Mike Minutes Mastermind 06/07/2024

All right, ladies and gentlemen, here we go.

I'm starting a little early, so you're gonna get this message afterwards probably, but I have some updates. I don't have updates. These are more like Salty Mike educational tips. Okay.

Later today I'll send an email out just kind of some of the most recent updates in the past couple weeks just to kind of summarize those. For those that don't aren't able to watch the Masterminds. Although honestly very impressed. Most people watch the Masterminds. Usually about 150 or so people watch the Mastermind. So I know sometimes you double watch or two people from a location will. But that's awesome. At least if you can watch the first few minutes when it's announcements or education, that's a good thing. Okay, Salty Mike is going to emerge. Some people learn more when you love them. Some people learn more when you beat them. Some people learn more when you coach them. Today we're gonna do a little coaching because Salty Mike has emerged after looking at some numbers. One second, I gotta sneeze.

Alright, we're back. Okay, I looked at the numbers. Over 25 locations that are active.

Have less than 30 Google reviews.

On the checklist. At training we talk about in the very first stage of growth and on the checklist before you leave, one very important thing you must do get Google reviews. And I give a specific number and that is 30. And still there are locations have been in business for over a year that have less than 30 reviews. I saw one the other day that has been open for several months and still has zero reviews. And therefore we can't link it on the website to the their Google little widget thing that we connect. So as soon as you get above 5, you can go to your dashboard and ask that it be added and we'll do it for you. But we can't do that. And that schema on Google is a massive driver of SEO and Google ranking. But we can't do it if you don't have five. And I recommend get 30. And so if you're spending a dollar, a dollar on marketing to get new leads and you haven't got the 30, there's a reason why in the checklist it's the very first thing to do.

Over 40 locations haven't tried, haven't got a Google verified address. I know this one's harder and especially in the past six months, 12 months, it's become more and more important on Google listings. But something we've talked about a lot and it's something that in the past year at training, we've also talked about 40 locations still don't have a verified address and are still using a service area. These are the basics. Like getting leads is the equivalent of algebra. If we don't know the ABCs, we will never learn algebra. And you're going to make learning algebra, that is getting leads a whole lot more difficult if we don't know the ABCs. And the only reason I stress this is because I want to see you win. But if you have no Google reviews and you don't have your Google listing verified as an address inside of your service area, that should be the number one focus. Especially it boggled my mind because I could see people are spending money. I can go into Facebook ads library and see if you're running ads. People are literally running ads, spending gobs of money and not having the basics. And if you don't have the basics, it makes the more complicated things much more difficult, infinitely exponentially more difficult. And that is like getting customers to find you is a whole lot harder. If you're not, you don't have the address verified. If you don't have 30 plus Google reviews because you're not going to rank, you're not going to rank well on the map, you're not going to rank well in the organic search. The only way for you to actually get notice is to have ads. And if you're going to constantly be spending ads to get leads, you'll never be able to become super profitable. You'll always be stuck under 10% profitability. From what I have seen, as you scale, the only way to get above 20%, especially let's just say 15% conservative, is to make sure that a lot of your leads start to come in organically. The way to get them organically is to show up in native search and on Google Google listings. And how do you get shown up on Google listings? You verify an actual address, which I know is difficult. I know you might have to like, go park your truck in front of a spot, go find a friend, go do some free service to be able to use someone else's address at a warehouse or a commercial spot and put your sign up in the window, but do whatever you've got to do. And you're like, well, what do I do? Put it on the Facebook group. Like, a lot of these locations are the ones that are MIA on me right now in terms of like, you're not involved in the community, you're not connecting with other owners. And for that reason, like, you don't have anyone else's eyes on your business. The whole advantage of join a community of any sort, especially Augusta Nation, is that you have other eyes on your business. When you have a problem, you have someone to go to. You can literally be like, hey guys, I can't figure out how to verify my address on Google. It keeps declining me. And you're going to get five other people that are going to give you comments of exactly what they did as different ways to be able to get their address verified on their Google listing. It is the number one most important thing. And these are the building blocks. The ABCs, Google listing verified as an address and 30 plus Google reviews. And.

Especially if you're sending out second, third locations. One of the locations I was looking at yesterday has been open for months. 0 Google reviews. What are we doing?

And I say this because I love you. I, I just genuinely want to see you in and I don't want to see you wasting money and I don't want to see you frustrated with not getting leads. And if you look at the most successful operators, the successful, most successful entrepreneurs, they just dominate the basics. And the very first thing they're going to do is they're going to find an address inside of their service area. If they're starting a new location, the very first thing they're doing is they're going to get an address, they're going to find a friend, they're going to rent a facility, they're gonna do whatever they can do to make sure they get that Google listing address. And their first thing they're gonna do is go get 40, 50 Google reviews, friends, family, whatever.

This is important.

So I just don't want to see you beating up your head, beating your head up against the wall, trying to figure out how to grow a business when you can have a tide behind you of free leads coming in.

So it's in, it's in the stage one. It's on the checklist, it's on the dashboard. If you. And again, when I looked at the 25, almost all of them, I haven't heard anything from the Mike Minutes mastermind. I know they're not connected to a lot of other owners and they're not posting about the things they're struggling. If you're like, hey, oh, the X, Y and Z are my struggles, I can't figure them out. Post it on the Facebook group. That's why we have a community. Like, Nick is an owner, success manager. Contact him. I can't figure out how to do this. I Can't get Google reviews. I need some help here. Great. He will hop on with you. Another owner inside the Facebook group. I'm happy to help you in the mastermind. You're like, okay, let's send a Google text blast. Like, everyone now has the ability to text from copilot. It has helped command center tremendously when customers are trying to find things on the phone. Things like, no problem, let me send you a quick text. Get it right away, and then you can click the link. This is super helpful. Use it. Get Google reviews again. I'm not saying this to rebuke anyone. I just want to see you win. And I do not. Like, I know what it's like to. To be wanting to grow your business and not getting leads. And if we're not going to the basics and the building blocks, we will never get the leads. And we will constantly find this uphill battle of paying for every single lead. All right, so I want to see you win. That is the only reason I get frustrated, but I was very frustrated when I saw this yesterday. 25 locations. That's insane. That is borderline ludicrous. It's all we talk about the first day of training. It's in the checklist. It's in the first stage of growth. Like, if you. If it's been a while, go read the stages of growth again. And like, I can guarantee you're probably hitting up against the things that are listed in that stage of growth that you're currently in. And so just fix those one or two things.

All right, Salty Mike off. Thank you.

All right, back to our normally scheduled programming.

What do we got today? Oh, two questions. Okay, we got Terrell from Boone's Creek, Tennessee. We got a long one. Okay, what do we got?

I watched your 10 years of advice with business on YouTube. Sales and hiring. Sales and hiring. Sales and hiring. Sales and hiring. Okay. Yes. As a new business owner with only a year or so of experience, I feel sales is probably the bottom line for growth. 100%. Again, stage one and two of growth, both of them at the very bottom. It just says, sell, sell, sell. And this is why, if sales is such a necessity for the new owner, as it sounds like, it would be nice to speed up the learning process in any way would be possible. Oh, I know what I'm gonna say. I know. I'm gonna say, okay, let me say it here and see if the rest of the question says record yourself. Have people critique it. Put in the Facebook group. I will critique anyone that posts their. Their follow up Calls on the Facebook group and you'll get 10 other people that give really good advice at different angles and contrary opinions which will give you the perfect balance of what you can do and try next time. All right, let's see if that where, where we end up going here. I have had this thought multiple times before and just did just recently after listening to an audio clip from Corey's meeting at the shop. I know it wasn't a sales meeting, but just said the idea applied to sales would be this. Is there a way that we get guys that are really already good at selling to get a recording here or there so it would be possible to listen to real world audio of someone with more experience dealing, overcoming objections, working the right customer right on through the sale and closing. Just an idea, maybe we could help. Could be helpful for us newer, younger guys trying to start out and grow for nothing. Grow, grow from nothing. I also realized that it's reps, reps, reps. It's just, it's tough when I have, have not had 10, six or even three years of sales repetitions to apply on selling. Great question trail question of the day. Let's go, let's go. Okay, this is great question. Even for the people that are quote good with sales, it's still super valuable to record yourself and get other people's opinion. The reason that.

I've been more comfortable with talking for example, in front of people and taking like questions live like I do with Mastermind is I do it every single day. Like that's all I do is sit in front of microphones and look at cameras. So like it is reps. However, the beautiful thing about recording is you have game footage. This is like Y command center. They do this thing where every single day they are recording calls and then they're breaking everything down because you get edge cases. Like 90% of the communication you have throughout your day is like easy for all of us. It's the 10% where you get your massive success. That's the sales, that's the overcoming objections that's pushing the customer that is really focusing on like honing that level of communication. The thing is none of us talk about this other 10% in terms of actually being able to see ourselves do it. I actually think if you record your phone calls and, or even wore the glasses or here's a, here's an easy one because you could do this right away on your phone record.

Put your phone on audio, stick that thing in your pocket when you're doing your next in person estimate and Then just listen to yourself afterwards. You don't have to post it publicly, just listen to yourself afterwards. You will get so much better at talking to the customer and you will, you'll start beating yourself. Like, why did I interrupt them? There's why when they were about to ask a question, did I start talking? Why when they were about to accept the estimate, did I start talking? Like, you can only do this through recording and listening to yourself. Listen to yourself. And then when you think you've done a pretty good job, post it for everyone to pick apart. The way that I've gotten better with video and all this other garbage is like I gotta post Every single week 5, 10, 15 pieces of content that everyone in the world is gonna see and pick apart. And that's what the commons is. It's essentially the yellow slips that I need to fix in my business. That is talking and communicating. And so if you want to become better at the skill it is, record it, break it down yourself, and then let other people pick people. Let other people pick it apart. If you had GMs, this is what you, this is what I'd recommend doing on weekly calls. Do live follow up calls. Have one or two recorded to break down with your team. This is how command center gets better at the phone is every single day. Liz is breaking, Liz and Brian, break them down and literally live take, listen to the call here. This is what they could have said, this is what they could have filled in this gap. Oh, this is a really edge case. Okay, so in this scenario, do this because like, we have not heard about this before. Try this.

So this is the number one way to improve at any skill. And if you're trying to improve at sales, I just recommend record yourself, break it down and then let other people pick it apart when you think it's doing pretty good. And don't post the one where you sold the job, post the one where you didn't sell the job because that's the one where everyone's going to have an opinion on how you could have sold it better. And then you're able to test these things out. Like, yes, reps are important, but if you're doing the wrong form, you could hurt yourself or have less results. And so that's why it's like if you're going and doing, you know, a gym, it's good to have a personal train at the beginning, at least know how to do the form so that when you're doing the reps, you're doing them correctly and you get the maximized gains and you don't hurt yourself. And so you could massively be hurting your close ratio. You could be massively impacting the ability for customers to accept when you're doing your follow up calls or when you're in person doing estimates. Like if your in person estimate close ratio is way different than what's on your website, like your instant price, instant quotes, it's not a pricing issue. There is something going on with the in person quotes and it's like, oh, no, I'm doing good. You are probably doing it. I would say across Augusta Nation, we're probably all in the top 15 or 20% of salespeople as a general rule of thumb. But the elite people do it over and over and over again. But they also usually record themselves, break down and figure out how they can become better and then let other people do the same thing. And that's not fun. It's not. It's humiliating. It's the amount of humility you have to have to other people pick apart what you've done and what you've taken pride in doing and take. To pick apart your work is not easy. Trust me. Every single time we pour ourselves in like a video on a turnaround and we've gone out and flown out there and spent a bunch of money and I've tried to help and all the rest of it, and people pick apart stuff, it's like, yeah, that hurts a little bit, but that's how we get better. And like we can fix those things, right? It's not fun when I hop on here and there's like negative things said, but that's how we make Augusta better, is the feedback, is the criminal stuff. Last night, same thing like I was on with an owner. How can we make this better? It's like it's not easy. It's not fun to see people pick apart the thing that you love, the thing you spent all of your time and energy and thought about. And the same way I think about from Augusta Nation's perspective, the same thing is true for your business. Like, you spend all of your day, your weekends, your evenings thinking about your business. And so when you have to die, then submit that work to other people to pick apart. It's not easy. And people will say negative things about the way that you introduced yourself. Cut someone off and it's going to be immediately like reverse. The only way to get better is to do this. That is why the elite of the elite when it comes to sports or business, record themselves. They pick it apart and then they let other people do it.

And that is what separates the novice from the expert. So I know I put it the other day, like to put it inside the, you know, personal WhatsApp groups that you might have with other people. But man, put it on the Facebook group, put it here. I'll break it down right on the mastermind if you want me to. It just comes with. Okay, I'll. I don't think you'll mind me saying this. Lee, who does hundreds of calls and has done sales out in the field, probably thousands of estimates. Then as a general manager, managing an estimator, doing tons of follow up calls, and now doing franchise sales, hundreds if not thousands of also times yesterday had a question about sales and he's like, hey, in this scenario, what would I say? In this scenario, how do I get this result to happen? And so if you don't have the humility to ask or to record yourself and break it down, like Lee, for example, when he does his calls, he has an AI agent that's behind him that is tracking when he has filler words. So then he knows all his filler words and so he can attack those things and try to cut them out and make them better. And, and so if you want to actually get better at sales, become a student of the game, record yourself and then let other people break it apart. That would be like, yeah, if you post it publicly, people will roast you. And if, hey, if you really want to become better, let them do it. If the objective is to be, is to be is to win and not just appear correct, that's the objective. And it will hurt because it is the thing that you have poured yourself into and the thing that you care most about and the thing that you think about all the time. But if you actually want to make it better, that's the way to do it.

Kyle Tarvin, needing some advice? Okay, here we go. Long question.

Needing some advice. We are running two locations and my time is currently split between the two. I'm basically having to work half a week at one and half a week at the other. There are two employees per location and we ran 70 to 80 budget hours per week on recurring maintenance only. Oh wow, so you're almost at capacity.

This does not leave a lot of room for error in regards to splitting my time between the locations. And if someone wasn't able to hit 8 budget hours per day, we would be behind.

We just raised prices to earn 150 to 200 customers out of 230. The increase was $6 per cut.

What we should have got.

Should be like 8 or 10. All right, let's keep going. Nick and I are working on upping our hourly rate from 65 to $80 per hour, which is much needed for mows and projects. Yes, I agree. While I'm adjusting our BH to the new 80 per hour rate, I am finding the BH on the current mows are going to be very tight. Dbh. Yeah, because you only did six dollar per cut and you're raising, you're raising your hourly rate by like 20%. But you only raised your prices probably by about.

12 to 14%.

The BH will go down and will be harder to hit times. The crew will go over on some of them. I would also say though that they're going to still make better money on P4P because the price was increased. Just keep that in mind. I've tossed around doing another six dollar price increase to those customers I just raised a week ago and a 12 to $20 price increase. The ones we have not raised yet. During our increase a week or so ago, we probably lost 15 to 20 people. Okay, so you did, you did lose about 10% or so. Okay, I need to start making reliable profits at both locations as we are now in profit mode for the rest of the year. I guess I'm just scared to raise prices again as we need as we just raised them a few weeks ago. My goals are more profit and not having to kill myself because I'm splitting my time between the two locations helping everyone. If you were my position, what would you do? Okay, so let's address these multiple issues. Great question.

First off, multiple price increases usually are not looked on as good. However I have seen them work in several instances where it doesn't affect it as much. However, what I would do if I was you, if you're really thinking about doing a double price increase is out of that 150 or 200, raise the take 50 of them and raise prices.

Only 50. Then if you lose half of them, you've only lost 25 customers instead of doing it to 200 customers and losing 100. So you don't need to do the whole like rip the whole band aid off. Just do it segmentally and see what the percentage is and see if you're then willing to deal with the consequences. I would make sure that your initial, your new jobs are extremely high priced. I would make sure also that if you ever raise prices again, you do by at least 20, like 15 to 20%. At least. I always say 15% but I'd rather go 20% because like there's just. If you're going to go through the pain, I could guarantee if you would have done this as $10 per cut, that you would have still lost 15 to 25 people. So.

That'D be the first thing I'd say. Second thing I would say.

By having the $6 price increase, you are going to make about $2,500 more per month in straight profit. Cool, that's going to be helpful down the road. But you're at capacity, and so what you could do, this is what you could do, Kyle, if you're at capacity and still getting new customers, I'd make sure the new customers are extremely high priced. And I would also, as you hit capacity, raise prices on this 200 customers. Segmentally, it's like 25, 25. So over the next two months, every week, say for example, you did 25 new customers every eight weeks. So two months you're gonna raise prices again, all these customers, but you're gonna do it every week on 25 of them. And then what you're going to do is try to get 2, 3, 4 new mowing customers every week to basically backfill them. And so this is gonna take a longer period of time. And however, I would only do that if you did raise price on say 30, 40, 50 customers and a bunch of them left. I would do it then slowly, which is okay, I'm going to still do this, but I'm going to make sure I backfill with my customers every single week because I got new ones coming in, but make sure they're higher price, like your instant price form, you know, in these sort of pricing for your rate matrix for mowing should be really high because you're at capacity essentially at both locations, like you're above capacity. I would also consider hiring someone that would be your floater in this case. Because if either of these locations have one person go down, you're stepping in. If you hired someone like, hey, you could potentially work at either of these locations. I'm going to pay you X amount per more because I know there's going to be a little more drive time when you drive between these two. But I need you to kind of be a floater in case someone goes down or at Thursday, Friday, like we're running behind. I'd potentially think about that. Because you're at capacity for both these locations, which means if anything happens to just four people like you immediately are in the field. And there are two different locations, which means like, you have 50, 50 chance because there's two at each one. Like your. The likelihood of you always having to step in the field is going to be high. Hire one person, have them as a floater between the two locations. Say, hey, look, you're not going to be able to make as much on P4P because you're going back and forth. There's more drive time. But I need a floater right now so I don't have to step in the field and fill in the gaps. And then you're gonna be able to pay for that person extra because we're gonna take 25 every single week and try to raise prices on. And that is going to. We might lose five people. Like, that'd be 20% of people leaving. You'd lose five people every single week. But if we can get three, four, five new mowing customers every single week, we don't actually change our capacity.

So if you're. It doesn't sound like you're concerned about P4P, you shouldn't really be because, like, because your labor revenue went up, the guys are gonna make the extra money on that, but.

Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. Just by increasing your prices, too, at the 90, at the improve 80, you're gonna increase budget hours as you raise prices because now you're not raising the rate. So.

Two questions. They are both fantastic. Great work today, gentlemen.

Cool. All right, I forgot to throw it in my salty one. Okay, switch back to salty mode. Boom. Show up to your jobs. And if you don't, please let command center know it is costing people a lot of money because they are not showing up to their jobs there. There's been multiple flags in the past couple weeks of people not showing up to jobs three and four weeks. And eventually, like, Command center is not trained on what to do when people continually are just not showing up to work and they just keep pushing things off. In copa, we don't really. And we have no notes. And if we can't hear back from someone, we don't know what's going on. So there's been multiple times this week, we've just had to tell customers, like, go find someone else. Like you. You're racking a command center bill. And if you just keep pushing the job off, like, let us know, like, if something's happened in the family, if you've gone to the hospital, we can block for you. We just need to know what's going on so we can tell customers. And they're usually pretty understanding. But if you go MIA And Command center, we can't help you. Like, we just can't. We don't know. Like, we just look at Command center like, oh, hey, like, looks like they pushed you. Tomorrow you're going to be on the schedule. It's plus or negative one day. But then that person calls four days later like you didn't come. When is it coming? Oh, okay. It looks like you're on the schedule again this week. Like, and we letting you know and like we're trying to, if we, if we don't know what's going on, we can't help you. So please, please, please communicate with Command Center. I'm seeing some of these bills and it's because things are being moved around and they're not communicating Command Center. And then they're just getting multiple call the client. We don't know what's happening. So it's happened about 10 to 15 times this week. Where I see flags come in to confirm command is because people are not showing up to jobs. And then Command center has no idea what to do. And we've had to this past week tell several people, like just go find another provider. 1% to mow their own grass because it's been four weeks, we haven't, we haven't seen you. And Command center does not know what to do because 99.99% of the time that's not happening. So very good. Last thing I should have really done at the beginning, flip to announcements.

At the end of this month we're going to, on your next, on your next Command center bill, you're going to see a refund for any processing fees from ach. And then also we noticed that some people kept getting charged their processing fees on credit cards when we duplicated their invoices inside of Copilot and it brought over their processing fees. So you're going to see a refund line item on your next Command center bill for any ACH processing fees. So like the five dollar thing that comes every month and then if you had processing fees on credit card and you switched to ach, some of those carried over. So we're going to refund all of them. So I know I said originally the end of the year, but we looked at the other day, we're going to do it at the beginning, at the middle of the year and then hopefully by the end of the year Copilot has the ability to distinguish charging customers for ACH fees versus credit card processing fees. But in the end of the year we'll do the same thing. So the extra little $5 charge will get refunded to you on your next invoice. Keep in mind also starting in July is when the annual inflationary adjustment for Command center happens so it'll be I think it's 4.2%. I'll look at the CPI data confirm it, let everyone know but it's not on June. You're not getting charged extra on June. It's starting in July. Any services at Command center get that inflationary adjustment and we'll just do our best to make sure that we can beat inflation by using technologies to make sure that we can make it work. All right everyone I hope you have a fantastic Friday. I will be sending an email out with several updates over the past couple weeks and links to certain things. Nick's got a great video coming up with the new changes coming to the coaching program. Looking forward to that and I'll make that all in the email though later today or tomorrow. All right love you all. Take care.

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