Mike Minutes Mastermind 06/14/2023

Hello, destination. Let's go ahead and get started.

A little earlier than usual.

I've got to go out and do a property cleanup today, so. All right, let's see what we got. I first got this over from YouTube. One second here.

Oh, oops. I did not put a thumbnail on this. Sorry. Let me just do a quick comment on this. It all looks similar.

Fifteen questions that came in. So I'll jump right into questions do. If you are interested, look at the.

The Facebook group. Last night I posted day 15's behind the scenes video. So you kind of give you a taste of what I'll be making for everyone by the end of the month. I'll have every single day done and I'll kind of make a kind of mini course for everyone in Augusta for all 30 days.

But for now.

I put day 15 in there and then what I talked about in there is a lot about selling jobs in person while you're at the estimate, which is not always recommended. I talk about when to do it and how to do it because my last three jobs that I sold while at the estimate in person.

So kind of went over when to do that, when not to do that, as well as how to do it to make sure that they're not going to do a whole bunch of price negotiation with you and make sure it's professional still. So feel free to check that out. Especially if you're just getting started or you're still getting one or two leads a day, you can definitely sell in person. I'm thinking tomorrow's video that comes out publicly will actually show.

Actually, I think today's show is a little bit too of me selling one in person. But yeah, I've done my last three job lists like they asked for a price. I was like, you know, give me a few minutes, let me make a video. I'll send this to the office and I'll come back to you in a few minutes and I'll we'll go ahead and get you on the schedule. So. But watch that video on the Facebook group if you're interested in that.

All right, we have 15 questions, so let's jump in. Caleb from Mare Island. Now that Max AI is answering the phone in the off hours, should we change our Google business profile to being open 24 7? Not yet. Max is not answering the phone yet in the after hours. It'll probably be at least three to four weeks before he's officially doing it. We started testing last week and we will continue testing that a couple weeks until I'm confident it can do pretty well. But I would say it'll go into production mid mid July in beginning of July and then it'll just get better. It'll get better super quick. Like the first three weeks especially and then you know we just got to keep going through the phases of what we're going to use it for. Devin from Red Deer do you buy bulk material like landscaping, matting and pins just to save extra for when jobs come up is I want to make sure I use all the materials within 6 to 12 months max so I don't get like years worth of material. Because things happen, things change. You gotta move and now you're moving a whole bunch of inventory. Inventory crushes. It's like dollars just sitting there. Nick from Marysville we are quickly running out of work and I'm not selling jobs fast enough to stay busy. Set the one click and lowering prices whenever possible and doing all my follow ups. I have a six man crew and with everyone switching to bi weekly and the lack of projects being scheduled we are only going to have 67 budget hours recurring and that is going to go down. If everyone was fully efficient we would need 190 hours to keep them busy. But realistically around 150 budget hours we need we. I haven't been turning turn marketing off except for four days this spring. I have serviced every lead and tried everything to close these jobs and I'm coming down in terms with the fact it's not going to happen. I can't close that gap from 7 to 150 watts hours every week. It's just not possible. I would be careful saying that over yourself. So after finally building a team it looks like I am going to have to lay people off. Obviously that's the last thing I want to do but assuming that is what I have to do, I can no longer justify being out of the field full time. So then I'm almost half to lay off another person so I can have field work for a few days a week. Can you give me some ideas or something I have not considered. So this is something I would consider and that is I don't know if you've tried door hangers but potentially what you can do is if you're trying to keep your guys and I'm assuming you like love all six of you guys and there's no like low performers and I looked at your videos and it sounds like you have a really good crew next. So I understand where you're coming from. I know it's like to have A really, really solid crew going into, into summer. And you basically staffed up for winter after spring rush. And that's why in spring rush I always want to get out to about four weeks to five weeks booked out, because I know I have enough to burn through through summer. And too many people hire too. Some people, I shouldn't say too many, just very few actually hire enough people during spring to where it's like, great, we're only a week booked out. We were just like slotting jobs in the schedule. And then as soon as that slows down, they just don't have enough work. So very, very common. And it's tough when you have a really good crew and you just like, man, I don't know who they're going to let go. One thing you could do if you tried doing door hangers is.

Let'S see if I got any. I could show you.

One second.

So like, these are the instant coat door hangers for mulch, for example.

Like that.

So it's just mulch. We also have ones for just property cleanups. What you could do is say, hey, I need you to deliver a minimum of 60 of these an hour. You're gonna get base pay while you're delivering them. Here's the parameters of like small properties, large properties go, right? So you might say, okay, 3.99 for small properties, 7.99 for larger properties. On the multi soul. X amount of yards. X amount of yards, right? All they know from multisol is like yards installed. And then you can just give them a multiple and tell them to go. If they did that and they're able to get say two customers a day, they would pay for their wages. And I would rather pay a really good, great employee. Let's do 18 an hour as your base pay. Let's just say, or 20 an hour is your base pay. Multiply that by eight hours in the day, it's 160 hour, $160. I'd rather pay 160 to my crew members in this case, where I'm trying to keep them busy to go get myself two jobs, then pay, you know, Google 100 or $200 or Facebook or whatever your customer acquisition cost is this time of year. And what I'm finding is during the summer months, like even here, when there is a lot of people looking for services, you're going to have to go create the leads. They're not just spending more on marketing isn't going to do a lot. So, you know, I. If you're spending a thousand, $2,000 a month on marketing. I would rather spend that on like the guy. All, all of our leads are coming from door hands. And it came from last week. He did three days, 21 hours of door, door knocking or door hangers. And then I did Sunday.

Like 400 or whatever it was. So you might have to just create the lead then if you wanted to, you could literally send a guy out now and you still have it sound like you have a little bit more of a buffer. Like pretty soon you're going to run out of work. And yeah, if you're running out in the middle of June, July, August is going to be tough in terms of just like hours because everyone will switch to bi weekly. Some people will cancel. It's just how it is in the Pacific Northwest and a lot of, a lot of our areas. So I would pat yourself on the back for the fact that you've got to six guys, Nick, because like, you know, that's been our struggle every spring rush for you and even this, the beginning of this one. So you nailed it. You just gotta be careful. Cause you'll switch now to the other pendulum, which is like, okay, now I've got great guys, I have another problem. Right. And so you're going to start getting better and better every spring rush and knowing what that demand cycle is like and being able to feather your gut. Like if you would have got these guys earlier in the spring, you would have been able to ride that spring get probably more recurring just because you would have been able to manage it. And then you have a better base going in the summer as well as you know, you have two more months in your belt where potentially one or two of these guys, just because of natural attrition, moving, getting out of the job, et cetera, have moved on. So you'll get better and better at that. It's just each year. But I would say I would consider thinking about trying to get project based work and using door hangers as a way to kind of keep them busy artificially for now. But as long as they can get enough work, you'll be fine. But ultimately you need.

About 90, 80, you got 80 budget hours right now a week you'd be good. That means you need to sell probably 8 to 10 small projects or 5 to 6 small and medium sized projects. When you do property clips, there's gonna be ones where it's a thousand fifteen hundred dollars, you know, 20 budget hours like it. Yes. Last week I got a 35 budget hour and a 30 hour budget hour cleanup and projects. So you get a couple of those and you're off to the races. So and those are for door hangers. So something to consider. I'm not saying you should do that. I would definitely test it though. Do it for a week, let one of your guys go out. Given the parameters of small property and large property, different types of the amount of molts that you're going to install and let them run with it and see what happens.

This is an option. So just trying to think outside the box besides just saying right there.

Karen and Audi Tono, Texas mastermind June 12 business course and access to it before you Left for your 30 day challenge I tried to log in and accessing stuff online skate business course I'm having trouble getting in. I've used the tools in the dashboard. I feel like I'm missing one kind of step I think Business course coupon I'm trying to pass Ryan Payne Brian Connor Next 12 months. Can you help? Sorry Ryan Payne this is the repeat question.

Yeah, if you go to the dashboard there is a coupon code. You should be able to log in to go to landscapebinscourse.com pretend like you're checking out. Use the coupon code. You should be good to go. Use a different email potential because you might already have an account and so it might be messing you up. That potentially has happened to other franchisees where they've joined, they've paid and then you use a different email to come in later on and use the coupon code. Chelsea for Arnold Hey Mike, how do you handle customers who continue.

Handle customers who crews continually report their dog droppings in lawn we are we know recurring customers are valuable but our employees don't care if we just drop customers. At least that's how it seems when crews report dog droppings. We send out a nice email to the customer asking them to please be sure to pick up the lawn before the crew arrives and they are set to get a mowing alert Dog dropping email if they aren't already getting it. In the past, if it continued to be an issue, we would add an additional fee to the customer's bill. This is the first year we've had employees so quick to say there's a lot of poop and dog droppings in the lawn. We want to make sure our employees know we value them and if they are truly running into these issues we want to act but we just aren't sure what to do. Fire the customer. Give them a certain number of warnings. Charge them an extra fee. What are your thoughts?

I would go Check if you're really doubting whether or not the employee they're telling the truth and how bad it is. Just go check it out yourself. I'd probably say.

And then I would definitely tack on an extra fee because then the guys feel a little bit better. At least the fact that they get extra five or ten bucks on the job.

And then yeah eventually just gotta let the customer go after a few if they've been getting the notifications etc so but if you're not trusting that they're actually legitimately a lot and it's bad, I just go check it out myself. Ben Collins Hey Mike, do you feel there's a reasonable limit to what guys should earn per hour in P4P while mowing or at least a number you should hypothetically shoot for now that more of our guys are trained. One of our new workers earned 35 an hour today and another made 38 hours $38 per hour for the day, both working solo. I feel like this is way too much for hours, especially since we have we still have a lot of backlog debt and due to low funds I have not been able to get paid this year only a few of the lawns on our routes were at 1.5 weekly bi weekly pricing. But give it a couple more weeks and many are customers switching to a biweekly schedule and anticipating their hourly wage skyrocketing. The 40 to $45 per hour. To me this is insane. To be safe, I kept a clause on our BPP explanation documents to employees saying we'd be lowering the percentage down to 30% sometime in June July since I was worried about this due to our very dense routes and commercial non push mower equipment. But part of me worries 30% is not low enough. We'd love to hear your thoughts so you can always go back up. You definitely want to put this in writing in terms of like future months that okay, June, July, August, we're going to go from 33% to 28%. Whatever it might be, that's fine.

I so I'm going to check this from two angles. One, get it in writing, change it. Yes. Go down to 28% if you feel like that's necessary. But it needs to be done in writing and to be done like this is what's on the board. Everyone knows this is coming up and that's one thing. Okay, now let me like attack it from a completely different angle and that is this is the wrong mentality. Okay.

Are we happier with the guys that are making 25 $20 an hour or hitting base pay because they're making less per hour. They're earning the same amount for the, the. They're earning the same amount of profit for you if they're above base pay. Right. So you don't want to take your extraneous circumstances, which you, you have, you know, backlog debt, et cetera, from the past, et cetera, and now project that on employees that are kicking butt right now. The question is, have you, have you gotten to debt because you bought all this equipment and all this other stuff that now allows them to be so incredibly efficient and they're making all the profits from the investments that you made with the debt and now you can't pay off the debt. That's a valid concern. And that's when you need to lower the percentage of P4P for given months. And it's in writing. Right. But I just heard yesterday this made me very unhappy.

And I heard one of the franchisees fired somebody because they made too much money on P4P. Like.

That'S dumb. That makes no logical sense. When someone hitting base pay is probably taking 45, 50% of their labor revenue in wages, the person that hits 33%, and yes, you got to pay them way more because they crushed it. They're doing the work of two people at that point, so they deserve it. That's why P4P exists. So I would say that what's probably happened, honestly, is you've taken out debt in order to afford the equipment and the mowers that allow them to be super efficient. But now because you have P4P, you're basically giving that money to them and the increase in efficiencies have gone straight to them instead of paying the debt that afforded the assets that they're using. So you need to just make sure you bring that down. If you go 28%, that's fine, but make sure it's okay. It's June, July, August. These are the months that we're going to go to 28%. These are the months we're going to do 33%. I would also say that you're looking at $35 per day and 30 hours per day. I guarantee you they're not going to make that on the paycheck. Right. I guarantee you they'll be at 25, 26 because there'll be a yellow slip. There'll be a day it doesn't go as well. Whatever. I can also guarantee that these guys are going to be so hungry the rest of this paycheck. To make sure they protect that P4P dollars, and that's what you want. They'll probably perform to the level of two people because they made so much money on that one day. They'll just want to guard it so bad the rest of the pay period. So I'm okay with you changing it. Make sure it's in writing. Make sure everyone understands the parameters of that. I, I do believe that's what's happened. You've fronted the, the by getting into debt and everything, getting this equipment and the trucks and everything else and making it very route dense, done all that work, but now you're basically handing off those proceeds to the employees. It's a higher overhead with the, the capital expense of the, the mowers and increased overhead of having all that equipment. And so you will need to re. Re readjust. This is what I do. See companies that do get a lot of equipment, like, yeah, you become more efficient, you will need to bring P4P percentage down because otherwise you get way more efficient and you're basically handing all that money to the team members. And if you're literally in debt, we have a problem. Right. So. But I would, I would really, really make us all rethink this whole idea of like they're making too much money on P4P. Assuming that all of like a whole bunch of your crew is doing that, then yes, you probably need to bring people down. If a whole bunch of your team is at base pay and these guys are crushing it, they deserve every single dollar. Right? So I'm just kind of using you, Ben, to make a point here. I'm not saying this is specifically in your case, but I would say change, change it in writing so everyone knows what's, what's happening. It's all in front of everybody. But it's very, very normal that from now to the end of the years when we see all of our profits, it's because the guys start getting efficient because the grass stops growing so fast. So you'll need to adjust occasionally your P4P percentages, especially if you have a lot of bigger equipment that makes the guy just be able to fly through stuff. Kyle, Tyrone, can you break down this self storage deal?

Okay. It's a YouTube video, a little about the property. Self storage with a car wash for sale. And Enid, Enid, Oklahoma. Rents have not been increased in 20 years and are now and are over 80% below market.

Okay, $225,000, only 2200 square feet of storage. Gross revenue is only $26,000.

Such a small deal.

Do home service pros love about Jobber. Jobber payments. Jobber payments, jobber payments, Jobber job repayments. Yeah. I don't know if you guys can hear what I'm hearing, so let me just quickly scan through this. So you got a little bit of storage, it looks like.

And then we got a watch, car wash. This would be over a million dollars. Million and a half in volume.

Three wash bays, 21 storage units, two vacuum bays.

What I'm looking at is honestly more than. Yeah, that. That's what I'm looking at. This is a really bad location. Horrible.

Yeah, it's like really backed up against residential on both sides. You probably have a variance in terms of your zoning because you're in a residential area. This road isn't so bad. And there's definitely getting improved the signage along this main road here. Not so bad, actually.

Yeah, I'm looking at the traffic. I saw one car drive by the entire video. So I'm concerned about the.

Traffic on that main road. To consider that you're a commercial building, you need to be looking at traffic patterns more than demographics. So you're saying, look at the numbers. We would have to increase rents pretty dramatically to get the business to cash flow and be able to cover the mortgage on the property. I'd be very interested if we. It would be low money down or no money down. At $26,000 in annual revenue. I would deploy all the energy, time and the $50,000 you have to put down this property into your lawn care business 100% without question, no questions asked. Not even a tinge of doubt in my mind. Because even if you could double this to 50 grand if you take out your mortgage and then like, you're not. There's not. There's not enough meat on this bone. This is literally $2,000 a month. Your mortgage is going to be.

In this environment. Fifteen hundred dollars a month. Month. Because you're gonna have quite a bit of commercial a liability insurance on these. Now. It's like, okay, well, now you've got to manage tenants. How many of them? I forget. Exactly. But all those storage units and all like things breaking on the. Whatever the car wash. I would focus on your. On the business. And this one's not even hard. I would 100% say that the business isn't great. And secondarily, the cash that you would be putting into this and then more importantly, the time when would far outweigh 26,000. Let's just call it 50,000. If you spent $50,000 on your business that you would have to put down on this deal instead of going after 50,000 gross revenue minus mortgage, minus expenses like utilities for water, soap, all this other stuff. There's just not enough on the. You could get more money than doing door hangers for a day or two.

Then you would in a year during that business.

Dustin from Champaign, IL what would you title a job ad for professional door hanger guy. It's not really easy, it's not really sales. It's more like more marketing. But they aren't really doing anything but walking and occasionally pricing things. I'm going to systematize it and dumb it down as much as possible. Really just looking for a broke college student. I don't mind walking. Yeah, I would probably do something along the lines of hang door hangers, listen to music. Like that's what you might want to lean into. And then what you do you want, what you really got to do is incentivize them by the lead and or the sale. Right. So I'm giving $10 per lead, $20 per sale. Because otherwise you're literally going to have a broke college student throw them all in the garbage and then just chill out. And so that's why I have certain requirements like you've got to at least do 50 an hour. If you're. They're just indoor hangers. That's so easy. 50 an hour. You've got to have to help that. Which means an eight hour day. He should be able to at least do 350 with a break.

In terms of pricing. I would tell I had systematize it like you said, large and small properties. And then I would say like you get X amount per lead, X amount per a sale, converted lead. And be deadly honest with that. If they ever catch you not giving them money for a lead that they got or they go back and they see you, you're doing working in a profit they did the door hanger for and you didn't give them money for it. Like you're gonna have a problem. But I would really lean into the fact that like make like play the music.

Walk then you know, walk, listen to music and get paid X amount on average. And you just have to say hey look, usually we get about one lead an hour, one job every two or three hours. Based upon that math you'd be making X amount. Right. And then just you got to be careful because I would rather get a higher quality person and pay a higher base. Pay by just a few dollars sometimes will completely change the type of person you get and then, and then your, your lead and customer amount is like less impacted on who actually gets in the door because there's so many people just looking at dollar per hour rate. So just be careful with that. That's what I've seen. Because yes, I would like in the perfect world to be like okay, it's minimum wage plus and I can give you more on the lead and the customer side if you're great. But most people that are good are going to want a certain minimum for base. So that's why like I did 20 per hour in my mind I was like I could probably give him more money if I gave him minimum wage and then gave him like 25, 30, 40 per lead. I would like that more because more incentive based but I probably wouldn't be able attract a good person usually for that kind of lower base pay. What you're also looking for is someone who just needs a few weeks worth of work. Right. So like the guy that's doing my door here's. He has his own business 45 minutes away. So you only can work three or four days a week.

And.

He'S not full time and he only needs to connect three weeks. Right. So it's like perfect.

Glenn from or sorry, Kevin from Bloomingdale. I'm not good, not currently hiring but I had someone apply via website and had an interview with him and he's really seemed like a good fit. He's a go getter and a self learner improver. I wouldn't want to miss an opportunity to hire a great employee but I don't quite have the work for him at the moment. He does have experience in sales and his communication skills are great. Maybe he can do hangers for a week and then jump in the field. I'm wondering what you might do in this situation. How I might, how I should be thinking about this. If you are slower and you can handle improve increased lead flow. Yeah, like be like, hey, just be really honest with the guy. Be like, hey, I love you. I think you'd be great. In our team right now we just don't have enough work. So what I'm going to do is this week I'm going to go ahead and let you do door hangers. Here's how it's going to work and you break down the system literally in 10 minutes, 20 minutes you can turn into one on door hangers. It's not rocket science.

Don't let them customize estimates. It takes them way too long and it's a game of numbers. Anyways, so give them, like, the small and large. Give them two different sets and let them run with it. And it's like, hey, you're gonna have to create your own work. I want you on the team, but you're gonna have to create your own work. We just don't have enough jobs right now. And then to see what they're up to, see what they're capable of, they go out and they just crush it. And they're putting out 400 a day. They talk to a few people and sell while they're on. And they're getting at two, three leads a day. Like, I've been getting the leads I got last week from someone working part time has filled our entire schedule. And I mean, one or two jobs away from literally getting like an additional 70 hours worth of work if they got accepted. So.

Yeah, I would say, like, if someone's that good, be like, hey. And even Nick from you previously, having an honest conversation with employee, like, we just don't have enough work. Okay, you're gonna have to go create the work. I want you to be on the team. Here's what we're going to do. Here's what the incentive is going to be. And then it's up to them. And then if they don't deliver or they're not hungry, or they are just, you know, dinking around throughout the whole day when they're supposed to be doing door hangers, you can just let them go, Right?

Derek Durant, Allen Park, Michigan. PPP software Question. Is there a way to show budget hours completed for mowing in the daily reports?

Let's see. I think there's a way, but let me check. Because now in the daily reports, you'll be. You're able to customize what the employee sees and what you as the manager sees.

Why is this not loading? Thank you.

All right, let's see here. So if you go here and you go to email report settings, you should be able to see.

I see you're saying there's no budget hours completed.

There's just people P earned.

I'm just trying to think when. When that would be super important. Let me see email reports.

Because technically you just take their P for P, divide that out and come up with it. But I see you're saying, like, you want to see budget hours separated out. Yeah. Like right now, the thing is, the reason I haven't really done it because you look on their time card, right? Like, you can just look at their time card and see how Many budget hours were completed on a mowing route and you're already inputting that number. So it feels kind of dumb to put it on the report. But I'm guessing you're priming to the employee's sake, which again, like they should be able to do that. Doing that math, I'll think about it. But I just don't want to overload the amount of information that that card. And from the manager's perspective, you're already bringing that budget hour number over. In the future, that will be an automatic thing on copilot. But for now, like, you're already bringing that number. For the employees perspective.

My question is, do they care about how many budget hours they complete? Are they looking at how much they earned?

But it's something I'll think about. And if there's. If you want to leave another question in here, Derek, in terms of how that has been important or why it's important, feel free to let me know and I can. I just don't want it like there's a gazillion things we could put in there. Just. I don't want to overload it. Laugh in Winter Garden if employees are using company credit card and I make some transactions on a business credit card, these expenses will not show up on the profit and loss statement. How should we document these expenses on the profit and loss we share with the team each month?

Employees are using a company credit card and I make some transactions on a business credit card.

These expenses will not show up on the profit and loss statement.

Why?

I'm not 100 sure. You're saying if employees are using a company credit card. Great. And I am making some transactions on a business credit card. These expenses will not show up in the profit loss statement. How should we document these expenses on the profit and loss we share with the team each month? I'm not sure what you're saying. If you are. Yeah, I'm not sure what you're saying. Sorry. It sounds like you have company credit cards. They're using it, you're using it. Those are both showing up on the profit and loss statement. Because if they have anything that's the business and their business expense, they should be on the profit loss statement. If you're trying to keep something off the profit loss statement, you could potentially do like a miscellaneous or personal pay or personal, you know, business, personal, business owner expenses or something like that as a category that you just easily subtract out. You could do that as in terms of categorization. But I'm not 100% sure what you're saying saying there. Nick from Marysville what are the pros and cons of doing monthly profit sharing on a monthly basis? I want to find out a way to keep guys motivated, especially when I have to bid jobs so slim that they realistically can't hit BH on them for the business. I just want to stack jobs on the focal pass because that's where the profit is. But they get discouraged when I short them on bh. But I want them to see they will still make more money if we do those jobs. Currently, none of my guys have faith in P4P because it hasn't worked with them. I could read the percentage too. I guess a lot of the times two man routes are nearly impossible that good people peon and when they do, it's insignificant for them to care.

Monthly is the fix. So I don't want you. What you don't want is profit sharing to be the main driver of efficiency. You want P for P to be that. And then profit sharing rewards the people that show up consistently for the team and are not late. You need that double whammy, right? Because he doesn't really do that. So you might need to fix the P4P thing. And what I would say is, I know this seems foreign to some people potentially, and that is like, your bidding job is pretty tight, but you're also making the most profit for the business because everything's ironed out. Your guys are super efficient. You're not eating as much as you did in the spring rush in terms of inefficient labor.

Mistakes. You're not having to train guys like, the business is way more efficient, however, and you're making really good money. However, at the same time, the guys aren't making budget hours because you're skimming down by doubt to fill them with work. So again, having a really honest conversation with the guys is helpful. When you have to film a budget hour down. Like, hey guys, A, do we keep adding more budget hours on and we have more P4P or B, you guys want the hours and I just need to fill the schedule. And you can even just be honest like we tell the guys in Bellingham when this is happening, it's like, hey, we're going to be, you know, trimming down on budget hours. And so it might be tight, but we want to make sure everyone has has hours. Now people are starting to complain about like exhaustion or heat or whatever. It's like, okay, great, well we're not going to trying to put more on the schedule. When that's happening, we're going to just increase the price enough to where they can make more MT3P. But.

Now there's less hours for everyone. But they're not complaining about that because it's super hot. So maybe they're only working 30 hours a week.

You might want to change the percentage. If this is a consistent theme. Nick, I would be careful doing that because it sounds like what your problem potentially is more is a matter of over. Like your labor capacity is too high for what you're currently selling. And so there's inherent waste. Whenever you have a capacity that's super high and then a limit that is where it's currently at. Right? So for example, your capacity for budget hours is called 150, 160, but you're only doing 70, 80 or 90. All of your waste from P4P is coming from the fact that like you're putting two guys on a job, you're cutting budget hours like all these other things. Be careful because if you say, okay, we're going to raise it to 40% because I'm cutting budget hours and the business is profitable, whatever, be careful because next, next summer, let's say now you have grown the business and you have six guys again. But now you have 150 budget hours of recurring because you crush spring rush. Now you've got a problem because you're, you're going to be in the same situation as Ben from Arnold, Ben Collins. So and then he's like, oh my God, I'm giving all this money with these guys. And like.

Like this is crazy. And so you don't want to be caught in that position either. Right? So just know that you are, your capacity is extremely high because you have really good employees. You've hired a bunch of them later in the spring rush and then you're a little bit lower on the other part. So.

I do think that the alignment of budget hours getting stacked on the schedule will help their PvP because you're going to diminish that excess in capacity. So before you abandon that strategy, see how close you can get by using door hangers, by filling the schedule, getting them close to capacity. Because what you'll find is maybe, yes, this should have been a six hour cleanup. I made it four so I could sell them the job. And now all of a sudden the guys are working, you know, half a day. Well, what happens is when you able to get more jobs, yes, they're still bid low so you can sell them, but now you get two four hour jobs in a day and someone was working five clocked hours to finish that first one project but they only clocked in for eight to finish two projects. So that's what's going to happen because right now your capacity is so much higher than what your currently budget hours are at. All of your waste is here. So my recommendation is usually, I've currently said to fill this up as much as possible before making a judgment on whether or not you need to raise P4P percentages.

Yeah.

Kyle Tarbin, how do you handle the crew being upset they aren't making P4P at a new location? Our smaller location is still in the growth phase of picking up customers. We have basically built it off of cheaper prices to get our foot in the doorways effectively. Is it affecting the creative ability to make much PvP? Is there something you would do if you aren't yet at capacity and still want to grow but give the guys PPP money? I would just increase the percentage if you're in your first year potentially in order to make sure that they are above base pay. I would also be questioning if after six months you're not able to get them above base pay if your route density is way too low and you're getting jobs from way too far away.

So like those first couple quarters maybe I'd say hey guys, we're gonna do 40% instead of 33% because we know we're not very route dense, we know we're bidding jobs a little lower, etc. But next year or whenever it's gonna it goes to 33% but we're gonna artificially increase it right now because we're less efficient because we're less route dense, et cetera.

That would be interesting to me because again, you just, you want them above base pay. It's very important.

Kyle Tarvin, I keep getting letters regarding the employee retention credit stuff. Is there something we should file for? I remember you saying it's difficult to get. I didn't say that today. And is it worth it? But I have no, I didn't say that. But I heard that you got credits for it. Just curious if it's actually worth our time as the money would be nice.

Why? Oh my word, I'm showing the wrong one. I'm so sorry. Sick. Sorry guys.

Sorry about that.

Erc specialist.

Actually I have it mikeandys.com erc here's a quick link to it. This is what I'd recommend. I would only use it if you had employees in 2019 and then you kept them in 2020, then you can apply here. They'll walk you through whether or not you are able to. I get it. I've used them. I know Ryan's Payne used them. I think Brian Connor is starting to use them. But you've got to be in business prior to Covid basically. So it's not worth it. If you just start got started in 2020 or 2021. There's not much there for you. You could apply, but I haven't seen a lot of actual employee retention credits. Because what they're trying to do is they're trying to say, they're trying to anchor you against 2020, 2019 and say, okay, because of 2020 and 2021, these based upon 2019, we're going to give you your payroll taxes back. That's essentially what you're getting.

But yeah, feel free to apply there as long as you're in business in 2019. Get something.

We have had a bunch of people call in this Kyle Freeze from Bloomington. We've had a bunch of people call in to switch to bi weekly mining since we have had very little rain and nothing is growing. When they get their new bi weekly price which they record in the beginning, they get upset and cancel. We've lost nine customers in the last week and a half, and a half last week and a half due this and no growth. So they start mowing themselves. Would you ever consider mowing biweekly at the weekly rate to save these customers, entertain them. Guys will still hit budget hours at weekly time for pqp.

I would question this, that all nine of them left because of the increase to biweekly price. I would be more inclined to think that they, they just stopped service because the grass isn't growing.

So and like you, maybe you're right, like you've actually specifically asked them or they specifically said because of this price increase. But.

Most people understand the fact that like if you go to the store and there's buy one, get the other one 50% off. It didn't cost Pepsi any less to make that second Coke. It's simply you buy, if you buy more, you get a lower price. And so.

Very rarely, like it's still cheaper for them from a month perspective. But like if they're buying less services we're going to charge more. So I would personally really try not to go this direction. Like I don't know out of nine. I don't know if that's out of 50. I don't know if it's at 100 I don't know what percentage this is, but I would be. I would definitely question as to whether or not they're canceling or because of the price increase or just simply because they don't think the grass is growing.

Now you just got to be careful with this. You got to be very careful with this because otherwise you're going to have basically a halving of all of your revenue for recurring work versus maybe 20, 30% decrease by allowing bi weekly during the the season you're gonna have. You're gonna, you're gonna increase that dip of the summer even more. So just be careful. Yes. If you really know. We understand that these nine customers left because of the price increase part. Okay. But ultimately it's like you know, someone calls in or says like hey I want to, you know, we want to go to bi weekly. Okay, great. You are at $40. The BI weekly price is 60. So I can go ahead and change it to the bi weekly schedule.

And enrolled it. Honestly, I don't even think you need to go over price if they accepted the quote at the 60. So.

Yeah, before making decisions I was really confirmed that those nine customers all left because the price increase. A lot of times people just like they see the lawns not growing and they'll bail.

But I would just be careful with making that a policy because you're probably if nine left, I bet there's 15 or 20 that stayed regardless. And the increase in revenue from those 15 or 20 are going to supersede the loss of just those even those nine because it's like it's straight profit on those other ones.

Tarot and incentivizes by incentive incentivizing the stamp weekly service parallel. At Boone's Creek we are solo models so we only have basic CC services being performed. What is the thing to do about customers who don't put a credit card on or have one on file but have insufficient funds to pay the last month or two months invoices. I've tried calling most of the time going to voicemail, emailing, send the credit card, ask email. We've quit servicing them for now. A few things I would number one, go in person to their house with a printed off invoice. Knock on the door. I do that a few times probably especially if you're. You have time. That being said, if you want to send them to collections you can send them to Empire Collections that all the documentation is on the dashboard. Just look up collections in the templates and downloads part and that documentation the same that command center uses will be given to you, and you'll go do step by step of what you need to do, printing out the invoices, filling out the paperwork, et cetera, and send that into the collections agency.

Wow. Quite a few questions today. Very good. What else we got? Canvas and Bloomingdale's. That's what I do. Like Mike said, I have an employee who has got. Who has to go create their own work and pay them $50 for every accepted door hanger. They crush it and get multiple leads a week. Very cool. Let me make sure I know I can just say who that is. That's Vlad. Vlad Koga. All right, everyone. Have a fantastic day. Wow. Long one today. We'll see ya. Take care.