Mike Minutes Mastermind 05/24/2023

All right, we're live. Let's do this. Just drop this in from YouTube.

So I think for the vast majority of us, we have like three to four more weeks of spring rush probably. This is usually when a lot of burnout is gonna, is happening, especially if you're growing. But even too, if you're having multiple locations or like new general managers, this is the time a lot of them are going to be struggling. So.

Just drop this in here. Just know you're not alone. I've heard like this morning multiple locations is having some pretty big.

Problems. And so it's just very normal. Employees get overworked and exhausted. General managers start to fall off or potentially feel like this is not for them. This is spring rush. I guarantee you in one to two months, it all changes. In terms of now you're looking for more work, you're not trying to cut out work, etc. And it's not like it's, you're immune to it just because you're bigger or because you have more money, because people are people. And so just know that it does get better. It just switches and changes in a completely different direction because literally in six to eight weeks, a lot of people are like, oh man, I don't have enough work. Whereas right now I was like, you're just drowning, right? So keep your head up. Those have done this for five, 10 years. It's a little bit easier because you can kind of know what's about to come. But for those that are newer, this is, this is pretty much par for the course this time of year. And every single season, every single spring rush, you'll get better at projecting your demand, hiring enough employees, ensuring you have your capacities nailed down so you don't go overboard and exhaust yourself. And same thing with your general managers. Knowing what their capacities are, making sure that they have benchmarks. Leading up to this is something that I've even learned this, this spring is you can't just tell someone to over hire. You need to tell them to give exact benchmarks and dates as to how many employees they should have at every given period of the year. And so for someone that is a new general manager or you have a general manager that's been around for one or two years, even they might not have seen five or ten years like you have, where you can really anticipate demand much better. And so therefore you're going to have to probably. I just learned that this spring, like now I have lots of general managers, they're new to it, whereas I can kind of see exactly what that demand curve is going to look like. But I can't just tell them arbitrary things like, hey, you need to get more employees. I need to say, in February, I expect you to have 8, 20 employees. And by this date, and if you don't, we have a problem. And it will seem counterintuitive to them because they won't have enough work in February. But I know the demand curve, and I don't want to have to have them figure that out for their first, second year and kind of figure that out themselves. Because I was arbitrary with my numbers. Right? So especially for those of you who have general managers, multiple locations, you're training someone to take your spot. I'd highly recommend figuring out what the demand curve has been the past year, two, three years that you've been in business and really start to nail down, okay, when do we start requiring weekly, when do we change the percentage of P4P and which months? This should all, like, be pretty nailed down. And then give them requirements. It's no longer like, hey, I think we should do this. It's like you, by this date, you must have 15 employees. By this date, you might have 18 employees, but you have 20 employees. And then you give exact dates for them. So I'm learning that too. You cannot run it based upon just what you know. You've got to now create actual systems for them to repeatedly follow that if you're having multiple locations. All right, let's jump into. I think there was a couple questions that came in. Let's see, we got three.

So no namer submit question. When will there be more spots available in long care bookkeeping? For bookkeeping, I have no idea. We're booked out or like, we're booked pretty solid. I'm guessing this is a solo operator and you basically now have employees and you need bookkeeping done until you become a full service at command center and a growth model. Personally, I'd just use like something like gusto to get through right now and then put that money towards your growth model simply because you have to pay a thousand dollars just to become a client at lawn care Bookkeeper. As well as it's twice as expensive, we charge twice as much now, and we're gonna be raising the prices again on lawn care Bookkeeper and home service epa. Like, it's twice, almost three times more expensive than command Center. So, yeah, I would just probably I'd personally recommend, like, hey, try to get through. And even if you know you can, for example, if you know you're going to be able to get your growth model, for example, by like in November, December, then you could get growth, get full service and then commander can just go and clean your books. And they do it in literally less than a day. And they do have cleaner books for taxes this year. So if you're, if you're planning on getting the growth model potentially just do that. Because otherwise you're going to kind of burn the money you're going to spend on long care bookkeeper. And it's just, it's expensive to be honest. Or we're going to probably. We just doubled the price on payroll and it's still booked up. And bookkeeping, I'm probably gonna, if not double at least 50% increase it. So I'd personally put that money towards getting your growth model set up. And then once you become full service, like hopefully November, December, then I would have command center as a project just go through and clean your whole books for the year. And they'll do that honestly probably in four or five hours. So it's just way cheaper than paying for long care bookkeeper. Devin from Red Deer Would you pay your guys his P4P bonus after he has showed you and fired him or just his hours? Oh, I think Nick no showed you. I personally feel like just paying his hours. What about you? Typically if someone's being fired, it's like over something that is actually like a yellow slip, damage case etc.

And so you know, technically the P4P bonus. Yes, you could withhold it. Every single firing is gonna be a little bit different though. It just really, really depends. So I think usually we do restrict, we withhold the P4P bonus if they're getting fired. But typically that's because like they made a massive damage case, they didn't show up three times and they don't have any P for P anyways. Once you actually account for that. But every single situation is so different. I've had times before like when someone walks off the job and I still paid them their P4P because there was extraneous circumstances, so. Garrett, Glendale, Colorado can you give a quick refresher on efficiency score? Is that just effective hourly rate divided by base to pay? No, your efficiency score is your budgeted hours divided by your clocked hours. And one quick thing, I was talking with someone the other day and they didn't know about this. Let me show it real quick. There's a new feature. Not new, it's been around for a few months, but I didn't really talk a whole lot about when it Came out. And that is on P4P right here. Underneath the efficiency score, you have a dropdown. You can see over the course of time. The efficiency score. So you can see what you're doing over the course of months. This is new a few months ago. So if you haven't seen it, you can see here because this resets every single month on the 1st, whereas this shows time shots. And if you need to refresh that, if you've never looked at this before and it looks flat, just go up here and reset.

Oh, man. Manage snapshots, select all the months you know you've been in business, click update, and then it will refresh to actually have all those snapshots updated. So you can check that right there. But yeah, it's just budget hours divided by clocked hours. And we are going to be adding a. A graph here called clocked hours. You can really easily see that.

On the monthly metrics on P4P here.

All right, you got a question? Does BM still service customers with stairs? We are debating over keeping some customers with stairs or not.

We have customers that have some stairs, but if we can't do it solo, like, if someone can't do it by themselves, we're probably going to drop them. I know last year they dropped like three or four customers. It was like, hey, you. You have to have two people to get, you know, a mower downstairs, and we just let them go. But in some markets, you have stairs on every single property, right? So you might want to get creative, like how you do ramps or something.

But if you'd like a few customers, I would just drop them because it's not worth having to always accommodate different equipment and a different number of employees going to that house. So, all right, everyone. I know everyone's very, very busy, so I'll try to keep this one short. And, you know, it's spring rush. I know it's exhausting. Everyone wants to quit right now. It's like, literally how everyone feels. Trust me, I feel the same way sometimes. It's. It's just the most exhausting time of the year. It's exciting, what we look forward to. And then you hit it and you're like, oh, snap. This is. This is a lot. So just know that I would say you got to give yourself two or three years of in profit mode when you're not trying to grow to really understand what your demand really looks like in your market and then be able to accurately predict, anticipate, and then prepare for that demand curve higher than the Right amount of people having the same. The right amount of trucks having systems in place to be actually know, like when you do your blade sharpening, instead of it just being like, oh, my word, like, we're way behind, I'm just gonna have to do it on the evenings or on the weekends, et cetera. So, like, give yourself a little bit of grace. If you're still learning that demand curve, and if you do know it and you have multiple general managers, you have people that you're trying to train up, you need to start creating, like, in writing what exactly that demand looks like. And, and I'm still learning that too, because as I've gotten a whole bunch of new GMs, I take a lot for granted of what they could potentially know. Because, like, oh, you should do X. Well, no, now it needs to be like, you do X by this date. And this is the numerical value of number of employees, number of mowers, number of trucks you should have. And so the only reason I know that is because I've done it 10, 10 years in that market, right? Your, your new general managers, your employees, this is all new to them. They think this is crazy because this is their first time doing lawns and it's the middle of spring rush. It's insane, right? So even at the Bellingham shop, they've add some sanity has been added by the guys that have been around for years. And they can tell the crew, like, hey, like, in four or five weeks, we're all going to be wanting more hours. So, like, let's buckle down the next three and work overtime because it all changes, right? So that sanity gets added just with time and experience. It's not something you can just like, tell your crew, like, hey, guys, it gets better, Trust me. Well, they don't have any contacts. No one in the field actually understands that. And so it's difficult pushing your guys. I know. And you feel horrible. You feel like a tyrant having to push them. And ultimately, if you don't, you know, you're going to lose customers, you're going to have unhappy customers, then you're letting people down that you promised to. So it's not easy. Give yourself a little bit of slack if it's your first few years, and more importantly, if you're growing through those first years, it skews your. Your demand curve up because you're artificially inflating using marketing, so your demand curve gets wonky. And really, until you're in that profit mode, you see what demand really looks like. Can you actually chart across that demand curve. When you should be hiring, when you should be marketing, when you should be turning off certain types of estimates, when you should be increasing your E fee, that becomes more systematic as time goes on. If you're growing during that, it just throws everything off because you're going to be marketing, which inflates it. You're going to be. You get to govern that demand curve a lot more using marketing. So just keep that in mind. Give yourself a little bit of.

A little bit of a grace, honestly. Don't beat yourself up. All right, guys, have a great day. We'll see you tomorrow. Take care.