from sent to lost the status automatically assuming that.

It'S gone through that whole expiration process. Right now though, my fear is if you call someone and you just leave a voicemail, okay, well I'm going to mark it as lost. Then they might go look at the link and now it says loss all over it. Or they call in and it's lost and it just gets really confusing. So not the most ideal situation but down the road that's what we will do with super next year is that way when you're following up with someone you can keep following up with them knowing that if once the quote expires it would change the status to lost. If this is a big deal for you, you absolutely make your make an automation that would remind you after 30 days of the quote being sent to market as lost. But it's just another email, right? And you're going to get dozens and dozens of them every month to go in there. Just mark it as lost. So this is the part that command center we used to have as part of the, the actual like step was market is lost if they, if, if you don't, if you don't close the deal. The challenge that is 90% of follow up emails or calls are just voicemails and so that's the challenge, honestly, right now. So I believe with the Twilio integration and the texting with the, the estimate that'll help to get. Get an answer instead of just, I hate when estimates just stay being sent and we don't get any response. They don't respond to voicemails or automations or anything. Like, seriously, we just wasted our time. So texting will definitely help with that a little bit. But honestly, the, the quote when it expires, I don't see why this status doesn't automatically just change to lost at that point. But it's not a current something inside service. All part that I'm aware of. So hope that makes sense. So when command center calls and follows up on an estimate, most of the time it's a voicemail and they don't really want to mark as lost because if that person gets that voicemail, looks at it again, it's going to say loss all over it and then they call in, etc. So cool. Let me go ahead and open up the questions, see if there are any in the form. Oh, good, there's quite a few. All right, let me go ahead and just go start going through these. Okay, this one we went through yesterday.

Let's see here. Okay, we went to this one yesterday.

Okay, go to that one yesterday. Sorry, I'm just kind of clearing these out as I get to them. Okay, great. That was the one about acquisitions. Okay, so these two are new, I think. All right, let's see here. Let me share my screen.

And this one. This is funny. They submitted it as my name. Oh, it's funny. Me.

Share my screen. Sorry, guys. Share screen window.

There we go. All right, so this was not me who submitted this, but someone just put, put Mike, Andy's here, which is totally fine. You can put nothing in here, by the way, if you want to do it anonymously. But question is, how do you handle burnout? I find every spring burnout turns into depression. Yeah, like spring rush is extremely difficult. Seeing that we are a seasonal business. You kind of got to make hay by the sun shines. And so I think part of it is preparing yourself that's going to happen. Spring burnout is a real deal. And if you instead of trying to say like, okay, what do I do to not have burnout? It's like, okay, I know I'm going to get burnt out. How do I prepare for that? How do I.

Schedule certain times off and make it part of my schedule, making sure that I don't get Estimates done certain days or certain times, how do I make sure that I get the staff in place prior to the spring burnout? And then honestly creating really there's something I've really, I wrote a lot of notes past, like year, year and a half about, and I think maybe one day I'll write a book about it, but I don't think I have quite enough authority yet. And that is about burnout. And.

I think what I would title is called the Hurting Entrepreneur and about how.

So many of us have like internal breakages and issues and we just kind of like hide them and it becomes bigger issues down the road. And so how I think about it is like when someone's, you know, got hit by a car or break a leg or there's an injury, you call the ambulance. And we have a very, very universal way of pulling the rip cord when someone's hurt, and that is call 911 and we're going to get an ambulance and we're all going to like pull over to get that ambulance to the hospital as soon as possible. And everyone just accepts the fact that like that is an emergency. However, when it comes to mental health and then entrepreneurs that are burning out for some reason, we just continue like kind of grimace through it. It literally be like if you got in a car accident and you were like completely immobile, mobilized, and you're like, oh no, don't worry about it. Like, I'll get home. Like I'll, I'll somehow figure it out. Like, it's very, very painful. It's very hurtful. It hurts everyone around you and ultimately it's going to lead to death, right? So in my mind, creating your 911 for your business is important. Like what happens when you get into a crash psychologically, mentally, and having that. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. Here's step number one. I'm going to contact so and so and they're going to take all my estimates off my schedule. Step number two, like this happens quite often. It commence and I see it come through. It's like, hey, someone just passed away. I have to just please cancel everything, move everything off. And they accommodate that. And, and I realize that command center is that cord that you can kind of pull. But there should be other steps, right? For example, whether it be employees, spouse, family, pastor, there needs to be a process of calling 911-quote-unquote, when it comes to burnout and mental health, in my opinion, the same way that we have a very strict stringent way of calling an ambulance and getting someone to the hospital. So planning like there's been, there's. It costs billions of dollars for the infrastructure of 901 to exist. Billions of dollars. Operators, the, the, the, the technology that pinpoints where the cell phone is at. There's a massive amount of infrastructure people money that's spent on that. We should be doing the same thing for our, our well being as business owners is like when crashes happen and they're going to happen like it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. In spring rush, you can basically bet all of your money it's going to happen. So how do you prepare psychologically for that and then make sure that when you do crash that there's a method to actually get help.

All right, next question here. This one's actually from Facebook. Hey guys. Our first week of mowing is wash out. So far, five out of seven days, man. Took the guys out for hours and passed out over a thousand door hangers so far. Man, that's brutal. This happened last spring, I think was last spring. Yeah, A lot of the Midwest. Just tons of weird rain late into the spring. All right, let's bounce back into questions here.

Okay, let's see.

Boom, boom. All right.

Should we have a feature in Zooper? After customer makes payment, next window is feedback. I am pleased with my service. I'm not pleased with my service. Call me, please contact me about special project or service request for auto pay customers. Top of paid invoice, email, have survey. This part is already in there.

Wintergarden let me know. You might not have your workflow turned on for this, but yeah, once they pay, make a payment. This is when it goes to asking a smiley face versus a negative face and it does exactly what you just talked about. And it doesn't say call me at least lets them leave comments and then that comes internally back to you.

And this is something that I don't know if they put on there yet, but it's on our list of stuff in terms of feature requests for Zooper right now we have a pretty defined step by step for the rest of this year. That's mostly because we got to get ready for service autopilot transition. And a lot of the features that we're actually asking Zooper to do are really just trying to make that transition easier. Even naming things, certain things to make it a little bit simpler to transition everyone to servers Autocyte really next year is when we'll probably start doing okay. Like this quarter we have a feature, let's all vote on which one we want to like prioritize and we go through that process together. So right now it's not a matter of like, what feature should we add to Zooper. We have a pretty clear path for this year in order to get everyone from service autopilot over to Zooper in January.

I know D is so much talk about scaling a business, but how do we make mowing as profitable as possible? It really comes down to route density and it really comes down to having your employees on P4P, having a rent a dense route. That's really what it makes, what makes mowing profitable. That's why for your first few years, you're typically not mowing profitable mowing. And this is why a lot of people abandon mowing. Because in their first few years of business they're like, oh, mowing. You can't make money mowing. You're right, you can't. Because you only have 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 customers. When that starts becoming 100, 200, 300, 400, there's lots of money to be made there. But typically you're not going to, you're not going to. Not typically you're not going to get hundreds of mowing customers your first year. That, that recurring revenue is a trickle now. As that trickle grows, it becomes profitable and it becomes much more sustainable than selling projects every single week, every single day. So that's why I always say recurring revenue is a long term gain. And that's why we put all our marketing dollars in that. And that grows over time. And then the projects that come in, that's great, that's awesome. But that's why for the first few years you're not going to be profitable. Mowing is number one. You're not, you don't have a very dense route, you're typically inefficient and you don't have enough mowing customers to actually do good routes. Like you're driving 15, 20 miles per day versus driving three or four miles round trip, all miles included, for a good tight, dense route.

On a truck. So that's why the first couple years, that's why people abandoned mowing, it's like, well, if I do projects tomorrow, like in the short term, yes, project, that project will make you more money tomorrow. But in, you know, in three to four years, is all of your revenue gonna be based upon one time jobs and projects and you have no recurring revenue. Right. So I understand that recurring revenue and mowing is a slower term growth game and short term, a lower profit margin game. But it's also the thing that in five, six years you can hand off to someone and know that there's not, you know, concrete's not cracking. Paver patios don't sink. Like ponds don't drain out or have a split in the liners. Like those are big, big problems that are very difficult to systematize and hand off to other people besides yourself. And so it is a long term game. I understand that. I also understand that if we would, if I, I'm very aware of this part. If, if we focused on projects as the main source of your revenue and growth for the first two years, we would all become profitable within those two years instead of the three to five years that's required typically to become really profitable. And that's because recurring revenue is our focus. But I also am looking out for the 5 to 10 year window of time when a lot of times like, hey, I'm just, I'm just getting burned out, I want to start handing this off. I want to have a manager. I want to um, I want to not be after doing, doing everything myself. And that's very, very difficult to be doing with things like concrete paver patios, retaining walls and big, big excavation. Like those are very, very difficult. So in terms of being profitable, fast projects tomorrow you can be like 60% profitable on a job tomorrow you're not going to be able to do that on mowing. And so that's why people usually will give up on mowing and say they just going to go to projects is because in the short term it is going to be more profitable.

See here if there's any other questions that came in here.

Cool. That's all the questions I had so far. I'll stick around here. I know sometimes people wait till the end. So if you're on YouTube or Facebook, feel free to post a comment.

Later this week, Thursday or Friday. I might not be able to hop on for the daily, but I'll let everyone know in the Facebook group. I did have a couple updates there this morning, both for super users. There are some new updates coming to the app on this Saturday, including contracts and a few other things. And Then also site one is offering us all 120 day payment options. So you don't have to pay for anything for 120 days. And if you pay within 30, you get 3% extra off, which is kind of cool. So definitely if you haven't gone to a site one, they're a really great resource for just learning landscaping in general in terms of the actual physical work, you want to learn how to do lighting, you want to learn irrigation. They're really, really good at sharing education. Side.

Can a business strictly run on mowing and recurring jobs 100%. It's just that longer form, longer term forecast for profitability that is required. If this is the mindset. There are several of our locations that literally when you look at their wiki and what service they offer, it's all knows besides one thing and that's mowing. They don't even do cleanups and they're profitable like because they have, they literally focus on a mile radius and they get 100 mowing customers and that's all they do. And they're the ones who can run it part time and just get one employee and go do another job or another business and still have it run. Because mowing is so cyclic. Like it's super easy. Once you've got your clients, you've got your tight route and they're. They're profitable.

Absolutely.

How's Mike doing overall is the main question. Who's this coming from? Let me see here. I can't see the names on this one. Let me just check this out.

Context of who asked the question is always important. Even though it's here. My Austin. Thanks Austin. I'm doing good. Definitely been stressful the past couple weeks as I feel like I've been letting some of you down on the command center side of things. But we are working our very best. I'm actually doing a lot of training to get people up and running for them and we're doing our best. Hey Mike. Dustin Bloomington. Do you still recommend maxing out a truck with two guys in each or is that more relaxed now with prices starting to come down? Maxing out a truck with two guys in each or is that more relaxed Now? I would only do more than two people. If you are doing large commercial mowing or big projects, anything below 24 budgeted hours on a project and anything that is less than four hours on a recurring mowing service, I want two guys or less. I'm still a believer in that. Oh, I think I know what you're talking about. Recommend maxing out a truck with two. Yeah, anything above two. Like even with the truck prices as crazy they are, if you're getting three and four people inside of a truck and they're doing like a regular mowing route, you will not be profitable on residential mowing. If you have four people in A truck, you're just not going to be profitable if they're doing 30, 40, $50 lawns, you're not very difficult, I should say, because the amount of infrastructure, amount of equipment you need on that truck and the amount of wasted time of people waiting around on other people to get stuff done is tremendous. I might be misunderstanding your question though, Dustin, so feel free to clarify.

Yes, absolutely. Yet you'll be here for training. What are your thoughts about focusing on biweekly mowing instead of weekly since biweekly is more profitable, although twice the clients would be needed. I'm a big fan of still increasing the number of visits per year and increasing your, your, your, the total value per customer per year and weekly is still going to do that by a margin of 50%. Right. So I understand that again on the, on the perfect per service price you're making more margin because it's 50% higher, like significantly more. And your guys will actually make really good on P4P once the grass stops growing. However, in most of our markets, like our example, our market, we don't even allow bi weekly for March, April and May because wet it grows really tall. And as much as we charge by 50% extra, there's times it grows way faster that second week and we're talking about a foot and a half tall grass and we're talking about having to do it like three or four times and filling an entire truck with, with, with clippings. So.

I would only do this, what you're talking about now and focusing on the bi weekly. If.

If you have a climate where you don't have to beg clippings, it's not growing super tall. But like again, do you want bi weekly clippings? Because now when you cut it, it doesn't look as good. And that's what you're being judged on by all the neighbors and all the people around them that you also want their customers. So this is why we do the weekly and the bi weekly price under the same option inside mowing. And then when they accept, we just assume weekly. But then they have the option to go biweekly if they want to cancel one service in the middle of the summer because it's not growing very much. Fine. Well that next service is going to be charged the bi weekly price because they skipped a service. So that's why we like to have the weekly and the bi weekly the same. When they accept, we assume weekly and they can always switch to biweekly, but they've now accepted we have it in writing. That they've accepted a bi weekly price. Like they've seen it, they've accepted that. And so when they switch service schedule, there's something there. The worst thing that I see is that when someone sends out price just for weekly and then three months later when slows down growth, the customer calls and switches to biweekly and we don't have any sort of proof to say that they are going to get a 50% increase in price. You can't just do that. Right. You'd have to send out a new estimate. Well, that takes time. So like that's why we have the weekly and the bi weekly together. So if clients said hey, I want to switch to bi weekly, it's just not growing very much. Fine, that's great. Or better yet, when they call in and they say I want to cancel, say hey, you know, why don't we just put you on biweekly, you're able to save money and we'll just keep you on bi weekly, make sure the place is still looking good and then if it starts growing again, you can go back to weekly. So it's a nice drop sale. When someone wants to cancel because their grass isn't growing in the middle of season.

You probably don't get. Yeah, Dustin, Sorry, should have explained better. I have two things. I have two guys in each truck now. I was thinking about buying another truck now even though the schedule isn't completely full, the guy I. Right. The guys are definitely more efficient with guy. One guy per truck. Yeah. I would do this under two conditions. One, you expect more growth, which dust in your case. I think that's, that's a given. Two is guys are not making P4P and you're doing this actually as a, as a HR mechanism to keep them engaged. Because it's very true. Especially if you only have under like 100. 100 mos. If you have under 100 mosquitoes and you're starting getting double crews. Very difficult to have an efficient enough route to make double two people in a truck efficient enough to make profit. So not only does newness and number of mowing customers as that is lower, harder to hit P50P if you have that combined with having two people in the truck makes it even harder for them to hit P for P. So this might be literally if you have the cash available and you know the growth is coming. I would look at this really as more of an HR mechanism in the fact that like I need my guys engaged. I want them to be, you know, focused on P4P and be able to hit P4P and get above base pay. And so that's why you might actually get the truck. Then in addition to having the truck is going to increase your capacity usually by about 15 to 20%. Right. So having two people in one truck, as soon as you just buy another truck and move the other person over, your capacity will go up at least 15%. That's what we've seen. Because there's more efficient. So not only do they make more money on people, but your your capacity increases. So what always happens when someone cannot find employees and they have everyone double up in trucks? I say hey, if you have the cash but you just can't find employees and no one's showing up, this is when you go buy new trucks or buy more trucks because that's a form of expanding capacity. Is getting more trucks because it's become more efficient.

I buy other trucks so you can roll out with one guy each day. How many employees can the solo guys have? You can have as many employees as you want, but as soon as you get above 20,000, that's when you switch to the increased monthly fee. And that's when I would recommend securing your territory and being able to use other services of full service too. Can always hire part time if your schedule is full or full of jobs and you need help. Yep. Cool. Let me just double check. Make sure no more of the forms from Google were filled out today. Nope, that's it. Cool. Awesome. Thanks so much everyone. I appreciate you guys and I will see you tomorrow.