Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/21/2025

Hello Augusta Nation. Hope you are doing amazing. One second. Make sure my audio is set up here. Very good.

Okay, I want to go over one quick thing as a reminder. On the weekends there is no full service at command center. There's just basic service. So that includes things like answering the phone, sending out estimates, responding request forms, instant pricing, etc. There is not checking emails, checking connect team chats, etc. So just as a reminder, a couple people had reached out and wondering why their Connect team chants weren't were not being addressed on the weekend. That doesn't happen on Saturday Sunday. So the office is open, phone calls are being answered, estimates are going out but not the other full service tasks. All right, let's go ahead and jump right in. It looks like there's only three questions so feel free if you have one, feel free to post one down in the description. There is the link. First one is from Mr. Anonymous. Question for the uniform vendor. Do you plan on offering 4x shirts? We end up paying $35 a shirt locally. I don't know, to be perfectly honest with you. I know we went from extra small to at least 2xo, but I don't know if we went to all the way up to 4xL because if the volume is too low we end up paying like five times the shirt in just storage cost. So how it works is we, we, you know, order tens of thousands of pieces but if they don't sell out within I think six months, then we have to keep paying on those every single month. So it actually becomes where the cost to corporate could potentially be two to three times the cost of the shirt if we don't sell them out quick enough. So we might not be able to use fringe sizes simply because there's just not enough volume that goes out on them. So if not, that's why feel free once it goes live to see if those are available. But if not, those fringe sort of sizes are. It's because if we don't sell them out in six months, we end up starting to have to pay more and more storage and inventory costs. And the reason that's why we really get the fast shipping is because they're already pre done as well as the low cost is because we are ordering tens of thousands. Can you level a little more on the GM Ford CarMax deals that are being worked on now? We are looking at buying a truck but don't know if we should wait. Buying will cost us 1300amonth, but leasing is $400. Sounds like an easy decision, but still looking at pros and cons. Yeah. So we're working on GM, Ford and CarMax. There's no guarantee these will go through. These are deals that take forever. Like literally when we started working on it, they invited us out to come out to like this weekend thing with their leadership and a whole bunch of, it's just a lot of wining and dining they're used to. Also working with companies that are ordering these by like the thousands. And so we're so relatively a small fish in the pond. There's also two very different divisions in most of these. It's financing and there's purchasing. Purchasing being like we actually get discounts financing, we get special terms. So for example, you know, getting a hundred thousand, getting a free upgrade from 60,000 mile warranty to 100,000 mile warranty, that's a good benefit. Pushes you more into like hey well if I have 100,000 mile, that's like a solid 10, 12, 14 years that I know that everything's under warranty. Starting to look pretty good. So yeah, when the leasing programs are looking more and more solid. Also if they're commercial leasing programs where they bake into the fact that you're going to be using them and abusing them and then sometimes the buyout after three years of a lease program, not bad at all. So you might pay down half the cost of the vehicle or a quarter of it and then, then do the financing in three years. And the reason that works well is because then in three years you've grown the business and throwing the thing into profit mode. This is why we're really looking at this is because if you can put less capital into the business in the form of trucks, trucks specifically in this case, and be able to grow it even if it's a lease and you're paying a little more in insurance and some of that's obviously financing costs, et cetera. But then three years from now you actually have to purchase the, the piece, the truck. But you now are in a capable position where you're above 500,000, you're in profit mode, you can afford the increased payments of a, or even cash of buying out the entire vehicle. So I would, yeah, we, you know, there's nothing really in terms of like we are working on both fronts. We're working on purchasing and we working on financing. How can we get the best upfront deals like $3,000 off, for example? How can we best financing deals in terms of terms both the rate, the number of years and then we're on the Leasing program, what that looks like. So it just. These people are so slow. Like, every single department has so many different people they keep juggling us around to. It's like very hard to nail them down. So shout out to Nick for the patience of we dealing with all of them. They're just. They're in no hurry to sell us anything. It's kind of weird. Nick from Hudsonville. Oh, by the way, you might. On that note, you might see a poll from Nick in the Facebook group asking if you're planning on buying more trucks. If you have the remote possibility of buying another truck in the next year, click yes on that. Because they're wanting some data around. Like, how many trucks are we actually looking at? And the higher that number looks like, the better deal they're going to give us. So if you see that poll inside the Facebook group and you have any chance of potentially getting a truck in the next year or whenever Nick's parameters are, please, please respond yes to that because it allows him to negotiate much better even if we don't buy that many. But it's like just them knowing that there's the opportunity to get that much business allows them to be able to give us a better deal. So that would be super beneficial. We're still a small fish in the pond of dealing with these big entities that usually do massive, massive deals with companies. So. Nick from Hudsonville. Hey, Mike. Last fall we asked command center to stop taking leaf clamps because we were swamped. Now it's spring and they turned away two new cleanup estimate requests over the weekend, saying, the wiki still says we're not taking them. We've had a hard time remembering to update the wiki between seasons. Would it be possible to set up some kind of system where seasonal task restrictions or wiki changes could expire automatically or get flagged for review after a certain time? There's too much room for error on this. What I would recommend, Nick, is literally just send either a reminder inside of copilot or on your phone monthly or quarterly to just review your wiki. The reason is because if someone forgets to put the seasonal issue thing in there and all of a sudden it becomes a problem if they do it. And it can still be a problem because it says it on the wiki. So I would just recommend weekly or, sorry, monthly or quarterly to set up a review of your wiki. Make sure the services you want, make sure it's the service areas. You know, every two weeks now we're doing the review of service areas. So we can adjust every two weeks now. So even if you wanted to align it like that twice a month just to make sure, especially if you're moving, like, significantly where we are not taking a certain service and then we change it to where we are, I would highly recommend checking it more often. So if we start creating seasonal restrictions, then what happens is you forget or you put the wrong date on. You say six months, and then six months come and they start putting things in your schedule like, oh, man, I forgot to move that date another month or two. So instead of doing that, it's just gonna be whatever's in the wiki that's the source of truth. So if I was you, I would just a monthly or a quarterly reminder. You can do inside of Copilot if needs be, assign it to yourself. You can even tie an automation to it where it texts you and reminds you just to review that if you're gonna start moving certain services based upon the season. So that's. That's the safest way to do it.

Oh, wow. It looks like that's it. Okay. Boom. I just want to take a quick second just again, congratulations to everyone for Q1. It was certainly a very pivotal quarter for us to going up. Same store sales of 47%. So congratulations. Really, really big. There's a lot of things I think, combined, like we talked about in the roundtable that went into that, but certainly going into spring rush, it is a. It is a not an easy time if you're in your first few years, if you're still growing. And so shout out to everyone. That's just been crushing it. I know on all fronts, we've been kind of optimizing for every spring rush, and this one so far has been super, super solid from so many fronts. So congratulations. And I know that in the middle of spring rush, if you're growing, it is just every single day is problems and issues and customer issues and employee issues and et cetera. But just across the board, the amount of leads that we're getting in and the. Just across the board, the numbers are so, so, so good compared to last year. And I would say across like longer web design and home service web design, we see a stalling if not a reduction in lead count in the past six weeks because of everything with do with the market. And that has not been the case for Augusta. So congratulations to everyone. I know so many people are doing door hangers and just doing so much and it is showing in the numbers. So congratulations. And I just want to give everyone a quick shout out on that. Hope you have a fantastic day. A little bit shorter of a mastermind. If you ever have questions, the link in the description I know everyone's busy in spring rush. I try to keep these tight anyways and not go on and drum it on for too long during spring rush. But if you have a question down in the description, always feel free to submit your questions there and we'll see you tomorrow. Take care.