Mike Minutes Mastermind 06/20/2024

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to another edition of the Mike Minutes Mastermind. Sorry, I'll just put it into Facebook here as well.

All right, quick little update. Given my weekly meeting at the Bellingham shop, their price increase went Well.

I think about 8, 8%. 7, 8% of people did cancel, but we raised prices across the board on 300 some odd people. I guess the average would have been $15 per cut increase. So very good. The efficiency score of the team magically went up from.

Mid-70S to 90 plus percent. Very nice. Everyone's making more money. Seems to help things. Everyone goes faster and they get Friday off. Let's go. So overall, really positive. I'll have all the numbers in a week or two. Just in case there are stragglers that cancel. Just have accurate numbers. That being said, we ran an ad this week and gained six new customers just from one ad. It's like, let's go. So I think across the board, everyone that's raised price has been super positive. Liz had made a post in the Facebook group that the exact letter we sent out, I made it and I basically took like four or five different price letter price increase letters from across August nation and I kind of combined several pieces of it and then I kind of revised it. I put it through the Hemingway app, which is what I used to write my book and made sure it's like simple verbiage and sentence structure and easier to read and took out stuff like that. So it's like a grade five reading level. So that is in copilot as their password. It's also in the dashboard as a download if you wanted to get the letter portion of it.

I had another thing I was going to show you. It's not on my desk though. Basically a every door direct mailer campaign that I saw that was went to me and was really effective. Also hooked in Zach from the media team and he actually went and contacted the person that for tree service. And so I saw it. We liked it a lot. We copied it or put it in the the dashboard and pro shop basically in every door direct mail campaign that looks handwritten. Basically saying like hey, we're going to be in your area this week doing a job. Great time to do an estimate. I think it'll be really powerful for projects if you're looking to do those in certain areas. So.

I think that's all I had for today. Cool. All righty.

Present. Where's. I guess like a week away and then we're in Memphis. Let's go. Where's The. There you go. Cool.

All right, first one up.

One second. Boom. All right. It's from Kent. Lin. I've been listening to some of what you've been saying about coaching and coaching calls about Alex and Dr. Kashi. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I am assuming that they don't offer their advice for free. And when you pay someone like that, you're paying a lot of money. So my question is, even though we get a coaching call once a month with our monthly franchise fee, do you believe it would be more beneficial and taken to heart and implemented if we got charged each and every time we had a coaching call? Also, that way the coach would feel compensated for the time, even though we all volunteer our time. Anyways, I've thought about this. I don't want to create any sort of roadblock whatsoever to getting coaching calls because then just a reason why you like when you need it the most is usually when you can't afford it.

So, you know, that's why going to the doctor, in my opinion, if you could just make the annual checkups, for example, if you could somehow subsidize those very heavily, you'd probably save a lot on, like, emergency and other healthcare stuff. So I believe that coaching is a way to. Even if you're doing well, like, you're doing checkups, you're seeing the numbers you're tracking, you're just like having another set of eyes on things. And it's a good thing when, like, there's no massive changes that need to happen after you go to the doctor. Like, it's a checkup. Let's go. I believe that making that as low friction as possible, the checkups is important. And then when someone needs to pull things apart, jump in and get really messy. Someone like Nick, owner, success manager. These masterminds. I consistently help owners one on one if needs be, when things are in collapse. But a lot of times when I look at collapses, I look back and see there have been no checkups. Same thing with when we would look at people's medical records and I was shadowing. It was crazy how it was like, oh, they had a heart attack. How. When was the last time they had a doctor? Oh, eight years ago. Oh, and they haven't had any scans. And eight years ago, they were told that their artery is, like 70% blocked. Crazy how we're having a heart attack right now. They haven't. Oh, they haven't changed anything since. Since then. They haven't changed their diet or exercise or anything like that. So like it's not necessarily surprising to be perfect honest in terms of charging, like I don't know.

There was a, there's a new coaching call on the courses, landscape business course and MBA for entrepreneurs which everyone here has access to for free. I put it up the other day is like a $800,000 window washing company. Young guy, 24 years old and yeah, they get to, he pays $2,000 an hour and you can see the fact that he, he always, he's just going to take whatever I say simply because he paid money. And so sometimes, yeah, you know, sacrifice will beget better adherence. Like it's like if you go to a concert or you go to an event, you usually don't leave like halfway through unless it's like a blowout victory of sports or something like that. But like usually you want to get as much as you can possibly and absorb as much as possible because you did pay for it.

And so yeah, there's a sense of this but like if you, if this is like your way you think about it, Ken or anyone, I just like okay, my entire franchise fee is for the coaching call. Fantastic, now you have something to lose, you're paying for it. And so wherever you want to attribute that value to be able to ensure that you actually take advantage of those things, go for it, you know, and you'll see like if you watch that coaching call, like he's basically like I got all these voices and ideas like I just need someone to tell me like exactly what to do. And he's like I've never paid so much money to talk to someone and I'm just gonna do what you say. It's like did you really need to pay the $2,000 an hour to talk to someone? I don't know, some people maybe, but.

Yeah. All right, Tim Andes. When, if, when and when, if ever will we be able to receive pictures and videos in copilot sms? Right now I'm having to send self personal cell to get picks. Yeah. So most like Twilio, etc like through CRMs will not allow pictures to be sent through because it's MMS and it's like significantly like I won't give an exact number. It's a lot more like it's more than double or triple. It's like a lot more expensive to send them out. So we're going to do some metering with SMS and then we're going to look at like how many, how many people are using it, et cetera. And then down the road we do have it to try to figure out mms which is multimedia texting instead of just texting. But it's not like high priority. It is on the roadmap though, like for us to investigate and see like the actual cost of this and if it's so cost prohibitive like that people won't use it or not. Right. So and we can track this now like we have metrics actually know how many people are using these features. So we don't spend a whole bunch of time and resources because we 1 or 2% of people would use it or not so.

Brayden Morris, thoughts on this? I'm down to two employees right now. I have three working interviews scheduled for next week. Trying to hire two more guys. Today it is almost 90 degrees out and the guy that has been with me the longest, about two years is complaining about how hot it is and he wants, and he wants to cut. I understand it's hot. I am, I'm out cutting lawn solo today as well. What are your thoughts on this? It just annoys me that you pick a job that is outside and you know it's hard work and you complain about it.

Like I try to judge people by their actions instead of their words when it comes to things like complaining because like every single job is going to have parts that we don't like. And so if someone's emotional, they're going to say weird things sometimes because we're humans. And so I try to judge them based upon like what do they do? For example, if he starts doing like a whole bunch of breaks throughout the day, if you start saying stupid stuff, if he starts showing up late, like those are the things that I would judge someone on is like their performance. Especially when like they have a, like it's hot. It's. The worst part of the job is like this period of time and it's not easy. Like physically they're just going to be drained. They're going to say some dumb stuff. When they've worked for 30, 40 hours out in 90 degree weather, they're just going to say dumb things sometimes. And so I would give them a lot of grace and then I would say I would. If the track record changes, then you start making judgment calls. In my opinion, like working outside for 40 hours, 50 hours a week in blazing heat. You know, at the end of the day I we. I remember like when I would be at the office and Liz was there, like people say some weird stuff. They're not really all there. Sometimes they're tired, they're exhausted and rightfully so. But if their performance changes and like the actual like measurable actions that they're taking for their job changes, that's mean, you know, they're going to be judged on that, I would say. Bryson, I've heard you talk about your faulty manager last year, Bellingham, a few times, but I can't remember exactly what you touched on. Were his flaws that were making the shop do so poorly. Can you touch on that instance and others you have seen at other locations or companies, the traits or actions that cause things to fail? I'm still learning about management and when I saw the P and L year over year, I was shocked to see that an okay manager can be so night and day from a great one. Thanks. Yeah.

The talk that Lee had at last year's conference is on the dashboard and Academy. That's probably why I pointed for like specifically to the Bellingham shop.

Because he talks in depth, kind of like why and things like that. But I would say most of the time it is a matter of.

If, if a manager is wanting to move up with the company and they're in, they're incapable or unwilling to adapt and like improve themselves. If the company is moving like this and they're just like, well, I'm just staying with my current skill level, I'm not going to change my, you know, physical outlet, I'm not going to change my mental outlet, I'm not going to, you know, get new education, I'm not going to improve my skills. Guess what, you're going to outgrow them and they're going to leave or you're going to fire them. And so if someone's unwilling and incapable of changing and improving their skills and then they're put in a position to be, to be more than what they were hired for, it usually doesn't end well, to be honest. And so the most accurate indicator in my opinion of someone that can move up with a company that's moving quickly is are they actually actively trying to improve themselves. Like someone that like shows up and goes to the gym every single day after a computer, like listening to books and listening to podcasts, et cetera, like, and then they start adapting. They come up with ideas, they share inappropriately to the person that they are reporting to, they get more and more involved in the long term vision of the company. Understanding why because of all the work they're doing outside of their job to improve themselves, that's like the biggest indicator. And so that wasn't happening with that manager. And like, this is consistently like in Every business I've ever been a part of. And like more and more, it's like the number one thing. If you're growing a company quickly, whether you're going from 200,000 to 2 million or you're going from 2 million to 20 million or going for 2, 20 million to 200 billion, is if you are growing the company and the people that are at the bleeding edge of the growth, which is usually your middle and higher management, general managers, regional managers, etc. If they are not actively improving, eventually they'll either leave or you'll have to fire them because the company will outpace their rate of change. And so if they're not willing to change themselves, psychologically, mentally, physically, in business, their skill set, eventually the business will just eclipse their growth and they'll have to leave or you will have to fire them because they're not gonna take a demotion. Like no one wants to be demoted. And so you're basically firing someone if you ever say, okay, we're demoting you. No one takes that well and so. But the bottom line is if they start moving up inside the org and the company's moving faster than their pace of change and they're not willing to do the hard work outside of work on themselves to improve their skills, that's usually what happens. So.

Okay, we got a couple other questions that came, it looks like on the chat. One second here. Delete. What do we got here? Braden Morris.

Let's see here. Any suggestions on paying off debt. Start with equipment, real estate, highest interest rate, what to start paying off first. The debt snowball is more of a psychological thing and that is like start with the lowest payment and just like are the lowest balance and just pay them off. That's like more of a psychological thing. From a pure numbers perspective, the most accurate, the best way of doing is like attacking the thing with the highest interest. So.

Whether or not you need the psychological benefit of the snap debt snowball is.

Really a personal thing. I know it's different for any everyone's situation. I know I asked a pretty broad question, but any advice would be, would help. Thanks, Mike. Yeah, like if you, if you struggle with saving, you struggle with budgeting and you struggle with saving money, you probably are going to want to go after this debt snowball. And this is like Dave Ramsey preaches it because like the vast majority of people do have a lot of mental problems around saving money, going into debt, et cetera. So it's just easiest to like attack the lowest payment or the like the lowest Dollar amount first. So you can get this, like, this psychological benefit of like, paying things off. It makes absolutely no sense to pay off a $2,000 0% interest loan. When you have that for the next 12, 24 months and you have a 18%.

Interest payment on a $500 credit card, that makes absolutely no sense. So the only way it makes sense is if you need the psychological benefit of a debt snowball, which is like, you're paying off the smallest ones and you get this domino effect going. Cool. But, like, from a pure number standpoint, you pay off the thing that has the highest interest rate.

Oh, we got another question. We got another question. Sky skidding in here at the last moment. Let's see if we can pull it up. Present share screen. Boom. All right, what do we got? 1 of 1. Mr. Anonymous, what specific criteria do you believe make a successful buyout or from another location? You mentioned that Bryce did this well recently. Yeah, Like, Bryce's video is good as stated. Like, every single buyout is so different. The thing that made his valuable is the fact that the owner was willing to stay on notice. Like he paid $900,000. Like he paid three times earnings and he paid like, what point? 8.75 of revenue. He actually paid a pretty high valuation, but he got the owner to stay. And the owner has done very well. And if the owner didn't do well, he would have paid way less. And so every single acquisition is so different because most owners won't want to stay on. They just want to cut ties and get out of sound. Like, I'm just going to guess this owner really cared about the customers and want to make sure that the handoff went smoothly and so tying the purchase price to the performance of the transition. Good move. Now it's like, you know, changing the culture and all the rest of it. It's like, it's sometimes difficult to get a whole bunch of new people into the team. And then obviously Bryce is like, adjusting to be a manager of so many employees, etc. But, uh, there's no real specific criteria because, like, what do you want, what does the buyer want? And like, how do you marry those two things together? Uh, I think that Bryce's approach and that is staying in touch with this owner for months, if not years in advance is, is the move. And this is why it's so important to stay in touch with your, your competitors like that. If you listen to that video, that wouldn't have happened if you wouldn't have made the reach out to the, the competitor and like had a relationship enough to be able to get that meeting. And this is why you'll see how I do. I handle the content because most people will judge all of you when you come, when you start getting bigger or in your market, they'll judge you based on my content. And so I try to make it a very pro competitor. Like we all want everyone to succeed, et cetera. Because I want them to that to be there. The standard they know we all abide by. Because you will get deals like Bryce got. And like, like it's like do you want to be, do you want to be right and like we're the best like Flex and I want or do you just want to be win? Like do you just want to win? And if you just want to win, you make you, you do what you absolutely in the best interest of your competitors in terms of helping them, supporting them, making it very clear that you're not against them, you're not trying to pull them down. You know, if you, if you have an employee that is worked at your competitors, like why not call them if you, if there's bad blood in your direct competition, like very, very frequently in a small market, like if you have less than 50, 60,000 people in your market and there's a few providers and someone's coming, just give them a quick call like hey, they applied at my place. I just want to make sure everything's good with you. I don't want to, I want you to feel like I'm taking them, etc. Like that's a, that's a decent thing to do.

That sort of relationship is what then leads to them coming to you and selling. This is why a few like seven, six, seven years ago I bought a company that did 1.5 million revenue the year before. I just bought out their recurring stuff. So it was maybe be like 2,300,000 worth of recurring because there's a bunch of projects. He lost tons of money. He just really wasn't a good, great operator, honestly. And I say that because he started like four businesses since then. Each one just doesn't do well. But.

You know, we got it for $75,000 and the revenue from that was probably like probably around 3 to 400,000 recurring. And then we got the contact list that had like six or seven thousand contacts. So huge slam dunk. Probably paid that off within a matter of a few months in terms of just sending out some one click estimate emails and filling up the schedule.

And that was really the year that we were able to Cut a lot of big services out at the Bellingham shop and focus more on recurring. Because I always had this big chunk of new clients that I could just like, kind of backfill the revenue with and get rid of all the big project stuff we were doing. So.

Yeah, every acquisition is so different. You gotta. You really. The main thing is you wanna align the goals of the seller with yours and then just make sure that it's like, the faster they want out, the less you're gonna willing to pay. Like, if they're like, hey, I just want to out of this thing, that's when you can. Your. Your price is gonna go way lower.

And then also, if the business is growing like 30, 40% a year, for example, it's. It's worth more. It means that there's power behind what they're doing. They're. They have momentum, et cetera. Like, you pay momentum. That's why you pay, like in the stock market, you Pay, you know, 30 to 60 times earnings for like a tech company versus like 2 to 3 times earnings for like a railroad. Because there's not gonn. Massive innovations in railroads. It's gonna be steady, it's gonna be consistent. It's gonna be here around for a while, but it's not growing. It's like growing like 1 or 2% a year maybe. But if you're growing 50, 60% a year, there's momentum behind it, and you pay for momentum. And so a company that's growing is worth more. And so even this is if the location, say, is two or three years old and it's growing really quickly, there is a certain amount of value you can put on that because it means that there's leads coming in that you're not paying for as associated part of the brand. So anyways, there's just like, so many reasons. That's why I'm happy to answer questions on. In terms of acquisitions on here. The more numbers you can give me, the better, just to make sure it's a good deal. All right, everyone, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, and we'll see you all tomorrow. Take care.