Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/22/22

Okay, we're just a guestination. I'm very sorry. Somehow I went public on the YouTube channel instead of unlisted, so. All right, let's restart this bad boy. And I knew all of a sudden there was not 30 people inside of the chat, inside the live video. So I apologize for that. Let me go ahead and put this in the Facebook group and we'll get started. Give me one second.

YouTube paste.

All right. We are live announcements.

Okay.

First and foremost, yesterday I made a video about getting the new thank you and welcome emails out of the Marketplace for service, autopilot and for Zooper. So we made one for projects. We made one for lawn care and for mowing services just to save you a little bit more time when you're scheduling jobs to copy and paste in there. So you should be able to quickly get that from the marketplace. One for projects, one for mowing and recurring services. And I noticed a few of you still had the old, old, old verbiage for the thank you and welcome email. So it's good that everyone update that because some of you did not have the verbiage yet about the plus and negative one day for scheduling. And so definitely a good idea to download those. It takes you 30 seconds. Next thing is, last night I uploaded new done for you ads for nextdoor ads as well as the new Google Maps performance ads. Okay, so nextdoor ads replaces Google or sorry, next door local deals that no longer exists. And in my opinion, nextdoor has diluted their ad product massively and made it much more expensive at the time. Same. Same exact time. So I don't even know if I'll be recommending nextdoor in a few months. But I did go ahead and make the new ad the new done for you ad platform just so we can at least see how it goes. And if you're wanting to run ads, you can use it. So we'll see what the return on that is in the future. But for now, I don't, I don't like it as much. I definitely don't. I know they've probably doubled their prices and they have no longer. They no longer allow us to target by neighborhood. They allow us to only target by zip code, which is not as good. Like not even close as good. And you're tied down to your address still, so we'll see if they change stuff. They're changing things up like every single day. But they don't even allow a description of text anymore. It's just a title. So they're very much trying to go after mobile, it's very obvious what they're trying to do, but I'm not a huge fan, definitely not. So we'll see what some of the results are as everyone across the system is using it. But I haven't seen anything great. But it's only been a couple weeks, so I can't. I don't want to judge them quite too soon because I know they're changing things now. On the other hand, the Google Maps performance ads, even though they're only a couple of weeks old, I'm seeing really good results from those, mostly due to the fact that you give them a whole bunch of images, a whole bunch of videos, a whole bunch of headers and titles and headlines, and then Google optimizes it based upon if it's a certain type of device size or if it's video. If someone's using YouTube a lot, then they might go see you on search and they'll make sure it's the right headline to like match those up. So I actually feel it's a really, really good product. It takes a little bit longer to set up, but it does. Instead of having to do a YouTube ad and a Google search ad and a banner ad or whatever, it's all in the same spot now. And then it will optimize whichever best, whichever photo is working the best, whichever video is working the best. So I'm a big, big, big fan of it and I'll see what the results are of it, like actual data over the next several weeks. Because they just rolled out in the last few weeks too. But actual concept and how they broke things down is I like it. I like it a lot. So those are both on the Academy. Both. All the creative, the videos, the headlines you can just copy and paste. Everything that I do is directly in there as well as with a video as well. So again, just go to the academy inside of Augusta franchise.com go to more training and then it's under marketing the done, sorry go to done for you ads and then choose whichever platform you want in terms of next door, Google, etc. What else we got? I know I mentioned the other day on the Facebook group, but if you are overloaded and you cannot get to work and you're running behind either because too many estimates are coming in, you don't have enough employees or employees have left, you're way behind on jobs, lots of rain, whatever it is. First and foremost you got to prioritize the current jobs and mowing customers and recurring services that you have. First prioritize Them and then work your way back. And so if you're just falling way behind, I would recommend putting a pause on your in person estimates. So let me actually show you what it looks like on the website.

So over in Modesto, California with Forest, he's just been overloaded with work, which is great. They've been growing very, very quickly. Let me just share this real quick. Share screen. Boom, boom, boom. So on your estimate request form, we've made this alert and then we've made it where the estimate type. It doesn't allow for an in person meeting. Now, we did leave, come by anytime and email a quote, because if they do this, we can still do over the phone estimates if they submit their information. So again, this was only because he's grown so fast and a lot of his employees are brand spanking new. And so when he said that his most tenured employee was only two weeks or less in terms of experience, that's when it's like, look, you got to get in the field. You got to solidify your crew. They were six weeks booked out. So you got four to five weeks to, like, work, work through your backlog, train up your crew, and you'll be just fine. And so that was the strategy we used in Modesto. And then there's a couple other locations that have turned off their in person estimates. And then it's just a matter of like, look, obviously you're gonna get less projects, but you'd rather get less projects and you not running around doing estimates all day long trying to go to projects and meetings and just lock in with your crew. If you're having a bunch of people leaving is the time to jump in and lock in with your crew and train them up and get your hands dirty with them. And so, yeah. Okay, I had some questions come in on the group here. Share screen, Boom. All right.

Here we go. Nick from Marysville. Sorry, I haven't looked at any of these, but we'll jump in. Can you touch on insurance requirements, would you recommend and why? We have five vehicles and our premium is $8,000 a year for base level liability insurance. Is, is it a smarter plate? Increase limits of coverage and spend the extra money in case something goes wrong? Auto insurance.

Yeah. So I would definitely recommend getting above, definitely your liability, like increasing your liability protection. I'm not a huge fan of comp and collision if you're having, like, cheaper trucks because usually it's just not worth it if you're paying an extra $200 a month for comp and collision on A truck that costs $10,000, it's probably not really worth it, honestly, because the extra $200 would be like a payment on a new one. So I wouldn't worry about that, but I would make sure your liability requirements are a little bit higher. I usually don't go with the minimum unless for some reason, the drivers on that policy.

Have a bad record and it's causing it to, like, triple in the cost. But typically, going from, let's say $50,000 or $30,000 coverage to $100,000 is literally going to cost, like, 10 or 15 bucks more a month. If it's going to cost you thousands, then I wouldn't do it. So I think, you know, Nick, some good advice was put your way on the Facebook group. Like, go to a broker and an agency. A broker and not an agency. So don't go, like, into a state farm and be like, hey, give me your prices. Like, you're not going to get the best deal. Go to a broker where they have, like, 10 different companies that they work for. That's usually when you're going to get your best price. And so, yeah.

Sometimes people ask if I'm the owner, I respond by saying that I'm the estimator. And in 99% of cases, that works. But every now and then, it seems like someone catches on and they'll ask a second time if I'm the owner. Is there ever a situation where you would admit that you own the location, or do you think it's better to always say you have the estimator, even if you have to tell a white lie? Yeah. Like I would say, if you're gonna tell a white lie, I would say I'm one of the owners. Right. And so I always use this. I've used this from day one. If everyone. If anyone ever pushed back on me is like, do you own the business? When I said I was the estimator, I said I'm one of the owners. And so that's just what I've always used. And if someone wants to say I'm a liar, like, I guess they technically. Right. But I also look at it as I want to make sure that I want to. The reason I do that is because I want, when an employee is on the. On the front lines for them to have sway. And so I kind of justify my white lie in this case because I'm doing it for my staff. If I say that I'm the owner, I just lock, like, handcuff the hands of the employees when they're on the job site because to make decisions, move the ball down the court, do work, change orders, negotiate with the customer, make calls and decisions about the job. And so I'm doing it for them, I'm not doing it for myself. Like, to say that you're the owner is a nice little ego stroke of drone. Right? But it's not doing your team any service. So it's not about lying. It's not about saying, if I'm the owner of the estimator, it's about two things. One, the systems need to work, not me. And what that means is I need it to be where when they call the office, they talk to them and get stuff done. We have several owners now where people call and because they know that the franchisee is the owner, they will not talk to anyone on the phone. They'll say, I only want to talk to so and so, tell them to call me back. Like, and it's usually like little tiny things like, oh, we want to move something, or can we change the date of service? Or we want to update our card information. But they'll only talk to the owner. And that's what you're trying to prevent. And then you're also trying to prevent your frontline staff, whether it be on the phone or people on job sites, from being handcuffed because they only want to talk to the owner. It's like, it's not good for the business, not good for you. It's not good for the customer because they have to usually wait to get to actually talk to you. So I know your size, Max. It's tempting because you could theoretically talk to every single one them knowing the owner, that you could text them back and forth. It would not be a big issue. Again, I'm thinking about when you have 3, 5, 10, 15 employees, if it's scalable and it's not them knowing that you're the owner. So.

Next question. Yeah, but in terms of like, you know, the next. If someone actually follows up with but are you the owner? I just say I'm one of the owners. Yep. And then just move on.

Bloomington business entrepreneur, finance, YouTube channels. You recommend looking for something update that post regularly? Yeah, let me think. Like, in terms of finance, I really like. Let me give you a couple that I found recently that I really enjoy. This is kind of what I listen to when I work out. That's kind of like my one thing that I'm able to do. Let's see here all. So there's a really good show that I like on A daily basis that you might like in. It's more around the stock market, but it's economy kind of overall. The channel is called Sense Invest Cents. Like pennies cents. Invest. And the name of the show is Money Talks. It's kind of a cool show. I like it and I just listen to it usually when I work out. Millennial Money is another cool show with some popular YouTubers that are in the personal finance community. I think everyone knows I like Alex Harmozi. Just from a business standpoint, if you like real estate, Ben Mala is kind of a very humorous. More of a comedy show, but it's. It's good information, too, really. A smaller YouTuber that I like and I've followed for a while just for, like, more macroeconomic stuff is Joseph Carlson. Stock market stuff again, Game of trades. Layla Hormozi, which is Alex's wife, she does a lot of HR stuff. I like her stuff as well. There's a whole bunch in here. If you want to have some very controversial thoughts to your thoughts as a capitalist and your thoughts as an entrepreneur.

Watch a guy named Joshua Fluke. He basically makes videos kind of, you know, tearing into companies that treat their employees bad, but also just a lot of different thoughts that are kind of go against the grain of most entrepreneurs. And I try to actually. If you go through my YouTube channel, there's actually a lot of stuff that I don't agree with, but I listen to it in order to kind of hopefully challenge my thoughts and solidify my opinions. And so people like that Joshua Fluke, you know, there, if you watch his videos, you would usually come across like, this person thinks all businesses are bad. And I know that's not his intention, but it comes across that definitely. And it challenges my opinions as a boss. And so I think that's healthy. But that's a few. You know, Ken McElroy is a good one for real estate. Oh, man. Patrick Doyle, if you want someone who's like, hedge fund analyst, very, very boring to listen to, but knows his stuff, Patrick Boyle. That's a good one. So I have a bunch in here, but anyways, that's a few. That's enough for today.

Cool. All right, that's all I got for questions that were submitted. Let me just make sure. Yep, that was all we got for today.

X out of there.

Go. Allergic reactions in lawn care industry. Gotta love it. This is the time of year, so. Cool. If you have any other questions, I'll leave it on here for a second. Feel free to comment, but, yeah, definitely check out Google performance Max. I think it's a great platform. I really, really like what they're doing at Google. They're gonna dominate the, the ad industry like with Google local services. If I was Angie's List, Yelp, Home Advisor, Lawn Starter, any of those companies right now they need to take a different angle. The whole ad, the whole strategy of paying, making the providers us pay per lead is there. They are toast. They are so dead. It's, it's not, it's going to be carnage. So I, I think some of them are trying to pivot right now out of that model they've become some addicted to. But Google's out to like just crush, just crush, crush with this new product. Then no one can compete with them on this. So.

If you are working 10 hour days, how many budget hours should I schedule the typical guy for? 8.5. Yeah, 8.5 would be aggressive. I think that'd be good. Eight would probably be a little bit more conservative to make sure they don't go over into overtime if that's what your goal is. But yeah, kind of like if you look at what on your max metrics we, we showed the efficiency score which is simply your budget hours divided by clocked hours. You want that to be around 75% or higher. If you, if you're lower than 60% or 65% it's very hard for you guys to make above base pay on P4P and you're, you're usually pretty unprofitable. So this will usually happen around when you're at 60 to 70% efficiency, when you have new hires and you're training them. So like in March we had a whole bunch of new hires at the local shop, for example, really bad efficiency scores. Because of that everyone was doubled up, tripled up. Lots of training was happening, lower scores on P4P and so the efficiency score is lower. Now that same, that efficiency score is what can be applied to what you're talking about here, which is how many hours do I put on the schedule based upon clocked hours. So if you're working 10 and you multiply that by 75% that'd be putting you at 7.5. Right. So you being a little more established, Connor, having a little smaller company, your efficiency is probably 80, 85% and so you could get away with that. 88.8 or 8.5 budget hours per day. And this ties into scheduling and being able to book out into the future knowing how many budget hours you have in capacity per day.

Dustin Bloomington ME and three other guys in the crew. Currently, on Monday morning meetings, I find myself talking a lot. Any recommendation getting the crew talking? We are keeping them at 10 minutes, but I see myself talking most of the time. Yeah, this is common when you're smaller and especially if the guys are newer. But what I would recommend is ask one of them to talk about a certain thing, right? So if you want to talk about safety, instead of you talking about safety, talk to one of the crew members that you worked with the other day before, or they might have brought something to your. Your attention about a specific safety issue. Have them talk about it. Right. If there's something on the mowers, you want to show everyone how to fix it, have one of your more mechanically inclined guys do it. Right? So start just asking yourself, like when you look at your notes for the, the, The. The. The. The meeting, just ask yourself, could anyone else talk about this? Sometimes the reason you're saying no is because the guys can't talk. Like, they just not good in front of people. They're just. They're not good at meetings. They. They'd never had meetings before. And so sometimes it is a little bit painful at the beginning to let them talk because it's like, man, that should have been said in 30 seconds. It took them three minutes. And they said 46 times. And they looked at the floor the entire time. And so that's challenging. You have to work them into that somewhat. But it's much more liberating when you can give those things off to other people and they talk about it. Because there's nothing more encouraging than when your crew says, hey, can I say something? And they tell the crew what they're doing wrong. That's what you need. That's between anonymous peer reviews when you're larger, and then team meetings where people feel comfortable to talk about things that they see other people doing wrong. It frees you up from nagging on people. Right? So what we usually do is Marcus kind of gets the meeting kicked off. He starts with his yellow slips, which opens everyone up immediately to talking. And they have to. We're forcing them to talk with a yellow slip, but that really breaks them in. And some people have mentioned that have gone and started their own locations, have mentioned that their way of getting public speaking skills was yellow slips at team meetings because they didn't know how to talk before, and it was very apparent, but they had to learn that way. So we break it in with yellow slips to other people talking. And then usually when they mention a customer's name. Other people will chime in. So that's why in the yellow, so it has the customer's name and we make them read the name, the address and start talking about the comments. Because we. When someone says someone's customer's name, everyone just goes to that property in their mind and might have other feedback. So usually a yellow, yellow slip starts with someone talking and then other people like oh yeah, yeah and make sure on that property. Or people just laugh like oh yeah, that property. They did that last time. So it's definitely a, a good opportunity the yellow slips to break in the meeting and then look at your. What you're about to talk about and just ask yourself, can I give this to one person? If it's mechanical stuff like in our local shop, they're going to give that to Caleb and he's going to talk about it. If it's about locking up, like those are the sort of things that we're going to go to certain people that can talk about those things instead of you. But it's very difficult two, three people especially because your guys, most of them have never been in meetings. They've never talked in front of people and it is painful sometimes to listen to them talk the first few times. The reason I ask is because I have guy that has time and time again. The last month has finished 20 hours jobs in like seven hours. But I sent another guy and they're at 17 to 18 hours. I've even called customers and no corners are cut. With that many hours being left, he essentially finishes his week in three days. Got it. So I would recommend is use overflow. So when guys get done fast have something that they can do. So for example Tim and Mount Vernon, they build like garden boxes and then he sells those and they literally put them together. It takes them like 30 to 40 minutes and then he sells those and they stain them and stuff like that. And it's honestly just a kind of if someone has an extra hour, they just go knock on a couple of those. Something like that is cool, but I'm not a huge fan of having a different service like that altogether. Unless you have very, you know, inclined people towards like that. But I would rather have like shop maintenance. All the things that can be done any time of the day. Those should be the things that if something someone just burns through jobs then they focus on that. What you don't want to get in the habit of. And this is very, very important especially when you're trying to get jobs in the schedule. It's easy to get in this frenzy of a treadmill of like, I got a job today, I'm going to sell it and put it on tomorrow. Like, slow things down a little bit. Right. So if you're booked out a week or two weeks and someone gets a job accepted and you're like, oh, great, so and so finished their job yesterday, I'm gonna throw this person on tomorrow. Or let's say you didn't get a job accepted. Okay, so and so finished their jobs early. I'm gonna go ahead and call three customers and pull their jobs forward. You can, but I'd prefer you not unless you're five, six weeks booked out and you're really starting to make a massive backlog. But if you're only a few days or a week booked out, don't start pulling jobs forward so fast. Cause it creates havoc. And you have to call them, you have to reschedule them now. Things don't show up, the delivery is not ready to go. You're booked out till May 12th. Yeah. So that's three weeks. So potentially that might be when you're like, okay, if I got a couple jobs accepted today, can I pull any of them forward and just put them on tomorrow? That would be my first thing. I don't like rescheduling jobs. I really don't. If someone's accepted a job and they're three weeks booked out and they paid 50% down, or even if they haven't, like, I'd rather just let them keep that spot. Now, if I know there's customers that have time sensitivity, like they need it done in a week or two and I'm five weeks booked out, I'm going to tell the customer, look, I can't guarantee you time, but if we get a spot that comes available, we'll let you know. That would be the person that you potentially might throw the weight throw to this person that gets done early. But I'm not a big fan, honestly, of being only a week or two weeks booked out and like moving jobs from Friday to Thursday just to get jobs because someone finished a job early on Wednesday, I'd rather just let the person have a day off and come back strong again on Friday. Every time you reschedule jobs, you create a level of a degree of error. Because now your deliveries might be messed up. Your scheduling, the customer might have planned things around it, and now those are messed up. And now they forgot that they also had the cleaner coming that day or the paint. The house was being painted that day. Every time you reschedule things. It creates a degree, a small degree of, of air that can happen. And so I would say either a, have shop time recurring maintenance on your trucks, washing the trucks, shop stuff, have that being done when people are available. Like that. A lot of people do. People do that in the morning and it's like, why would you do that? Like, get the guys out, go do work. And then for the people who get done early, they can do shop maintenance at the end of the day, they can sharpen blades, they can do stuff like that when they're ahead of schedule. Instead of burning the best part of your day when you don't know what that day entails, every day you go out, there's bound to be crazy stuff happen. I'd rather only do the shop maintenance at the end of the day when number one, guys are more inclined to get things done faster because they want to get out of there. Another kind of rule of thumb, you want people to be doing things at the end of the day that are shop time and not on P4P because guys want to get out of there. So what would have taken them an hour and a half in the Morning suddenly takes 30 minutes in the afternoon because they want to get back to the shop, get it done and get out of there. Whereas if it's in the beginning of the day, in the morning, guess what they're going to do? They're just going, if they're not, if they're on P4P and they know that now they can do shop time for an hour and a half, guess what they're going to do? They're going to make sure it takes an hour and a half. So I really like having shop time and equipment maintenance being done at the end of the day after work has been completed for the people that have been have finished faster and having that stuff backlog to the point where when there are jobs that are done way sooner than expected, then you do that work, it's usually done more efficiently and guys actually want to get out of there. Big, big mistake I see is people doing shop maintenance at the beginning of the day or just stuff in general that can be done besides the very first thing in the morning when guys are freshest and need to get out and should be out and doing working. So cool. Thanks guys. Have a great weekend and we'll see you Monday.