Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/20/23

Hey, everyone. Hope you're doing super well. Let's go get started. What a morning. My goodness. I completely jinxed myself by posting the Facebook group saying it was gonna be a great day. Copilot went down twice this morning. Ridiculous.

So we live and learn, at least. No, you know, why and what we can do to fix it, at least. So.

We'Re basically just playing it. We need to put a new test server in. We've been pushing everything directly into production when we fix things. The problem with that is if someone gets in there, one of the developers, and submits something as a fix and overwrites things, and now you've just messed up everything. So it's just too fragile of a state. And so we've been good the past month, but this morning, man, has been awful. So I'm going to age probably about five times faster having copilot. I'm honestly telling you this. All right, let's go ahead and get started.

Announcement. Liz wanted me to go over, and that is in relation to your Empire, your collections. You do need to make sure you pay those once you send them to collections. If the person pays you, you need to pay Empire. They'll just stop taking your account. And we can't jeopardize them leaving us completely because I can't get that rate anywhere else for a gustination. And the percentage that they take, I think, is 30 or 33%. Like, I can't get that anywhere else. So, please, if you submit them to collections and the customer pays you, you need to pay Empire and they will send you an invoice. Because what's happening is they will still. They'll keep contacting the customer. The customer, like, oh, no, I paid it. They'll send submit proof. And then what's happening is Empire is billing you, right? Because they're like, hey, like, we need our money. Like, that's how they make their money. Please respect that, because otherwise you're going to jeopardize that relationship for everyone in Augusta. And I cannot get less than 40% anywhere else. So please, please, please.

If. If you submit some of the collections and they pay you submit that. That money, that. That 33 or whatever to Empire, they will send you an invoice. Just. Just mail them the check or whatever, please. So that would be very, very helpful. We cannot lose that relationship. They've made a pretty good process for us at command, and.

That rate is unbeatable. So. All right. I got at the gym. I still pay. I pay 55, I think so. And that's with Anytime Fitness and they have, they have us on a lock like every franchisee has to use.

The vendor. So anyways, let's go and jump in. Let's see here. I haven't opened this up yet. Sorry Mastermind. Okay, we got nine questions. Here we go.

Present.

How does state of emergency work? This may be premature, but I have to let a go of a gm if he doesn't turn things around with this location, with his location in the meantime, it looks like I'm, I might, may have to look for another GM to take his place until we can get him or her to training.

Two things. One, a working gm because most of their time is really spent with the crew. What I would do is put that person into place. If you need to get rid of a GM and put someone else in their place, just, you just need someone that will manage to help manage the team, get them started in the morning, etc. And then what I would do in this case is you would potentially do all the estimates for now, but then that working GM doesn't really need to do like estimating and things like that until they do come for training, that's fine. But you can get, you start getting them broke. Broken.

Terms of state of emergency, it's not necessarily something you would use in this situation. So state of emergency in terms of how it works, you can click on the button on the main part of the dashboard to walk you through that, how that process works. Basically six weeks command center is going to check in with you on a daily basis to make sure things are going well. But we're not going to like be routing in or we're not going to be a managing or crew throughout the day. And that's what your working GM will need to be doing. So what I'd be potentially doing in this scenario is probably having you want whoever you think is in your current crew that could help be at that location, be a presence in the morning, be accountable to get the crew out, get them started for the day. Maybe you show them a thing or two on how to dispatch, or show them throughout the day how to manage the crew, they're their point person, etc. And then potentially you take the estimates on yourself for now, just until that gap is filled. Two, can I run one location while CC runs the other. How does it work? Yeah, I know like you need a still, you still need a working gm. Even with, even if command center was running a location, you still need some point person there. And if you can make that an employee that'd be fine. Command center can definitely help and you can submit for state of emergency for them to help step in. But they're still going to need to be a point person that is guarding and is going to be in touch with command center throughout the day. So number three, how much would you let the business suffer before cutting and replacing a gm? So the first two seems to me like this isn't a very acute problem. The third question leads me to believe that you're still in the deciding part. So that changes things a little bit. So it doesn't seem like, okay, so if you have to. So I would not let, let this GM go until you do have a plan.

If that's kind of is in the back of your head right now.

In terms of the business is suffering, you need you, you have an obligation based on the employees.

They'Re working to replace them. And in terms of how long I would put up with something, it'd be like, look, you get yourself a warning after a month maybe and then if you don't turn around the next month, like you're out. And a lot of it has to do with level of effort. Like if someone's kicking butt and working as hard as they possibly can work in the field and doing estimates and doing door hangers, great. But if they're not putting in the effort, then that's where I get very, very concerned and would be cutting them much faster. And so I'd probably give them one warning where if they're really working hard and they're just not seeing the good numbers because potentially they can't sell, they're not doing follow up calls. I might give them a couple more, you know, a little bit more leeway. But the biggest thing I'm looking at is are they trying very hard.

And so, but in terms of how long let the business suffer? Like not long at all. Like you can only let the business suffer so long before it becomes a money suck. And especially if you have multiple locations, as soon as that second location starts to hurt, you're basically siphoning off all the cash from your first location. Right. And that's why again, the success of a secondary locations strictly comes down to the type of general manager that is in play. All right, so cut them fast if you, if you can and if you have someone else to replace them, that's the most ideal.

So you know, our general manager, I know that that video came out last week with Chuck, but like that's from a few weeks ago. Like I know that the locations that he was specifically talking about in that video. They have done a really, really good job in the past few days and weeks to like turn things around, increase their level of engagement, get out and start pounding pavement doing door hangers. Like the response to your feedback is extremely important. How they do that?

Delta. Hey Mike, I'm wondering if you have a process for back lacklusting clients so that command center knows not to schedule estimates or anything for them. We operate under our previous brand for a while and there are a handful of people we don't want don't want ever serve again. One of them showed up on our dispatch board a date. Not a big deal. We can email the client, say we're too busy, take on work at this time or something like that. What's your thoughts on the. On how to deal with this or should I not worry about it because it's such a small number of people? Yeah. So definitely on the off. Two things.

You should be able to mark them as like do not disturb so they don't ever get one click. Estimate emails etc. I'd take their email out of their their profile and then put that in the office notes and then in the office notes just put like do not service for any reason. No estimates. Again all bold, all caps and put that in office notes. And command center will pick up on that. It's very occasional that somehow they can get around it.

But they're like, there's ways but like 95 of the time they'll, they'll catch it and they'll be. They'll just get it right when they get to their account.

Max from Burnaby. Initial MO price Sometimes clients are surprised by the cost of the initial MoW. Occasionally these clients refer to a conversation with CC where an agent said it would cost close to the bi weekly rate. Is it possible to not refer to the bi weekly rate in relation to initial MoW pricing? Our initial mows often cost much more even though the lots are small and our market establishing edges can take a long time because the grass is often growing onto the sidewalk on pathways. We do not talk about this at command at all. I don't know if I've ever heard. That being said.

I'll run. Oh you know, Liz will hear this obviously and she can run this bike. I have never heard this said one time.

So we very much stick to the rate that you put in there per minute and we say if it's, if it's overgrown or any of the edges need to be redone, that first visit is by the minute. We emphasize that on every single one. I hear that. I've never heard that. It's close to the bi weekly rate. So Liz will see this though, and she'll be able to diagnose better.

Oh, a lot of anonymous questions this morning. Why didn't you paint your personal car yellow and have decals? Just curious.

I.

It's the first time I've had a car in a very long time that was not yellow. And it is a certain part of it being nice. I get recognized out in public. People will put stuff on my car when it's Augusta because they know it's me. So it's a little bit nice to be incognito a little bit. That's just the honest truth.

Joel from Lafayette. Is it possible to increase our Google Drive storage from 30 gigabytes or do you have a better method for storing and sharing project estimate videos? We started using Google Drive using WhatsApp capsule video length just under three minutes, resulting in two videos for most projects. And WhatsApp doesn't allow always load sent videos for playback. Blair. But each file is one or two gigs, so that eats up the Google Drive. Yeah. So I would definitely not be using Google Drive like this. So there's two things you can do. Number one, WhatsApp should be doing a six minute video. It should not be three minutes. That's very weird.

I have not heard the three minute limit unless it's recent.

Secondly, I would say use this app. It's. I think it's either free or $10 one time. I can find it. It's called Compress.

Let me see if I can't show this to you.

Right here. It's just an orange.

Let's see here.

It's like an orange little button there.

Yeah. There's plenty of these apps that you can Compress in like 30 seconds and take them down by 10x, make it much, much smaller. I would recommend that if you're not using WhatsApp, but to my knowledge it's still six minutes on WhatsApp, so I could be wrong. But I would recommend using the Compress app and then doing that.

Because the Google file storage, if we change it on one, we have to turn on everyone and it literally would cost at this point like an extra thousand dollars a month. So I would recommend that.

Devin from Red Deer, Alberta. Hey Mike, how do you track your close ratio? Because 90% of my estimates are over the phone and my close ratio is going through the roof. 90% plus. Yeah. If your estimates are over the phone, doesn't matter because your close ratio is based on estimates sent versus estimate. Oh I see you're not sending the estimates. I just do it based upon how many created estimates then. But command center will still send Devin once you get in August, in July they will send your estimates even though.

It'S over the phone. And we do that just to make sure the customer hasn't writing. So I'd recommend doing that regardless. Kyle Tarvin, the GM at Moore, has decided he no longer wants to be a gm. So he asked if he could go back to mowing lawns like he did before without the responsibilities. Sucks, but I'm over it now. No use in crying over spilled milk. I've been prepping myself for this for at least the for the last two months. My question is can I go ahead and hire someone new asap or do I have to wait until I can send them to training? My thought process is that is that if I wait, if I have to wait, I could strip the location down to bare bones, clean up mowing and light landscaping, no schedule estimates, super tight service here, et cetera. I could easily handle that workload along with running the normal location. Thoughts on what you do? You do not have to send them a training by the way, GMs do not have to come to training in order to be a general manager. We don't require that. It'd be a good step though, so I would personally do I'm guessing Kyle, you were the first question and now this is transpired over the past 24 hours. Number one Mike, my my first question would be could they potentially serve as GM until a certain period of time so you can get someone else ready to roll that My first try, it sounds like they still want to work with you. Like there's not any bad feelings. Just like they're not a good fit. So for that position. So I would try to get them to say hey look, I'll do it to May 1st or whenever. And then you try to get someone to train them up on enough so they could schedule route dispatch and then do certain tasks. That would be the goal. That would be the ideal situation. Then they, this other individual potentially become mowing on their crew. That would be great. That way you have someone there that had at least some experience for that person.

Assuming again that they can, they're okay with working underneath someone else. It sounds like they want that. So I think it'd be okay.

I would definitely can I? Yeah, you can. You can absolutely do this. Go hire someone, get them in his GM Put this person down as, as a mowing crew member. The ideal situation situations, they continue to handle those responsibilities for next couple weeks. And you say, hey, can you give me till May 1st? That gives you 10 days to go find somebody or potentially upgrade, promote someone from within to be the general manager. And then this part down here is really just down to your, your personal preference. We don't require that by no means, but this might be what you want to do. If you can strip down one of the locations to be super, super profitable. And until there's a GM that does organically come up, it's okay to strip down the location. So to just the really profitable services, the Thai area not doing scheduled estimates only, only over the phone and drive bys. Like you could do that. Absolutely. So this is why it's so important to have a regional manager or you as the owner being close by to your second, third, fourth locations is because this is going to happen.

Napin I just landed my first decent sized commercial maintenance contract. 40k for six months over four properties. We're billing them fixed monthly rate. Their payment terms are net 30. I'm wondering if I can tell them we always bought the beginning of the month so that we still end up getting paid at the end of the month. I just don't want to risk scaring them off by saying this is how we bill. I would assume if you've already landed the job, that should have already been ironed out. So you could, you could float the idea. But at this point, if they've already accepted and their payment terms are net 30.

Oh, I see, that's not a bad idea. You could probably submit the invoice. I don't know. Obviously this is how you determine how you talk to these people already. You could probably submit the invoice and say this is net 30. And then I see what you're saying like you want to be paid by the end of the month, so you submit at the beginning of the month. I'd just go ahead and do it.

In the future though. You'd want to make sure this is clear prior to sending out the estimate because they don't. You don't want them to feel like you're trying to pull one over on them, which obviously you're not. But you will want to submit that in the future with the estimates. They're all. Everyone's on the same page. Jeff Bromley, please take a look at my attached Google Ad. Could you help me interpret it? Wondering if I need to broaden my zip codes for better Reach.

All right, see, we got here, you only got 138 impressions. That is a problem.

You got nine clicks, though, and you have a very high click through rate.

You spend a hundred dollars on nine clicks. So it's like what, $11 cost per click? That's not good.

Yeah, $11.14 cost per click. $100.

I don't see your keywords and everything, so I'm not sure what you're targeting. The fact is you're only getting 130 impressions, which.

I doubt. This is monthly. Oh, yeah. It's like. Yeah, no, there's more than that. Mercy. Yeah. I think that you have somehow narrowed your scope too much. Whether that be through keywords or. It didn't look like it was geographic because I saw your map there and it looks like you're kind of hitting your whole market just fine. So it might be keywords. You might have put something in the audience that is restricting it too much instead of just by age. So with the coach, feel free. If you wanted to go through that, they could go through the ad and see what potentially might be causing that hiccup. But it looks like you, you're, you're, you're being too restrictive on your targeting.

Although if you only spend a hundred dollars in 20 a day, that's like five bucks a day. So that's like your minimum. But increasing the, the spend won't do anything.

Yeah, like you're basically probably spending like 5 or 10 bucks a day max.

So increasing that won't change it. So I would just look at your targeting and then keep in mind you're doing the base amount of spend, but you should be getting more than three or four impressions a day or even four or five. You should be getting more than that, assuming that you have a wide enough target.

Got it. Deal with. Deal. Got it. Deal with. Hello? They are cool with it. Okay. I'm not sure exactly what I was referring to. Oh, I think it's probably the general manager. Got it. Deal with. They are cool. Is it okay? Cool.

Yeah, definitely. When it comes to, like the gm, things like, that's when you definitely want to talk to a coach. All the coaches, both of them have dealt with GMs. They still, they still manage GMs for me. So they know, you know, it's not never easy. It's hard. It's not an easy job to be a gm. That's new. You got a lot of learning curve being put in uncomfortable positions and some people are going to bail on you because they. This is not for me. And they'd rather make less money and not push themselves. And so what you're looking for is that person that's willing. That's why, like I said, like, I'm more forgiving if someone's really trying, grinding and hustling, because that's the type of person that will figure things out eventually. And like is present. Even with, like, what is happening with Chuck's locations from his video the other day. Like, if someone really wants it, when you do draw them up short, they go work, they get done. And that picture this morning, the five estimates, is from that location. And so, like, kudos to them. They, you know, it takes a very special person to take that kind of criticism and then especially, like, the public stuff that Chuck was saying and then go out and execute. That's a very special person. That's someone that you can work with, even if they're lower performing, that you can work with that kind of discipline. How's the building going? The. The well's done. We basically just waiting on the very final permit now. I'm hoping it's basically any day. I've paid for most of it now because I have my 1031 in it. And so we've paid for more than two thirds of it now.

So, yeah, now we just need to actually see it happen. But that is, like, the least of my concerns at this moment. So, anyways. All right, thank you, guys. Hope you have a fantastic rest of your day. We'll see you tomorrow. Take care.