Mike Minutes Mastermind 06/10/2024

Hello, Augusta Nation. Happy Monday. Hope you all have had a fantastic day thus far. Let's rock and roll. We'll run the questions, but if you did not get an email on Friday evening, please let us know. But I think it went through just fine. Made sure. And that is just updates kind of usually every two, three weeks, I sent an update email that includes all of the recent announcements. Just in case you don't hit all these masterminds in our eight of A list. No, just totally. Okay, let's get started.

First question is from Corey Williams from Bellingham. Good morning, Mike. This question is about your experience and development with the skill of social networking. Okay. No need to go in the weeds if there are a number of other questions. Thank you so much in advance. For context, my unique life path has put me in a position where I do not have any social existing social networks or the skill set to integrate into new ones. I believe I'm able to make an accruing investment in myself to act as a connector of other people and a facilitator of growth within others through that connection. At your personal stage of wealth, how have the objectives with your social circle, social circle, or networking changed? What actions have you taken throughout your journey to connect with people at your level and integrate into higher capacity? Do you stay in touch with communities you've outgrown, like Alex from Mosey and his previous mentors? How much time do you dedicate towards the UN the upkeep of socialization with people who are currently your even peers? Wow. Their trousers is deep. It seems to me that people at your stage of success integrate people into their own community, and I think the franchise is a good model of that. Do you believe one day the professional circle you're currently a part of will one day have several members of Augusta Nation? And do you believe the systems the franchise currently provides can get people there? As the saying goes, having access to people smarter than you is a blessing, not a threat. Also, would you ever drive a motorcycle? I don't think I'd ever drive a motorcycle. Like, long term, I'd do it for fun. Okay. This is like a really long question. Like, there's at least 10 questions inside of this. So let me see what I can say here.

So, okay, there's a bunch of questions. Let me just kind of filter through them real quick. Okay.

How have the objectives with your social circle networking changed? So this is just a prioritization of what you want in life. I, you know, if you're going to go after one thing a lot you're going to sacrifice in some other areas, right? So like, obviously there's lots of areas of my social life that I have put on the back burner in order to be able to chase business. And I've been clear from like day one that eventually that will change. And it'll never be that I don't want to do business, I can promise you that. But it'll be that the 95% business, 5% of their life will change to maybe like an 80%, 20%. And that's just normal. And so unfortunately, we've sort of identified success as really anyone that has money. And so if you over index towards putting all your time and attention towards that, you will be deemed as quote unquote successful. But there's just like so many different areas and facets of life that you can be successful in. And usually it correlates with, to your point, how much time you put towards upkeep, how much time do you dedicate towards upkeep of socialization?

So whatever you upkeep, what you give attention to usually thrives and grows. So, you know, if you're gonna put more time and attention and upkeep on the business, guess what? It magically grows. If you listen to podcasts and books about business, guess what, you're probably gonna grow your business. Now the same thing can be true about your health. If you put time and attention towards going to the gym, listening to podcasts about health and nutrition and diet and exercise, guess what? You'll probably get healthier because there's time and attention towards a common goal in terms of like the people around me. Typically if they have similar goals to me, then I want to be around them. I'm just not going to do super well. If someone doesn't want to make money, it doesn't want to live a healthy lifestyle, isn't interested in business and improving themselves, I'm just not gonna. I have nothing in common with you, I have nothing to talk about with you, and I will probably spend very little if any time on upkeeping my quote unquote socialization of you. And that might be harsh, but like, you know, just like, how bad do you want your. What you're going after? Like, if you want a great relationship, it means you're gonna have to cut other certain relationships out. If you want to have a great family life, that means you're gonna, it's gonna come the cost of time and energy spent towards other things. So. All right, Kyle Tarvin. I'm working on lowering my insurance, but I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking at here as far as coverages and what is needed and not attached to breakdown for my insurance agent. Can I reduce any of these coverages if the premiums seem a little high? Well, first off, you know, your insurance insurance agent should be walking through this like in granular detail. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because like really you should just talk to your agent. But I can see if I can help a little bit. Okay, so annual premiums we're looking at. On the right hand side, you got two locations. So it looks like you're paying 4, 8, 14, 000 per year on more. It's like a thousand dollars all in. That includes your auto policy though. I don't know how many vehicles that is, so that's an arbitrary number. Same thing with Norman. Yeah, you know, you got to see revenue here, you got to see payroll amount and you got to see the type of vehicles that are being insured. Oh, I see payrolls here. I see payrolls here. 158,000 payrolls here is 30,000. So your premium for auto probably have. I'm going to guess you have two trucks and then three trucks. Just going to go off the cuff there. Three trucks, that's 2,000. Something seems too crazy. You have decent liability. You have double liability on this one, a million, which is okay. You do have medical, so you have a little bit of comprehensive coverage in there.

Business owners policy. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess this is like a general liability. Yeah, work aggregate occurrence, that's normal.

Okay, what's your.

Where is your deductible? There you go. Deductible is a thousand dollars on comprehensive and collision. A thousand dollars. So you know, if you have cheaper trucks, sometimes you can get away with not doing as much comp, you know, comp and collision on your insurance. But again, you know, you're only paying $4,000 a year. If that's for two trucks, you're paying like 70, 80 bucks a month. Probably worth paying extra 10 or 15 bucks a month for compound collision, just in case. So $158,000 is your payroll on this one location, for example. I'm then looking at the fact that your liability is basically 3, 2, 2 and a half, 3% of that. 3%. So that's not horrible.

Again, it's going to depend so much like what type of services you offer, etc. So again, just for the sake of time, I'm not going to go deep on that one. Just because your insurance agent should be breaking out every little part of that and going over your binder. It's called your policy with you. If you don't understand your insurance policy, you're. That's what your insurance agent is literally paid to do. So I'd recommend really grilling on like, hey, like if I wanted to reduce or increase this, what would I do? So for example, the conversation I'm having mostly with my insurance agent now is like, okay, think edge cases. If someone was to sue me or something crazy like X, Y and Z happened, do I have coverage for this? So I'm going the opposite direction now, which is like I'm trying to get more insurance. But yeah, at the beginning, like I was trying to see where I can shave little bits and pieces.

With the push to make. Oh, this is who Joel Lafayette with the push to make Max the face of Augusta. What do you think about using the name Max for automated text messages and email signatures instead of our own name and or our GM's name? Yeah, I've thought about this. I think some people would find it deceitful right now because they know that an email is being processed by a human. They know that the text message is coming from a human. And if they ask for Max, you either have to lie or you're going to have to explain it. And so it's easy with like Max AI because people get there. He's not a real person, but we call him Max for the sake of being able to talk to him as a colleague, talk about him as a colleague when they call in a command center. So.

Part of my asking is also something by turn at the GM level. Oh, that's a great point. I had not actually thought about this.

Especially with multiple locations. In the future if I just use Max, I or regional manager wouldn't have to replace the GM's name in various automation templates. And email signature CC would potentially use Max to sign text messages instead of office staff. For instance, I have text messages for estimate follow ups that say, hi customer, it's Joel from Augusta Lawn Care. I'm following up. Would it be weird to replace Max with Joel? Okay, I think a follow up people know that that's an automated thing. I'd be, I'd, I'd give the okay with Max on that one. If you're replying back to a very custom like work order change, I'd probably be using a real human's name so they know who to contact.

What about email signatures Max head instead of my picture or the GM's picture? Would that be too impersonal? If not, could the media team create and share the email signature graphic? Yes. The email signature thing is inside of the dashboard. You could download, you could make this your the way you're talking about very easily. You just take out the spot where you put a head and you put Max's, you know, profile there. That'd be totally fine. I would say for automated things it's very good. I would say in terms of GMs and like that, that question. I don't think a GM should ever be putting general manager on their email signature. I would still be using estimator Again, there's never a time where I say put GM as your email signature or you refer to yourself as from customers as an owner. And I'd say the same thing at gm there's no reason to be putting general manager because you will become the bottleneck for all problems. They will want to talk to you instead of command center and you'll rack up your bill instead of just letting them talk to command center and handle stuff for you because most of it you don't need to handle. And so more importantly you don't want to be dealing with headaches because the customer knows that you're the general manager and only wants to talk to you. I just put estimator in your email in your email signature in general. Also to your point Joel, if someone did leave and they were the quote unquote general manager, if the customer just sees them as the estimator they for all they know they have you have two or three estimators so they don't they won't hold it as bad.

Kyle Tarvin Others might not agree but I really but I enjoy listening to Salty Mike rant. I think you should bring him out of the shadows more often, especially when it's something critical to successful business. Sometimes we just need a good shaking and wake up call to focus on the important things in the business. Being called out isn't fun, but after you dust off your ego you can go after whatever the issue is. I've worked hard to get both my locations above 30 reviews. However, I'll be the first to admit that I'm lacking in other areas of the business. I asked last year but wanted to ask again, do you have any critiques or things you see I need to work on?

I think my my critique would be very similar last year. Kyle, you've improved in that area though a lot. And you know, because I'm speaking to you, you know what I said. So the biggest thing you have, have learned and are going to continue learning over the next six to 12 months is going to be how to run a secondary location and treat general managers and foster them up. And the video I'm coming out tomorrow would be like a great one for you to listen to about multiple locations and the skill set required for that. And now that we've seen like 10 or 15 owners inside of Augusta Nation have multiple locations, I can see what's working and what's not working and not even just like my own experience, but see what's working, what's working, what's working and not at so many different levels. And like I'm very confident saying, like, if you can have your GM work with you for at least 6 to 12 months before they become a GM, you like double or triple the probability that'll work out because I've just now seen it so many times. And so things like that, you'll just learn, I think. And you'll see tomorrow in my video I will literally say you're gonna stop growing for a year and just focus on getting a good general manager. And so you'll see like some everyone's gonna expect when I make this video, like year two you start a second location. Year three, you start another location. And it's not that way. I start off as you plow tons of money in marketing and it's not until you're four you start your first secondary location. And that's with a big budget on the first location, like $140,000 to start. So you know, I have seen, especially when we allow, when we first started allowing secondary locations, quite a few people jumped on because it's just super cool. It's an awesome feeling to have multiple locations and it's great to have general managers rise up. And that's a big reason why you have multiple locations. But the ability to have capitalization to be well capitalized in your second location, be your first location fully in profit mode and you have a person that you fully trust and have vetted and have worked with you for a significant amount of time, as the general manager puts that, the chance of success in that secondary location far greater.

Kyle Tarvin, I asked last week about doing a double price increase in our customers. You mentioned to raise them in batches of 25 per week. If I go, if, when I go to raise price on 25 and half of them leave, would that be a good indication to stop raising prices? We're picking Up a few customers a week. But I don't want to lose 15 customers a week by raising prices and only pick up three to five as a backfill. I don't think the math would work out then. Thoughts? That's why I said start with 25. Because if 15 drop off, you probably don't want to keep raising prices. But then you would have lost 15 customers instead of raising on 200 customers and losing 150. So that's what I would do if I was you. And if the 25 go well and like oh my God, it's only one or two left, great, go raise them on the other 200 or 300 or whatever. It was just, you know, I was, I was recommending the sample set so that way you didn't have paralysis by analysis and overthink it. Just test it out on some of the customers. If they don't work out, let them roll. And like if you could even just be like if, if someone gets the thing and they blow up about it and you're like, well, I don't want to lose them. Well then you could just be like, sorry, that was set in error. We meant to send it. We already sent. You already had your price increase last week.

So you could do that too.

Six out of 14. Coach Connor.

I didn't make the nickname. The people gave me the name.

Oh man. FYI to the person who asked about nicknames, serious question. When it comes to Christmas lights, I will likely buy an enclosed trailer. Great point. Ooh, that's a great idea. Ooh, ooh, I like that. Will the medium do graphics for set for such for something like that? There's already a bunch of graphics for Macs and Christmas lights on the brand identity page. Also would be a full wrap design and a partial. And a partial wrap design. We probably won't do that because like trailers get so specific. I would probably recommend just doing the. The Max logo that's on there blowing up Max's face with the head of the. The Christmas, the Christmas hat. I'd probably just blow that up to proportion for Christmas lights. Will we need a yellow trailer at some point? I don't think so. I was thinking black or white for now for seasonal colors, but was curious what long term regulations been that? Yeah, there's no real regulations on the trailer. We don't have regulations on the trailer now. We have, we have regulation on the vehicle in terms of the wrap for trucks. That's what the FAC is kind of agreed on. Everyone needs to have the Same for that. But we don't regulate, you know, trailer yellow or black or white. And if you were to get a trailer like this, I would just say I'd probably just like make the logo as big as possible and cuz like you want them to make it very clear distinction. Cuz you're going to have an Augusta truck pulling that trailer. I just make it like massive.

And I just keep it focused on the logo honestly.

Good idea because you could use it for storage too. Also looking for a shop space. We still run our location out of my two and a half car garage. Getting tight and needing to get the weirdos we fire out of knowing where I live. What's a good monthly to pay for shop rent and things to look out for? Here is a listing we are looking at today. A thousand dollars for what you see. Extra 250 to get access to the 2 and a half car garage with electrical as well. Okay. All I'm gonna go say right off the bat. An extra 250amonth to get electric is a deal.

Oh, what is this? Nice, nicey nice. Look at this fancy thing. All right. 800 square feet of warehouse, electric included. Internet included. Air conditioning, no triple net short term of space available. Thousand dollars per month. If you're going to do this, I would try my best to get at least like some sort of a term on this. You just don't want to move into this and then literally they pull the rug from underneath you. That's pretty cool, dude. Yeah, it's like perfect. Cuz like this isn't. This isn't rated for office. It's rated for warehouse. So you could literally just store stuff and then you got the stuff pot in the back for like parking things is in a residential area typically that is a little bit higher for like crime. Just FYI. I don't know this neighborhood. Obviously that's the bigger factor. But this looks great, dude. You can get this for $1,000 Broski. You can make up for it by putting a good sign on this thing. Getting traffic from that if, if it's inside your. Yeah, it's in Evansville on the right side of the of the water too. It's pretty good, dude. I don't think like you got 6,000 square foot lot, 800 square feet. So you really just got this spot. It looks like they're just giving you the, the kind of like garage door thing. But that's pretty sick, bro.

Yeah, I like it a lot. Personally I would give you a thumbs up on that one.

What was Your question though, what's a good monthly to pay? Yeah, so I talk a little bit this tomorrow I'd be trying to shoot for keeping your cost of admin and office stuff below 15%. I shoot between 8 and 12% at my locations. That's kind of the goal. So I would take your command center bill and add it with your rent shop space and make sure that that together you can get under 15%. So for example, I know Connor, you're growing quite a bit this month. I think you sent me last month it was like 79,000. So if you're spending a thousand dollars on rent, let's go if you can get. I don't forget if you're full service or not. But let's just say you're doing full service and you're paying five, $6,000 a month for that $1,000 for rent. Let's say some miscellaneous things like trash for this area. So just call it.

All in. You're looking like six or seven grand a month on a seventy thousand dollar month business. Not bad. Then it just becomes can you make sure that your downside in the winter is covered so you don't have where you drop down so far in revenue? Because that's the only problem when you increase fixed expenses like rent is that rent stays throughout the winter. Right. But again, you're going into Christmas lights. I like that idea. And then you have space in that, in that warehouse too to store your Christmas lights.

Your location name is Regret. Okay, Regret. Let's see what you got. How do you recommend dealing with thoughts of regret about choosing your career path? To be honest, I can't tell if it's actual regret or just the pain of spring rush, but I dread going into work every day. I was on a similar career path as you prior to starting a landscape company. Did you ever feel those feelings? How should I deal with this? Oh man, that's deep. Okay.

So regret is different than.

Give me one second.

Okay, so you can have all the regrets in the world, but if you are forced in a certain situation, that's one thing, right? So for example, the only thing I knew how to do was mow grass and make. That was the only way I could make money. So when I dropped out of medical school, that was the only thing I could do. And so if you feel like you've chosen a path and you feel like it's incorrect, then you have to ask yourself, is the pain you're going through now causing you to question and cause that regret? Because it was easier Before. And this goes back to the dig build Barry, that I talk about before. Initially, when you start a business, you go down like you dig down like a foundation. And when you're in a foundation and you're down the ground, you look back up and you were making more money before. It was easier before, but especially if you're going from corporate America into a business ownership, massive change, like loss of security, loss of dependability, etc.

Overwhelming 24 7, kind of like stress and pain. Very new to you. You're going down. That's what's happening, right? So you're going into, into the, the foundation, you're digging. And this is the hardest part of a business because you look back to everyone else that's standing up there. Your friends, your family, the people you compare yourself to, and they're ahead of you. And it's very confusing to your brain that you're working more hours, it's harder. And yes, you will regret the trajectory of where you're going. And that's why I always say like three to five years, you have no evidence of success. You haven't built the building. And so how I deal with these feelings, because there's always times you're going to have like, oh, I could have done this better. I messed this up. Regret is a little bit of a different word compared to like feeling like a failure, etc. Regret, I define that slightly differently. But like how I, how I deal with it is like, what's the end result? Like if I'm, if I'm in the ground and I'm building a foundation, like, yeah, it's gonna stink, but I'm trying to build a building. And so like, yes, I always had the option of getting a ladder, going up the ladder and going back on flat ground, but guess what I didn't do? Build the building. And so coming back to why you got in the ground and started digging in the first place is a good thing to go back to.

Dustin from Champaign. Our 3x mark mowers in Bloomington by the end of the year will be approaching almost their 1000 hours. And we have had them a little over two years. I've always traded equipment around 900 to 1200 hours. But I remember you posted a video talking about the lifetime value of equipment and holding things longer. There's a balance here, but let's keep reading. With this location in profit mode, I want to squeeze every dollar we can, but I also want to make sure the crew has equipment that is reliable and efficient. I haven't gotten prices yet, but my guess is the trade will be worth 6 to 7k each. Wow. And the new ones are 12. If you can get 7k on a mower that has a thousand hours, that's not a bad deal. I would probably take that because just look at the math here, right? If you like realistically a mower you're going to usually get 2000 hours out of before you start having big replacements that just make it worth that to switch out. Usually if you got 2,000 hours out of this thing and you doubled the cost that you're they're willing to give you now like per hour, I would take this trade because you can break this down to the cost per hour of a piece of equipment. I should keep reading. We have about 7k remaining in debt on them, but it's at 0%. Looking for your recommendation on preparing to buy 3 Mowers end of year or trying to get at least one more year out of them. I don't expect a huge tax burden because we have plenty of stuff from Champagne this year as that location is still in growth mode.

It comes down to like if stuff is breaking all the time and going down and costing a lot and your dealer is like hard to get to, they're far away. These are like things that play into this equation as well. Like for example, if your dealer's down the street, they're super fast with getting you in and out. They're willing to give you a loaner for the day. Probably would just keep scratching it honestly if it's hard to get parts, something going down could mean a couple weeks, your crew not being operable. It's causing them to get frustrated because of P4 puff breaking down. That's when I'd probably just try to get another 0% at the 12,000 level. Get 7 grand. Basically wipe out your old debt.

Ken Lynn I was approached by a local chuck and a truck acquaintance of mine last week. He had mentioned that he would like to have more time to do his side work tattoo artist and he was he was considering not running the business anymore. That got me thinking about the question I had last week about taking on someone's client list for free. Would it make sense to do since to buy his client list and have him come work for me as a full time employee since he already knows how to do it, put everything underneath the Augusta business. I wouldn't need to buy any of his clothes, equipment, mowers, truck, etc. The advantage to him would be he can also he can sell all his equipment and his money back still make the same amount of money that he used to but without the overhead and response to the pros and cons. First off, I wouldn't see as a valid thing that he already knows how to do it. Like if if someone needs to give you, you know, give you instructions on how to mow someone's lawn outside of just like a couple job notes they might have for that, we got problems. It means that the customer is completely tied to this person and without them like you should be able to mow someone's lawn without getting a yellow spun 90% of properties even without job notes. And if you're going to get yellow slips and callbacks over like random one off things, you don't want that customer as you scale up. So I usually don't see when someone gets bought out and the owner's working for someone else it ever work out well. I'd give that like a 80% chance of failure. I've seen it work out sometimes great. So it really depend on like that's a small percentage by the way that do work out great. But I would say come down to their demeanor and their humility around the failure of their previous business or if they're like hey, I just can't take it psychologically I'd rather just work for someone, maybe I would then consider it but if they come into it cocky at all, like usually doesn't work out well.

Ken Lynn.

Just got done watching the last C suite unfiltered and I have an idea. They may work around your schedule and still be able to start a new location. If you had the money, have the media team record you making phone calls and research online which would be kind of boring but it would be interesting to see how it works talking to a GM and getting him started his location. Then send him out a bunch of GoPros and have him a once a week or once a day vlog about his day. 2. If you don't have money you could pick a solo operator just as the basics one mower, one truck, etc send him a bunch of gopros and have him set up all over his equipment in the cab, mower, etc. Both ways I believe would be very entertaining and education not just for gusting but for those people who like and follow you vice and can now watch a monthly 30 minute video. How how somebody's monthly those who have the money for a nice truck and new equipment and advertising and those who have nothing but a truck and a mower on a dream P.S. don't pick me. Pick a guy. Pick a new guy.

No, like, the thing is about doing that sort of a vlog style is I can't control someone else. I can give advice and stuff like that. At that point, it's like, well, just watch my videos. So the reason we did the challenge was to actually show it being done because I could control how much time and effort went into, like, holding a sign and doing door hangers. If someone's starting out, it's like, I already say to do the. To do yard signs and door hangers. And if you don't have money, you have time, and you should just be founding pavement. I already say that. So if you're just gonna watch me say again to someone else.

You know, I don't know how helpful that would be. All right, this is Mr. Anonymous. Hey, Mike. Kind of a random question, but it may help with future goals. I hate cooking and washing dishes, which makes me think of one day having my own personal chef. Whoa. Let's go. Okay. Could you help me figure out how much income I'd need to afford a personal chef? Whoa, dude. Oh, Marcus. Texas. Okay, okay, okay. So.

Okay. I can actually do the math on this. So you have to ask yourself, first off, how much time do you save? So cooking and washing the dishes, you know, meal prep, buying food, etcetera, and then washing the dishes, Some amount of time. And I think it's less than you think, by the way. Like, you can literally multitask, clean the dishes pretty easily. Anyways.

That being said, what would you be willing to pay per hour for that? How much time would this take you per week or per month? And then that dollar amount, once you cross that threshold of what it actually costs for someone to come to do those things for you, then you go ahead and do it. And the reason I put a dollar amount based on what you think it's worth is because some people don't mind, you know, making their own food. They actually enjoy it. So they would put a very low dollar amount in terms of the.

The exchange of value that comes with subbing that out, quote unquote. Bryson from Colorado Springs. Alrighty. On the train of people raising prices, I wanted to see what to do in my situation. I have talked with Nick, and the plan we have come up with is to stay mostly solo, doing 90 to 95% of the work throughout the remainder of the year. This is because I hit the 20k mark and need a stack cash before next May. With that being said, I have found being in Colorado since we Have a delayed spring rush. I'm going to have a much wait. You hit 20k in your solo, dude, it sounds like you're having some people help you a little bit. Okay. All right. I'm going to have a much less significant summer lull than I experienced in Florida pre Augusta. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I have about 29 to 30 hours of mowing one week and about 23 to 24 the other bi weekly mows. Making up the discrepancy, I am having a hard time trying to schedule projects. Not because I'm not getting any leads, but because I only have two to three days a week to do them and a rain delay sends the schedule schedule spiraling. 95% of these clients are less than 3 months old and I don't want to scare too many people off because I want to grow hard next year. These mo's are also priced for dirt. I can hit P4P if you count for all three days. But two out of the three I barely make it. No way employees could. The options I'm considering. Okay, I will continue reading this question, but I'm telling you you're overthinking phrasing your prices. Listen to what you're saying. You're overbooked, you can't get to projects, you have leads pouring in and you're not going to increase capacity.

We should be raising prices. You've admitted that the prices are dirt. They're not going to make P4P if you hire people. So you're going to not be able to scale. So like why are you even concerned about getting more customers or keeping more customers if the ones you have right now will never allow you to be able to hire because you will lose money.

So Bryson, I love you. I'm just saying my thoughts here straight. This is. I will continue reading the options. However, this is very straightforward. If you are at capacity and you're not going to be hiring people, you raise prices. If you are, those things are still all true and you have leads pouring in and you can't get to work and you're unprofitable on the work that is being done. Once you take out your cost of labor. Folks, this is what we call a slam dunk in the business. Raise prices. Let's continue reading here though. The options I'm considering raised price in majority of underpriced modes lose a potentially higher percentage than we have been seeing across other locations. But Now I hit P4P and be more profitable. That sounds like a fantastic beep. Make Money, let's go. Keep most of their same price and suck it up till next year. Raise price next year when less will leave due to servicing them longer. This is an assumption.

That servicing them longer will somehow make them stick with you a lot more.

Next one is, I wouldn't raise for anyone with us less than two weeks. That seems fair. So maybe looking at 20 to 33 accounts with the shorter gap, I would likely be able to keep a mostly full schedule, if not at least 40 hours a week. Like, look, look, this is what I would do. I would send an email to everyone, raise prices. And then if someone freaked out in the past two weeks, you just got them started, you'd be like, hey, we apologize. That was meant for clients that have been older. You could literally say that if you really want, really afraid of losing them again, you need to lose some of them. So. But you could do that if you're like, say, like, hey, there's like 10, 15 accounts we've got in the past two weeks. Great. If they email you and they freak out, just say, hey, sorry, you're a new customer. You're. You're. We're going to honor your price until the end of the year. Fine. Right. My other thought is, once blowouts and fall cleanups get here, I have virtually no time. If I don't lose some. That's a great, great thought. Now that I think about it, a third option could be raised by more than I would now in about two months. Trying to lose more out of necessity than sell cleanups from crazy prices. Because, hey, you're overthinking this. Look, you have projects you're pushing off. You have leads pouring in. You're at capacity and you're not going to increase it. Raise your prices. And if you're really concerned, if they've in the past few weeks have just signed up, either don't send them a price increase letter, or if they blow up at you, tell them that you'll honor their price till the end of the year. That's fine.

Also forgot to mention the fact that I go back to school in August, which means that essentially I'm mowing five days a week after school. I think we have decided on what the protocol should be for this one. I genuinely believe if you raise your prices, you will lose less people than you think. Especially if you use the strategy that if more recent people comment, you can be, hey, sorry, that price increase. We're going to honor your price at the end of the year. Right.

You don't want to be in school, having to hire out the work. And now they're unprofitable. No. P for P is being made, and you're not making any money. That stinks.

All right, everyone, I hope you have a fantastic evening and we'll see you all tomorrow. Take care.