Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/26/2023

A couple quick announcements, then we'll jump into questions. First off, I'm really looking forward to the April update from Chuck. That's going to be coming from the corporate locations, probably in a video next couple weeks.

Really good improvements from some of them, the general manager locations down there and then.

Actually getting a third truck at one of the locations already. So that's great. Great. So, yeah, it's been, it's been a really, really good month and kind of turning around a lot of the problems that we're at last month. So really good. I appreciate Chuck, appreciate the GMs down there and then figure a lot of these bumps in the road so that down the road, when you have multiple locations and need a regional manager and multiple gms, it's a little bit easier. All right, let's jump into. I need to put this in the Facebook. Give me one second.

YouTube.

Back. Sorry, guys, one second. Forgot to do this a couple days ago.

Edit like minutes. Okay, couple quick updates from Liz at command. I need to go over.

Facebook. Facebook.

Okay.

You are a solo operator. This notice is for you. We'll make it a nice notice, but it can become a meaner notice. Okay, I'm just joking.

Please do not call into command center and ask them to do full service tasks.

This is a system that down the road we can figure out, but we're not going to figure out during the middle of spring rush. And that is we do not train command center to ask you if you're full service or if you are solo operator or growth model. We do not train them on that. We train them to help you whatever they possibly can. Please don't call in though, and ask them to do all of your collections. If you're a solo operator and you know that that's full service task, please don't do that. They're going to want to help you. But we went back through last week and there's a bunch of this happening and it's slowing down full service departments that their workflow and their amount of work, that is their workload is based upon how many people are in their full service department. But then what's happening is basic service people are calling in and asking for services that are not basic service. Okay, so basic services, phone calls, contact forms.

The web chat on your website and estimate request forms. That's basic service. But you can't call in and ask for full service things to be done like, hey, tomorrow, I don't, you know, reroute my schedule. And I want you to invoice these People, you can't do that. All right? So everyone at Command center is trained to help you whatever you ask them for. We're not going to validate you. We're not going to like. It just slows you down when you need something in the pinch. And that's what we're here for. But please don't ask and call in and ask to do full service tasks if you are not in that department or if you, if you know you're a solo operator, please don't do that. Okay? That's why full, that's why growth model costs. What it does is it. It takes us three to four times longer to train people at Command center on full service tasks compared to basic service. We get someone on basic service within three to four weeks doing okay, I'd say two months before they're efficient. Full service. It can take us months and months and months to train people on payroll, quickbooks, a lot of these other things. And then we give these departments and, and supply team members and agents based upon the amount of people that are in that number of locations in that workload. So if we have random dumps of like, hey, I need all of my invoices sent out or I need all my automations gone through. I need all my invoices done in collections and there's 30 invoices that are overdue. That slows us down massively. And they're trained to just help and support. Support. So for now until we have, we're through spring rest and we create a system around this, please just be honest. If you are in a pinch though, regardless if you, if you're in a destination and you need a pinch, that's what we're here for. But please don't make it habit. And that's what I'm, I'm kind of, I need to kind of crack down on is people dumping stuff on Command center via phone call. And then it put, puts everyone else that was, has been in that department for a long time way behind. And that's just not fair to everyone else. So please be aware of that. I don't think I'll need to even like crack down on it, but it's something that is slowing down Command center and putting them, putting too much stress on them. So there's people doing 30 plus overtime hours right now. And the last thing I want to be doing is putting things on them that they were not expecting because people are calling in. So that is all I had there. Let's go. Questions? Present. See what we got.

Ah, there's two Devin from Red Deer. Do you guys empty your debris every night? Even if it's a half load? I go into the dump and it's a seven minimum a load. Yeah.

So we do it every night. But we, we try our best to make sure wherever we have a shop, say that we can dump there and then we can either burn it or we can bury it, or we can dump it off a cliff like in Bellingham. It's a big reason why at the new headquarters location, I needed it to be industrial and out in the country so that we could do to breed management, burning, theft, etc. $7 minimum load. Let's say you do 10 of those a month. It's only 70 bucks. But when that starts becoming two trucks every single day, that starts to become where it's like, hey, it's worth spending extra 3, 4, 500amonth to get shop space that you can handle that debris. And furthermore.

You'Re charging pickup of debris, half pickup debris, etc to be able to cover those costs. So.

Bryce Claussing from Vanworth, Ohio, which by the way, I think your edit your video is getting edited now, Bryce. So thanks for getting that footage over to them. It's gonna be fun. Curiosity question. Okay, if I'm not mistaken, you mentioned that down the road you would like to take on investors to open more locations with Chuck and other. I have not said that I have thought about doing this. I do not have any plans. I'm not thinking about this currently. It's something that we talked about on a podcast.

So just asterisks next to that. We don't have any plans to do this whatsoever. Also, if I'm not mistaken, you mentioned that you could get investors a 15 to 20% yearly return. How much would you structure such deal and why would investors choose to put money into a brand new location rather than real estate or the stock market?

How would you structure such deal? And okay, so you want me to like hypothesize. Okay, how would you go about selling that? Investing in a brand new location is better than the stock market real estate. Would you include protections for both parties such as you don't have payments during the first year so you can maximize growth and stability? And would you give them protection such as guaranteed returns even if the location didn't perform like you projected? Would they get equity in the location such as 50 equity and you buy them out at 50 to 400 to 500k and slowly grow it to 700 to 800k with full ownership? I apologize for the long winded question, okay, we can hypothesize. Because I have not, like, thought this through and through it really honestly, like, it would come down to the team and the people on the team and what their goals were and whether or not they wanted to build a behemoth of an internal corporate location structure. Because this gets extremely taxing. And this is the thing I talked about with Lee one time after the podcast is like, here's the thing. Let's say I want to go start 10 locations. Let's just call it a million dollars. I would need to do that. Yes. I could go raise funds for that. The thing is.

I would have to spend at least 150,000 of that just on legal fees to set it up. If I have investors, then you'd have to have a investor relationship thing, like where they have to. Because people would want to call in, they want to ask about their investment, they wanted to get set up. They have questions to ask. Then you'd have to have investor updates. Like, people want to know what's going on with the locations. We want to know about the P L. They want to know why we're buying trucks. They want to know why the winter is. The first year is like, you're losing money. Like, you'd have all these questions and all this extra work and just the extra cost of setting up a security.

That would be extremely substantial in terms of how this is could be pitched as a positive thing for an investor. It's like, okay, you would get a piece of equity, so it'd be a security, right?

That's the only way to do it, because otherwise you'd just be daring it. You'd be. What you could potentially do is guarantee or guarantee a rate of return, right? So what you could do is you could say, okay, we're gonna guarantee 2, 3% every year, and then you get a cut of the profits. Like, it's basically a profit sharing program. You could do that, right? And then they could get 5, 10, 15, 20, whatever it is for profit sharing. The more likely scenario, because if you do that, you'll probably have to give securities anyways. So if you're gonna do securities, you might do equity where they have equity in the company and then give them shares.

So my argument is that, okay, if I spend 100 grand on a location and it can return back to investors $20,000 a year. $20,000 a year. That's a 20% return. So am I confident that after year one, that can happen? Yes, 100%, like, absolutely. So the thing is, there's also the fact that I believe one out of four, one out of three locations are going to have a bad GM that you have to get rid of. And that could be a money suck, like a money pit. If you have a GM that really does poorly, you can, you can lose a lot of money on a bad GM location. So there's risk to that. Right? So even though one location might literally have a 40 or 50% return on a hundred thousand dollars deployed, you have another location that's negative 20, right? So then it, the math only makes sense for, for me, if you start doing 20, 30, 40 locations at the same time and that becomes a whole behemoth to build. So it really come down to whether or not people on my team were like, hey, I want to do this, I want it for the next five years, I want to grow this and I want to build 100 locations. And like, let's do it. And they want to manage investors and they want to manage, you know, the PR side and they want to manage the funds and talking to lawyers all the time who. I'm not signing up for that. So that's probably what would come down to whether or not I did. Also, only I could potentially do it if financially I needed to for taxes. And.

I'm not super keen on it because I just don't like using other people's money. I already get stressed enough about my own capital, let alone if I'm using other people's money. You're answerable to them, right? And like, you know, I just, if it, the numbers have to get very big for that to not be like, well, why would I just not do the million and on all of it have full control and autonomy, just do whatever I want.

So how it potentially set up though, that you get a piece of equity or you get residual some sort of guarantee. I would want to guarantee to be able to give investors like, hey, 2% even, like, hey, you're at least getting this. Like it's basically risk free 2%. And I have that collateralized with backstop something. But again it's like, well, if you're going to backstop it, why don't you use that capital and go do it yourself, right? So the numbers have to get very, very large for it to become worth it for me.

And then it's like, well, why are you doing it.

To give other people a way to invest. Like, well, they should just go buy their own location. So I've focused more of my time on how do we systematize GM locations to where someone wants to invest with Augusta, they start more locations, and they have a very, very deployable way of finding them, training the gm, having a regional manager, and then that's how they would invest with us. So.

Let'S see here. That's all it. All right. Nice short one for Wednesday makes up for marathon Monday. And Tuesday was pretty long, too, yesterday, so. All right, guys, have fantastic day, and we'll see you tomorrow. Take care.