Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/11/2022

Good morning Augusta Nation. Hope you're all doing super well. A couple updates here, stuff I might have already mentioned a little bit on the Facebook group.

First and foremost, yeah, the YouTube channel of ours that everyone's running their ads against was suspended on Thursday night after I uploaded the recording of our roundtable. We were recorded for hate speech and violence. So yeah, it's pretty crazy. So it's obviously some sort of a bot or something that's gone wrong. So I've been in touch with YouTube Lee and I the entire weekend submitting all sorts of appeals and trying to contact them. And we upgraded our account just so we get better service and a whole bunch of stuff. And actually honestly the best way to get a hold of YouTube I found it is actually just going on Twitter and tweeting them. So that's actually where I've been back and forth them for the past 24 hours. So hopefully we get some some feedback on that. I apologize for your ads just being stopped and all of the Academy videos are locked. I can't even get in there and download the ones that we have in there. So we really have to make sure we get this fixed. So it's kind of number one priority for me right now. And unfortunately I'm dealing with Google via tech support on Twitter. So anyways, Google My Business changes I posted this last night as well about your Google My Business app. The mobile app is going to no longer exist here pretty soon. I'd seen rumors of this, but I had never seen an announcement from Google until last weekend.

And when Val Thomas let me know. So that screenshot I posted was from his account and so I don't know how quickly that's going to happen. I would assume they'll give us a month or two heads up that it's going to be no longer in use. But what you'll want to do, just use the Google Maps app and then find your business and you can do everything in there as you would in Google My business. So I think they're just trying to get rid of Google My business. And then you will have a Google business profile and inside of your Maps and as long as you are a manager of that account then you'd be able to edit all the details. So again, this doesn't surprise me a whole lot due to the fact that we have seen them really put an emphasis on search engine optimization and ranking based upon if you have an address, which means that they're trying to tie in more and more with Maps. So ultimately a big Google makes A lot of money on Google Maps because so many people tie into it and integrate it with it. So every single service autopilot, super all these companies pay Google to use their API for Google Maps all the time. So it makes sense that they're trying to make their most like core product Google Maps more valuable by putting all the information from businesses in there instead of Google My Business. So really interesting. Obviously they've integrated somewhat already for the past five to seven years in terms of having your Google My business account linked up with Google Maps. But now it's obviously like they're not even doing Google My business. So very interesting move. A lot of people are wondering should we be switching over to getting an address? Again like I mentioned a few months ago, I do recommend trying to get your Google My business to have a physical address. What we're seeing right now is about 1 in 10 of us when we switch to your home address or an address that is not an actual business commercial location, one out of 10 will get suspended, your account will get suspended and you'll have to go through this like one to two week process like we're doing right now at the franchise level to try to get your account reinstated. So don't, do not change it to a P.O. box. That's a big, big red flag. You'll immediately get suspended, guaranteed it. But there's also quite a few locations that have switched their home address and it works just fine. So I don't know if there's any rhyme or reason. I've tried to figure out if there's some sort of correlation between people that have reported that to me, but I don't see that. I don't see any sort of obviously Google's telling you certain things like they don't want you to use a home address. But think about it from the perspective of there being more and more home operated businesses and business that are run out of their home, people's home. So I don't they're just letting it slide or if perhaps they manually review some of them. But I would try if I was you, I would try to get your personal home address. That's where you're working out of to be the Google my business address. Just realize that you're going to have a, A, a slight chance that you get suspended and then you got to go through the validation process. So but again 90% of you have already switched over your personal home address and it's working just fine. And that is ideal because when you search on Google it wants to show People on the map and it will highlight those people first in Google my business. Let me actually show you real quick. Let me show you. Let me just pull this up. So let's do. I'm just gonna do lawn care in an area where we are not like we're not in Phoenix, Arizona. All right, so if I pull up Phoenix, Arizona. Here we go.

Here we go. So if I share my screen.

So when you pull up Google and this is when someone's searching your place, for example, you can see here now this obviously in the past has always been this way. Google, my business listings are here. But these locations are the ones that are prioritized based on have an actual address. Right? So like Lucas Lawn Care, for example, they have an actual address right here versus a lot of these other services.

That might actually have a lot of Google reviews, et cetera, great websites. But because they don't have actual addresses, they are penalized. So I do recommend trying and to get your address in here even if you do not have an actual business site, a business address, it's worth that risk because we're seeing them emphasize this more and more. And for some of our location the past couple months, they actually fell out of this top three area because they were not on a map. So I would recommend that it's very clear that that's what they're trying to do is integrate this map. And they will highlight companies here on the left hand side that are on this map. So again like if I type in. Let me see here. Just do lawn care. Lawn care in Bellingham, Washington. So when you scroll down here, you can see because we have an address. Whoops. Just messed up the map. I don't know what happens there. Let me refresh this. Boom.

So. Oh, you can't see them. Anything. So if I scroll down here, why does it keep doing that? It's showing like right there. It's the Bellingham shop. And then all of a zooms out to the ocean world.

That's so weird. But yeah, you can see here because we have in our county one of the only locations that has an actual address. We are highlighted on the map in addition to being on the left hand side. And it's because we have an address. So again, I would just recommend trying to do that if you possibly can.

Next door we are doing some tests. I'm not liking the ad product right now unless you know that you serve an entire zip code. But even still, even inside zip codes, there's neighborhoods that you don't really want to market. To. So we're doing some testing right now, but I'm not sold on this new nextdoor approach of not being able to target neighborhoods and only doing zip codes. But as we get more information, I'll let you know. Cool. All right, let's go. Some questions. Do franchisees have to buy tickets if we're bringing two guests to conference? No, you do not. Anything more than two. You do. The annual fee that gets charged for the franchise conference includes the public conference as well for up to two people. So it's 500. Everyone gets charged that regardless. And you can bring up to two people. And that includes our Thursday conference as well as all the rest of the weekend with the public for two people. If you go and do more than two, then you just need to buy a ticket.

You get one place. Yes. Cool. Connor said. Thank you. Okay, cool. There's a question that came in on the form as well. Let me go ahead and pull that up.

There it is. Cool. All right. So there's two actually. Now looks like there's two. Let me go here. See here your name. Relocation 2022 Rookie of the year in blooming. Oh mercy. Dustin. Dustin's very, very cocky here on this Monday morning, you know, But I like the confidence. I like the confidence. Already claiming rookie of the year and we're just a few months into the year, but we'll take it. We'll take it, you know. Submit question okay, rewatched minutes from yesterday. When you say you think it will be a delayed spring rush, would you recommend a steady spend on marketing or hold off on a few weeks and spend more on a shorter amount of time? Okay, great question. So the, the problem with a delayed spring rush based upon something like we had in March 2020, which was Covid and we had that in March and we had that delayed spring rush, I kind of feel like we're having the same thing now. But again, you can't predict when you know something like a war is going to be over or like the Fed decides to not do a 50 point basis hike on to interest rates. Like you can't predict that. Like it could happen tomorrow. Right. So I don't, I'm not a big fan of like waiting because unfortunately to realize that when that happens, if you have a delayed demand, it's also what it also means is that demand comes quickly. And at the same time that you want to quote, unquote, spend money on marketing is also when you're natively getting a ton of leads anyways and you're then to Compound that is like adding to the chaos and you would need a staff up just to get ready for that, which could be again months before that happens. Right. So. Or weeks if you're waste hiring people and they don't have anything for them to do. Theoretically, yeah. If I thought in a few weeks that the demand was going to shift, the war goes over, Fed doesn't hike rates, people start spending money like crazy and we have that demand shift, then I would say, yeah, do that. But then you need to hire a bunch of people now because if you're going to market on top of a demand shift, you're compounding how many leads you're going to get, which is fine if you plan for it. Right. So I wouldn't say I'd be more consistent. I just realized that that's really probably the reason that we're going to see a shift in the spring rush. I would say in a lot of markets because of some, some areas because of weather, but then also because just everyone's fear right now level is very high in my opinion. They're seeing their mortgage interest rates going up, they're seeing the war, they're seeing all of their interest rates, credit cards, everything is going up. And so I feel like there's a lot of fear right now. And then fuel prices on top of that just being so absorbently high, all of that combined is what I feel is causing people to hold on to buying decisions. And like we talked about at the roundtable, having a lower close ratio, a lower response rate. But I do feel like that's going to just, it's not going to go away. Like people long still needs to be done, but they'll push it off three weeks, they'll take an estimate and they'll accept it in two weeks instead of just accepting that night. Right. So I would just, I would just be more consistent with your marketing. Don't feel like I've got to save up until the perfect time. It's literally like someone like in the stock market being like, oh, when the next crash comes, I'm going to, now that's when I invest. Well, you would have lost out in the last like 12 to 13 years of like really, really good stock returns. So I wouldn't say like keep money and just don't spend anything until that time happens. Like when demand kind of comes back. Just, just spend predictably, spend efficiently and just know that that's what's happening in terms of demand. Because if you can stay top of mind, you can get those, you know get in the mind of the customer. Now when that demand shift does happen, then you'll be top of mind. You'll take it market share during that time. Let's see. Next question. Here.

Is the main reason that only solo operations are using zippers because commands and it can't handle full service with a Super yet. Nope. The reason we're using super with the solo franchise operators is because we need to get all the kinks ironed out and we're trying to. It's not so matter of there being bugs in Supers. Honestly, we have to take a little bit of responsibility for that because when we're changing so many of their features and they're doing that for us that it causes other random little things to happen. And a lot of times it's very small that they can just fix for you really quickly when you contact Kevin or Siraj. But sometimes those are what's being caused and they've been very, very considerate. Honestly, in my opinion. They have not charged anyone for super subscription yet. So everyone so far has not paid a dollar to the CRM. Which is very concerning in my opinion because they know that there are things that they're still tweaking for us and changing for us. I don't know expect that to continue. I don't know when they'll start charging all of us for Zooper. But they very considerate. They know that we are still adding to it, that there's causing little tiny bugs occasionally. But no, that's not why we did that at all. It's just a matter of the solo operators getting inside Zoop. It's much easier ramp up time. It's great for smaller businesses. We've got to build the feature set to allow the larger companies in January to switch over and make it as smooth as possible by trying to make those features similar to service autopilot. Right. So the wiki needs to be created inside of Zooper so that way we don't have to change our vocabulary in terms of training command center in terms of everyone that becomes goes from Zooper or from servers Autopilot to Super in January. We need to have that smoother transition. So it's going to be. It's jarring no matter whenever you're switching CRMs. But our goal with having the solo operators see all the little issues, see the mistakes, fix them and then try to make the features as similar to Service AutoCAD on the transition as possible is really ultimately the goal.

Let me see if there's any other question. Nope. That's it there? Make sure. Cool. All right. Any other questions here, Connorstead. Thank you. Add to my question. We have two owners. Do you both get one? No, it's just two per location. So two tickets are included in the 500 bucks that everyone gets charged in January. So two per location is what is allowed there. So cool. That's all I got for today. As always, if you have a question, submit the form or just hop on tomorrow morning and I'll see you then. Take care, everyone.