Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/13/2022

Good morning, Augusta Lawn Care. Welcome to another mastermind. Got a bunch of questions came in on the forms, so I'll go ahead and address those. I had some other stuff I was going to go over about inflation and things after some reports yesterday, but we will get back to that maybe after or even tomorrow. All right, let's go ahead and share my screen and we'll start jumping through these questions. Share, screen, share. Boom.

Okay, here we go. This is the first one I'm just gonna work my way through. So, Max Harwood, can you talk about the fear of making mistakes in business and the process of overcoming it by temperament? I'm a perfectionist, and I hate it when we disappoint customers. I'm realizing we will inevitably not meet everyone's expectations, especially as we grow. I kind of feel like I just have to go through the process and not be too hard on myself. But any thoughts or reflections are appreciated. Yeah, like as an owner, you're the only. You're going to care the most. There's. You're never going to find anyone that cares as much or more than you. And so you are. Like, when I was solo for a year and a half, I did lawn care and never got a single callback, never a single complaint, never a single one star review. Like, none of those things. And for most of us, that's how it would be if you were solo all day long and you had 30 or 40 customers and you're kind of there. Literally two weeks into having my. My first employee, I got a damage case, like damage someone's property for the first time ever. And I did that. But then they got a call back and the customer is mad and stuff. So it's part of growth because two things. One, you start moving faster and you start make sure. For example, I was weed whacking. Sent a little pebble through someone's front glass door. Happens that these are peach tree doors, which is French doors, and I had to replace both of them because they're a double, like, $3 million house. And Peachtree was out of business, so it was impossible anyways, all that to say I was moving faster. So I made mistakes. And then furthermore, the employees that don't care as much as me, they also make mistakes.

And so Obviously, things like P4P will help them be more cautious around damages and making sure they have. They don't make yellow slips and callbacks. But it's inevitable. It's 100% inevitable. And the sooner you can buy that, the sooner you can move on. And Grow the business being immobilized by unhappy customers, which is going to happen. It's inevitable. If that immobilizes you, you'll always stay at solo or one to two employees. Always. And so it's a gut punch. Like, there's nothing that hurts my. Hurts me more when I know I've disappointed a customer. Like, it's a gut punch. I understand that. I remember that where I was driving, where I was the very first time when I knew I broke that window and I knew it was gonna cost me like thousands of dollars and I was unhappy customer. They were trying to sell their house and I just broke their front door window. So.

Yeah, it's horrible feeling. But you have to realize that is required, that is part of the game. And if you just expect that from day one, you won't be disappointed. And I was talking about this with Liz the other day about expectations of employees and staff. Like, we were talking about how, like just setting the expectation low, leading by example, that some people are going to rise, that some people are going to really push themselves, some people are going to really excel, but then realizing that the vast majority of people aren't. And to not be disappointed every single time when they just show their colors, that they are not the type that's going to push through, going to think outside the box and going to go above and beyond the call of duty. So it's working within those confines and setting our expectations low. And then if someone surprises you, it's like, great, but you're not always like. That's why a lot of times the first few employees are such a grind is because when you're three to five is because every time you hire somebody, they make a meaningful impact on the business. You're like, man, this person's great. They're awesome. Like, I'm gonna do really good things with this person. And then they let you down. And that constant roller coaster is emotionally just scarring. And. And so that's why you have to just realize from day one, if I'm going to grow this business, I know that there's going to be customers that aren't happy because they do not have me. Because I. There's employees that do not care as much as me. They aren't going to do as good a job as me. That's a hundred percent guaranteed, 100%. You will not be able to copy and paste yourself and make it where it's basically the business is perfect. So.

Cool. How are things going at CC these days? Not a big rush, but I've submitted yellow subs and haven't heard back for a while. I understand you guys are probably prioritizing other tasks, but I would ask. Yep. So in terms of Communication Command, last week we. We would have been down to Inbox Zero if it wasn't from Service Autopilot. But it's still slow this week. But we are going to, I think, get the inbox 0 this week. When it comes to Yellow slips, Max, we do address those on a weekly basis. We might be slightly behind because of everything at Command Service Autopilot, but by this end of this week, I think we're going to Inbox Zero and we're going to be really purring along. But Monday, my goodness, Service Autopilot was dragging along and you know, people in Zoopr would know, like, their things are being sent out right away right now. Service Autopilots we could grind to a whole. We have to log out, log back in, switch accounts, close out the browser. It's a. Yeah, it just mostly honestly, like there was one. One person Liz said at Command center is like, I'm too embarrassed to answer the phone because when I go into someone's account, I know I'm just going to be apologizing and then telling them I'll call them back. Like, it's. It was really, really bad Monday especially. But anyways. Oh, sorry. I accidentally did this. There you go. All right. Yeah, we addressed the yellow slips, usually maps, on a weekly basis. If there's something that's immediate that needs to be done with an account, though, don't submit to Yellow Slip. Submit that to your Connect team, directly to Command Center. But yellow slips are more or less a matter of getting your refund back when the mistake was made. And that way we can track it too. By the way, there was a really cool thing that we've done at Command center recently to track better. Because the handicap of Service Autopilot is we only have one certified Advisor account that is allowed to go into everyone's accounts. And so the problem with that is we don't know without someone putting their name who did what. Well, we. We can't quite like, super. Obviously everyone has account. We know exactly what everyone's doing. That's great, that's fantastic. But we have made a way now to track a little bit better inside of Service Autopilot who did which estimates things like that. So we're working on some things that. Or external software outside of Service Autopilot to try to track certain things just to make things like Yellow slopes Easier because honestly sometimes it takes an hour just to dig through a yellow slope of like what happened, who called when listen to recordings, all that stuff. So that's why it's probably somewhat delayed right now, Max. But usually especially after this week, I think we're going to be right up, back up to speed. All right, next question.

Why isn't this showing? No, There you go, Nick. Google Local services ad is awful this year, unlike last. Why is that? How also how can we accurately track leads of coming from search ads versus from other forms of marketing? So Google Local services, every single location that I've seen, they're doing different things in and they're testing different stuff which is frustrating and great at the same time. I know they're trying to refine the product. Like I've mentioned years ago, I believe they will wipe out Angie's List, Home Advisor, et cetera because their product is better. But because they're testing stuff in different markets, sometimes I see really, really good ad spend and sometimes I see not so great. But when you say they're awful, I'm assuming you mean you're not getting any or the leads that are coming in are just not that great. Like they might be just wanting to lay out like one time services or things like that. So maybe they clarify that with me a little bit, Nick. But honestly, Google services, not much you can do. It's not like you can optimize your account and it's more like you have a listing, they create that. So there's not really much you can do in terms of optimization. But I know there's some locations like literally the only thing they have running right now is Google services and they're getting multiple per day and it's crushing. But so it just again very varied because they are testing things so much. Some of Nextdoor was doing a few months ago where they were like every market was different and they're obviously testing things and trying to hone in their product which is great but it's very confusing especially when we're trying to figure out what they're trying to do. We've been doing lots of initial mows at $1 per minute. Do we still pay the crew P4P as if the initial mows are a bit at normal rate at this point we are losing money. Okay, this is a great point. This is something I was planning on talking about in a couple weeks. But I'll just go ahead and share what's happening and what we're testing at the local shop. So at our local shop $1 per minute per man equates to $60 per hour. However, our MoW rate is $80 per hour and so on P4P. Theoretically it's not good for the crew. So what we're playing with is actually raising that to the point. For example, if we did charge $1.33 per minute, that's going to be $80 per man hour which would then allow me to use the budget hours and it'd be really easy on P4P and then the crew wouldn't be at a loss. They just basically always hit budget hours since they're being. They pay the employee, the customer is paying based on time. And so we're moving that up to that and above. We're actually going to play with a dollar and 50 cents per minute because I just feel like most customers that is not an issue. Like once we sell them on mowing price like over the phone for example, and then we say hey, it's a dollar per minute. Like not people. People are not flinching over that versus a dollar and 50 cents. Like they just roll with it because they understand the first visit and they want to get up to spec. This leads though into this next question about one time mode. I think though also one thing I've noticed is people sign up for our service and after they are scheduled they disclose they are only interested in a one time service. I don't want to be doing one time most for a dollar per minute. It's a waste of our time. What's the solution here? Yeah, so this is where I'd say just raise your initial that permanent price. So if you let command center know for your estimate calculator and then also inside of your service template, inside service autopilot Nick, you'll need to make sure you change that verbiage. But you could literally make it a $50$33 and that would scare away people that are trying to look for cheap one time mows and then cancel on you. I could come back and tell them it's our hourly rate, but that sort of a bait and switch. Yeah. So I would, I would recommend raising your per per minute price to where it's at least what you're charging from regular mowing. So if you're doing $80 per hour, you're going to need to charge 1.33 or $1.33 per man per minute. And that's what I would recommend doing changing on your service autopilot template as well as your estimate calculator for command center and Then that way you can just always use budget hours. It's very much linear in that regard because we don't want the guys doing like the hardest lawns for a lower rate on P4P.

In essay.

In essay. Is there a one, is there a one time project scheduling email template or should I just edit the welcome and thank you email? When scheduling one time projects there is a separate, separate template, but it's very similar to the one the thank you and welcome email. You're just gonna take out that first line. It says we'll be there on such and such a day. You take that one part out and put what day you are coming. So there is another template. We could get it up for you, but it's honestly literally the same thing. It's just a matter of take out the paragraph about which days of the week you're gonna come and then switch that to being you know what day you're going to be there. So for sake of simplicity I just keep it one honestly.

Jonathan Florida I know talk to you about this on the post, but could you have more elaborate this is about getting the second truck. I don't start until next month. Should I wait until then or grab a truck now if I'm able? Quick question. We talked about this on the Facebook group in terms of anticipating demand and looking forward, knowing when you're going to need a truck, realizing that a truck is going to take a few weeks to get painted decal ready to roll. So you can anticipate demand by looking at a number of leads that are coming in over the past four to five weeks. See what that trend is if it's going up and you can just literally just filter about how many estimates you've done and literally just do by date blocks and figure out how many leads are coming in. Then look at your close ratio for each of those weeks and make sure that you're actually getting customers. We can't just give you a bunch of leads and not closing anybody. So make sure your close ratio is staying stable. Then you can accurately predict knowing okay if I am getting on average right now three new lawns a week, for example, well I'm going to need a new another truck in four weeks because that's gonna be 12 lawns. I don't have space on my route and I'm by the way I'm also averaging two new projects a week that are giving me an extra 30 budgeted hours worth of work. Well immediately there I'm also gonna need basically a full time person and a Truck rolling. So I'd probably be buying the truck right now, right. Cause I got it painted, decal, license insurance rolling in a couple weeks, really realistically. So that's what I'd be doing. Track. Trying to track where your demand is at in order to anticipate when you need to buy the truck. And if you're. If you're starting to already push the boundaries of one truck, like, you're already juggling it between two jobs, you're trying to drop someone off. Like, it comes down to how much capital you have. If you don't have a lot of capital, I would literally take someone to a cleanup, for example, get them started, go do a mo route and come back and pick them up at the end of the day. Like, that'd be like, you know, really using your assets like asset utilization to the max. But it's probably inefficient because you're going to, you know, not be efficient on that route. Coming back to them, picking them up, dropping materials off, they have in a bind, you're going and picking them up. So it's not optimal. But if you have. We're limited on cash. That's what I would do. If you weren't limited on cash, as soon as you start feeling any sort of constriction on one truck with two people inside of it, you'd be getting another vehicle. Because you know, you can instantly split those two people up and be more efficient.

All right, I think there's two more questions here. Nick and Marysville. So the crew has been doing fantastically recently. They have been having some killer days on P4P, but something always goes wrong and wipes it out. Nobody has seen it on their paycheck yet. I don't get it. I looked at my pay stubs from Bellingham the whole time we did P4P. I never hit base pay once at any time of the year. Why am I having such a hard time getting them to hit P4P? My estimate estimate is never far off. I either have to bid the bid, bid the job lower to close, or bid high enough for the crew and not get the job. We are finally in a position to raise prices. But this is not permanent. Even though everyone has been killing it recently, the bad days will wipe out people again. This pay period. I will inflate the numbers as so they see P4P. But I can't always do that. Thanks in advance. Yeah. So this is specifically in your market, Nick. And for everyone listening when it comes to P4P, is spring rush is difficult because you don't want to raise P4P so much to the point that come summer they literally could make 35, $40 an hour. Um, and this is why during March, April and May for us, when the grass is super long, it's harder for them to hit P4P. We raise it from 33% to 40%. This is why, because you need your crew to be able to get above base pay consistently when they're crushing it. And you can't have, you know, a few really bad days of rain wipe out their whole paycheck. It can be very demoralizing for them.

So like what I would say is check first and see if you need to have a temporary increase in percentage. And then secondarily would be.

Knowing that they're new, that there is inefficiency still that they're hitting. And that part of it with P4P is yeah, if you have a really, really bad day because you make a mistake, you're going to probably wipe out Most of your P4P. Like if you just make a two day yellow slip, like you're going to be absolutely hurting on P4P, you're not going to make any performance dollars.

But also realizing that you might need to address the fact that for a temporary period of time, which for most of us is spring rush when grass is growing crazy, lots of first time mows, property cleanups, more variability, the weather's worse, lots of rain. That's when. That's why we have that percentage above a 33%.

Spelling unprofessional by CC. Why should we send when it's lowercase or online was the last name for a person or online was the last name for a person or online was the last. Okay, I don't know if it's actually. If you're saying like the last name was online. It's. They're pretty online.

But yeah, a lot of times because they're copying and pasting honestly from the web form. But I agree with you. It's just a matter of most of the time that's what they're doing. They're copying and pasting from the web form. Or if they're chatting with somebody and someone types it in, they're pasting that in really quickly while they're talking to somebody.

Which are happy. Happy. Which are happy. Frequently happening probably. Let me see who this is. One second. I gotta go back to Facebook to see who is actually.

This is getting one second. So I can address this if needs be. Tim.

Yeah, so I would Say first and foremost.

Like some things like this, for example, like you see if you're spelling mistake on someone's last name, I would just change on my mobile app and realize that command center is copying and pasting from a form.

But.

Spelling errors. Yeah, a lot of times the spelling errors, like when I've looked at yellow slips in the past about the spelling errors. Same thing with addresses. 60 to 70% of the time it's because that's the information was given to them. And service autopilot does not auto generate addresses. And so nice thing about Zooper is when they start typing in an address, it will make sure it scans Google and we get the right one. So if the person spelled labor labor street wrong and they put some weird letter in there, that could throw service autopilot through a loop, whereas it has to be inside Google in order for it to work well in Zooper. So things like that I'm just really focusing on trying right now. Instead of trying to like.

Plug all these little holes at command, I'm really trying to focus on like what are the systems that are going to fix the long term solution. And the long term solution is that like for example, with addresses and you know, you having the wrong address, the solution is not to have every single call verify their phone number and address like three times or ask someone on a chat bot, which is already hard to keep them retained when they're in there. It's not the right thing. Like hey, can I just triple check this, this address I'm looking at. Like if you do that, they both leave, right? So they're going to copy and paste that information. Try to be as quickly, as quick as possible. But my what I'm thinking about right now is like where do we create the systems that don't allow for error? Which is ultimately things that we can change in super like automatic capitalization, like searching a Google database to make sure the address is valid. So if their digit off or if there's a character that they typed in wrong on a web form and we copied and paste it, it doesn't send you through a loop. Right.

Let's see. In your video on solo operators you mentioned to have automation for everything so the owner can focus on closing and performing work. What automation should I build in Zooper if necessary? Really there's everything in there that is necessary that is built up for you. Let me again just double check who this is. Just so I have Jeffrey.

Yeah, so everything is in there that you currently need as long as you set up Twilio with texting, all of that will be working and there's really nothing that you need right now. I know that come end of this year, there'll be even more automations that we add to that because there's so much more flexibility as well as things like on the way. It's in there right now. You just have to activate it. So feel free on a call with Lead if you want to go through your workflows and make sure inside Zooper, you've turned everything on, but everything is there. Everything inside of Service Autopilot. In terms of automations, we've already duplicated inside of Zooper, but there's more that we can add towards the end of this year before we get everyone switched over. There's more flexibility. It's Nick. We have raised P4P to 40% for mowing. I just don't know how. I always hit P4P all the times of this year at Bellingham, but for us here has been impossible until about now. And even that it's inconsistent. Yeah. Part of this is a new crew, though. Tunic. You have a lot of new guys. I'd give it a couple more weeks, honestly. And they should be improving also. Once they go solo, they're also going to improve dramatically. So even at the local shop now we're in the same boat where like this past couple of pay periods have been really good. But before that it was like kind of hit and miss. It's because not only was it spring rush, even though we're giving 40% because the grass is growing, it's raining and they're new and they're doubling up on mo routes, when they go solo, that's when they start crushing on P4P. And you, for example, in spring rush last year or year before last, whatever, you were solo.

I could say that's on them and they have have to own being over bh, but that will not go over well because I see them trying so hard. I'll sure it'll improve with time. I just hope that when I inflate the numbers that next time it becomes more natural also. Thank you. Raising initial mill rate to my hourly. Great. Spring should already be at 40. What's that? Let me see here. What he said that spring should already be at 40. I don't know what that means. Okay, cool. Oh, I see. 40. I was here saying. Got it. Cool. All right. I think it's all the questions I got so far. I. Let me make sure I got the last one. Oh, there's one more on the form. Give me one second here sharing this.

Oh, there it is. All right, let's see if this is anonymous. Rain can be crazy here. There are several weeks where we really might not be able to mow for at all. For three days in a week. Do you recommend A, that we work long days over the weekend to catch up? I personally hate this and think my employees do too. Yes, employees hate working weekends. B, start back where we left off Monday and then mow some properties on Monday to catch up and a million on Friday, risking overtime hours with this one. Or just skip the remaining most of the week. If we have two to three in the week that we can't mow, if there's just two or three, I would just skip them and just come back and eat the eat on the next visit. Honestly, especially if you're spread out again, this is the reason things like rain delays is why it's so important to have a really dense route. Because if you have a dense route, you don't mind, you'll push them off a couple days because they're only going to be five minutes out of your drive time. You're deserving a massive area and you're working from left to right. And Friday you have a bunch of jobs that you don't get to, you know, Monday you're 30 minutes away. Like that's a big problem. So getting close in terms of proximity is the number one thing that I would say. And then the second thing is.

Let me see here. The second thing is I'd be trying to pull forward things that you can get done in the rain, like property clamps, bush trimming, even mulch. I know it's not fun to work in the rain, but if it's, if it's like not a deluge, if you can get those things, pull them forward. Like for example, if you know Friday's a rain day, it's horrible. Try to pull forward some cleanups or mulch and softer Monday or Tuesday next week. So that way, Monday or Tuesday come along, you have time to go back and get the, the lawns done that we couldn't get to. Entering the rain.

I'm meeting with a commercial guy, 120 locations for banks. Anything I need to be aware of. Let me just double check who this is so I can. This is Tim. 120 locations is going to be far outside of your service area. I can guarantee that. Also realize that if they're getting other bids, you're going to massive amount of commercial competition and you're Going to be up against regional players at this point that are operating on 3 to 5% profit margins. I probably would not even go bid this account. Honestly, it'd be a waste of my time. Personally, I would not go after this job.

I've had two clients that had scheduled estimates. Then command center called back saying they're not in our service area. Then calling back that we are. What's the pro process for that? It happened past two weeks. Is it. It is in wiki that I do.

Let me check. So, first and foremost, inside your wikis, having an actual map with an outline is extremely helpful. In the past, what we've been doing and for some of you still have a picture of your service area and just have a whole bunch of pins on it in terms of where your customers are at. That is fine if you're really, really centralized, but if you're spread out at all and Casey, for example, you look. That's who I'm actually thinking about. Like, because you're expert on the ander and some of these area other areas, it's very debatable based on just the pins. So what you could do, Casey, and what I'd recommend is actually have a map and do an actual line instead of just showing where your customers are at. Because sometimes there'll be a customer you actually have cut out. But if that picture is three months old, it's still showing someone way over here, but you want to cut them out already. So unless you're updating that picture all the time to command center on your wiki, in terms of all your customers and where they're at on a map, I'd rather have an actual map with an outline of where they're at. And then make sure. Make sure that this correlates with. And I don't know your account directly, Casey, I'm not in it, so I'm not saying that this is what you're doing. Just. Just bear with me for a second. When I was doing a lot of command center stuff last week, what I would find is I would go and look at the map and it would have an outline or I'd see customers. But then when I would look at the zip codes, the customer I would be on the phone with would be inside the zip code that we do service, but in the map they were not. So you got to make sure those things, two things align. It's the same thing with, like, if you're going to put notes on your dispatch board, but you got to make sure those align with wiki because they're going to look at those and if they con, if they're contrary, that's when this is like we're always getting mistakes because one thing says we service this specific zip code, but then we go to the map and part of that zip code is cut off inside the map where it's a service area. So I would just double check those two things. I'm not saying, Casey, by no means that this is you specifically. I'm just kind of making an overall arching thing here. Just making sure that your map as well as your wiki notes and what zip codes or city names actually correlate. Because, for example, a lot of times people say city names of what areas they service, but then their map, there's one part of that city that extends far out and they don't want part of it. Well, again, you're now leaving that to someone to make an instant judgment call. Do I put an estimate on or not based on the city name or based upon the map? Because they're contrary between one another. So you might want to actually look at like the zip codes that you might be including and then make sure that on a map they actually correlate with that zip code. Because if they're contrary, that's when you're just leaving it up to the commands to guess. And then there's their flip flopping. That's what's happening in this case. So.

Yeah, Casey, if you want to direct message me, feel free. Also, please message me about the every door direct mail. Also, Newburgh, those two locations are the ones that cannot get every door direct mail in. I want to make sure I compensate you for your time and we are fixing that currently inside of the pro shop, everyone else's work. But if you had, if you could not get your stamp to work, I want to make sure I cover some of those costs that should be happening. All right, everyone, have a great rest of your week. And that's all the question that came in. It was, take care everyone, have a good one.