Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/24/23

Happy marathon Monday, everybody. Hope you're doing well. Starting a little bit early this morning because I know later is going to be tight on my schedule. So I want to make sure in case there are a bunch of questions. But there are 14. Let's go. All right, so let's jump into it. Before we do though, a couple quick announcements. The French Advisory Council board had asked about the.

When we're going to do a Gusta Nation specific for conference. So I haven't nailed it down exactly yet. Getting anything to book during that week is nigh to impossible simply due to the fact that the Housing Authority is basically controls Equip Expo like that Expose center. So they lock down the whole whole city basically on the ability to do other events. So I still actually don't know how we're doing Monday and Tuesday at the Omni Hotel. I honestly do not know how it's possible, but we are it. The problem is finding anything else around it on that week is extremely difficult. So what I'm thinking right now is Tuesday night we'd finish the public around 5 o', clock, we'd have dinner at 5:30 with just a gustination and then we'd go late into Tuesday night. So it'd be a very, very long day Tuesday. Um, but then you could obviously come in on the weekend, probably Sunday, everyone could go out to restaurants, do stuff like that together. And then Monday, Tuesday and then Tuesday night do dinner with all of us and then hop in and do our specific stuff that evening. I think be better too because that way I can get more generalized stuff out of the way and then we go really, really deep together after the conference fight versus us trying to go deep. And it feels like somewhat of a recap throughout the rest of the weekend or next two days.

So I'm looking forward to it. I'll have more details on that and I'll confirm all of what I just said. That's just me thinking out loud. And currently what the plan is it just anyone like anything above 50 people anywhere right now that week is extremely hard to book. So we're working on it. They'll probably be at least 150 to 170 of us. So it's just no one is allowed to book us. So I can do it that night though. It's just expensive. That's why we're not doing dinners with the public is because almost $100 per plate at the Omni Hotel and I don't want to pay that. But for us to have a space to be together it's basically the only place we're gonna go get. So that's what we're working on. I'll confirm all of that as soon as I possibly can. Quick update. I know people are asking about copilot stuff, so let me share something. We just rolled out this morning and that is this booked out thing. It takes the number of employees that you have active and then in the back end of each employee profile asks how many budget hours per employee are being.

Used for the calendar. And what that allows you to do is when you create a new visit or whatever sequence. Let's just start it next week.

And say let's do a recurring current series of visits. You can see it puts these, what would be those estimated hours or budget hours across those weeks. So I'm going to do it every single day. So let's just move this up to like say four and you can see what happens here. So within 80% of our booked out line is going to be yellow. So kind of says hey, warning, red you're above the capacity and then green is like you're good to go. So. So this is going to be really helpful, I think in terms of making sure you don't accidentally overbook yourself three or four weeks from now when it looks like everything's good on the schedule. But you got to remember you're adding recurring visits, you're adding in to dos, you're adding in meetings, and this works for meetings to dos and visits. So even like adding estimates, adding interviews, all takes away from your schedule. And so I want to make sure that that is very helpful in the future. And then down the road, this is what we would use in 2024 for automated scheduling, which will then specifically go to every single day and then every single employee and be able to allocate jobs automatically to people. This is kind of the first step in that direction. So pretty exciting. It doesn't seem like anything revolutionary, but it's like our first step towards automated scheduling because we need this data to then down, down the road. Like for example, if someone came along and said, hey, I have an eight hour cleanup, I already know it's going to be scheduled on this week, right. Because it's the only time I can do it without going over capacity.

Down the road. It would go ahead and schedule it, email the client and tell them what we're coming on, which day, and then step three is assigning it to the crew, already knowing who it should go to, etc. So kind of fun.

Cool. You're going to Hear in the next few weeks we are doing integration with Deep Lawn.

Inside of Copilot. That is not the stuff that I talked about last year at conference for destination. Deep lawn costs around 40 to 50 cents per property to measure and it's not what I think we'll use. Instead of a gustination inside of my agreement with them, I am having exclusive thing for augustination that we are able to basically.

Database our own information and not have to rely on that per property fee. Because I think we for about 20 to 25 cents per property can get the information, database it and then have it instantaneously.

Inside of the CRM and on the front end of our website which would then allow us to do what I talked about conferences like downloading the database, putting it into.

An email or a.

Every door direct mail with a QR code that then connects them to the CRM. They scan that and then they can set up their billing and their. Their pricing is already locked and loaded. I'm going to reserve that right basically inside of Deep Lawn because other users would have to pay for every single property. Every single time they look at the property they got to pay it at 40, 50 cents. My goal is to make it where down the road we're allowed to database it and we could get for half the price. But furthermore by having a database then we can use it for a whole bunch of stuff like ever door direct mail. And I truly believe if I send out 10,000 postcards with a QR code and they scan it, it tells them their price.

Take that back. You would not be able to do every door direct mail because you have to have a specific address. But what you could do is you could do every door direct mail to a neighborhood and give them 3,959 and you just know that the entire route is that price. They scan it, already has the prices. They put in their address stuff and then immediately put in their payment information. They don't have to take a picture, they don't have to submit to command center, they don't have to submit to you. You don't have to schedule them. That's the goal down the road. So just, just know that if you hear us talking about Deep Lawn you can look them up. They basically use AI to scan the property and give a.

Give a price.

We, we can do that for almost half the price. And then, but then more importantly is database and that information. That's what I was talking about last year. I was trying. I was thinking we could database the entire us. We are we usually aren't going. It costs so much money. It's going to cost $12 million to do it correctly. And there's just no way we'd ever recoup the money. So down the road, when I know that we actually have all this locked and loaded, we've beta tested because I have all the data for the Whatcom county location or Bellingham, I have all the addresses done. Once we. We've beta tested that, which I think is gonna be late this year, that's when I'll let you all know. I'm hoping I can do this, like at conference or beyond, say, hey, if you guys want to get started on your. On your properties in your market, I can show you exactly how to do it. And then you could do it, your spouse could do it, you could do whatever you wanted to be able to do over the slow season, and you might be able to get the majority of it done by next spring. And I'm hoping that, like, by the next conference, like fall 20, 24 is when I can say, hey, we've got everything data based. And either A, you can do it, or B, it'll cost you about 20, 25 cents per property. You know, if you have 10,000 houses, that's going to cost you two. Two grand, two and a half grand. But you have a database to when you can send out pricing immediately.

And I just think it's going to crush. So anyways, let's move on to.

Questions.

Because it's marathon Monday.

All right.

Okay.

Oh, this is that one. Oh, sick. This is the one.

Okay, I talked to Liz about this, and I didn't get the answer. I will circle back on that one again. Ken from Fenton, Michigan, in Zooper, is there a way to change the sales tax option to credit card processing fee? I've had a few customers contact me back and say that in the state of Michigan, you are not required to charge sales tax and services. So now they want me to take off the percentages and charge them that way. But I don't have the credit card processing fee baked into the pricing. So now I would have to tell them that you still owe 5% credit card processing. It makes me look bad. Well, the problem is, if you've been collecting sales tax, you're technically supposed to pay it to the government. Just be careful with this, because if you've been collecting sales tax and not paying it, that's like a big problem. So.

I would personally not worry about this. I would raise your prices, whether it be now or down the Road I wouldn't raise it by 5%. I'd raise it like 10 or 20% your prices and then recoup this cost very quickly. Inside Copilot, we do have the option for you to be able to click this and have credit card processing fees and it's a little more integrated.

But I would, I would not make a big deal. Especially because if you've been collecting sales tax and not giving it to the state of Michigan, that's a big no no. If you collect sales tax even if you're not supposed to be collecting it, if you say sales tax and invoice, you have to give that money to government. So just be careful with that. I would definitely not be putting that and then saying, oh, that's a credit card processing fee. Like you'll get in trouble. So Devin from Red Deer, can you quickly talk about Augusta's what, why and how so I can write down, please. You'll get to set training, Devin. That's the first slide we go over.

Nick from Marysville. So I may hire a guy who, who a month and a half ago totaled a company vehicle at different company. Don't judge. He was very upfront about it. What happened? And I called the employer and said they loved him, they just couldn't keep him on the insurance. The other employer said something like if they kept him, their insurance would drop the company and he would have to find another insurance provider because one person and they have 30 trucks. And he said it wasn't worth it. My question, okay, this is the classic yes, I had know exactly this is going. My question is, when my insurance ask annually for an updated report, are they only asking for the number of employees? Are they going to take all the information for each employee and run their reports and raise my insurance according to the employee's history? My insurance hasn't asked yet and statistically speaking, he won't last long. But I would hate for him to be solid. And then I found later our insurance skyrockets. So if you've never had a claim, you might not ever get an annual, an annual audit. Especially if you're like one or two trucks, if like three or four trucks, if you're getting about like eight, 10 trucks, that's what they're going to always require because they know you have a lot of employees. But until you have a claim, most insurance companies lie low because the cost of administration on your insurance rooms is like their biggest cost outside of claims. So you have claims, then you have cost of admin, cost of add ins like Answering the phone when you call. It's running these type of audits, it's doing underwriting, all those things. They want to minimize that as much as possible. And if you're not making any claims, there's like they're happy to take your money. It's when you start making claims that they're going to want a lot more documentation. So that being said, you're probably good to hire this person. And if you get asked in 612 months about an audit, like you said, statistically speaking, he potentially couldn't be there. But more importantly, even if he is.

Address it at that time. Don't cross this bridge too soon because I think at your size, if you haven't been making claims, insurance companies just they're happy to take your money and never have to do anything. They are happy. It's when you start making claims they will start really, you know, ratcheting up audits as well as if you have a lot of trucks because then their liability is greater. So I know I talk about insurance audits quite frequently, but a lot of 1, 2, 3 truck truck companies will never get an audit. It's depending on which company you're with too and what type of brokerage you've used.

Devin from Red Deer I still get people offering me cash and I say I take credit card through email. Should I have a credit machine on me or is that way too time wasted? Yeah, I would never collect payment on the job. I'd encourage them to fill out credit card information so you can charge them automatically and leave it there.

Also like you'll have way less of that once you get out of the field. Eric from Largo looking to book my hotel for summit in October, but wanted to make sure I have my day straight. I see on the website the dates are October 16th and 17th, but we also doing the franchisee only meeting on the 15th. No. So I, I'm very doubtful right now that we'll get anything on the 15th. I've tried probably 20 or 30 different hotels in Louisville and meeting and conference centers. The only alternative would be like, like a restaurant, basically what we did last year. But even in that it's not set up for us to like feel a talk and do speeches and things. So I'm thinking it's going to be the Tuesday night and we'd go late, we get everyone out of there at five o' clock. For the public we'd get in there at 5:30 for dinner and then we'd go late that night. But I'll keep Everyone loop as soon as I know for sure. That's currently what we have on the schedule with Omni in terms of like food service and stuff. Kyle Tarvin.

Can you go through the process of how you started your first three to four locations after Bellingham? I'm finding out why it is important to have your locations close or have a regional manager that can step in if needed. My guess in your case was that you had some good GMs and a little bit of luck. Now I think, now I think that you are approaching the point to where your locations basically run themselves through. Chuck. Curious though, how you would handle if Chuck just suddenly left. What would you do to immediately and how would you respond? So it's, it's. It's like every single thing we try to do at Augustine that is like create. You promote within and the people from below them can support them if something happens. So for example, if. Let's work through these questions. So first and foremost is how I do the first three or four locations after Bellingham, they were not run as well because they did not have a regional manager. I checked in with them like once every two or three months. It was not ideal. They just basically had a coach, which was Lee, which is fine, but there's no owner. There's no one with equity constantly managing it. There's no one that is invested. Like, their job is to manage the manager, and that is a requirement in my opinion. You, regional manager, in my opinion, needs to be within proximity. Even if you, the owner, are not, that's fine, but the regional manager must be. It's been our saving grace down in North Carolina. People, you know, get hurt, people quit, things like that. It's so much better have a regional manager very close. Or if you're the regional manager, you're able to step in. If Chuck left immediately, I'd probably look at my GM pool and be like, okay, who can be regional? The systems are all the same. It's just a matter of who can manage people and who can manage managers and hold them accountable and hold their feet to the fire. Because that's what needs to happen when I as the owner am not involved, like at all. So if I suddenly left, if Chuck suddenly left and there's emergency or something like that, I would first and foremost try my best to make it work virtually and then for whatever period of time he needed to be away. But then if not, I would be getting one of my GMs to step into that role. And they, they would have seen how he operates and they know the systems and they could probably move in that role with relative ease, assuming that they have the leadership skills. Devin from Red Deer, do you have any videos of live calls CC Going through the exact steps to close a customer so I can copy it and make estimates and track my close ratio on the dashboard. In the academy, there's a whole list of live calls and live demos from Command Center. I don't know if there's a specific like closing somebody, but more of that will become clear at training. Kyle Charvin how many of your locations are solo or with one guy? How many locations are you actively pulling money out each month? So I don't pull any money out for the first three months. So like you guys just saw the video last Friday. That was month one, month two and month three. I don't pull any money out. I try not to pull any money after. For the first year especially, it depends on the general manager and how fast they want to grow. But in the perfect world, it's three months. I put my money in 80 to 100k and then I'm able to start taking distributions in quarter two along with profit sharing to the gm. That being said, the working capital balance in that company will have to go up significantly during that time because the company's grown. So I might leave cash in for that first year and then start taking distributions in year two, like after one, one year.

But I think all of my locations are either one employee or more or they're at least trying to get their first employee. Like their first month is now done right. So even that location that on Friday you guys saw the video, that location has done very well. They really kick things into high gear. They got like that screenshot I sent on the Facebook group. They got like five from door hangers the other day, other week. So you know, this is a, this is a matter of again, the.

Success of a location. 110% depends on that general manager. 100% completely correlated. I stand by this 110%. If you have a good GM, that location will do well. If they're not doing good, that location will do poorly. That being said, when you bring in people who have never had management before or done leadership, there are certain skills they might have to acquire or they might have to be pushed a little harder. And those first few months might be choppy. So you got to give a little bit of grace because underperforming location managed, if that manager is managed correctly and is taught correctly, potentially could all of a sudden switch, turn a switch on and be extremely efficient, accountable, pushing themselves, et cetera. It might be that way because they don't have leadership experience and so they have to figure some things out. So we're pretty gracious in terms of that learning curve to people that are new to leadership. But then it just comes a point where it's like if you hold their feet to the fire and like hey, these have to change and nothing happens. Like you got to get them out immediately. So we've done that once last October.

Ben Collins from Arnold Hey Mike, can you add a feature to PVP for employees so they can take multiple breaks if needed?

One second.

That makes total sense. I thought for sure they could go break in, break out for that. All right. Our guys haven't been hitting PPP and are pretty much are pretty far from our entire workforce is brand new. That's a big piece of it except for one person. They also take multiple bricks a day which wastes so much time since they can't log the breaks or leave comments letting us know they now can leave comments. By the way, they are being paid for this time and most are not close to PPP. After weeks of training, one day the crew went to the gas station four times and we found out via GPS tracker it was a total of 78 minutes not including all the time they spent going out of route to drive to their favorite gas station. We have talked to them about this so they were aware but they have to. But they need to stop to get drinks, use the bathroom multiple times, etc not sure how to fix the situation if they can't clock the multiple breaks and if they are going too slow just for P4P. Yeah it would be nice for them to clock out for their break. So we aren't paying for this at least until they hit P4P. Yeah, so I just made that note. I would expect that within a couple weeks we can get that out in terms of multiple breaks. But more importantly, more importantly this is the challenge with having only one experienced person and a whole bunch of newbies is P4P is such a distant thought to them. They don't think it's real. They don't think it's so like you are not running P4P because P4P is not affecting their their psychology. Now it only will take one pay period, potentially two for that to switch. They need a taste of P4P and so whether that is you make sure you really laser like focus on route density for a week or you give them some projects that you know they can just Absolutely. Annihilate and crush. You need them to get a taste of getting 2, 3, 4 more dollars per hour on their pay period for the next. See the difference? My second thing would be are they getting daily reports? Are they actually seeing the push notifications and emails on a daily basis of their PVP versus their hourly.

Because again that, that is a precursor to an entire pay period being above base pay. Because until it can take a month or two for someone to be above base pay for the whole pay period. But ideally they can hit above base pay for a day relatively quickly if you engineer it correctly. Once they do that, everything switches. So second question. We are very short staffed. Up until a few weeks ago we kept running help wanted ads and now have a surplus of employees. Praise the Lord. Well, we found a few guys with lots of experience and we, if we keep them, we'll have three to four too many guys. But the rest of our current workforce is slow except for the new guys. So this is what I would do. I would fire your lowest performers. If you, you have three to four guys too many and they're like experience and stuff like that. If in order, if like one I would take what I just in the first question and that is like making sure your reports are good, making sure you can give them a taste of above base pay. Give me one second, guys.

So yeah, everything I said in the first question still applies but I, I also added that is with what you have said here, you, you could do this much faster than what I said in the first question. And that is fire two or three people. Fire two or three people that take these massive breaks and that you've made it clear that you don't want that and that will correct the behavior. And by correcting that behavior they'll be more efficient and that will get them above P for P or above base pay, I should say. Based on this, would you raise your percentage that everyone gets a taste of P4P? Right now we are at 32%. We were hoping to use the 1% for gas cars and other perks. Don't want to go too high since we still have quite a bit of debt. So keep in mind if they're not hitting P4P, you're not even close at 32, you're probably like 40 or 42 or 43. So offering 33 or 34 and if they actually hit it because of that, it's much greater value to you having this percent. I've seen people do this before. They're like, oh, I can't give above like 25 or 26%. It's like, look, your guys are already at 35, 36, 37%. They're not even close to P4B. It's doing absolutely nothing for your business until they're hitting above base pay. P4P does nothing for your business. So our acceptance rate is for mowing is low, around 41. That's not so bad for your size though. Our minimum mowing price is 38 for 4,000 square foot lawns. And it seems that most of the quotes are going out between 40 to 40 range. Our pricing matches the rate matrix Chuck gave me. I'm not super concerned about 41%. It seems like you've kind of switched from profit mode to growth mode simply because you have all these employees. I would challenge you that. 41, 40, 40, 45%. Totally fine with that. Because I think you want to stay in profit mode and to stay in profit mode and not feel like you guys feel the schedule up for these three or four guys. Let the, let the, the bad actors, two or three of them go that are doing the whole break situation and doing that they know is not what you're supposed to be doing. That will then get everyone alignment with like efficiency and then they'll probably hit above base pay and then that will reinforce that behavior. Would you lower prices to win more customers? Our current man hour rate is 83. I don't, I just don't think this is the problem right now. I would attack this as the problem. Use the fact that you have great employees, you have a lot of them to cut. The ones who are doing, doing the bad acting and going way out of the way, just, I just fire them. Like just let them go. And the next team meeting, here's why we let them go. Make an example of them. And then that will bring everyone much more efficient, which will get them closer to base pay, which, which will then if they get above base pay, reinforce P4P in the business.

Brian Connor from Augusta, Georgia. Jeremy is going to purchase another 33, another 30% of the North Augusta location. We have a contract in place that was drafted by an attorney for his current 10% ownership. Should we use LegalZoom to create a new contract with a purchase agreement for the additional 30% or do you recommend making an amendment to the current contract using the attorney that drafted the original? Going forward, would you recommend legal Zoom for all new locations we open?

I would personally probably use the attorney that I drafted the original because they know that like the back of their hand and they would do a better job of probably doing the amendment and be cheaper if you take it to a new attorney. They've got to go through that. They're going to always have tweaks they want.

That was the weirdest thing. Case of Mike check 1, 2 2, 2.

My computer just restarted. That was the weirdest thing ever. Okay, we're back. Sorry. I don't know what happened there. Now everything's getting updated. What in the world? Okay, I have no idea what happened there.

Let's continue on. I would probably have the same attorney do this one. In terms of.

In terms of legal zoom. Oh, you could. Honestly, based upon like if I was legal zoom, I would be freaked out of my mind because chat GPT does pretty much exactly what legal zoom does. I think the biggest thing that I would do if I was you guys is have a contract written up. Whether you write it or an attorney doesn't really matter. Or chat GPT and then have it signed by both parties and have it notarized. If you do that, that's a legal binding contract enforceable by law. That's what I would do. So for example, even with Copilot, my 4060 split with Patrick is literally done on words. I created two page document of what happens when, if this happens, what happens, blah blah blah. And us both notarizing in our states, stamped and sealed. And that's legally binding. So it's usually enough.

Tarot Act. Boone's Creek. Hey Mike, I found these follow up call invitations that you did on the 18th mastermind. Very helpful. I don't think I've ever heard a live invitation like that. However, you had someone on the line with you when you were doing those. Could you do a quick imitation of what you would do when it goes to a voicemail? Like way over half the time all I get is voicemail. Just wondering how to leave a good voicemail. They'll actually get a call back. Yeah, this is how you do it. Here we go, another impersonation.

Ring, ring, ring. Okay, goes the voicemail. Hey, Mr. Jones, just checked in with you. I know yesterday we had come by the property. It was great to meet you. Here, here's the estimate here as the estimator Augusta. I'm just here to really make sure that the clients get a great spot on the schedule. And I was looking this morning at our dispatch board and it looks like we're filling up three or four weeks out. But there was a spot game available next Thursday. I could could go ahead and get you slotted in there. I'm going to go ahead and hold that for the next few hours. If you give me a call back I can go ahead and reserve that and get you locked and loaded for that. I just don't want you to have to be waiting and I know the the bushes were getting kind of out of control. I don't want you to be pushing you off to next month. So give me a call back and we'll get this locked and loaded and I appreciate you. Have a great day. That's it. Right? Give them scarcity, give them a reason to call you back and then just to lock it in and assume that they're going to come on the schedule. Right. I didn't even ask did you want it. I didn't ask did you have a question about your estimate. I simply used the scarcity of the time and that's how they're going to call me back. I'm going to hold it for the next few hours but please I need you to give me a call back to be able to lock it in on the schedule.

Acting. Let's go. You'll get a lot more of that in June when I go to the location. That's a big reason why I'm going. Kyle Tarvin Are we allowed to get shirts with just a black logo on a yellow shirt? Trying to save money on these shirts. We go through them like candy.

It shouldn't be a whole lot more to do black compared to green. I would recommend trying to stick to green, maybe a black outline but I don't think it's going to cost you a lot more to be honest. Like you're talking maybe a dollar.

Dustin and champagne. How low is too low for mowing estimates? We are starting to gain some traction in closing mowing jobs as we are hitting the stride a string rush but our minimum is 35 and we are not, we are only closing 42% of mowing estimates. I have thought about lowering our minimum again but any lower and it will be hard to make anything. I am stuck kind of still having mindset in Bloomington with just being profitable but we need to start, we need to grow champagne quicker than we than we are. Any thoughts? I would question what percentage of your estimates are minimum because you're thinking okay, I need to lower the minimum. Is that because 80% of your lawns are at the minimum? If that's the truth then yes lowering your minimum is going to affect but what a lot of people do, they're like oh I gotta lower my minimum because I gotta lower my price and increase my close ratio. But only 30, 20, 25% of their estimates are actually at the minimum. So in that case they need to shift their whole mowing matrix down. So I would take a harder look at even if you just look through the last like 30, 40 estimates and like just categorize are these minimum mows, are these 35 to 50 mo's, are these 50 plus mo's and see what that distribution looks like. Because what you might be amazed at is if half of them are between 35 and 50 or 55, that might be the thing that actually want to move down versus your minimum price. So.

I would just do that first before you think that's just the minimum media move down.

Jason Knoxville and do why our gust emails will be going to spam. And is there a fix of this if it started last week, you're using Jobber. Do you use Jobber to send them out? Do you, do you use your Augusta email through Jobber? That's usually the first thing I ask. The second thing.

Like I, I don't mean like you're not sending them from Jobber. I mean like if you're using that email address from Jobber or Service off or Zooper and then they start getting flagged, then what happens is when you send a regular email, they'll also go to spam. This is, this is a bouncing ball and this is all these CRMs, including Copa. We have to constantly be seeing what the filters are changing and adapting our, what we're doing on our end. So there's not a lot you can do yet. I would just track this and see if it's like something that's happening for months over end.

But the biggest way to get around this in terms of making sure is people open up their email. If people open up their email and they're not marking you as spam, you're good to go. This could potentially be also if you send out one click estimate emails and this is what's happening with a bunch of service all about people right now is because they're getting pushed out like massively. And like that whole bug last week that was sending out 8, 10 emails, you're going to get marked as spam. And then it might take you a month or two to like prove to the filters that you're not spam because people open up your emails. Tara Leck how do we add employees on Zooper? I think there's a, a video on the academy for this. You just add a new user and Then you select which roles and rights they have. Pretty sure there is a video on this on the Academy underneath the Zooper page.

This is from Anonymous when it comes to running a location out of state, where are some key things that need to be thought about before pursuing it? I've thought about how challenges could be it sound like you may never went to Charlotte. Is this something you feel could be easier because that location is corporately owned? I know that back end support is there to support a gm. I just can't get past the mental block of the challenges this could present. I think that ultimately the success of an out of state location is up to how good the GM is. But if problems were to arise and a GM were to quit, things could escalate quicker than if a location is nearby. I don't know what I necessarily have a specific question. More interesting to hear your thoughts about what you have learned from your experience, what you would have changed and would and Are you planning to copy and paste a Charlotte ID and another city? This 100 comes down to having either you or regional manager close by. If you're starting your 2nd 3rd location, highly recommend that it's nearby. Highly recommend that within an hour's driving distance at the most. Because like you said, if someone drops out you need to have someone step in their shoes. That being said, if you get like a group of six or ten locations and you have a regional manager, that regional manager can step in for them or other GMs can help each other if they're together. But you must have a gm, a regional manager nearby and if you're serving as a regional manager that means they need to be close by you. I would only ever start an out of state location like I've done for Charlotte. If I'm starting four, at least four, ideally more like six locations with a G regional manager at the top, that's the only time I would do it where it's out of state from the get. This has just been proven time and time again that having a regional manager close by is a must. And ideally that regional manager has been your GM before. Like this is something I can't really prove. I don't have data against using a regional manager that has or has not been.

One of my GMs. But like Chuck, being a GM adds a huge level of authority because he's been in all of their scenarios and in all of their situations and it's not an outside person being like you should do this and you should. He's done it already right? And he did his location so well that now he can run that location almost like part time as a GM at the Moore's location, because he did exactly what he's telling all the other GMs to be doing. And so there's a certain level of respect as well as they can.