Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/16/2025

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to their mic minutes. Mastermind, one second here.

Boom. Let's get started.

Tomorrow is the roundtable. So tomorrow evening, 7:00pm Eastern Standard Time, 4:00pm Pacific Standard Time, is the Zoom Roundtable in your email. I sent that last weekend. The weekend before as well. I'll be texting everyone tomorrow. We will not have a mic mint Mastermind tomorrow. We will just reserve all of that time for the roundtable in the evening. And so, yeah, feel free. If you have questions, feel free to bring those to that. I know we already have the mic meets Mastermind, so a lot of your questions are usually answered already. One second. Make sure. Can you hear me? One second. I did not check my audio. One second. Okay, good.

So I know we have Mike Mitts Mastermind, so usually get questions out. So usually the questions are based upon what is the new information we're sharing in the. In the roundtable. So a whole bunch of announcements, things that are coming and being released. So I'm looking forward to sharing that with everyone. Be there live if you can keep your camera on. So much more interesting to see everyone's faces than just names on a screen. So really looking forward to it. We got a question pop in Mount Vernon. Thoughts on two man vert? Two man first one a verse. I think you would mean. Thoughts on two man versus one man cruise for initial mows. Customer complain and calculate 180 an hour. I get very upset. Already had a couple cancel.

You know, one one person mows are always gonna. One person crews are always more efficient. So when you're charging the customer by the minute, technically, yes. It's going to cost them more to have two people on it. Also, if it's super overgrown, you're going to run into the fact like your crew's gonna get completely demoralized if they're on one mow initial mo for like four hours. So there's pros and cons. I would say you're always going to get this for initial mows that are overgrown, the price being so high and like, it just is what it is. We're in most markets four to eight weeks into spring rush. So you're getting now for the next few weeks. All new mowing customers usually require a pretty heavy initial mow. So. So I would be planning from a budget hour perspective in this direction. That is every initial mow is going to take me longer because the person likely has not mowed the grass for four to eight weeks when they should have been. So should I put a solo person Only on it. Well it's going to, it is going to bring the price down. So in the perfect world, yes, simply because they're more efficient than a two man crew. But I would personally not change my whole schedule and put just initial mode with solo crews just to bring that price down. I would not do that.

I would probably just make sure the initial mode is like hey look, if it gets the property it's going to take like five times longer than the budget hours. Call the customer. I'd rather do that than like change my whole schedule of doing only solo mower solo routes for initial mows. Then you gotta change trucks and like it's a pain in the neck especially if you're bagging. So that would be my two cents. Okay, share screen. Let's hop in here. We only have a couple questions today so if you have one, feel free to submit in the form. The description in the link in the description takes you to this form. Let's see, the first one is Matt Slakey from Salem, Oregon. A local 42 year old indoor landscaping business is is for sale in my city. They do sales install and maintenance for indoor plants and offices. A few questions. If I did buy it, would it be need to be rolled up in Augusta or is it optional? You'd have to look at this with Lee but like so traditionally anything to do with landscaping, snow removal or Christmas lights have to be rolled into Augusta. Now for new people joining now they have to do within two years. We allowed people have historically gotten, that's totally fine. But going forward we're doing that to protect people's territories. And we've had to turn down some people that want to join Augusta. But we did it because their existing business is operating inside of Augusta locations territory. And so I was like well yes, you could start one an hour away but if you're also competing with an owner, I know there's gonna be bad blood eventually. Like the, the likelihood of bad blood is high and so we're trying to avoid it at all cost. So that's why we do that. It's not because like I, you know, generating more revenue through the rest. We don't charge royalty. So I don't really care about that. I just don't want blood between owners because someone has a historical brand they bring in and then they join someplace else and then they're competing with another owner vicariously. So that's why we do that. But indoor plants doesn't sound like a lot of crossover. I don't think anyone's Gonna be too concerned about this. So if I did buy it, would it need to be rolled up in the gusta? I would probably make sure you run this by Lee. And from a compliance perspective, I don't think so. If you're just doing indoor plants only, probably not a big deal. Is this compatible with lawn care or Gus in general? Regardless, if I, if I bought it, does it make sense to take on this type of work? I don't believe it's. It's. As the total addressable market for indoor plants is just so much lower. That's why I would be careful. Now if someone's built up a very established indoor landscaping business, very cool. I don't think it would gel super well with Augusta lawn care, because when you think out, when you think indoor landscaping, I get a picture of what you're doing. When I think Augusta lawn care, I think mowing grass and landscaping. And so I don't think it would roll up well together. I think it does have to live separately.

So that'd just be my two cents. Do you have any advice on distinguishing between taking advantage of a good opportunity and taking my eye off the ball? Yeah, like, so.

First off, you know, let's assume it's a good, good opportunity. So like, buying price is correct, like a lot of other factors. Let's assume that for a moment this is a good opportunity.

Just realize that when you get on the other side of the, like Alex said this the other day. So when you get on the other side of the fence, because, you know, you know the grass is always green on the other side until you get over there and you realize all the crap that was there that made it grow in the first, and you start to realize the issues with that industry and et cetera. So, you know, it's very likely you'd get in this industry and find hurdles and blockades, et cetera. It's like, okay, well, if I have to figure those out, why don't just spend all that time, energy and mental resources on my current problems and issues. And if I did that, would I just already have that size of business if I, if I just focus on what I'm doing now? And the answer to that most of the time is yes. That being said, there are sometimes, for example, if you're super passionate about indoor landscaping, hey, like, all right, money's not the main thing here. Sometimes you'll do things for a long term play. So for example, like I, I knew, like, getting into software, for example, was not necessarily like in my bingo card five Years ago. However, you start to realize, okay, in five more years what we will we need is a moat around Augusta. And to do that we'll need software. Okay, great. Now it makes more sense from a 5 and 10 year perspective. But not in the short term. In the short term I will lose a lot of money. So like sometimes you're willing to take the short term l for the quote unquote, taking your eye off the ball. But it's the objective is that it comes back around in it's in a very long term way. But the vast majority of the time when you take your eye off the ball, quote unquote, or do something else, you will make less money in the short term. And for everyone that says, yeah, this is just long term, this can be long term, I'm going to be, you know, it's going to work out. The vast majority of people don't last five years in business. So to say that people should do this because like if everyone was thinking long term, like 10 and 15 and 20 year horizons, a lot of the times what looks like a distraction to them is actually a huge opportunity that if put together there'd be a lot of alliances and.

Positive things, especially if there's crossover between the two different businesses like indoor and outdoor landscape, for example. The vast majority of businesses don't last five years. And so it is, they never actually live long enough to see the synergies happen. So.

I have more questions. So maybe this is for coaching call. Yeah, you can do a coaching call. It'd be a great question for the office hours with Nick. You can always ask questions here as well. But I think that until you have a business that can run without you, I think almost everything is a distraction. So until the business can run without you being daily operations, I think everything is a distraction. To be honest with you, everything. Unless the business can run without you. Unless you're past, you know, I would say at least stage three or four of wealth. Everything is a distraction. Like everything. Any other business opportunity besides like getting to at least like stage one, stage two and stage three, then getting a general manager, like until you do that, everything in my opinion is a distraction. Now once you pass that, it's a matter of okay, am I willing to take a little bit less money or return for either A long term swings or B life value like what I want out of life. And so but until then I just, I do believe that everything is a distraction. And that's why like the stages of wealth, we made that because everyone I kept seeing people like at 3, 400,000 revenue, thinking about investing in real estate, thinking about second locations. Like no, no, no, no. Like hold on, you're not through the stages. Like we got to get this thing in profit mode before we even think about a second location, before you even think about a general manager. And so not following those stages of wealth will cause less. You'd have less money. But. But there are times that you are willing to make that exchange value for other values that you have, like family, long term swings, passions that you have, etc. But just know like many times getting those stages out of order will cause like a financial hit.

Alamo Ranch, Texas Hey Mike, can we get Autoplay on the Copilot University videos? Maybe the landscape business course, mba, the new owner training videos too? Yeah. So I think what you're actually wanting is auto switching from course to course because right now if you start a course it does automatically play the video. But once you're done the video, it doesn't automatically go to the next lecture. And that's not possible unfortunately. Inside Teachable. So we use a teachable learning platform called Teachable and basically when you finish the lecture it doesn't automatically go to the next one, but once you get to the next, like if you click next it will automatically start playing the video. So kind of stinks. In the perfect world you'd probably have all the videos in one lecture and then it just, it would just auto play them through. But no, it just, it just auto plays the first one. It's all. The only option they have in Teachable is to where once you go to a lecture it starts auto playing the very first video. So. All right, well that's all we got for today everyone. Tomorrow is the roundtable. It is by far the most announcements we've ever had and the most updates. So be there or be square. It's very, very good. There's some really cool stuff that's coming out. Everything from owner success, everything from Lee on kind of the item 19, the financial performance. So great updates on Q1 across the destination. Just really, really solid. Got some new vendor portal stuff, new vendor preferred vendors I should say with some really awesome discounts that every single person will use. So looking forward to and some really great updates on instant pricing, et cetera. So come there tomorrow, 4pM Pacific Standard Time, 7pM Eastern Standard Time. There will be no mic minutes tomorrow morning but we will continue as normal on Friday. Right. Love you all. Take care.

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