Mike Minutes Mastermind 06/11/2024

And we're live. Hope everyone's having a fantastic day thus far here on this Tuesday, June 11th.

There were no questions submitted today, but that's fine because we're gonna go straight into edumacation. So this is what I figured we'd do. I am going to. First off, I need to download this, actually. There you go. Very good. Did it actually download? Very good. I am going to go over after yesterday.

Getting quite a bit of people saying they would like a little bit more Salty Mike. We're gonna go a little Salty Mike. But this is for Salty Mike. This is not reactive Salty Mike, where you're actually mad. This is me thinking and then becoming salty over things. So I'm gonna go over three different things that I think that if I was to speak broadly to just Augusta Nation, the things I think we can do better.

As owners and entrepreneurs. And these are broad brushstrokes. Obviously, your coaching calls are gonna be much more specific and questions that you can ask in the Mastermind. I can be more specific to you, but these are, like, broad. And then I want to go over the current seven values of Augusta Nation and explain them in depth. Here we go. All right, so if I was to give, quote, unquote, I don't like giving advice. Like, if I had to give critiques or advice as a general whole, again, be like, this is not me, great, that's fine. But I think we nonetheless can all take something from this. So the first thing, if I had to, I had to try to boil it down to three. There are some other ones. I can get those later if you want me to, but I try to take, like, the top three, otherwise it gets too long.

Of things we can improve. Trust me, the list I have for myself is far greater than three and much more poignant and horrible. So don't feel bad if you're like that one stung. All right, first one, I'm going to use phrases that I've always used in the past.

So that way, it's not like this is new information. None of this will be new information. I can guarantee you that. But many times the things that I consider failures is in adherence to predetermined.

Norms and expectations. So let's jump into them. All right, the first is do the boring work. And when I say do the boring work, I mean this. Let me show you. This.

Obviously, do the boring work is from Alex, who had kind of make that pop that phrase popular. But what I wanted to show you is when I think about doing the boring work, I think about Doing this in sequence. Like what does doing the boring work mean in a gustination? It means why did that go up there.

X that out? It means doing these in sequence. And I see a lot of times people are trying to get out of this. So recently a couple weeks ago we had a solar operator, unfortunately have to leave. They're hopefully going to come back to Augusta eventually. But their question they submitted to the Mastermind was essentially they had not got to stage one and they're asking about stage five. Well, they had stage five, they had a general manager in place and it's like you're doing 200,000 in annual revenue. It's not going to work. Why? Because it's not following the seven stages of wealth. It's not following the predetermined system that's already been put in place. And so doing the boring work means following these steps and in sequence. And so some people will actually do stage one. They'll grow really quickly and they're like, great, now I'm going to go scale. I go to number four and they rack up tons of debt and they come very cash poor. This past year, in the past, I guess past, in the off season, I had two to three of our owners inside of August Nation. The ones that are the largest, some of the largest locations have really, really bad cash crunches. And in part it's because they went from growth one to eight and immediately went to a million dollars without taking a little bit of time to make sure they had some cash profit and three systems and they were actually out of the field and they could actually take yourself a little bit of time there. There's a reason why Sages 2 and 3 are there before you go scale the location to a million plus. And so whether it be debt and whether it be increasing their fixed expenses, those things come back to bite. There's a reason why there's extra steps there. So doing the boring works means doing the stages of wealth in sequence and not trying to circumnavigate them. Like, well, I'm only going to do 200,000 but I'm going to go get a JM and try to another location or I'm going to try to move, but I'm only doing 150,000 or I'm going to grow and then I'm going to go again and I'll go get a bunch of debt without building some profit, without actually putting systems in place. I'm still going out and doing jobs to fill in for the guys when they aren't doing A good job or when there's yellow slips, when a job goes south, I still step out there. You haven't conquered number three. Right. So doing the boring work. And again, I speak myself in the mirror when I say these. Okay, the next one I would say these are broad strokes. Remember, progress over perfection. Progress over perfection.

I see a lot of times, especially when someone goes from being whether they should be a laborer to becoming a manager, and then in the transition from being manager to. To being an architect in those transitionary points. So what are the transitionary points? Usually 4 to 8, 4 to 4 to 500,000 and then also between like 800,000 to a million. Those two transition points. Most the time I see people holding onto perfection because as a solo operator or as a laborer, when you're in the first from 0 to 200,000, everything you can touch and you can put your hands on, and people fail to go from labor to manager and scale to 500,000 because they want everything perfect like it was when they were a solo operator or when they were a laborer. They want their employees to be perfect. They expect perfection from them. They expect everything from an admin, sales and customer perspective to be perfect. It really, really hurts them to get negative reviews. And it can be demoralizing to the point that they stop growing or they stop doing what they know they should be doing, which is focusing on sales and hiring. And so they'll get fed up over one thing, that command center is wrong, or a customer review that is incorrect or bad, or one employee walks off the job like, forget that, I'm going back to being solo. And so progress over perfection means delegation despite someone doing a job less quality than you. And so your, your employees, no matter who you hire, when you go from solo or labor to manager, no matter who you hire, they're not going to do the job just like you. And they're not going to do as good as you unless you just stink. And like anything above you is better. Like, but the vast majority of us like when you go from being in the field to having employees, they're not going to do it as good as you. You're going to try to go.

You'Re going to try to make sure in stage three that you have systems in place to train them, etc. But there's, there's just such a low probability that they're going to be as good at mowing the lawn as you, as good as talking with the customers, you, as good at upselling as you, when you hand things off to command center. And you go from the solo operator and you're like, okay, now I'm trying to ramp. They're going to, they're not going to answer the phone like you. They're not going to upsell like you. They're not going to be able to close the lead like you would. And you have to be okay with all of these.

Deficiencies as you delegate because otherwise you will constantly hold on to everything. And then I see the same thing happen when we're trying to switch from now the manager to the architect. And if, you know, you know, we talk about 0 to 200,000 is labor, 200,000, 800,000 is a manager, 800,000 plus is usually an architect. I see owners now, especially as we've, now we've been. Some owners have been in business for two, three, four years. They're hitting up against 800,000 and they're, they're trying to get to the architect. That transition is tough because the same thing happens because now you're going to use have a general manager. You're usually going to have a general general manager either as a secondary location or you're building up one above a million. Either way, if gross revenues going over 800,000, a whole different skill set is required. And same thing like that general manager is going to hire the wrong person and you're going to have to let it happen instead of stepping in like fixing the fire. You're going to have to let them go through the pain, let them go through bad hires. And you're like, I don't think that person should be fired. And you're going to have to let it happen. Like you're going to have to let go and delegate in order for other people to learn some of these skills and allow for less than 100% accuracy. Because as the manager, you had all buttoned down and you had already done a 50 to 100 interviews and you knew exactly who to hire and how to train them, and you know exactly how everything should be ran in terms of the operations. And so now having a general manager step in, they have to learn some of those lessons themselves. And yes, hopefully it's faster than when you had to learn because you can give them the skills and give them the learning, give them education and give them the systems, but they've still got to learn themselves. And so that handoff, that period of time where you have to let them go do figure things out, also a time where I see too many people wanting perfection from the gm, perfection from the person they're handing things off to instead of progress, which is let go of things. Like when you're switching from. From labor to manager, you're usually.

Having to let go of all the. The labor, the. The actual doing of the work, whether it be answering the phone, whether it be mowing the grass, whether it be sharpening the blades. And now you manage. And what happens is you get really good at managing the same way you got really good at being a laborer. And because you got really good at being a labor, it was hard to switch to being a manager because you have to let labor kind of go down a little bit. You had to be okay with someone else's 80%. And then the same thing happens when you become an architect. Now you're handing off manager, you're handing off a gm, you're handing off things in the business that, like hiring and firing, things like that. And now when you switch to being an architect, you're going to look back at the person who's doing the managing for you and be like, they are less than me. And guess what? You're right. Because number one, you're the owner. And two, you have a bunch of experience. And so I see those are the two parts where people will really butt up against and be hard. And sometimes they'll. Then they'll back up.

And so that would be my second thing. Third thing. Expected obstacles derail. All right?

Unexpected obstacles. I give full credit to when people want to throw in the towel. Expected obstacles, they're expected. They are literally on the chart. They are literally. If you're like flying a plane, you can see the thing, you know it's coming. You can see it on your radar, you can see it on your instruments. You know there's a mountain, you know, you're going to have to trajectory up and fly over said mountain. It's already in the map. It's literally on a map. It's been charted. You know how tall it is. We know exactly how much fuel we're going to need. It's all already, like, planned for, and yet we get derailed. And I say this because, like, in the stages of growth, I chart out the map, I say the thoughts you're going to think. I say exactly the problems are you're going to come into. I say the exact doubts and problems you're going to face, and yet they still derail us. Like, the things that derail people at every single stage of growth are still the things that have been put in there for years. Like, I think around, I think probably level 30 to 40 or number locations, but level, number of location. 30 to 4 is when I created the stages of.

Growth, which is 0 to 100, 100 to 200, 200,000 to 500,000, 500 to 800,000, 800,000 plus. Like.

And yet people are still in those stages, thinking those same thoughts, but then not following, like, what we should be doing. Like, okay, I knew there's a mountain there. I planned for it, I had enough fuel, but then I got to the mountain and I turned back. It's like expected obstacles derail us like.

That. I just don't, I don't understand that. It's like, okay, if you don't have enough cash, you're going to have to pound pavement. You're going to have to knock on doors, you're going to have to hold signs. If you don't have $30,000 to be able to do grand opening marketing, do Facebook and Google and dial it in and have, you know, 30 to $50 cost per lead. If you don't have that money, you're going to have to pound pavement. The very first thing you should be doing when you leave training is get 30 plus Google reviews, get an address that's verified. Boom, boom, boom. These are expected things like, fill up your fuel tank. You know, you're going to have to have so much fuel to get over said mountain. But then yet we get to the obstacle and we turn back. So when expected obstacles derail, that's challenging because, like, what else can we do? Like, what else can we do? It's like, look, if you don't have money, you will need to pound pavement in order to get leads. So it's like, well, I'm not having any leads. Well, did you have money? No. Did you pound pavement? No. Why? Right, so this is, this goes like all the way up the stack. Like, as you get, as you grow your business, you're just gonna keep having bigger and bigger obstacles. That's all it is. But when they're expected.

It is a lack of preparation if they cause us to be derailed if we expected the obstacle. Like, you can't, you can't plan for a heart attack. You can't plan for things like divorces sometime. And yes, you could say, well, you could have preventative and you could be healthier, you could foster the relationship. A lot of times those are unexpected things. And that's usually what causes a closure inside of a destination is unexpected personal events or unexpected financial issues. But when it's like, this was a, I Have no one in my mind, by the way I'm saying this, I'm just saying as a broad stroke in general in business is like when you know there's going to be certain issues in the business as you grow and you know there's going to be certain obstacles and like we do our best like have the stages of growth and have the stages of wealth to be able to. So you know exactly the pain points you're going to have all along the way as you grow the business. Those things should be planned for. It's like, oh, I'm entering stage three of growth. That's 200,000, 500,000. Okay, I'm going to have to grow fast. It's going to be a little bit wasteful. I know I'm not going to make any more profit now than I did back when I was doing $150,000, had one helper and was making good profit. Great. I'm going to plan for that mentally to know that I'm not going to see this for any results in my bank account for next year. Like that is expected obstacles and for those things to derail you is.

I don't know what to say.

So anyways. Okay, let's go to the next one here. What did I do? Okay, cool. Core values. We embrace constant improvement. That one's pretty self explanatory. It means we're just kind of constantly making changes. Everyone wants to hear this. This is like good in theory. Everyone says hoorah. And then when it happens it's painful. Because growth is painful. Growth sucks cash causing financial pain. But when you look at any sort of growth in humans, for example, when someone's going through puberty and going through adolescence, like they, their, their joints hurt, their shed their skin can literally have stretch marks. Like, like constant improvement requires pain. If you're going to improve your body in any shape, way, shape or form, it doesn't like it. Like even if you were trying to improve it or if you're trying to be detrimental to it. Like for example, if you're going to gain £50 in the next six months, it doesn't like it. You're going to have joint pain, you're going to get lethargic, you're going to be tired, etc, if you go the opposite direction and you build muscle like you're also going to be sore, you have pain, you might hurt yourself lifting heavy things. Constant improvement. It will always be painful. But everyone wants it. Everyone wants to have the six pack, everyone wants to have a bunch more muscle Everyone wants to lose 30 pounds, but that's that improvement will require pain. Pain is the pain is the admission for change.

And improvement. 2. We are humble and teachable.

One thing I was saying at the command center the other day is if this is true and that is that everything that you want to become, the only thing that you lack is skills, then what that means is the only thing that you should be focused on is unlocking those skills from other people that have them inside of their brain. And so this is why it's so important to have coaching calls, is why it's so important to be part of a community. This is why it's so important to be part of the masterminds. And talking to other owners and coming to conference is because the inability to gain skills simply comes from the inability to be able to unlock from other people their knowledge. And the reason that most people are not able to unlock knowledge from other people is because they are not humble and they're not teachable. And so if you actually believe that all this, everything that you want in life simply is a matter of gaining more skills in terms of success.

And this could be like again, successes in any form. Like successful in your relationship, successful in family, successful in your.

Body. Like, if you want to improve your health, you just need a different skill. And if that's like anything you want is usually someone else has had it. And if the only thing that you're lacking is skills, you just need to unlock those things by getting knowledge from other people. But you will never be able to do that if you're not humble and teachable. Someone is arrogant and is in, has no ability to be teached, or people don't want to give you the knowledge and skills required to be successful if you have a problem, right? So like when I go to my coach, when I talk to someone like Alex, like you will you. You like, it's a different person. You come from a different place. Because I am completely in student mode and I want to be a sponge and I want, I want with everything possible for the person that has the skills that I want and the knowledge that I need to want to give them to me. It's a really, really fulfilling thing to coach someone and be able to.

See them succeed based upon the, the, the help that you give them. This is why the coaching program is a mutually beneficial thing. It's very fulfilling to see someone like, make changes in their business, make positive, raise their prices, hire the right person, improving. Like I had something to do with that, that's super. Beneficial. The way to unlock more of those sort of coaching moments is to be the type of person that other people want to help and they want to give their knowledge to. Because if you can unlock that from them and you can be a good student, you will attract the best coaches. You will attract the people that have the skills and the knowledge that you want.

Okay, number three, we walk with purpose. Boom. This is a matter of, like, we don't do things out of obligation. We do it with purpose. We don't come to work simply because that's what we do five days a week. We are going to do it with purpose. Like, the reason that Augusta exists is to change level professionalism in the industry. Like, if you actually believe that that is our, you know, what we can accomplish the next 20 to 30 years using technology, using the brand, etc. Like, this is more than just making grass shorter. It's about helping the people inside the organization get to the next level of their career, seeing their full potential. It is about creating jobs in the community. It's about creating pressure on our competition to improve and change. That's something worth doing more than mowing grass. This is why we have communities. This is why organizations as a whole exist. This is why we as humans band together. Because we see the fact that as a community, we will achieve more as a collective than we will buy ourselves. That is the purpose we walk with. All right, number four, we do more with less. This is just like, in general, like, this is why we, we allow people with less money than most franchisees, franchisors would. This is, this is why we don't have any lot of fancy things. Like, we are going to have to do more with less. We don't have venture capital. We don't have private equity at the corporate level. And the vast majority owners inside of Augusta Nation, outside of your equipment, don't have a lot of debt. So you're going to have to deal with more with less. If you don't have debt, which makes things so much easier. Because you eliminate the number one reason why people go to business, which is lack of capital, lack of liquidity. As they grow and they grow themselves out of cash, they grow themselves out of liquidity and therefore go to business. So if you have capital, if you have backing, loans, debt, someone else will give you money, et cetera, that makes it a lot easier. Most of us don't have that. So you're going to have to do more with less. Like bricks without straw. Is that going to be easy? No. But you have Less. So are we going to sit around complaining that we don't have more, or are we going to simply take the less that we do have and make more of it? Number five, we put the team and others first. That one's pretty straightforward. This is the number one thing that we kind of look for when it comes to new people joining Augusta Nation. And it's like, will you give more or take more from the. The community? And for owners that take more, those are the ones we have our most trouble with and have to put in order because a thriving community will simply give more to each other and the mutual benefit to everyone is increased. If everyone is trying to give more. You think about like the velocity of money in an economy. The more money is changing hands, everyone gets wealthier, same amount of money, but if the money is moving faster, it's called the velocity of money. How many times money is transacted between. Between people. If it moves faster, the economy will grow same amount of money. If everyone hoards whatever cash they have, they independently will become less wealthy simply because the velocity of money is lower. And so I think of a community the same way. The more times people exchange value, the more times people communicate, the more times people depend on others, the more times there is cross education between owners, more times that people around you, you share equipment, you share employees, you help people out. Doing so actually makes the collective stronger. Number six, we figure things out. This is especially important when you're first getting started out because you don't have. You don't have anything figured out. So therefore, you must figure things out the scrappy way. It's like YouTube University. It is trying it out, making iterations, using constant improvement to recalculate where you're going and to adapt. All right, number seven, we are emotional about our brand. Anyone that wears the gold, and for augustination, we care about them. Emotional means that in the lack of having logic, there's emotion. And so when logically we should give up on someone, when logically someone should fail, when logically we should count them out, we don't. We're emotional about them because they wear the uniform. And so this is why uniforms in the army are so important. Because you are going to take someone that has never met someone, lived thousands of miles away, has completely different backgrounds, different skin colors, different whatever, and they're going to meet each other on the other side of the world. But because they were in the same uniform, they have a collective bond. And because the brand, in this case a country, a flag, a cause, a mission, because of that, they get emotional about it to the point that out of logic, I'm going to trust this person I've never met before. But because they're wearing the brand, because they're wearing the uniform, because they have the same common goal and mission as me, I will stick behind them and I will take a bullet for them. That is the ethos of the military. And if you lose that brand, if you lose that connection, militaries will fall apart. And if you lose that in a community, and that is like a common goal, common mission. And for that, we will become emotional, which means we will look past logic and we will actually depend on each other and rely and trust on people that we don't necessarily know. But we're going to do so because we're emotional about the brand and the value and the mission. And the goal of what we're trying to achieve is greater than the logic that we would typically rely on as a human to say, like, oh, I don't know this person. Like, if you meet someone on the other side of the world and they have a gun in their hands, you probably shouldn't trust them. But because they're wearing a uniform that matches your uniform, you immediately would literally take a bullet for them. Like, that's. That's emotional. And so that is what those things mean. All right, we have a little education corner today. Let's go. I don't know if we call it education. That was just like, musings, because there was no question submitted. So I'll get back to questions tomorrow. I hope you all have a fantastic day, and we'll see you on Wednesday. Take care.