Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/25/2024

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Let's go and get started.

Kevin Fairburn says, who do I need to talk to to walk me through the dispatch board? Because I have questions on a lot of things that are happening on there. Dustin says Kevin for 89.98. I'll walk you through it.

Kevin says, I need help with it. Not more confusion.

So I would book a call with ATC air traffic control. So if you just go to the sidebar on Copilot, you can just book a zoom call and they can walk you through it. It's probably the best. There's the WhatsApp number. If you have something quick to ask them, you can feel free to do that as well. That's in the Facebook group pinned to the top. But if you want them to walk you through something, I just do zoom. So before you do that would be good. You wanted to reach out to the WhatsApp number two. You could just ask them to set up a call or something like that. But it's on the left hand side. Book a call inside of the.

Column on Copilot. All right, let's go ahead and get started.

Dustin said there was a very long question that he had submitted. So let's see what that's all about. Present share screen.

Boom. Boom. Okay, we have five questions a day.

All right.

First up is Dustin. Oh, is this the long one? Let's check this out.

Oh, Dustin's going for the longest question of the year. Okay, so let's see what we got here. We need some trucks. I was talking with Nick Sneddon. I'm getting guess that is and around conference and I think it came to light that you had given him advice or given him an idea of what would be to do long term to his business if he had bought new or nice vehicles. Here are my locations currently at and are interested in your feedback and recommendations. P.S. i'm definitely overthinking this. Hey, at least you're aware in terms of Nick Stennan, the reason that the.

Tractors that he had got for snow plowing up in Ontario were new is because a lot of the used ones were similar priced. And then like the insurance and everything, it just made more sense just to go buy new tractors. They're snow plowing with snow blowers and everything. So it is, it is not super common that I recommend to buy new vehicles. But there are occasions, especially if you know you're gonna be in business for 10 years and you're doing a bunch of locations and things. Probably if you actually look at the cost per mile of a used truck versus a new one. Right now it's it's not great to buy a new truck especially if you're going to debt. Right now interest rates are high. However.

If you look at the cost per mile assuming you're going to drive the truck for a long time. That's the part where I I'm so public about being using.

Vehicles is because most people don't last five years in business. So in general I have to tell people don't buy new vehicles because then they they end their business that didn't go well with a whole bunch of debt and a truck that they owe more on that's worth so that's what I'm I'm careful of. But if someone's in business for a long time and you're starting with the with a truck that has 5, 10, 15,000 miles and you're going to take it to 200,000. The cost per mile of a new vehicle can be comparable if not less than a used vehicle. If you run the math per mile. Anyways, here we go. Bloomington average of 125 to 130 budget hours scheduled weekly. Four team members and Kyle we'll do over 50k in April and planning to do 60k in May. We currently have three trucks with a transmission went out in one and it has many other issues. Would call it the ugly child. Over 10Ks in repairs to make it trustworthy.042 500175 miles that truck in my opinion is not worth fixing so I'm thinking about buy one and wrap it. Other two trucks are generally reliable. 01 GMC 06 Ford currently money in the bank $16,000 in the bank 27k to invoice and 20 and 12,000 left to complete in April. Champagne average 60. This is the second location if you don't know. Average 60 to 65 budget hours weekly. One killer team member does 40 budget hours weekly himself and me doing door hangers and attempting to grow stretch. Goal For May is 30,000 and adding a second team member we have one truck 2018 with 70,000 miles. Most reliable vehicle I've owned for the business. Currently money in the bank is around 16,000 12,000 invoice $6,000 left to complete in April. Currently Bloomington has debt on equipment with a balance of $2.7K in the credit cards not due for several weeks.

The total debt is $22,000 with fixed payments of $7200 plus your credit cards which you're paying off it looks like pretty much monthly. Okay, here's the. Here we go. I'm thinking about going and getting two new trucks, 2016 or newer with under 80,000 miles. This was the constraints the bank gave me on to get a loan. I have found some around 20 to 25,000. But I don't want to solve a short term problem, create a long term solution, or create solve a short term problem and create a long term problem. Okay.

I have been preached at forever to not go into debt on vehicles since I was born, but I'm not obvious on the idea, especially when they will create revenue. Most I've ever spent on a vehicle prior to 2018 was 7,500. So they're basically profitable after two to three months. But they also tend to be less reliable. Any thoughts or recommendations you have on what do you greatly appreciate Bloomington over? Their capacity to be honest and campaign is quickly approaching that same dilemma. We definitely are in growth mode as well as especially in Champagne. So before we would raise prices and go into profit mode, I would want to max out five total trucks, three in Bloomington and two in Champagne. Okay. So that's actually the kicker where the very last line is your kicker. So I would actually approve you personally to go get two trucks that are newer than 2016.

You have two locations, you know you're gonna be doing this for a long time. And you've proven over the past few years that you've stayed in business.

The part that ends, the part most will don't do, and that is they go buy the trucks, they raise revenue massively and then they never raise prices. And then what they do is they go by more trucks in two years or even next spring rush. So if you're, if you're confident you can keep growing at this base, fantastic. And then it's a matter of like when do we think based upon projecting? Like I would actually run these projections, I would be like, okay, based upon how much we're growing currently the past like three weeks, do we think we will hit capacity if we buy two new trucks? Will we hit capacity in six to eight weeks? If you can, that'd be awesome. That means you get to raise prices before the end of this spring rush. You'll be like, set up so much more better financially for the next 12 months because otherwise it's going to be a little bit tight during the winter. Again, this is why winter is so important for us to figure out. And having a good strategy in place for that would give me much more leeway in terms of Taking out debt on newer trucks. If I had a winter plan. So if you had Christmas lights, if you were doing something like that, I would give you even more leeway to take out debt on a growing business. And.

Yeah, like, it's not like you're growing very quickly. Things like. Or things are going well. So feed the beast. But it sounds like you got a good plan. Like, we want five pool trucks, three in Bloomington, two in Champaign. So that's your capacity. Figure out what your asset capacity is and then just be like, when we hit that number, we are raising prices, period. End of story, full stop. Because what happens a lot of times is people will hit that and they're like, well, I could keep growing because usually you hit capacity during spring rush. And so then they're like, well, let's get another truck. And all of a sudden they do ramp up to where they now they have five, six thousand dollars a month of payments. They have all these new trucks and they have no money in the bank. So which is still a problem that can be solved. Raise prices. But now they're going to raise prices, they're going to decrease the amount of work they have and they're going to have excess capacity. So the fact of the matter is your total debt is $22,000. That's not bad. And your $720 fixed payments monthly, also not bad. Like you could cover the 7200. Let's just say you got two new. Two new vehicles and you have to pay like 400, $500 per. Let's just say now your payments are like $1,500 per month. No. If you're able to improve revenue by 25, 20, let's just call it $20,000 per month with these two, two new trucks. And let's say you're 20% profitable on that. That means like $4,000 in profit. And you're going to add another thousand dollars, not even thousand dollars in payments. But more importantly, the thing with you, Dustin, is too, you do have a lot of older vehicles. And like, it's always been an issue. Like, also because we've been together for a few years, like, I know some of the problems you've had with trucks. And it always is like a really big emotional and like financial like surprise. And it's a pain in the butt. So having the newer vehicle is going to help. So hopefully me walking through that, not everyone qualified themselves to go buy brand new trucks, because that's not the point here. The point is you usually build the business using marketing Getting things off the ground, getting momentum. And then once you have that, if you're like, hey, I'm doing this next 10 years, the question is, do I go buy a truck that's going to last me a year or two or buy a truck that's going to cost me twice as much but last 10 years. Now we have a different story, right? So the, so even on, if you, if, if you had to pay $25,000 for a truck that has 80,000 miles, like it's half of its lifespan is done. So the cost per mile, if you're going to run it all the way to completion is actually less. If you got a truck that was say 20, 21, 20, 22 and had 20,000 miles and you paid 28,000 or $30,000 for like the trucks that we got at the Bellingham shop were all brand new. They were all the brand new. They're all like a year old. They had 10 to 20 to 18,000 miles on them. And I got them all from between 26 and $30,000. And so.

They just have ton. Like the cost per mile is so low. I just know they're going to, we're going to have Bellingham shop for a very long time. Like they're going to get used to completion. So hopefully I answer your question and not everyone thinks they should just go out and buy new trucks.

Oh, Dustin had some things here. Total is like 44ks. The debt is just champagne. Got it. Yeah. But if you, if, if you, if you're only paying 700 something dollars a month in fixed, it's still, I would probably still get the same recommendation, Dustin. So. And a lot of that equipment, like the thing is too, like you have to ask yourself, like you, I'm guessing you don't need to buy more equipment to get these two trucks. Like this is another assumption we're making is like, I'm assuming you don't need to buy more equipment to go get those trucks, fill them up and get to capacity. Because if that's the truth, then it's like awesome. So.

I would, I would rather the newer trucks because I've seen what's happened the past couple of years in the summer, I know you're going to be in business. You're going to keep growing these locations. The cost per mile on these are going to be lower. The thing is too, in the next 24 months, if you don't have to buy equipment, you'll pay off the X marks, you'll pay off the mowers, you'll pay off the tractor over the next 12, 24, 36 months because those are shorter term debt obligations. So that would be my 2 cents. I know you enough, Dustin, to be able to give you that advice. I would go out and get newer trucks. I'd probably be looking at 20, 20 and above. Under 30,000 miles if possible. If you guys go into CarMax, you can basically shop the whole country. I'm not a huge fan of going to dealerships, but if you're going to get newer, CarMax is pretty good. If, if a truck is nearby you, you can be paying either free or like maybe up to, you know, five hundred or a thousand dollars for them to deliver it, but you can literally shop the whole country. And I had one delivered to me And I paid $2,000 for the delivery because it was like $26,000 with 11,000 miles on it. It was like six months old, like or eight months old or something like that. So I would just recommend using CarMax. You're going to go the new route. I don't know what their financing is like because I did pay the cash, but that's just my two cents.

Joel from Lafayette Colorado Showcase review Roadmap doesn't include a referral tracking feature. Is that something you plan to build in a product copa? Yes.

Let me see if I actually can pull this up. Give me 34 seconds. Yeah, I have a whole referral thing that I want to build into copilot. Let me see if I can't pull this up fast. It might take me a second. Give me one second.

Referral.

Build referral program in the client portal.

Okay. No, I haven't put this all together yet. Okay. So yeah, we have a thing in place or on. On the roadmap that that is something we want to build and that is like referrals. Like we all know referral programs for like the subscription. Like to. To get the kind of affiliate program you get a bonus someone. But we want to build into the customer portal. If yes, is it likely to come out within a year or. It'll take a few years based on where I'm putting it.

Not gonna be this year. I'd probably say middle of next year, like 20, 25. Based upon where like I'm prioritizing it. That's probably where it's gonna fall. Second question on a related note. Why is build showcase reviews not from a customer perspective of your business and focus given all other things you do? Because it's like a very low lift. I literally spent three minutes a day on this, not even three minutes a day because it's A lot of stuff is already built. There's nothing super new about showcase reviews. The fact is if we can control it, I can connect it to Copilot and make it a value add for people. But this is not like we're not building new technology or showcase reviews. This is why like yesterday that question about the legal thing, there's like I don't know, fifty, a hundred other companies that are very similar to showcase reviews. I could list off like a ton of them. So it's not nothing new. And a lot of this stuff we could just build very quickly. It's very. It's a lot cheaper than going out and getting engineers have to build things from scratch like a good engineer. There's engineers I'm paying right now that are over $300,000 in annual revenue, annual wages. Because you're expecting people to build things from scratch. This stuff, a lot of stuff is off the shelf. We can piece things together. We can then add on top of it. You can get one developer on this, that's a mid level, you know, mid level to junior. So you're looking at maybe 150,000.

And very little if none of my time on C suite. You gave the reason for showcase reviews to get. Get lots of reviews to grow a new business. But there are many ways to do this already. Business card as a QR code manual, texting our email and customers automations and CRMs services. Like nice job. Yeah, nice job is a good one. It seems like the main benefit for showcase over something like nice job is better copilot integration in the future. Yes, correct. So it seems like showcase is meant to be a lower rung on the value ladder to bring people into the home service sphere. Or is this, or is there more? Yeah, so like a big. The big thing was with lawn care web design. So the team that's working on long care web design is also working on showcase reviews. Um, it's that low of software engineering level that we can get them going on it and then just bring in a mid level engineer. So.

We always have people wanting to join lawn care web design and home service web design and they are too small and they would be better served just going out and getting reviews. But they don't. And they don't because they literally don't know how to get that Google link and send it to their friends. So. So it's like, okay, why don't we build something that's like super low lift, get them off the Ground, they'll grow their business. And then when they can get. They can use home service, web design or whatever. And so if you look at how we. How I'm kind of building my business is like, we always are trying to. We're trying to get people to be able to get either started or immerse in the brand with, like, free stuff all over the place. So you have like, whether it be free book, free videos, whatever, and then we slowly merge them until we want them to join Augusta. So that's why there's people that followed me for two, three years, and they're just joining Augusta now is because they. We can literally track them through this funnel. And so you'll see like, lawn care media, that's like a $49 package. So we go from free, and then someone can get like a book. It's like 10 bucks or whatever. Then they can get. They can get a lawn care media thing for like $49. And so what we're trying to do with.

Showcase Reviews is merge that funnel from $49 to right now is jumping. You get like your website made by us. It's like 500 bucks, or you'd come to conference, which now conference is going to cost like 800. So we're trying to merge that gap. That's a big jump from 49 to 500. And so people can continue down that road, down the path with us. And so Showcase Reviews is a great place for people that are smaller to get into getting online reviews, growing their business, et cetera, because a lot of them should not be spending $500 a month on a new website when they literally have like four or five customers. So we would. We would literally tell them not to join. So we just always are trying to think about, like, how do we get people eventually to join Augusta? And it's like you have like this long continuum of like, everything from. And it can take five years to get some people through them through it. So copilots there, it's a really integral piece because, like, people will come all the way to copilot. They'll join the end. Okay, I'm using everything. I should just be joining Augusta now. And then we can see all of their business data. So we actually know all about them. We know if they're a good person already, usually they're a good business owner, et cetera. So things like that is kind of like where it's a good. It's a big hole that was inside that progression. But more importantly, there's so many people in Long care web design and home service web design that we turn away and we wanted something to give them. Kyle Tarvin I love consuming content surrounding franchise ownership from every industry. Recently watching a podcast with Rick Ross. Wow Kyle, really extending yourself there. And him talking about buying his Wingstop locations. I thought that was neat. Getting a glimpse into how it worked for him. I've also been seeing on time about his younger guy owning his first Subway franchise. Oh that's cool. Do you have any recommendations on groups to join content creators to follow other content surrounding franchises and franchise ownership? Yeah, I mentioned one the other day on the post I made what's it called franchise city on YouTube. He's a good one. It's a very interesting model. He because he actually exposes franchises that are bad that's like most of his content but then they actually he is a Franchise City is a.

Not a dealer. What's the word? I'm forgetting the word. Basically where he buys and sells franchises and he people a lot of people come to him like hey so what franchise should I join? And then he like they guide them for like kind of a consulting thing and then they'll also have they'll get cuts of deals if they sell certain franchises. That's kind of like how they their business model works. But Franchise City is a good one. He makes good content about like the down the he. I think the other day he made one about Snap on Fitness or sorry Snap on Fitness. Snap on the equipment guys that drive around sell it sell shop equipment and why like there that was a bad franchise. And so he dives into like the franchise agreement and like the terms and conditions and like why they're they're sucking their franchisees dry. I really like his content. I listened to probably 50 of his videos. Mr. Anonymous, where on Copilot do we find the reviews customers are leaving for our teams? Internally I've noticed a few clients have tags that say review left or something similar.

Review left. I have never seen that tag.

Put on the WhatsApp chat or or ATC in general. Just ask them right now you can tie. You really want to tie an automation off of it to get an email or like if you wanted to text yourself etc. You could do that. But ask them for kind of the best recommended way to do that and they'll probably have some better ideas than I would to be perfectly honest. Because I really don't focus on internal reviews. I try to drive everyone to the I want Google reviews because like if they give me a five star review Comes in internal like whoop dee doo. I want it to be where it's going to online so I, I don't even know if I have that even those even set up at all because yes, it's nice to have a 5 star internal review but I'd rather the 5 star going online. So to be perfectly honest I wouldn't be sending those, sending those out and just accepting internal reviews. The thing is they can go and rate you from their client portal and that's fine, that's cool, let's go. But I'm not going to actively set up automations to get internal reviews when if I can get five stars and publicize them that's really the goal of like showcase reviews. And we already have the automations to make the yes and the no happen. Mr. Anonymous, where do you look and what do you do when you are working like crazy and the business bank account doesn't go up for an entire month? I have tens of thousands of debt I need to pay off in the next few months and I need to figure out where the money is going.

Okay, I don't really have context here. Let me think here.

So there's two questions you're asking. One is you need to pay off debt. The second one is you don't know where your money is going and you're working crazy. This is usually.

Home service. Business owners feel they're working a ton of ton of hours and they don't see any money in the bank. This is almost always fixed by raising prices. And I don't know why, like I could theorize but I don't know why we, we always think that like why is it I'm working so crazy hard and like we're growing and we're not. There's not money to make grow sucks cash. And if you aren't making a profitable per hour business, making more hours doesn't make it profitable. Like if you are spending $76 per hour to run your business and you are making like charging the customer $76, you can keep growing and you will grow revenue but you will never make profit. So what do you do? You raise prices from $76 to $86 and all of a sudden you make profit and you will have to sacrifice some growth. Yes, but this is the time to do it. When you're working like crazy, go work a little bit less, increase your prices and watch what happens. This is why I always say like people will quit and they'll quit and I'll literally look at their last year and they doubled in revenue. And like, well, we weren't profitable. It's like, well, yeah, you doubled in revenue, you bought a couple trucks, you hired a bunch of people, you moved to a new shop. You're not gonna be profitable because number one, growth sucks cash and number two, you never stopped to actually raise your prices to decrease the amount of new customers you were getting, but make it profitable. So that's why I always say, like, until you've raised prices and you're in profit mode, you can't judge yourself as an entrepreneur. Like, you can't be hard on yourself because if you're growing and growing, going and buying trucks and you're growing and getting more customers and, and all this stuff and you're not raising prices to the point where you stop growth, then it's that. That, that would be my recommendation, unfortunately, like a problem for 80 to 90% of home service business owners. And it's okay to be in growth mode. Just realize if you're in growth mode, you're not going to be making a lot of profit.

I talk in the book, like you'll see is you must choose one or the other people that say, I want to double my business here and make more profit. Yes, it happens occasionally, but it's very, very, very rare. You're either maximizing for growth and you are keeping prices low, you are maximizing your close ratio, or you are in profit mode. You're increasing prices, you are decreasing the number of customers you have by raising prices and you're increasing profits.

Landon Tallahassee. I'm trying to figure out the balance of hiring. On one hand, a problem I had last year was hiring too fast, thus going through close to 10 guys pretty quick. At the summit, there was a guy who talked about the consequences of hiring. Fast firing, fast hiring and slow firing. I'm still on board with the quick fire train if they aren't a good fit. But I am having trouble with the balance of how to, how long to take to hire. I got a lot of applicants on indeed, but all of them seem pretty ineligible. Most of the problems being that they move jobs every couple months or are pretty old. I need to hire as soon as possible, but I don't want to make the financial and cultural mistake of taking bad people in again and over and over like last year. What would be your suggestion for me so I can find the balance of trying to make a good hire yet not being too picky?

The solution really to this is hiring when you don't need people and when I Say hiring, I just mean having an application out. So now with there being a lot more flexibility in the labor market, like even once you find someone good keep a free indeed add up. You'd be shocked if you just leave an add up.

If you leave an ad up on indeed and you don't put any money behind it, you'd be shocked how many, how many applicants you'll get. It's insane. So I would say like the acute problem I'm not really dealing with. I'm dealing with like long term. How do you fix this is even when you have enough employees, keep at least a free indeed add up. Maybe put five bucks behind it and keep applicants that are rolling in. So at the very worst you would hire them and then you would tell them hey, your start date is probably in three or four or five weeks. And then you either grow to that capacity and then have them come on or just know that you're going to let go of your lowest performing team member.

So glad to see copilot reviews customer page than reviews on top of.

Thank you glad Kevin Mike disrespectful question or more for commands and a contact for this would be Liz, Brian or you just help @augusta longer services.com you could also if you wanted to do a zoom call with command you could just book a zoom call from the dashboard. So you just go to book a call, go to the coaching tab, book a call with command center. You could go in there and then the dispatch scheduling department could book a call with you and you could actually just do it on their calendly right away.

All right everyone, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your Thursday. I love you all and we'll see you tomorrow. Take care.