Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/13/2023

This is not a team video. Sorry. Head in a different spot. Destination. How's it going? Sorry, I was doing internal videos notes. Okay, so this evening we have the roundtable. While I'm talking I'll copy this into Facebook.

This evening we have the roundtable which is on zoom. In your email there's an invite. I'll put it on the Facebook as well. The Facebook group this evening or this afternoon just to remind everyone.

And there we go.

Also when you come to the roundtable make sure you are named your name. Don't come in as iPhone5 or Google Pixel 3. We will not let you in. All right, so make sure when you come into the Zoom room you have your name.

Or your location's name. But we aren't gonna allow people that are in with no camera and it says iPhone. Okay. So if you get blocked a bunch coming trying to get into the room, that's why. Okay, so we've done this for the past year because like two years ago we had non franchisees trying to get in. Okay, so let's go ahead and get started.

Right? Yeah, this seems to be fun. I have some announcements, talk a little about copilot, talk about P4P, talk about what I'm doing in June, talk about the schedule of Copilot and all that stuff.

We are kind of getting bombarded from both directions right now in terms of service, autopilot. A lot of people are having problems with automations and just it being very very slow and then zooper. We have the same consistent issues of things not working when it comes to invoicing, dispatching, etc, etc, the same bugs for the past year. So I don't expect there to be to copilot this land of bliss because we're adding features that there's always going to be bugs. The bottom line is support sits right over there and we will fix things that are affecting us immediately. And I can deploy as many resources in terms of engineers to get things done for us. When we have problems, something is slow. If automations are not working, we will fix them. So I apologize because right now I feel very powerless fixing anyone's problems. Obviously server sidepod is much more stable but we are still seeing a lot of automations not going through a lot of accepted estimates, not not being triggered and saying that the estimates are not being won. Again it's like 1 in 100 but when you see 1 in 100 you start doubting everything else and then you're doing second guessing yourself or having to double check everything. So anyways, I apologize for that. The goal is that we can take control of that instead of always being at the mercy of someone else. So let's go and present, see what we got again this evening. I don't really expect you to come with questions because I know every single day we're already doing questions with Mastermind. I think the questions this evening would probably be more along the lines of questions about what I talk about. So don't feel like you need to come to this this evening with questions. I know in the that's been the focus has been. But with these daily masterminds, most of your questions are probably answered. It's going to be whatever I talk about. You will probably have questions about Copilot. Roll out what we're doing in June in North Carolina with my, my showing the location, getting started, P4P stuff like as I make announcements tonight. You'll probably have questions then. Jeff Bromley, could you do a quick overview how Google Ads for clicks work from a spend perspective? I was going to up my spend, but I'm already ranking at the top under sponsored ads and I'm on the first page after sponsored ads. What would be the impact if I spend more, will it put my ad in front of more people when they do search? If I'm already at the top, it's not clear to me how many, how, how more people would change anything. If I spend less, does it drop my ranking down under the sponsored ads? Great question. I'm sure there is better answers to this. Honestly, if you just YouTube this, you'd probably get some really good answers. But let me try explain it to my understanding.

And this is kind of. So it's an, it's what's called a, an auction of, of a click, right? So that's why some clicks might cost you a dollar, some cost you two dollars. Ultimately, how every click is act, how every impression is actually treated is like an auction. And that is think of it like an auction auction. Like you got Google in the front being like, okay, I got this viewer here. They have searched for lawn care. They're literally searching lawn care for me. Who will pay me $0.50? Boom. Okay, who will pay me $0.60? Boom. Who will pay me $0.70? Boom. Who will pay me 80 cents? And you just keep going up and up and up until finally someone either runs out of budget or they have a cost per click cap, right? So when you're going through, you'll see there's a button where it says do you want to have a cost per click cap? Cost per click cpc. And if you put that number then there'll be a time when the auctioneer is like would you pay $4 and 50 cents? You're like nope, 4:40 is my limit. So then they're going to keep going up into whoever has the highest bid on that click. Now there's a finite number of clicks. Let's say in your market there's a hundred clicks. And if you want to get every single lead, that's fine. Just know that those from 80 clicks to a hundred are going to cost you more from than the ones from 0 to 20. That's why a lower budget. What you're basically doing is you're going to get the lowest hanging fruit. You're going to get those ones that people stop at a dollar or $20 dol. You might get those ones but you're not going to have the budget to be able to get those out of that hundred. The ones that are 80, 90, the higher bidded ones that go higher. That means if there's less people in the auction bidding against you, the price will be lower because there's less people going high. If people cut their marketing budgets, what also happens the the ceiling comes down because 80 to 100 now is not so so expensive. So new competitors mark on Google will drive your cost per click up. Less people searching will also drive your search up because there's less leads to go around. And if there's less leads to go around and everyone's spending the same on marketing budget, let more people out in the auction still having a budget to spend that will also increase the cost per click. So demand going up without supply going up is going to decrease the price. So when there's more customers needing your services but everyone out in the auction are like I'm not going to spend any more, that will drive the cost down. Conversely, if everyone out in the auctions like I'm willing to spend whatever it takes and they put an unlap, uncapped cost per click and they have lots of money to spend that will drive the price up.

So what I would recommend doing is spending like $5 more per day and seeing how it impacts your cost per click. If it doesn't impact your cost per click and you're getting more leads, more clicks, great. If you raise your price and all it does is you get the same number of clicks, same number of impressions, almost impressions will sometimes go up, but your clicks are the same.

It's likely that you're just put you're buying that 80th 85th percentile. That is the most expensive. Right. So if you have $50 per day, you're like, oh, this is working really good. I'm gonna put $100 per day. You literally might only get 20% more leads. You might not. You likely won't get 100% jump. So keep that in mind. I hope I explained that half decently.

Let me share the screen again.

Greg from Ozark. I conducted a Google search for lawn care in Ozark where I live, which is also. Which is also my location name and my website is returning great results. However, when I search lawn care Nixa, my website is Barrett. Nixa is a neighboring town to Ozark and inside my service area. Is there anything that can be done to help the website rank better for searches related to Nixa? What would I do? Screenshots attached. I know this market, so I'm pretty sure I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. So if you have.

Boom, boom, boom. Cool. So the main thing is we can only mention city names inside your server, inside of your territory. So if Nixa is inside of your territory, your. Your governed territory on your franchise agreement or we are able to put on your website. So just email web gustalongerservices.com just keep in mind every single request to change your. Your website goes through me when it comes to. Or Lee. I think Lee actually does this too. Now. Every single one goes through us because we have to make sure if you mention a city name, it is inside of your territory. We have to do that. We could come into legal issues down the road if we don't. So just don't think you can just email webustalongerservices.com and get in that service area added and like a bunch of city names. You can't. It has to be inside your. Your territory name. And I would also say, let's just say. And I know this is not the case for you at all.

Greg. I know it's not for you like this and Ozark, but let's just assume Ozark is 80,000 people and you have Nixa, it's like 5,000 people. You're like, oh, I want to do Nixa. Like, look, if. If the majority of your clients are coming from the one, you might want to just put all the eggs into that basket that's driving all your growth and not try to dilute. Because if you start listing a whole bunch of city names, you are going to dilute your SEO. Right? So when I go into like south park, for example, now North Carolina. I'm just going to mention South Park. I'm not going to do two, three, four different city names even if they are in my territory because that's like my, like I want to stay inside that smaller radius and I don't want to dilute it by going after the little extraneous city names around it. So just keep that in mind. That'll be a cautionary tale.

I might not do my usual interesting mask or props due to my son's t ball game tonight at the same time as the quarterly call. We're very disappointed. I'm assuming this is. It's Kevin. You know, it just won't be the same. Kevin just won't be the same. You know, maybe a good baseball hat will let you pass. It would be the first maskless Kevin since the the origination of roundtable meetings at Augusta Nation. All you can do is this, you know, his first roundtable after getting a franchisee of the year and just goes right to his head. No pun intended. Guess the Long Hair Plantation. There's been rain for the past two days now. The sky is clear, the ground is still wet. Would you skip until next week or just hit the spots that are not wet? It kind of depend on what the forecast in the future and then what your.

What your schedule is looking like. I know in Florida, for example, the whole, the ground does hold water and you guys rain is like torrential so you gotta kind of stop. We don't pause for rain. Yesterday it was pouring, but we still, we just still keep going. But we have different types of grass. So I would say look at your schedule and look at the weather in the next few days and see what, what's it looking like right? Like if your schedule is like okay, I can grab a couple cleanups, do them now. Great.

If the weather's looking good for next week, you have plenty of time to catch up. So I'd be trying to pull like anything that you can get done now project related now. But if you've already done that in the past two days because it's been raining, you might need to just go out and get started. And it's going to come down to your schedule. Like if you're so backed up you're just going to, you're going to have to go out and get it done.

Mike, I have a question. Is there a way around paying a high workers comp rate? Do we truly have to inform them of employee changes or Payroll rates are super high. Do you recommend workers? Who do you recommend for workers Comp. Alison I don't know if you use command center or not, but typically you can get workers comp through QuickBooks and they're pretty competitive. Honestly, when you do it through QuickBooks Payroll or Gusto Payroll, like their rates are pretty good in some states, by the way, if some people are confused, workers comp in some states, like for example in Washington, we have to buy our workers comp through the state. Other, other places it is through the, there's private and you have options, right? For us, it's not like that. There's a rate based upon how much people get hurt. It's through the state. It's, you know, completely. There's no shopping around with what we call LNI labor and Industries. So just keep in mind some states are like that. But if you do have the ability to shop around, I have seen QuickBooks and Gusto. We pretty good, honestly in terms of their rates and we shop around those rates on QuickBooks and when we're setting up your payroll. But you can do the same thing.

In terms of informing the employee changes or payroll. Typically an annual basis is all you need to do. Check your, your state regulations. But like I know when I did insurance we just needed to do an annual check.

We would not do it like, otherwise you're going to spend your entire day constantly adding and subtracting drivers, adding and attracting employees, changing your payroll rate. Like I would recommend, just have a date on your calendar. Maybe it's twice a year. We do it once a year where we do all the information from our insurance. If you with your insurance company for usually more than a year, they'll automatically reach out to you and do an insurance audit. And they'll say, hey, we want to see everyone on your payroll. We want to see payroll reports, we want to see your P and L, et cetera. So typically they'll actually reach out to you and ask for that information.

And typically the less information you give them outside of that, your rates are better, honestly. Because if you're on constantly changing drivers, you're constantly changing employees, you're constantly changing what you're paying and you're telling them as it's happening, they're just, you're going to have like one driver, for example, that will be under 21, and it'll bring down your average age to a certain level. Like, we won't, we won't insure you or like we're going to double your rates. So we just do it annually. That's what's required by most states. Depends on the insurer, they. They can have internal policies that are different.

But yeah, typically less information you give them, the. The more money or the cheaper your rates are going to be. Honestly, I have a customer who canceled. Not. This customer's. Not. This customer is coming back about one week to 10 days later saying that he swears we damaged his neighbor's camper trailer. I asked that the said employee about it, who is a great employee and has been trustworthy, and he said no. He knows if he lies, he would get fired. So how would you go about this? The fact that he did seven to ten days is troubling. Um, I would say you need direct evidence on photo photos because you trust your employee. Stand behind your employee on this one, probably. Obviously, every situation so here so different, right? Is this a $200 fix or we're talking like $10,000, $3,000, whatever. If this is under a couple hundred bucks, I'd probably just pay it for goodwill. If this is. It's very obvious that you don't think this happened. Your employee doesn't think this happened, and it's a 2000, $3000 fix. That's when you say, I need evidence because I trust my employee. I stand behind him 100%. He says he did not do it. And you contact me over a week later after we were at your property. And so if they can't provide that evidence, then you bail. This is the thing. Remember, your customer is mad because only because your their neighbor is going to put pressure on them. Right? So what you might want to do is just go directly to the source, which is the neighbor.

Customer. The customer already canceled. Mercy. Yeah. No, if they've canceled, then I'm even less inclined to, like, worry about it, especially if you really do trust this employee. Also, I would keep this employee engaged in terms of knowing what you're doing, like saying, hey, you said this. I'm going to stand up for you. I'm going to stand up for what you said, and I'm not going to pay this off. It'll create goodwill with them just knowing that you're actually standing up for them in this case. So. All right, guys, we will see you this evening. Check your emails for the Zoom link. 5:00pm Pacific Time, 8:00pm Eastern Standard Time. It's going to be full of little goodies. At least if you can stay for the first 20 minutes or so, that'd be excellent. And then if you have questions about what I present, can absolutely go over that afterwards. Lee and Chuck will be presenting a little bit about gms and what's expected in the non tangibles of what a good GM does. And so it'll be beneficial for all. Thanks so much everyone. Have a great day. We'll see you tonight. Take care.