Mike Minutes Mastermind (06/16/2022)

Good morning, Augusta Nation. Hope you're all doing super well. We'll go ahead and get kicked off. The only kind of announcements thing I had is do watch Liz's video from yesterday if you haven't had a chance. She put it on the Facebook group and really the essence of it was if you're not able to show up to estimates, make sure you let command center know. If you're running behind, if you're skipping them, please let us know. There's been several locations that are not showing up to estimates 2, 3, 4 times and customers call and understandably are very frustrated, especially scheduled estimates when you're not showing up to those. So watch that video. She goes more into depth about what you can do. But as long as we know where you're at at command center, we can block for you. But when like someone calls for the third time because you haven't showed up for an estimate, we really can't do anything but apologize and just tell them maybe they should go find somebody else because we don't know what's going on. So watch that video from Liz from yesterday on the Facebook group. More info on that just so that we can block for you. And so you're just not wasting money with people calling literally four, five, six times to see where you're at. Similar to what we had talked about when it comes to scheduling, right? If you're just so far behind you can't get to an estimate, let us know. We can block for you. If you're so far behind you haven't been able to put someone on the schedule, let us know. We can probably help you get that done. So just communicate so that way you're not wasting money with people calling all the time, trying to confirm their appointment, et cetera. So I'm going to go ahead and jump into questions. That's all I had in terms of the announcements for today. Let me go back here. And I have not looked through these. Let me see. Share. Cool. We'll jump into the form. I haven't looked at these yet, so let's take them as they come. First one says, you say it's better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. If I don't have a license and I use a mixture of water and vinegar, can I spray the that onto flower beds to kill weeds? Every single state is very different. Some states, if you are spraying literally anything for commercial use, you have to be licensed. Other states it's only if you have the chemical applicators license, only if you're just using certain types of products or certain strength. So you just need to check with your state. Now the, the, the, the real story is that if you're solo, if you have one, two employees, you're probably going to get away with it. Especially if you are the one doing all of the spraying yourself. Because the.

You know, you're kind of taking a lot of risk yourself when you start getting a lot of employees. You're going to get in trouble eventually, eventually comes around. So that's why I don't like building the business on the back of that. And you know, okay, everyone can spray branch trees with fertilizer. Well, if they're not all licensed, you're going to get in trouble when you have a bunch of employees. You're going to get away with it if you're small because no one could care less and because you as the owner, operator, doing it all yourself. But again, every single state has very wide, varying ranges of enforcement as well as what their requirements are. So I would just definitely check with your state and then just know that you're probably going to get away with that when you're small. It's not going to, you're not going to get away with it when you're larger because then what happens is your competition will start calling on you. That's what happens. And even now, like with the local shop, we get people calling because they think that what's in our spray tank is like chemical based when it's just the water and vinegar stuff. And so we get complaints all the time. Then I just have to explain to the person like, hey, here's the mixture, this is what we use. And then they just, you know, file it. When I've called command center, there is no ringtone. This has happened on multiple occasions. I'm concerned leans will think the line is dead and hang up. Any way to look into this?

I don't know how this could possibly happen, to be perfectly honest with you, because even, even if all the lines were filled, you would go to ring to voicemail. So I would have to try to test this myself and see what's happening. But.

Yeah, I can look into this. But the only thing I can think of is like bad cell service potentially because yeah, even if every line was busy, which there never are, then it would go to voicemail. So I'll take a look at it. But if it's intermittent, I would imagine it's more of a cell service thing. I can take a look at it.

Chad Van Valparaiso I just wanted ensure I'M clear with in person estimates. If CC gives an hour window, are we expect to be there on the hour or within that time frame? I thought if an estimate was scheduled for time it would give a 15 minute timeframe. Can you clear this up for me? Yeah. So if you have an exact time estimate, it'll be stated. The name of the job will be exact time estimate. That's when you know you need to show up at the the first minute. You know, if it says 2 o' clock to 2:15 that means they're expecting you at 2 o' clock for that exact time estimate. If you are seeing an estimate and it has a 2 to 3pm Means you can show up anytime within that time frame and be considered on time.

So yeah, if you see a 15 minute window though, it should be called exact time estimate because we still have to give that time frame unfortunately inside the CRM. But if you see exact time estimate notes the very first of that of that time frame. But most of the time we're shooting for that hour time window where you can show up anytime within that given hour.

If an OTP is under bid, should I correct the pricing immediately and apologize for the initial error or keep the pricing the same for the season and raise in fall or spring? I personally lean towards correcting the price immediately but want to hear your perspective. I think it comes down to two things. One is how far off is it? If it's $5 I'd probably wait. If it's 15 $20 you need to be able to correct it so the guys can make money on P4P. That being said, if you're completely overbooked and overwhelmed with work right now, I'd probably raise the price right away. And if you are trying to grow and expand and you don't have a lot of work and you're not booked out like crazy and running behind, then I'd probably eat it for the next few months just to keep that client on. I think there's with OTP you're going to get a little bit more grace right away because they know you did done the estimate over the phone and now you've just seen the property for the first time. So they're going to give you a little bit of grace like the for after the first cut or two, you're like hey, we've tried the past couple of weeks but we've just, we've underbid this job. Obviously we do these estimates over the phone via GPS and satellite. There's some things that we miss based On X, Y and Z. Whether it be, you know, the length of the lawn or ditches or obstacles or access or whatever thing that has made that property more difficult for you and that these are the new prices going forward. I would treat this as a price increase and that is give them the new price going forward. This will be no further communication is required and then just roll with that unless they call you or contact you back because they don't want to continue service.

I've been in Michigan, I've been getting a lot of cancellations. After the spring rush. I tell tell them what their weekly and bi weekly rate will be or a one time cut. They always opt for the weekly rate once they hear what the other rates will be. But then after the spring rush is over, they cancel. This has happened for years to me. In the past I have made them sign a contract saying that there will be an early cancellation fee. Is this a good thing or bad thing? I want to add something like that to my terms of service going forward to encourage people to stick with me through the whole season or to discourage those who would try to take advantage of me. So this is why, you know, per cut pricing. You want to make sure you're profitable during even the months of spring rush when it takes longer to mow. Because if people do cancel during the winter or during the summer, you're still able to make margin.

A couple of things I would say if you're getting tons and tons of cancellations. This is partly why locally and at my locations we do monthly billing is to not remind them four or five times a month that we're charging them, but just once a month. So that's on. The main reason why I've stuck to monthly billing, even though from a cash flow perspective would much rather prefer weekly, is the fact that I know we would probably lose 50 to 60% of our mowing customers for two months out of the year if, if we did weekly billing versus maybe losing 15% when we bill monthly. But what I would say is.

It sounds like you're in contact with the customer, which is sometimes a little more difficult too cause they have that relationship with you. But if you're in contact with the customer, I would really push the fact that.

You can't really guarantee that you're gonna have a spot for them when they come back as well as when they come back, if the lawn is overgrown, there's gonna be an initial visit charge. And so that's what I would really push is like, look, if you want to go to Bi weekly service. Here's the price. If you cancel, just know that when you come back there is going to be an initial charge just to get this property back up to service. Because it's going to be weeks or potentially months that I'm not servicing your property. And there's going to be an upcharge. That's usually enough to scare them into, okay, let's do bi weekly. Because if they say cancel and then they call again two months and want you to start mowing again, there's going to be an upcharge. And just being able to say that is enough usually for them to say, okay, let's just stay on bi weekly for now. And then at the very worst, if they still want to cancel, what you want to do is try to get a date for them to commit to starting again. So if they're like, hey, I want to cancel, the grass just isn't growing. And you try to get them on bi weekly. So that's the next drop sale. And if they still don't do bi weekly, then it's like, okay, well let's go ahead and just put you pause your services from, you know, deposit for July and August. Let's get you started back in September 1st. Because if you don't, and if you wait a few weeks into September and the grass is overgrown, we're going to have to charge you an upfront, upfront initial fee for that first one. That cot gets expensive. So you know, at the very worst you go to, you go to bi weekly. The worst beyond that is at least try to get them on the schedule for another start date to initiate service again. And the way that you would sell that is that they're avoiding that initial fee charge of, you know, months of the lawn not being cut. So yeah, this is the main reason why we, we don't do the month, the weekly billing. As much as I would love to from a cash flow perspective, in our market, we would lose three to four times as many customers during our summer season when we make the most on, on money, our month, most on mowing because of P4P and we just crush it. That's usually when we make most of our profit on mowing. So the last thing I want them to do is be canceling during that time. So paid versus free leads. I feel like the free leads don't generate higher value based clients versus bargain based clients. I'm not understanding this one. Paid leads versus free leads. I feel like the free leads don't generate higher value base clients versus bargain Based clients.

Okay, I'm not understanding when you say free leads, I'm thinking like people that are just finding you on Google, finding your, seeing your truck and giving you a call and then you're not paying for the lead in terms of an advertisement or print marketing or something like that. So maybe clarify that with me. Okay, so that's what you mean. Okay, so you're saying that free leads don't generate higher value based clients versus bargain based. Okay, I see you're saying two things. One, even if this was true, even if it was true, which I don't think it is. Okay, so yes, Google leads. I see what you're saying. Got it. So when it comes to Google, I would say that the paid leads are going to be your highest value customers because they're looking for a specific service. So I agree with that. But in general, from a very broad perspective, when you look at paid versus free leads, free leads are going to be the best customers because they're coming from sources other than them looking for service. Because if they're looking for service and looking for quotes, they're looking for estimates, they're typically going to be more price sensitive versus someone who sees your truck and like they do a great job, I'm calling them, they're usually going to be less price sensitive and they're usually going to be the person that is willing to pay for a premium service versus the person that's, you know, going online and searching for three and you paid to get in front of them. You know, they're looking for three bids. So typically a free lead, when it comes to someone who finds you natively on Google, finds you from a referral, et cetera, is actually going to be your highest value customer. Google is the caveat to that, which is people are looking for a service they have intent to buy, so they sometimes are very high value. Now all that being said, when you start looking at it from a ROI perspective, a freely is always going to do better because there is no customer acquisition cost. So if you have a customer acquisition cost of say $80, you're going to have a return on that $80. If that lead is free, you basically have infinite return. Right? And so that's why a free, free leads, even if we assume that they are less value, less value of a client, take less services, whatever. If you can create a business based upon free leads, you can be much more profitable. And that's why the first two to three years a lot of your leads are paid. And then as you transition from paid into where you're not doing any marketing and you're getting free leads just coming in all the time, that's when you become profitable. And so that's like the local shop. We don't do any money. You don't spend any marketing. Mount Vernon location we just took up, we aren't doing any marketing. And that's why they're profitable, is because you're feeding off the free leads. And that's usually when a business becomes profitable, it's because your customer acquisition cost goes down. You're not spending 10, 15% of your revenue just on marketing. And that's what's required this first few years to just like you're paying for every single lead. So how do we have something taken off the website, such as irrigation services? You can email Command center help GustAlongerServices.com and they'll get that taken off of. Oh, off the website. My apologies. If you want something done with the website, for now, just email franchisegustalongarservices.com and I'll get that taken care of for you. Again, we are working on a dashboard where this will be a little bit simpler to be able to select which services you want to offer and make banners, et cetera. So, Kevin, if you just email franchisegustalawncareservices.com I can make sure that we take that off of your website. So cool. All right, everyone, hope you have a great Thursday and we'll you see.