Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/12/2023

Sup, Augusta Nation. Hope you're doing well. Let's get things kicked off. Happy Wednesday. Let me go ahead and copy this YouTube link into the Facebook.

All right, Copy save reminder. Tomorrow, April 13th, 5pm Pacific Time, 8pm Eastern Standard Time. We're gonna have a round table in your email there's an invitation along with the Zoom link that you will use to get on there. So I highly recommend everyone be on there. If you have any questions, feel free to bring them forward. Obviously now we have this daily so I know there's not. I don't expect a ton of questions because every single day we're talking already. But if you have questions specifically on what we are kind of announcing or bringing forward on those definitely, absolutely bring those at the end of the call. At the very least it is a good time to be able to see each other in person or at least on Zoom. So let's go ahead and jump in. But yeah, just remind Remember tomorrow, Thursday, April 13, 5pm Pacific Time, 8pm Eastern Standard Time. Really looking forward to seeing what mask Kevin Fairburn will be wearing this time. Let's go and jump in present.

All right, you got five today.

I don't know if that's sarcasm or not.

Oh man, people getting too creative with this. I need to have this fixed I think where it's like first and last name and it's like a drop down of everyone's names. Anyways. Submit Question here As the regional manager, I feel as though I should be the spare tire and used in a break glass scenario. However, lately my GM is asking me to come out and help on projects, Finish up mowing, etc. Let me just first say real quick, I don't think you're really a regional manager until you have at least three locations. Until that time you are going to be kind of acting like a GM unless you're not in the business. Like if you have other businesses and you're not there very often, like you're somewhat absentee. But if you just have one, one other location, I wouldn't call yourself a regional manager yet. You're a GM of one location, they're a GM of another. Just just to be clear year. And the reason I know this is because as soon as I got more locations and actually put a real regional manager in instead of just being like hey, you're a gm, I'm the owner and like that, that, that like totally brought to a different level of professionalism and just like support for those GMs, just put that in there. I've been hoping, doing his estimates, finishing up, mowing routes, etc but I'm kind of getting the feeling that he is possibly getting too uncomfortable calling me. He is getting too comfortable calling me to help anytime they are behind. Maybe I have it wrong but I think that this, that that should be the job as you have to pick up the slack and make it work, do whatever it takes to be successful. His location is needing to hire one more employee but for whatever reason that keeps getting pushed to the wayside. I know having another employee would help this situation though. I'm trying to not step on his toes either. I'm just struggling with myself because on one hand I don't want him to let him suffer but on the other hand I want him to be self sufficient and not break the glass anytime something happens. I have my own location I need to focus on too, not just his. Any advice? Yeah, no. So.

The general manager needs to run the location as if it is their own. Which means they will get help from whether it be the coaches here at Augusta or the regional manager or in your this case the owner. But if they do not execute against those.

Those tasks, they are not fulfilling their role as a general manager and they will not be entitled to profit sharing. Okay, so if a general manager is not going to hire when told they should, if they're not going to train people the way that they should be, except if they're not going to follow systems, they're going to be out. And so. Oh I see. This is very smart. Okay, I take back what I just said because if you put that your name is this, you're not, you're trying to not give away who you are. So even if whoever this is, whoever wrote this, if their GM is listening to this and like is he talking about me? Just assume for everyone it is.

You as a general manager should be running the location as if it is your own. And a high producing, well performing GM takes instructions from their regional manager, in this case owner it sounds like and goes and executes on them and if they're not doing that their job is in jeopardy. That's just the brass tax of.

Should be that the general manager owner offers to help with doing things if they are able to and if they feel like they need, they want to help. But for a general manager, if you see your owner do that or you see a regional manager do that, just know you are failing your job.

It'd be the equivalent if I'm like hey, you know I'm just not feeling it like can you Know, Zach, can you come over here and do the masterminds? You guys be like, wait, wait, what? Like, I thought that's your job. Like, yes, your job as a CEO is to communicate with us. And just pulling other people in or asking for help means I'm failing in my job. So.

Whoever. I would just say someone needs to take more accountability and ownership of their job and realize that this potentially, if this is not addressed, I would be bringing this up with this general manager around profit sharing. And it's like, okay, great, 25% is if for us. I do 25%. Let's say you're at 10% because it's an existing location or 5% or whatever it is. See, look, this assumes that you're taking the role of a general manager. Let's look at your job description. All the things that I'm doing for you currently is in there. That profit sharing is in jeopardy until these tasks are being taken care of. And if they're way behind, if they're, you know, a circumstance happens, like they get sick or something, they're going through something in your family, yes, maybe you do step in, you help. But like, they need to know that whenever you step in and do their job, they're failing and they need either coaching or, or they need support or they need to reach out for help around other things so that doesn't happen afterthoughts. After writing this, I feel that the tough love and letting him figure out maybe what I need to do at the end of the day, he needs to figure out how to make it work just like I have had to over the years. I need to get out of the firefighting mode anytime he calls for help. Maybe I'm wrong. You're would love your input, criticism. Welcome to. No, I think you're right. Like, obviously you don't want to be in firefighting mode, but you definitely need to hold them accountable to taking action on the tasks that you see as important. And so if you know that they need to hire someone, you don't need to say, hey, I think you're doing a lousy job. You need like, you know, pick up the slack. And you should have seen that we needed hiring three weeks ago. Don't say that. Just say, hey, look, next week we need to hire somebody. Like, they need to be able to take that, whether it be from you as an owner or regional, or if you need to hand this off to the coaches, they have the coaching call. I know some of the best GMs have coaching calls with one of the coaches. And they don't just let their owners do it. They take their coaching call. And the coaching call, the coaches will see exactly what you're saying. You need to hire someone you need. And they'll give them dates and times and they'll be like, hey, you need to get this done by next week, next month. Like, these are the type of things that a coach is really helpful for, especially if you're the owner serving as a regional manager. Because there's gonna be certain things you will need said that will be uncomfortable. And, and if you're, you feel like your GM might get offended, have the coaches say that, right? Because the coaches have no relationship with them. And it's going to be much more like, hey, what's your numbers? And they might be offended by you saying the exact same thing. So keep that in mind. And I think I would say, if you're a GM.

Watching this, I would say be very, very quick to ask your regional manager or owner, if they're the owner.

What do you, or what are you, like, give them a lot of permission to tell you what you think that they think you should be doing so that you don't ever come to the point of, like, I don't think you deserve profit sharing. I'm doing too much for you. Ask the owner, like, hey, is there anything that I should be doing or that you feel the general manager's role is supposed to be doing that you feel I'm inadequate in or I could improve on? Is there certain books or things I could be trained in better? Is there a part of the training videos that, from franchisee training that I should be watching? Again, is there anything you feel that is negative in my job description, like, am I not fulfilling that role? Have that mentality. Let your regional or owner, whatever, pick some holes. Like, they'll think more of you. You'll do a better job. You'll, you'll, you'll deserve that, that, that profit sharing a hundred percent. All right, Devin, how's this? Down 300. Cleanup debris, power raking two to three budget hours. Just depends on how, how the size of that property is. But again, you'll go, we'll, we'll make, we'll improve this dramatically when you come for training. Devin, in terms of how you're presenting the verbiage on the estimates. Kyle Tarvin, is there a point at which you should lower your pricing anymore when trying to close work? Our Norman location is in growth mode and we are closing at 40%, which isn't ideal. I know we need to close more, but I'm not sure how much lower in price we can go.

I'm already making making my budget hours bare bones most of the time. It isn't enough BH to complete the job anyway. It's just hard for me to justify quoting a job that should ideally be at $500 for $250 just to book the work. Command center is also following up on estimate at day one and day five via phone calls. Anything else we should be doing to close more work? So a couple things. Number one, there's always two ways to look at your pricing. One is the actual rate. Two is the budget hours. This is in the case where you start looking at things like, okay, my service area MIT spread out to where I'm not hitting budget hours because I'm driving so far. Doesn't sound like that's the issue. Next thing is, is there a piece of equipment or things that you potentially would need to get the job done in that number of budget hours? Because everyone's like, oh, like I'm too expensive so I should lower my rates. Like, well, no, if you can get the work done faster, you can bring your budget hours down. Yes. You as the business are not eating the cost of that capital improvement or that piece of equipment to be able to get the budget hours down to that level and still make a profit. So that's when I would be asking like, I don't think this is your case in your case Cal, but like this is when I'd be asking like, okay, should you go from a 21 inch mower to a 30 inch or from a 30 inch to a 40 inch and take absorb the hit. But in order be able to do that, but, but by doing that, be able to get the job done faster, allowing you to have less budget hours and therefore a lower price on the job. I would also say I would be looking at whether or not you're at capacity and getting close to it. It sounds like you're in growth mode. That's great. But my next question is like, do you literally have people like employees twiddling their thumbs ready to go or is this a matter of I'm in growth mode, I'm still three, four, three or four weeks booked out. Like in the only case that I would be cutting prices like you are right now is if even at 40% you are only like two or three days booked out right now. I would only be like if you're four weeks booked out that says like go hire an employee, that that's a different conversation. So and the reason I say that is because when we talk about close ratio, the other thing you got to think about is the number of leads that are coming in. Your close ratio will come down if you have 30 estimates a week versus what you used to be doing, five or 10. Because on those five or 10 you would talk to the customer longer, you would take more time on it. You would do the everything just perfect. You'd spend three to four times longer on those estimates. Whereas when you're in high speed and volume, yeah, some of them are going to fall through the cracks. You're not going to talk to Mr. Jones for the hour and a half that he wanted because you need to get to the next estimate in 20 minutes.

So I would keep an eye on for those of you in like your second year and beyond, keep an eye not only your close ratio but also number of estimates just accepted generally. Right. Because if that number is doubling, you might say, well, I'm only doing, you know, I went from last year I was at 40%. This year I'm at 40%. But if your volume of estimates have doubled, then our leads coming in has doubled. Your growth rate is still doubling. So just keep that in mind. Don't beat yourself up too much over close ratio if the volume of leads you're getting compared to last year is double or triple because your, your, your quality, especially of in person assets will go down. They just will. So again, take what I've just said here, Kyle, and use what all these points that I just talked about and talk about with your coach.

Kyle Tarvin. Do you think it's important for growth locations to take on bi weekly mo's? I have people asking for bi weekly, but I don't like them due to scheduling issues. Does Bellingham still take on biweekly modes? Yes, we do. We require weekly from March through May and then only if they call and let us know would we switch it to bi weekly. But if they accept from now until end of May, they automatically are put on weekly. And if they go to BI weekly, it's 50% more in terms of price, which outside of spring rush we actually make more profit on bi weekly. And the guys hit budget hours way easier on but on bi weekly because they get 50% longer. And usually it's not 50% longer if it's in spring rush. It could take three times as long though. That's why we don't allow bi weekly during the spring rush.

Con from Evansville. Pictures attached. I've never seen Client canceled before. Are we going woke and canceling people now? Is this because they don't want marketing or is this something that CC accidentally pressed? Let's take a look. Yeah. So service autopilot. By the way, they. They client was canceled. Of course. It's Mike. Andy's unsubscribed.

It might have something to do with this if they unsubscribe from the notification emails.

Let me look at this other one. So yeah, just. Just for background. It used to be that when you pause a service, it would never allow you or when you would cancel, you wouldn't be able to get the job notes in the future. Now you can. We've still just been pausing though. Let's just say mowing estimate. Looks like they just got sent a mowing estimate. Then they went. They clicked do not disturb on their.

Terminated first.

I'm guessing if command center this, you would have gotten a ticket and it would have been put here. It's kind of funny that they got an estimate and they just canceled right away. Like, what was there to cancel.

Tate Terminated. I wonder if they called in the work super mad and wanted to be like taken off the. The.

Like never emailed again type thing. Like super, super, super mad. And then that's why we did that. I just don't know this specific case. But we still do just pause inside servers autopilot. And I know that now when you cancel, you can go back and get job notes, but we're probably just going to stick with the current system until the end of the year when we're switching out of it anyways. But I wish they would have done that years ago and then we would have just stuck with canceling because it makes more sense. But even from an attrition standpoint, I understand why they're doing that from a software perspective because we're kind of having to figure out with copilot right now, like the difference between pausing, canceling off season and then what's considered like a customer's attrition. Right. So.

All right, that's all I got. All right, guys, have a great Wednesday. We'll see you tomorrow. We'll see you tomorrow morning and then we'll see you in the evening again.

For the roundtable. All right, guys, take care.