Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/08/2024

Alrighty. And we're live.

All right, let me put this into here. All right, I'm gonna be talking really quietly because if I talk loud, I start to cough a bunch. Yesterday was pretty brutal, but I'm feeling a little better today.

So it's gonna sound like I'm doing ASMR on this microphone. But mostly, if I start talking louder, I will start hacking away. All right, this party started.

All right, pull the questions out here. Okay, we got eight questions today.

Okay. Present. Share screen.

All right, Joel from Lafayette has a question. How do you or the Bellingham location train your trainers? Do you just give them the training checklist and tell them to follow it, or is there more. Typically, Corey kind of preps the trainers prior to the trainees coming, so.

They kind of staggered all their new hires. I actually think today there's still two people that just started their first day because he staggered them throughout March and then this first week of April. So I think he preps the trainers, kind of like leading up to all of those, and then goes over the training material in terms of checklist, etc, so he could probably make a better answer to that then I.

Kyle Tarvin, can you have the pro shop create a smaller yard sign option for us? I think there's a 12, 18 would be nice to have something half that size. We are spending a small fortune on signs and looking to cut some costs if possible.

I don't know if there's a less than 12 by 18 yard sign that Vistaprint makes, to be honest. If they do, you could always take one of the.

Templates and just make it smaller and put it on one of their designs. That's totally fine. You can download the designs on Photoshop or whatever. That would be my recommendation. If you found like some other company that could do the designs in a smaller sign size, I don't think it's going to reduce your cost a whole lot going from 12 to 18 to say six by nine. Six by nine. You're gonna be very small. Like if you're doing it for marketing, just depends. I guess if you're doing it for chemical applications, it'd be different.

All right, this is from Kyle Tarvin. As an owner, it's always your responsibility to verify your managers taking care of the business, following up booking revenue, completing workflows correctly, customer service, etc. I feel as though I have a good handle on what is needed for that. I am not so clear about how that would look for an owner with a regional manager in place. If you could answer each of these individually that would be great. I know I'm throwing a lot at you, so would like specific advice for each of these questions. What checks and balances are in place for an owner to ensure their regional manager is handling their business and GMs correctly? Would you have one on one meetings with your regional manager to over numbers etc. Would that process look like and what would you discuss three in your mind, how involved should an owner be with their regional manager and daily decision making holding them accountable.

First off, I wouldn't concern yourself with any of these questions until you have at least three locations and then a regional manager starts to become like worth it at like four plus locations typically. Unless really it'd be like if you're doing over 32 to 3 million in revenue, then it starts looking like okay, now regional manager starts to make sense. So I wouldn't actually concern yourself with this. I'd focus most of my time attention on just getting great GMs in place.

But in terms of checks and balances, I'm looking at the P Ls every single month. That's my main check and balance. To be honest. The daily stuff, I don't really do anything. It's up to the regional manager hold the GM accountable and then I'm holding the regional manager accountable for the profitability of the location. That's like the only metric I care about. The GMs, they're going to have other metrics in terms of like how many budget hours they complete each week, their close ratio and all of that is going to be governed and monitored by the regional manager.

Thomas from Littleton, Colorado, is it possible or setting available to view the estimates accept page from a most recently accepted viewpoint?

To be honest, I do not know. Thomas, is it possible or a setting available to view the estimates accepted from my most recently accepted viewpoint? Got it. I'm assuming on the estimates page you're trying to get to where you could just filter it by accepted and then I assume it would fall into that category. I'm guessing though you're saying if that happens based on date still.

So I do not know if that's a setting or anything. Coach Connor.

So I see a current workaround for clients accepting estimates. I see that command center is accepting it without a card on file because the client said that they would fill in their CC information on their own. I would think personally that if your wiki says CC on file then the leaf is not unclosed and CC should be accepted should not be accepted to the estimate. I was assigned the cus if I would if it was sent. If it was sent to the customer because they want to populate their own information, it should be sent to them unaccepted. Since I have the cannot accept a card on file. That way there is no workaround for the client that then I don't have to submit a yellow slip, then I don't have to wait on the client to respond and so forth.

Yeah, like that doesn't happen. Like if you have the cards on file. If they're on the phone we're gonna get the card on file. Like we know that the part that they can get around is if they have an instant quote and they've accepted the estimate there that's their one way currently around getting a card on file.

Command center should not be allowing them if they're on the phone with a customer they're not. They're gonna get the card information.

Kirk Kyler from Plainfield, Indiana I'm filling out the paperwork to be a veteran owned company. Question is can I put logos on my trucks and trailers for when I am a veteran owned. Thanks Mike. Yes, absolutely. I don't know why you have a paperwork to be a veteran owned company. I never heard of that. I'm gonna go on a limb and say it's some sort of someone making money on something.

If you're a veteran and you own a business, you have a veteran owned business.

Tim, it seems something needs to happen. Invoicing currently depending voices show up and make a person think they owe that as well. Example person had four cuts in March that don't have it on autopay. On the 1st of April they have another cut and they go to their portal and pay. They they have a higher amount than expected. For this example, the client switched to bi weekly as the total price surpassed them that it was so high. Seeing that pending invoices should be set up as a separate invoice and not visible to clients who may charge their card later in the month for different reasons. Also it makes it confusing copilot to always see an outstanding balance when a lot of people just got billed or other pending invoices not even sent yet. FYI almost all customers had caught on file. They just don't have the auto pay turned on.

Okay. Currently the pending invoices show.

Okay I think some of this you can do is settings and it's like well it seems that pending invoices could be set up as a separate invoice and not visible to clients.

Who may be okay Smith this is a feature request. It just seems like it's just a matter of you don't want people to see the outstanding balance until they've been invoiced.

Jeff, Sandwich, Massachusetts. Mike, towards the end of last season, a team member was complaining about joint pain from mowing for two seasons with us.

He was laid off in late December and this was the last I heard of it. I found out last week. He's now in the process consulting with his primary care physician to diagnose the issue and then possible treatment. He set up a time to meet with me this week to talk about the situation. The orthopedic office called me today regarding a workers comp claim which at this point has not been filled. My question is, how would you move forward? He may very well have joint pain from repetitive motion. He's always shown up and done a satisfactory job. Nothing off the charts, but comes in and does his assigned work. However, the timing is poor. He could have started this process from late December to now. We start mowing next week. I've never filled a workers comp plan on behalf of an employee for something like this. It's always been for something I need to be taken out of on the spot. For instance, stitches, not sure how to best move forward, or any red flags I should be aware of. Thank you.

Be really hard for him to be able to.

Like, pin you on this because all these machines are being approved. Like, unless you're building your own mowers and you're, you know, everything is like you're taking all that liability. He knows what he signed up for in terms of the work, so I wouldn't really too concerned about that. It sounds like he's going to be starting to work with you. This is my question. Is like, is he going to be working for you again or is he, like, is he done? If he's going to be working for you next week.

You gotta be careful. You can't fire him based on him doing a worker's comp claim. So I would keep rolling with it. And then if you want to fire him, fire him based upon performance. So if he doesn't show up on time or he's not doing a fast enough job, etcetera, Then fire him based on that. But just make sure you don't fire him based upon him making a workers comp claim, you'll get in trouble. That's what I did my first year.

Second thing, if he is gone like the wind like you, you're not. He's not coming back next week. I would not meet with him.

You're opening up a whole can of worms. So if, if he's coming back next week, pursued as normal, pretend as if he did not do this claim. If he.

Is gone and you're not having him come back next week for mowing, I would not meet up with him again.

And just leave it at that. Because you're going to open. You're going to get in trouble. If you meet with him again and he's already, like, left, he's going to try to pin a bunch of stuff on you.

I just have a hard time thinking that they're going to actually be able to pin this on you. So I wouldn't really be too concerned about it. Honestly, there's nearly nothing you can do. Even if it is valid, there's not much you can do. There's no reason to talk about, like, talk to his orthopedic office. There's no reason to talk about that stuff. Like, you have workers comp insurance for a reason. Talk to them. I wouldn't be talking to him. I wouldn't be talking to the orthopedic office about it. I'd be like, look, once you've made a claim, I'm going to talk to.

Whoever'S involved there. But there's no reason for you to take your time and energy on this, in my opinion.

All right?

It's happened five times this past week. Exactly. Explain. An agent will say, sent client link. They want to populate on their own accepted estimate on their behalf. Got it. Okay. Liz will see this and ensure this not happen. This is probably one agent that's allowing people to basically fill out their own information. So we will make sure that it gets stopped Again, if we don't have a yellow. It's hard for us to find these things. So if it happened five times, you submit it one time, we will find this. Like, we will dig into them. But Liz will see this and then she'll do some digging on this one already. So that was the one about them allowing them, the customer, to fill out their information.

All right, everyone, have a fantastic Monday and we'll see you tomorrow.