Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/14/2025

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Mike minutes, Mastermind. Let's get this party started. We'll jump right into questions. Looks like there are 10 questions today. Very good.

Zoom. Just a touch.

Boom. Quick reminder, this Thursday 4pm Pacific Standard Time is the round table on Zoom. I'll be sending out a notification this evening with just a reminder via email and then also the day of I'll send a text message out as well. But this Thursday, 4:00pm Pacific Standard Time, 7:00pm Eastern Standard Time. Hopefully it's late enough so you are done, work out of the field and able to focus on the roundtable. Coming in live is great. Turn that video camera on and we'll have a great time. Got a bunch of announcements and looking back at Q1 in terms of numbers, etc. So it'll be fun. Let's go get started with these questions though. First one is from Mr. Anonymous. Is it possible to make a loan to your company? I have $10,000 I'd like to put into the company and take payments back from using this money for marketing. Is this legal? I assume it is if I need to make some sort of a document showing terms and such so you can. The question is why exactly you'd want to be doing this.

Because why not just put an owner's distribution in and if you're an S corp, it's taken as you know, if you spend more money in the business, those losses fall through to your tax return. So I don't see a huge reason why you do this for marketing.

But there are some reasons why you would do a loan to yourself. For example, like if you want to buy a truck with cash but you don't want it to affect the P and L for the sake of profit sharing in one specific quarter, you could then, you know, give yourself a loan, give the loan, give a business, give a loan to the business from your personal self and then basically you just have to pay taxes on the interest and you have to report that as income. So there is a little more accounting, right? You got to have the document of a loan, you have an agreed upon interest rate, you got to make sure there's payments that are coming across each month or quarter, however you have it set up and you got to report the interest expense as an expense on the business and as income to you personally. So as long as you're doing all of that, you're good. The question is more out of why are you doing the loan? And.

Yeah, I guess don't have enough context as to why you're doing the loan. Exactly. But assuming you're trying to like level out payments or you're trying to do something for tax purposes, I can see that happening. Then by all means that's something you can do. Just make sure you document it really well. You can use like rocket lawyer, even ChatGPT to create a decent document that outlines what are the monthly payments, what are the interest terms, is there a prepayment clause, things like that, or an early, early payment clause. Johnny from Denver, North Carolina. When CC creates an estimate from the website, then sends the customer is the default to charge 50% more for BI weekly. My bi weekly pricing on a website is slightly higher than 50%. And the customers are confused when they see one price on the website and another when they see the quote. The pricing has always been has only been $5 more on the quote but again customers are still confused.

So you just. If it's on your website, great prices have been found on more than a quote. But again customers are still getting confused.

Okay, so I'm confused. Is it on the quote that's $5 more. Okay. My bi weekly pricing was slightly lower than 50%. Great. And the customer confused when they see the one price on the website and then another when seeing the quote.

Okay, I see what you're saying. I think.

Okay, so I see what you're saying. So they're accepting the price.

Creates an estimate from the website. When sends to the customer as a default search.

So they're getting the price because see if the form is getting accepted from the quote. We see the pricing. So a little confused on the question. Sorry. When CC creates an estimate from the website, then sends it to the customer is the default to charge 50% more for biweekly. I wouldn't say it's a default. Most cut. Most of Augusta Nation does use 50% more BI weekly, but it's not the default. My bi weekly pricing, my website is slightly lower than 50. And the customers are confused when they see one price on the website and another when seeing the quote. The pricing has only been $5 more on the quote. I thought it was on the website. The pricing has only been $5 more on the quote. But again customers are still confused.

Okay, so if you're, if you, if you. Okay.

I'm not sure if you're saying the customer is confused by the fact that it's only $5 more and they're comparing it to rest of Augusta Nation, which I don't think that's happening because they wouldn't be getting quotes from other Other locations. I also don't know if you're saying that Command center is sending it out as 50% more in which case it would be strange because they see the pricing and they copy it from the form. So if this is happening Johnny, submit it on the to help Gustolongerservices.com you could also submit a feedback form from the dashboard forms feedback for Command center and see what's going on here. But this could be likely something that just need tighten up in your wiki. But if the pricing is correct on your website, it comes across as what's on your website to Command Center. So they would have to like it would be a yellow slip if they did that and if it's happened consistently there might be something else like in your wiki or something else that's pointing them in that direction. So yeah, just help with Augusta longer services. If that's happening periodically or more than once, like definitely reach out to them. Kevin. Kevin from Bloomingdale, NJ I'm noticing a higher attrition rate this year of roughly 10 versus my 5% in past years. I know the quality is good because I did most of it myself last year. The only other thing besides maybe the economy is maybe a lack of communication on my end. I sent few one click estimate emails and the only other communication was invoices. Should I be reaching out to my clients every two months or so to check in on how they like their service? Usually I assume no news is good news and just keep plugging away, plugging along. But I'm wondering if they should be hearing from me more often. Love to hear your thoughts. Thanks. Like if people are canceling, I'm looking at why. Like if they're canceling and moving to a different service, is it because you didn't solve more of their problems? Like I always look at like yes, things like the economy will affect your attrition. I also know that selling more of my services to my customers will increase my retention. I reduce attrition because if you're doing four services for someone, they're less likely to leave you than if you're just doing mowing. So I would take the bull by the horns on this one and say like okay, if I'm going to take accountability for this instead of just saying ah, it's the economy, which it likely is. We're seeing across the board in all industries like a definite this is happening with just the chaos of what's happening. Everyone gets a little freaky and they start spending less money. Very normal. That Being said, your attrition is very much tied to how many services, how many problems are you solving for the customer? It's harder for them to switch if you have four so they take ownership of it. I would go sell them more services and I would do text messages, I would upsell them into bed maintenance, I would upsell them into winter services, et cetera. I would take the bull by the horns on this one. Even if it's a matter of like, you know, churn at 5, going to 10% is pretty big jump. I'm assuming you're talking about monthly. That's a lot. 10% monthly, it's a lot of churn. And so you might want to consider something like a, you know, do you do a treatment, do you do a core aeration, do you do an overseas something of value to customers helps also. But again, solve more of their problems. So use the upsell feature, reach out to them individually, do inspections of their property. And then if you're hiring more people, keep in mind you last year your quality might have been higher than theirs. So you might have to be. It might be a retraining problem as well.

Kevin from Bloomingdale. Majority of my projects mulch, bus trimming, property clamps come from my recurring customers. I seem to be under budget on my projects. More times than not I need to increase budget hours which will increase my prices.

I'm afraid that if my close ratio decreases on these projects that these customers will find someone else to give them a price and then also have them mow their lawn as well. Am I overthinking this scarcity mindset? I need this client to stay with me through the summer, but I can't be under on BH anymore. Be brutally honest. Thanks, Mike. So first off, you haven't proven this. So you're. You're making a ghost out of this, which is it doesn't exist. You don't know that for fact. You don't know for a fact that if you charge a higher price, less people will accept the estimates. And you also don't know that if that happens that they will then use a different service for mowing. So I would be careful about making boogeyman out of things that are ghosts. So you ask for brutally advice. That's what I would say. It's very hard to fight an enemy. You do not have definition of. You do not know that they will.

If you actually charge what you need to to be able to make money on the upsells, you do not know if they will first off if your close ratio will drop. Secondly, you don't know if by them declining an estimate they're going to go to a competitor for mowing. You don't know those things. Now could those things be true? Yes. And I would follow you on that path in terms of logic because especially like raising price, you will decrease close ratio. But by increasing your prices to what you need to, will you reduce your close ratio by only 5 or 10%? We might still meet all game, keep raising prices and doing what you're, you know, paying, making sure you're charging what you're worth. Now if all of a sudden you have a massive collapse of acceptance and it goes down to 10 or 15% of people accepting and you're starting to lose people and they're saying I am leaving because I want someone to do this other service and they're cheaper, then we have, then we have a real problem to solve. And what's cool is like you don't have to like you can adjust here pretty quickly. You could for the next few weeks, for people that are asking for upsells, charge what you know. You need to see if no one accepts, that's a problem. See if by them accept them not accepting, do they go and go find another provider? Right. So you could find this pretty quickly without like jeopardizing your entire customer database.

Marco, when doing door hangers in Washington, we get lots of initial modes that are 1 to 2 inches, 1 to 2ft in the backyard. People mentioned that we should eat the cost and do the same weekly rate. Not for one or two feet. No, I, I don't, I don't believe that. Since we bag, it can get pretty tough. A $40 mo, we are seeing it to be between 190 to $240 cost. If we were to charge per minute per man, is it worth to eat the cost? No, it's not. Because if I'm going to eat 200, I might as well just go buy another customer. If my customer acquisition cost is a hundred or two hundred, let's assume I would rather go buy the customer. So I would not eat $200. I might eat 10, 15 or 20 bucks on initial mode, knowing I can keep them in perpetuity and I can have price pricing power against them in the future. Right. The advantage, the reason that you would consider eating the cost is the fact that in 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, I can raise their prices and turn that $40 cut into a $60 cut and increase the price by 50% on that customer. But from a acquisition perspective, there's too much risk. If I assume customer acquisition cost plus I lose $200 on the initial MO. I'm so deep in I might as well just go buy another customer. So I do not believe in this logic. If the initial mo, assuming you can raise their price in the future, assuming you don't have a locked in thing where for like five or 10 years you can't raise their price, then I'm willing to eat something on the front. But if you have pricing power, if you have the ability to raise someone's price, that's the only time I'd be.

Giving any sort of concessions on the first one. And I wouldn't be doing it by that much because I just go get another customer. Dylan Wirtz I set up automated invoice and ran into a problem. When the weekly invoices go out, customers with cards on file are getting emails like the one attached below and getting upset. Customers responded saying we should just charge the card and are annoyed or they are thinking asking for payment again even though they're just charged the service. The issue is there's no way to send two different emails. Receipt for paid invoices normal invoice for unpaid there's two different templates for this. There's also no way to just stop sending the email since sending the invoice is what triggers the card to charge. An idea I had was to simplify the template. So just keep this text Dear Name your invoice is attached. Total due is X. Thank you for so much. We appreciate your business. Click here to get your account. To get you to your account you can update your card contact information more. This keeps it simple and it works for paid invoices or unpaid. If it paid they'll see zero dollars and move on. If it's unpaid they have what they'll see they owe on the email. Here's your thoughts on this or if there are any ideas how to do this differently. To perfect the automated invoicing I'd like to just send nothing to those that paid like you have previously mentioned and only email it out to those that have don't have a card on file but as far as I know have not. But that's not currently possible. Yeah, so you can solve this. You can either a have two different templates one for paid invoices and one for unpaid and you just need to you can select that. The second thing is you could also for an automations perspective you could just have it where.

You you Filter. You can filter up by people who don't have a card on file and so you could set this up. So Dylan, I would say I would have a conversation with.

Atc. I think your, your proposition though is very good. I think if you just want to keep it really simple, have one template for all invoices, keep it basically your total amount is due is and put that merge tag and so $0, I think that's totally fine. I will say if you really want to customize it, I do think it's possible by just having two different templates. And you could also further edit this by simply filtering the people who have ACH versus not. But again you're trying to automate it. So I would probably just do. As an automation.

I would actually, yeah, I would just have it where they get charged and then I'd basically be doing a filter based on if they have an overdue invoice and they don't have a car on file, then I'll be sending them sending them a certain email. So I am 99% sure, Dylan, this can be done. I'm not super, super clear on the advantages of making it complex versus just using your idea, which I think is good. And that is just keep it the same for every single one. Your amount is X And you could probably put that merge tag also in the title of the email so that they wouldn't have to open it up.

And then in terms of filtering out the people who already have a card on file.

I'm sure there's a way to do that because there is a, there's a.

A condition around card on file. So I have to think about that for a second. I would probably, honestly I would probably like set my automated not send out emails to anyone. And then I would do is just like take all the ones that didn't have a card on file, select them all and just send those out with the one asking for the payment. That's what I would do if that's what you want to do. Like you do not send messages to people who you charge and only the people who have don't have a car info you want to send them. I would set your auto invoicing as do not send it. Do not send. And then I would just on the first have a reminder that hey, I just select everyone that doesn't have a card on file and I'll send those an email. That's what I would probably do.

Next up is Joel from Lafayette. Would would you be able to share the conversion on the Command Center Jotform for the new Instant quote door mowing door hanger. I'm looking for the circled number in the attached screenshot.

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, I will look at that.

I don't know if that's tracking.

Yeah, I'll have to look at it. I will see if I have this data how much of it's broken apart. Making a note, one second.

Done. I do see a pretty wide dispersion across different locations because a lot of it's based upon if someone's going aggressive on pricing.

But yes, I will see if I can get that boom.

Number eight. Is it possible to contribute to the safe investment in increments until we reach the $25,000 minimum or is the full amount required up front? Full amount is required up front. Again, if, if there was like a time crunch within a week I will give you plenty of heads up.

So I would not be freaking out about this. I would continue to put that money aside and I'll give you at least a week, at least a week to get things moved around if needs be. It will not be a mad dash at the end. So. But you know, it does, it does require an upfront at least 25,000. Coach Connor. I can never remember what is it? What is a good customer click rate when running Google Ads? Very, very dependent. Like I've seen click rates so high and so low. It's incredible. It's kind of like because it is a form of direct marketing, weather plays a huge pattern in this. Also sometimes I've seen when a big competitor of yours turns off their ads, all of a sudden your click through rate will go like way up because now they don't see two ads, they might only see one. So I've seen it all over the place. It's actually a little bit frustrating to actually try to get clear metrics on this because of seasonality but also just because like other people running ads or not impacts your click through rate. Also good customer conversation with Google Ads. Also good conversion with Google Ads. I know the CAC will depend on close ratio.

Yeah. So it's just so dependent. It also depends on what keywords you're targeting. So for example, if you go after keywords like landscaping, conversion is less because they're going after a bigger project, a bigger ticket mowing is usually a little bit better conversion but again you're going after a smaller ticket item. So in general that's why people are usually willing to spend more for a lead for big projects because they Recoup the cost of acquisition faster. So I wanted to run ads, door hangers, follow ups, et cetera heavy for the next six weeks to capture some leftover capacity as we've gotten out of some landscape work. Currently per click is around a dollar on Google. That's pretty good from what I'm seeing right now.

Conversion cost per conversion is around $15. Very good. That's fantastic with about $30 customer cost if you have a 50% close ratio. Just making sure I'm doing my math correctly before I run more ads and pump some money. More money off. Very good. Secondly, be careful about pumping money into it because with Google, remember we have a finite number of people using these keywords. So you could double your budget and get 10% more leads. It's very possible. So I'm not saying that's going to happen, but I would raise your increments of your budget slowly when it comes to Google leads. And again, there's a really good Evergrow did a really good keynote on this at conference two years ago. It's on the dashboard or on the Academy. Walk you through how to look at these metrics and determine if you're overspending based upon the saturation in your market. So if you're spending $10 a day right now, don't expect to go to 20, 20 or 30 and double or triple the amount of leads you're getting now. It could be if you have tons of people traffic and you're just scratching the surface, it could be possible. But those numbers are very good, Connor. Very good. I would also be increasing my budget if I could be getting customer for $30. You literally are recouping the customer acquisition cost within a matter of a visit or two. Fantastic. So I would do that all day long. And yes, if I could take out a loan to get customers for 30 bucks where the first visit I am making that back, I would be a very happy man. So I would keep doing that. I'd just be careful with dumping too much on and potentially having a problem. Is it possible receive the $2,000 referral check retroactively? I was talks with someone who ultimately joined but he admitted neglecting to put the name in the form. Thanks. Send an email to Lee augustalongerservices.com he can work on that with you. 100.

All right, I think that is it. I have a little bit of notes here I will follow up on. And that is it for today. All right everyone have a fantastic week. Happy spring rush now. Everyone's now getting into the thick of it. I had a few people get injured on the weekend. What are we doing? I'm sorry. It's horrible. This time of year is brutal, so keep your head in the game. I know. It's starting to get thick for almost everyone now. And reach out if you need help. Don't go through spring rush completely overwhelmed and not reach out to someone else. All right? Love you all. Take care. We'll see you tomorrow.