Mike Minutes Mastermind 05/18/22 (Playing Defense!)

Good morning, Augusta Nation. Hope you're doing super well. There were no questions in the form this morning as usual. If you have a question, it's in the description of all these videos that I make. So feel free to always post there. But today I did want to talk about something that I want to actually formalize and that is a defensive mechanism by which is used when an owner is completely overwhelmed and needing to and wanting to quit very badly, emotionally, physically, financially tapped out. I'm going to give more clarity and structure around this, but it's going to be an actual thing that we talk about down the road that we formalize. And we know it's like, hey, this is the rip cord that you pull when you want to give up. And the reason I'm doing this is because in the past week or so we've had three, three or four locations that we've really had to push, like really help to make sure they don't quit, make sure that rock bottom. And like I know what it's like. I've been there before. I know what it's like to not have money to be taking loans out for stuff. Like I know all of that pain all too well. And I want to create a formal process of how exactly that's going to roll. And kind of like when someone in, you know, declares a state of emergency for like a state or for the country, I want to make it like almost a, a formal thing that it's like, hey, I'm in the state and we pull the rip cord and then it basically allows all of command center to know what's going on by just using this phrase. So we have not formalized this yet, but this is what's going to look like it's going to be called the six week six step defense. So the same what we'd call a play or an audible in football and we'd call it something. This is what's going to be called the six week six step defense. And what this is going to be as catchy of a name as that is, it's not no fun. And that is six weeks to basically rectify the business, get it back on its feet and just solidify a foundation when you are spiraling and that you know you can fall back on. That's going to be profitable, it's going to be low stress and it's going to allow you to get your weekends back. And when locations go from last year that some of them were doing 20, 30,000 and this year they're doing 70, 80, etc you know, 100 plus one was having the day, that's great. Growth is fantastic. But if it's not sustainable and makes you quit because you're just overwhelmed with all the employee issues and yellow slips and you're just financially tapped up because you spent on all this growth, quitting is the ultimate failure. And it's not about failing in business, it's about staying in the game. And so, you know, Warren Buffett is known for saying, time, time in the market is better than timing the market. When it comes to the stock market, when it comes to business, it's the same thing. Time in the market, time in business, how many years you've been open is a very, very strong correlative of how profitable you are and how successful you are. Which means if you're just a year, two, three years in, like, that's timing, that's timing the market. It's, hopefully we get a good labor economy during those couple years. Hopefully we're gonna get economic time during those years. Time in the market is, I've been in business for 15, 20, 30 years, whatever it is, that company's price seen and, and gone through a lot. And so this strategy, this defensive mechanism is going to be used. We're going to formalize this. I'm going to make this with Lee and then we're going to make sure command center is instructed exactly what steps and protocol is when a franchisee says, I need to use this. And it's going to be the six week, six step defense mechanism or strategy. Step number one is going to look like this. And again, I'll formalize this all and everyone will have this in writing. Number one, you're going to email franchisegustalawncareservices.com and that goes directly to myself. And you're basically going to declare the state of emergency, all right. In that email, we're going to remove in person estimate options and then you're going to tell me if you want this specific banner that I'm about to show you. This step here will in the future be automated. Once we have the dashboard set up for your backend access to your website, this access is going to be through a login. And that's what we're working on right now, the security behind that. So that way you can control if you, you want these certain banners, if you want things removed, services page is added or removed, et cetera. Let me go ahead and share with you what this specific one looks like. So in Modesto, for example, this banner will be optional. You would not have to show this, but it would be something that you could do if you felt like it was necessary in your specific market. It would be completely up to you. But what we have done on this location here is remove the option for an in person scheduled estimate. Okay? And so that would be the first step. And currently right now, since we do not have the dashboard set up yet to where this is all automated, you would email franchise gustaloncare services.com and then let me know if you want that banner. And then we would remove the in person option number two, step number two of the six week step. And the reason I call it six weeks is because you can do it for six weeks and then if you decide to go back into growth mode, that's fine. But the six weeks is required to rectify the business. You cannot fix things in a day or two. You just can't. What happened with command Center, I told you, like it's going to take them, take me the whole quarter to fix it. So this is a six week pull the band aid off and fix the problem. And if you go from 80,000amonth in revenue down to 30, that's fine. All right, step two, update command center for your wiki and your dispatch. Okay? So we need to know what's going on and we need to know what you want in terms of your wiki and your dispatch, which is probably going to be no scheduled estimates in. No in person estimates only. Only over the phone and drive bys. And if you want to take drive bys away, that's fine too. Like if you really want to strip it back, that's okay. And then also if you want to change your services, like if you only want mowing, that's fine too. But we need to know at command center, right, Is that way they can put it on your wiki. And we know that those services cannot be offered. And occasionally things might slip through the cracks. If someone goes through a web chat or they email directly or something like that, they might get scheduled for property cleanup. That's fine. We'll call them, we'll cancel it. That's fine. So step two is update Command center your wiki and your Dispatch board number three is turn down all jobs over $5,000 in revenue. All right? And so what this already kind of implies is the fact that you're probably booked out three or four weeks. This is why it's going to take six weeks to rectify. So because you're going to have to probably call and cancel jobs that were on the Schedule, and you're going to go after the big ones, the ones that are causing a lot of stress that you do not have the manpower for. You just lost a bunch of employees. You're going to turn down those jobs over $5,000. All right? Now, if you've already collected money, I do recommend you do those jobs because you're losing out on revenue that you've already collected on. But again, if you do not have the manpower, just give the money back and turn down the job. Anything over $5,000, though, for new jobs, we're definitely not taking. Okay, fourth step. The goal here is to have two trucks, two employees, and you are working out in the field. All right? So two trucks, two employees, and you're working out in the field with one of them. So the weaker of them, you're going to work with the other one. The stronger one, you're probably going to throw on, be the more experienced person that knows what they're doing. They're going to go solo. You're going to go with the weaker crew member. All right, so two trucks, two employees is the setup here. Five, you're going to switch to weekly billing for cash flow purposes right down the road. This will be a standard at Augusta Lawn Care, but because of the way Service Auto is set up with their client portal and everything, the amount of admin time goes through the roof when we switch to weekly billing in many cases. And so down the road, we will make the standard. However, if you're in a cash flow pinch, switch to weekly billing, you can immediately on the weekend, start billing people. Every Saturday, you could bill people. Every Sunday, you could bill people. Cash flow is much better. There's reasons why with Service Allput, we have not made it mandatory to switch over to weekly, and we still do monthly because I want that one click estimate email open up in the middle of the month, as well as the admin time required right now with the whole client portal and cards on file and all that stuff. The. The admin time goes up dramatically when we've done weekly billing. I should not say dramatically. It goes up enough for me not to worry about my cash flow, but for young businesses, take a little bit of extra admin time on the weekend. Yes, it's gonna take longer to invoice everyone and collect all their payments four times or five times a month instead of one, but you're going to get that cash flow. All right? Six step of the six step program is the goal here. 30,000 in revenue, $10,000 in wages, $10,000 in overhead, $10,000 in profit. Okay? So 30,000 is going to be the goal in terms of monthly revenue. 10,000 of that is going to go to wages. That's going to include taxes and stuff like that. 10,000 is going to go towards overhead. It's going to be your fuel, your insurance, your franchise and command center fees, all that stuff. That's 10,000. And then the goal is to profit 10,000. Okay? This is not a big business, but this is the rip cord that I need someone to pull instead of going and getting a job or just calling it quits and going bankrupt, okay? And especially for the companies, I've grown really, really fast. I know this is a step back sometimes in your mind because you've been geared in your brain like I'm going to grow, grow, grow, and then I'm going to make it profitable. But if you fail to just continue going and you give up because the mental stress, the financial stress, employees leaving, all of that, you've got to pull this rip cord. Okay? So this is going to be a formalized process. This is the six, six step, six week, six step defense program. And it's going to be a matter of declaring a state of emergency, quote, unquote. And when it is declared, we know it command center, where you're at, we know where you're at mentally, we know where you're at financially and physically, just beat. And this is a good way for us to know how to block for you with customers. And we've been doing this with three or four locations this week. But I need to formalize this as a way so that when someone calls at command center, someone calls into command center and we see this person has declared this kind of state of emergency. We know how to block for you and we, we are more honest with the customer. We aren't going to make up excuses as much as being very honest with them about what's going on, whether it be staffing shortages, whether it be we're just overworked and we need to take some time and we cannot do this job, whatever it is, we need to have that information so that way we can serve the customer better at command center. So I'm going to cut this one off without doing questions because I want to actually use this video down the road to be able to explain what the six step program is. So this is a six week, six step defensive strategy. I do not like to use this. No one does. But if you are going, if you are considering failing and you're considering quitting this is a better option. It'll cover your expenses. You'll be very profitable at this stage. Right. This is not growing a business that runs without you. That is not what this is. You're going to be in the business working. You're still going to be out mowing. But now you're not going to worry about a bunch of estimates scheduled. You're not going to worry about five or six employees and four trucks and a bunch of projects going on. You're going to strip it back and take six weeks to just mentally, physically and financially take a break. And then you make the decision. Maybe, hey, this is what I want to keep doing. I'd rather just stay simple, simple over the phone estimates only for mowing or maybe go back into growth mode. You might just need a break mentally after losing a bunch of employees or a bunch of customers saying negative things. And then we know how to block for you better at command center when we know you're going through that. So let me work on this for the next couple days, kind of formalize this strategy and then make sure at command center we have a process that we follow once this kind of has been declared. But it's going to be initiated by emailing franchisegustalongarservices.com which comes directly to me. And for now, that's the process. And then we'll, we'll start going through those six steps. There's only a few people that we, I think we've already kind of been working with this past week, but this needs to be in place. I don't care if you're at 60, 70, a hundred thousand in revenue. This happens to people during the spring rush. It's mentally exhausting, it's financially exhausting. It's a lot of pressure when employees and customers are saying negative things. And we need to have a rip cord that was like, hey, this is the last line of defense. I need help. And I, if I don't get help, I'm going to be quitting here pretty quickly. The last thing I want you to do is quit. And I truly believe this mechanism of 30,000 in revenue, 10,000 in overhead, 10,000 in wages, 10,000 in profit. I really believe that for most of us, you're not going to get a job for $10,000 in profit, $10,000 a month. Right. And so you can be more profitable just staying small like that. Yes, you're working in the field, but it's less pressure because you're just mowing. Right? You're just me mowing with one other person throughout the day and you're not going to be in the state of trying to juggle so many things. So I'm going to cut this one a little bit shorter. I didn't have any questions coming in the form, so feel free to submit those and we'll see you all tomorrow. Love you all. Stay strong. I know it's tough out there and it's not easy with the labor market. It's not easy when the spring rush, when you're growing as quickly as some of you are. So please, please, please, based upon some of the feedback we had a couple of ways ago, I do not want anyone feeling pressure to grow. That is the ultimate goal. That is the long term vision. But if in the short term you fail to just keep going, then you'll never get there. So stay focused on just staying in the game. And when you talk about boxing or you talk about wrestling, they smell sniffing salts and they spray water in their face. Just like, just get through this round, get through this game. Just stay on your feet. That's the main thing. I don't want to see any chaos, knockouts. I want to just see people stay on their feet, get through this round, get back to the corner, allow command center, allow other people to block for you, refresh you, and then step back into the ring. All right? Love you. All.