Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/09/2024

All right, let's get this party started.

All right, copy.

I had, like, five or six owners text me yesterday with some very weird and crazy things that were happening yesterday. Everything from.

Accidents to some insanities. I'm sorry, it's horrible Monday for some people. Anyways, let's get started.

You drop this into Facebook.

Boom.

Sounds like quite a few. Yesterday, able to get a piece of the eclipse action.

All right, go.

We had none of it in Washington State. Very boring. Just another Joe Average day in the Pacific Northwest. And even if we would have had the eclipse, we wouldn't have seen it because it would have been clouds. Very good. Quick announcement. One week from today, we are having the Q2 round table.

Going to be a couple pretty big announcements, so holding on to them until then, so you'll want to be there.

And then we'll have open Q and A as usual as well.

All right, if I can pull. There we go. All right, we got five questions today.

I'll be sending an email out today also with a reminder about the round table meeting next week.

Can Michigan, you said in a recent POS podcast that you were working on multiple ways for franchisees to make money in the off season. Can you go into more detail? Yeah, it's easy to say. Very hard to do. So I'm trying to, like, create five different tracks that owners would choose. And basically, it's almost like you commit to one track and then you follow the steps in the process. So the same way we have, like, systems around things like budget hours and, like.

Grow to capacity. And we have, like, the three stages of growth, and we have seven stages of wealth.

Or, sorry, not three stages of wealth. The three sides of business where you can be profitable, and then all the different stages. The five stages of growth. We should have a system for winter, and that is, like, you choose five paths and kind of choose your own adventure. And so I know what the five paths are that I'll cover, like, pretty much every single location. And then it's just a matter of creating a playbook for everyone to use for the winter, for each path. So that's the goal. It's easier to say that than to actually do it. And so I'm going to be working really hard and trying to actually pull that off.

Excuse me. And so basically, if we can crack this nut, this code, a winter, it'll really, really help all of us. And that's the goal. So I'm going to be working on it the next several months. Some of them need some. Some of the tracks Require you to get started in the summer like by June, July to start taking action on several things so those ones will come out sooner. But I'm just in the starting phases and honestly it's like very difficult. It's like it's not like me just being like choose a track is going to somehow help your business. It needs to be like really tangible stuff. So I'm working on it. I'm not guaranteeing anything right now, but I think ultimately.

We are Augusta Lawn Care but.

We need to create better season specific services for the winter and then service specific offers for the winter as well. So that's what I'm working on and I hope it's helpful once it come rolls out. So.

Bryce in Colorado Springs, would it be possible to make it on copilot where we can choose whether we want a line to be a one time thing.

It for it to save. For example, we have a quote for mowing some small moving some small boulders and I don't want to have to say that as a service, but I have to in order to send the quote. Then I go and delete it after.

One time thing it for it to save. For example, we have a quote for moving some small boulders and I don't want to have to save that as a service, but I have to in order to send the quote. Then I go and delete it after. I would just recommend not making, I just make make your service items and services broader. So for example, you just call that landscaping, right? Landscaping would be the title of the item and service and then you add the description of that specific type of thing like that, that, that service that's like kind of one off.

If it's enough to be annoying, I'd make a new item and service. Like if you're doing it every couple weeks, make a new item and service. But if it's like really one off stuff, just call under landscaping or something like that, then put in the description. Kyle Tarvin do you keep track of new equipment and serial numbers for your locations?

I don't think we do, to be perfectly honest with you. Because our dealer keeps track of it all for us. So whenever we've gone in they look it up really quickly and if something's ever stolen, we've gone to the dealer and they have all our serial numbers for us.

Kyle Tyman, I know you're aggressively trying to grow the number of locations over the next few years based on your recent videos. C Suite Pod Few questions 1. If someone wants to purchase a territory close to our Current location, Will we ever get notified? It would be cool if we could get a form on the dashboard where we could put locations we would like to own in the future towns next to our location that we could get notified. Someone was in talks of buying that territory.

So yeah, if they're right against you, you'll be notified. Outside of that like you know you can usually let people know in like your coaching calls and like we kind of know what your next territory is going to be and we've had several times where someone's like about to buy one and we just let the owner know and they will either A say hey I'm probably still a couple more years away from this, don't worry about it or B yeah I'd like to just go ahead and pull the trigger on it. So if it's right up against you, we'll let you know. How long would we have to pony up the money if someone was interested in purchasing a Terry next to ours? It just whoever gets it first, like it's just whoever, whoever gets to look the location first would have it.

And we would give you know basically it's called we, we don't give first right of refusal unless we specifically have put in someone's franchise agreement that they think they have the one right next to them. They have first writer refugal but typically if there's one right next to you, we're going to notify you first and just make sure you're a good in terms of just make sure you don't want it first. Markers from Alamo Ranch, Texas.

Hi Mike. There will be a new Augusta location opening up in my city. Very excited and so is the new owner. Curious to know how much of an impact does a new location have on a current location? What kind of impact? Are there any numbers for this? Will Google searches, leads reviews increase Also many locations are needed in a County of 2.2 million and about 800000 houses to hold a majority of the market. Oh, how many locations are needed? Just some random thoughts as I was mowing lol.

So for most densely populated areas it's not going to be where it's like 2.2 million divided by a hundred thousand. Mostly because there's hundreds of thousands of people that live in a one mile radius. So we aren't giving less than I think it's two and a half to three mile radiuses.

And so in the market like 2.2 million we might only be able to get four or five locations in. Just depends on how distributed that city or that county is.

In terms of the impact. The biggest impacts are mostly around the fact that you can share things. So like, for example, smaller locations will go in on a, excuse me, an aerator sooner than they typically would if they are renting on their own. Because they can make sense of buying a four or $5,000 aerator if they only have to pay half of it, but they only have to really use it three days in the spring and three days in the fall. But if someone else is using it for three or four days, also, it makes more sense to start buying it sooner. So we've seen that same thing with, like, when equipment goes down, be able to help when employees are out, trucks are down. That sort of synergy. The benefit though of from the acquisition side of things is that all of your marketing is being dumped in the same general area. And so there's only so much area you can service, but there's still crossover people coming through. They see your ad, whatever it might be, and so there starts to become, basically you just look at the area and say, okay, how much money is being spent on marketing? When you have more locations, more money is being spent on marketing. And therefore brand awareness is increasing. Even if you're not directly spending ads.

More trucks are rolling around. Therefore, again, brand awareness is going up. So we've just typically seen brand awareness goes a lot higher when there's multiple locations. And that is ultimately going to bring down your customer acquisition cost because people are going to call because they see trucks rolling around. And again, their, their lead will go to whoever, whichever their address, you know, whoever's service area or territory they're inside of. But just the fact of seeing more trucks rolling around is important. Like, where we're at, there's basically an Augusta Lawn care almost all the way along the i5 corridor for like 1, 2, 3, 4, like 5 or 6 locations. So pretty much from here to Seattle, if I'm anywhere, someone knows Augusta long, they've seen it. And so whether they are visiting friends, whether they are moving along here, they already know Augusta. So you start to just see brand synergies and your customer acquisition cost goes down because people just know who you are more. That's typically like the biggest thing.

Well, the winter track release to the public or what do you say this is going. Oh, this is only fair, Augusta. Honestly, if I lose this public, no one would do it. Like, it's, it's just, it's laughable, guys, how few people do the stuff I talk about.

And then you, you Guys probably know all the ones. Like you probably know the names of the people who do, the ones that come to all the conferences, they're in the Facebook groups, they're on P4P like they're doing. There's a few of them, but there's very, very few.

So. But I'm not releasing it to the public. No. And honestly, it's not like revolutionary. It's not a matter of anything new that's going to come along. It's more of like a very defined tract. The reason I'm still researching and like looking a lot of numbers and stuff, but I think a lot of times we don't do well in the winter because we've had six months where the leads are just showing up on our doorstep and we're just kind of exhausted and we're kind of ready for a break. And so for, you know, from November, from Thanksgiving to Christmas, it's kind of nice to have a bit of a break. And then we wake up and say, oh, sick, I still have three more months I gotta get through before I see leads start showing up on my doorstep again. I better figure things out. And by that time it's too late because you haven't prepared. So whether it be going on getting snow contracts or be getting the Christmas light install contract signed, having actual campaign around winter services, or if you're able to mow, like really going aggressive to get more mowing customers during the off season. Yes, the grass is growing less and there's less demand and yes, your customer acquisition cost will be higher, but how can we still win in that environment?

So I want to create a very good track and like nail like paid ads upsells for every single one. At least have a track. It's not, it's going to be new. I just feel like people get off the track for four to six weeks once things slow down after leaf season. And by the time they wake up and realize they have two or three more months of winter to get through, they have no momentum. And they come out of. They go into January with like zero momentum, no leads. They're not doing door hangers, they've taken a few weeks off, nothing's coming through and they're just waiting for the phone to ring. That's a problem. It's not really a problem in January, it's a problem in March when they don't have enough cash to actually then capitalize on spring rush.

Can I pay myself hourly in my business? If so, it would be a good rate to do so. Still within the.0000. I would probably just pay yourself P4P. If you are in stage one of growth.

In stage one, I talk about paying yourself basically as a team member. So I just pay yourself based on P4P. Run yourself through the software. Let me just make sure who this is. One second.

Yeah, Marcus. I would probably recommend just paying yourself based upon P4P. Get yourself in the habit. Start seeing the numbers. That'd be my recommendation. In copilot, does the crew have to clock into general after each job? My entire last weekend missing time clock between every visit?

No.

No. The.

If there's missing spots between every visit means they're clicking clock. They're clocking in and out of the global punch in on on copilot. Copilot or P4P is using the global punch in and out off of copilot. So if they're punching in and out of jobs does not affect the time card at all. Who is this? One second.

I think there's an issue. Brian is helping now. Okay.

Roger that. Okay. Yeah, it shouldn't. You shouldn't have to do that. It should just be taking the global punch in and global punch out. The only reason it would be doing that is if people are actually punching out and in of the global punch out between every job but they shouldn't be doing so. It sounds like you figured something out. All right, everyone, have a fantastic day. I am on the mend having lots of these.

Lots of these.

The last few days have been the most ibuprofen. Ibuprofen I have ever taken my whole life because I usually don't take a lot of meds. So when I'm taking them every few hours, you know, it's not going well. All right, guys, take care and we will see you tomorrow.