Mike Minutes Mastermind 06/20/22 (Salty Version)

Good morning, Augusta Nation. Hope you're all doing super well. Happy Monday. We'll jump into some announcements and some things that I wanted to say first and then we will go ahead and get started on some questions. Let me make sure I have those pulled up. I didn't actually look this morning yet. Give me one second here.

Let's see here. Oh, wow. There's a whole bunch of questions that came in. Okay, so let me go ahead and do some announcements and then we'll get to some of these questions that that came in on the weekend. All right, cool. So a couple questions first or first some announcements. So when you're doing bids for your mowing and you are in person because like a really large job, it can't be done over the phone, et cetera, keep in mind that you want to do that bid as if you're using the smallest mower on your that you have. We've seen this a few times where people are bidding as if they had their 52 inch mower and then their 52 inch mower goes down and all of a sudden now crews will not refusing to do jobs because the 21 inch mower is going to take them three times as long. So if you're going, if you're going to do a bid for a mowing job in terms of budget hours, calculate that at the smallest size of mower that you could possibly have. Because otherwise you're going to be juggling your schedules based upon which mower types match up with which properties. And that's a nightmare. You want it to be where with that 21 inch mower, if you have that on your route, if you have that on your setup, that that mower is the kind of common denominator of budgeted hours. So anytime someone shows up to the property, budget hours are within reason and within reach if they just have any mower. Otherwise, again, you're doing your schedule based upon who has which mower, which size, property, all the rest of it. So we saw this happen last week to one of our smaller locations and that is the employee basically refusing to work because the zero turn went down and everything obviously takes longer. But the budget hours are not accurate for, for the smaller mowers. So when you do estimates, look at that and be like, okay, if I have my smallest mower is a 20 inch mower, how long would it take to do with the 21 inch mower? At least as you begin to grow and you have multiple setups, use the smallest mower that you have on those setups. As a common denominator. So if you have a 36 inch mower on every setup, you can use that as what you would be calculating budget hours based upon. But do not calculate based upon a 5260 inch mower. And you have one of them and it goes down. And now literally you'll lose all your crew on P4P. They will not do the job. So just keep that in mind. That means you might be higher or overpriced on larger properties, but it's going to mean that your budget hours are accurate and that regardless of which mowers you have on the route, it'll work. Second thing, entry level. Alright? So today you're going to get a little bit of salty Mike, a little bit of tough love, okay? Entry level positions should not have a salary. Period, period, period. I don't know how many times I have to say this, how many times I have to warn everybody. You should not put entry level employees on salary. We are consistently seeing this, the massive issue every single time an employee is put on salary, that's entry level. So I know the inclination is tempting because it's like, oh man, it's so much simpler and I can have them work a lot more hours and they'll work every single time without fail. This year that we have had people put their frontline employees on salary, we've had issues every single time. So resist the inclination to think that it's just simpler or easier. It's easier. You don't have to worry about P4P. They can do things on the side for you. They can help do some estimates occasionally. All of it makes so much sense until they're actually on salary and people now are all of a sudden like, oh, I'm not going to work past 2 or 2:30. That happened last week. Someone was put on salary, no longer wanting to work past 2:30. People just not showing up. But they don't have to because there's a salary. They don't have to show up on time because there's a salary. So I just highly recomm entry level employees not be put on salary. Highly, highly, highly recommend. Some of my general managers are not even on salary because I want it to be with the harder they work, the more hours they're putting in, they make more money. And if that goes overtime, that's fine. I want them to see that direct correlation between more effort and more time, more money, not this, you know, unwritten contract between us, that is, hey, I want you to work longer. And in their end, they Want to work shorter because the compensation is the same regardless. It's a very, very bad dynamic for entry level workers. So again, every single time this year, without fail, that has become an issue for people that have put frontline employees on salary. And if you're like, well, they're kind of a gm but they work out in the field, don't put them on salary. All right? I would only put them on salary if they are hiring, marketing, making buying decisions and they are the general manager of the entire location without you being there. That's when you'd put them on salary. If they are completely independent, that's the only time I put people on salary personally is if they're running a GM location without my presence at all. That's when they'd be on salary. Okay, all right, next thing. Again, a little bit of a salty mic this morning. Okay. Do not declare state of emergency if you're not going to listen to what's being, what you're being told to do. Okay? There's a lot of work that goes into creating a plan for every location that goes under a state of emergency. And to have that thrown back and, and not follow the plan is crazy. It's crazy. I saw a plan last weekend that was perfect and it's not being followed. And.

And like, it's like don't, don't declare state of emergency if you're not going to accept the help that's trying to come your way. All right? There was a very good plan for who should be fired, who should be hired, how the schedule needs to be readjusted and for that to just be like blown off, like, oh no, we're not doing that, we're doing something else. Like why declare a state of emergency? Like it's a waste of your money. For Command center to develop all the plan, create the implementation and all the rest of it. I've seen other locations do very well at executing on what Command center is telling to do. And in a six week plan, six week time frame is they're flipping their business, they are completely changing it. Their schedules have gotten more efficient. They've made sure that they've cut back on base pay that was way too high. They've seen the changes. But if you're going to ask for help from anybody, this goes for anybody, not just Command center, but anywhere in life. If you're asking them for help, be willing to put the actual change in making it happen. If they're going to give you suggestions, all right, but if they're going to Reroute and change schedules and move jobs off. Don't just like, hey, I'm just going to just, you know, pop off and do something else. I'm going to go on vacation this week. Like, you know, move my jobs off this week and tell my employees, like, it's just rude. And honestly, it's just a matter of they're in, they're trying to do the best thing for your business. And I see their plans and they're perfect. And so for that to be rebuffed is not right. AB State of emergency. I've mentioned this several times. There's been several updates about state of emergency. A six week plan to get back on track.

You know, because ultimately, you know, what I'm seeing is when someone's in a state of emergency, I know it's like, hey, you're ripcord. It's like, hey, I need help. But during that time is not the time to run from your business. When everything's falling apart and it seems horrible and everything. Employees are leaving and customers aren't happy and you're having to cut back on services and increase prices. I know that's the time you want to run, but as a business owner, we signed up to be a leader. And if you're going to be a leader, you do not run during a time of war. And so I'm seeing this happen in a couple locations right now. And I'm sorry, it doesn't cut it. If you're gonna be a leader, you signed up for this. Like you signed up to be a business owner. You're going to have to run into times of crisis and that is the time to buckle up and it's time to actually do harder work and jump in and like get dirty. All right, when command center, we had all the issues a few months ago. You saw what I did. I jumped in. I started literally being. Taking calls and being on the front lines and jumping in and training. That's what is required of a leader. It's not your obligation. It is not your. Is not the. You do not have the option as a leader to run when everything is falling apart. It is not even an option. Is not. That is an employee that gets to do that. Like, hey, everything's running, falling apart. My company, I'm just gonna go get another job as a business owner, as a leader, you do not have that option. And so please remember that the next couple years, as I've been very consistently saying, it's gonna be very difficult for us as business owners. It's Gonna be very difficult. But it's not the time to cower or run away and be like, I'm just out. And what I'm seeing right now is people tapping out and they're like, okay, well, I'm just gonna go away for a week. Okay, what about the projects? What about your employees that you just hired last week? What about, you know, the four interviews that you have scheduled for this week? Well, I, I just, I'm just walking away that I understand the desire to do that. I've been there. I know what it's like to be like, hey, just like, I just can't take it anymore, I've gotta get away. But you have resigned that right as a leader. To do that, you're going to lose everyone that you're leading. If in a moment of crisis and when the battle gets hot, you just turn your back and run.

Everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. Everyone wants to make a bunch of money. Everyone wants to have a small business that can do a million dollars in revenue. And everyone says that they can sacrifice for five or 10 years to make that happen, but it's not easy. And so in the times when it's not easy is not the time to be like, okay, you know, I'm just, I just gotta take a break. I just gotta take a break. It's not the time to do it. It's the time to actually dig in and do harder, deeper, longer hours, etc. And if that's not appealing to you, that's what business is. That's what being a leader is, is that when you run towards chaos and you run towards the battle, you do not run away from it. You have resigned that right and that luxury as a business owner. Alright, so everyone says, you know, whatever it takes, I'm gonna do whatever it takes. But like, seriously, you're taking a vacation in the middle of spring rush, like when, when you just hire new people and you had four guys walk off the job and you got a bunch of interviews and projects on the schedule and you're behind and you're supposed to, you should have been mowing on the weekend and you didn't just like, like, it's chaos. I understand that it's not fun to be in that, in that kind of environment, but that's what you signed up for when you said you wanted to be a leader. That's what you signed up was for when you said you want to be an employer. All right, I just do not understand why people do not get 30 Google reviews. I say that at training like 20 times. I say 100 times all the time. That is the most impactful thing you can do for your website and from an SEO standpoint and your ranking standpoint is get Google reviews. And I still see people with 3, 5, 9, 10 reviews. What are we doing? Are we gonna seriously go work 60 hours a week when I'm telling you if you just spend an hour or two texting family friends and just asking them to review you as a person, the business and the brand, the professionalism, whatever it is, and put a five star view, you gotta get those.

So you know, out of one side of our mouth we're saying we're gonna do whatever it takes, we're gonna work hard and then literally we run from times of battle and we won't do the simple things that are actually gonna move the men needle, like getting Google reviews. Like how hard is it? Okay, like if we can't do that, are we really going to expect that we're going to somehow lead a hundred like a million dollar organization and we can't go get Google reviews? Like I give you a sheet at training now that has the checklist of what you need to do when you leave. We did our first location that really closed down recently and.

And like we had, we had two Google reviews after three months. Like literally within three to four months the location had to close down, but we had two Google reviews. Of course we're not going to get a lot of leads. And then when the leads came in, like why are we getting estimates out one to two weeks after and not showing up to jobs? And command center's getting a bunch of people calling saying that they're not showing up to estimates. All right, so on one side of our mouth we say we want it, we're willing to sacrifice, we're willing to do whatever it takes. And then we can't get Google reviews, we can't show up on time to estimates. You know, so a little bit frustrated and then you have, you know, the six week plan and the state of emergency and it's like yeah, let's do that. Okay, great. But like are we going to implement, are we going to actually execute on the plan? It's one thing to say I want to turn my business around, I want to make it better, I want to raise prices and increase my route density and all the rest of it, but are we willing to actually do the hard work to get there or do we think that this business is going to fall in our lap? It's not easy. I've never told you at Augusta Nation that this is gonna somehow be like an easy thing. Take this pill and we're good to go. It's really, really difficult. And if it was easy, it'd be a scam and everyone would be doing it. Alright? So the reason that everyone is a chuck in a truck and has one, no employees and work by themselves is because that's easy. You can make a good living doing that. But if you want to build a business and become a leader and have employees and have a business built on systems, it's not gonna be easy. Welcome to the club. Like, that's how it is. And so if you can't sacrifice for the next three, five years to get to that spot and do the hard work, the hard, boring work, then, you know, like, what do we expect to happen here? So a little bit of Salty Mike this morning. I see a whole bunch of questions came in, so let me go ahead and hop over those. Share that screen. Boom. I figured Liz shared a little bit of tough love last week so I could just, you know, reciprocate with a little bit more. All right, let's jump in the questions. I have not gone through these, so let's just go ahead and take these live. I don't know if I'll get through all 10 today, but we'll try to get work our way through. On the header video from our website shows landscaping work which we don't offer. Is there a video that only shows maintenance work or is that something that would be coming in the future? Just wanting to avoid clients calling and saying, but I saw landscaping on the website video. Yeah, we can. We will probably be changing the video here pretty soon to reflect that because so many locations have cut out landscaping this year. Um, but we haven't seen a huge amount of people saying this. And so I wouldn't be too concerned about it, to be perfectly honest. But there is another option for a background video that's just mowing stuff. We're going to be switching that out here pretty soon anyways.

And like, just so you know, the local office, we are, we're cutting out in person estimates now. We're, we're six weeks booked out. Employees keep calling out. It's like, look, why are we doing in person estimates? Why are we doing planting jobs? We're just cutting out, planting, like no more. I don't want to deal with having to contact the, like the supply chain issues of the nursery industry. I do not want to become my own. So we're just going to cut out planting. It's a pain trying to get plants there and schedule them and then they don't show up and all the rest of it. Last week, last week the guys were mowing a property, but the gate was locked and they couldn't mow everything. We charged the full price for the visit. Client called in one of the credit for the visit. I said we couldn't issue a credit. Client canceled. Thoughts? Honestly, you just don't want the client. You guys stick to your guns. I would usually give them one grace period. So we usually like when it comes to like people canceling last minute or things like a backyard not being mode, we'll give them like one grace visit and they would say, look, we're going to put you on the automation and it's going to send you an email every time the night before when you're dispatched. And if that gate is not locked, sorry, if that gate is not unlocked, then you're getting charged full price. And this. But usually one grace period isn't a bad idea. How do you offer great customer service without getting taken advantage of by clients? Similarly, how do you create a great work, great place to work without getting taken advantage by employees? Realize that in both scenarios you're going to be taken advantage of to some extent. And the way to reduce that is that you've got to create systems and set expectations, right? So for example, with expectations of the customer about getting a discount because they need their backyard, the question is, can we set the expectations so that way they know that in the future if this happens again, you will get charged that this time we're going to go and give you half off. But going forward, here's our policy and here's how it happens. You know, setting expectations could be putting that verbiage inside the estimate. However, most of you know, people do not read the estimate fine print. If you have a whole bunch of notes underneath mowing, they do not read the notes. They just don't. In terms of employees in this labor market, you're going to have this happen more often because they have all the leverage. But very quickly we're going to see what happens when unemployment goes back up to 5, 6, 7%. And I think that will shift. So I think it's a matter of just, hey, you do your best you can, you're trying to help people as much as you possibly can.

And once in a blue moon, someone's going to take advantage of you and you just got to move on. Like I just got sued for someone that said I fired them. Because they were pregnant. Like, seriously, you really think I'd fire someone because I thought they were pregnant? Like, seriously? It's ridiculous. But yeah. Have you been part of Mastermind groups? Can you share experiences, pros and cons? I've only been a part of one group before I paid for, but they didn't let me stay in very long. It was actually Service Autopilot Academy back in the day. I was there for like two months. And then Jonathan called me and was like, hey, I don't think you should really be in here. But we had a good conversation and was good because I was able to make connection with him prior to him kind of stepped away from Service Autopilot, but nothing that I've paid like massive amounts of money for or anything like that.

I just think that so much of it is online and so much of it can be done there. And so I wouldn't. Unless there was something very specific you're trying to learn. Like, if you're trying to learn very specifically, but like real estate, selling real estate, like, it'd be a really good idea to go get a course, get a mastermind, accelerate your learning curve there. But there's. I just think that especially like when it comes to mindset personal finance, things like that, it's like, look, all of it's online. The same people that are teaching the Mastermind have free content online. They have a book that you can buy for 10 bucks, audible book or whatever it might be. When would be a good time to get a line of credit to grow during this recession? I have plenty of cash in the bank and I'm wondering if, should I get a line of credit now still before it comes more difficult? I've never had a line of credit. Can you get one and not use it for say, let's say, 12 months? Yes, 100%. This is what you should be doing. Open up your line of credit when you don't need it, when you have a bunch of cash in the bank, that's when they're willing to give them out. During a time of recession is when they will freeze credit lines and they'll say, hey, no more credit lines. Or they'll even recall. They'll even call revolving lines of credit and be like, hey, everyone has to pay up. So, you know, back in March 2020, I had all the credit lines ready to go. And the moment everything was shutting down, I liquidated them all. I brought all the cash out of the lines of credit just in case. In case they would freeze the lines of credit. They're more inclined to freeze a line of credit than they are to call a line of credit and say you have to pay us back. So that's why I would, I would took all the money out at that time. I literally did it in like two weeks later, paid them, put them all back. But yeah, that's what I would recommend doing when you don't need a line of credit is when you want to apply for one. As we begin to exit the spring rush, do you have a rule of thumb for reducing marketing spend? For instance, if we were spending 2 to 3,000 per month on Google Ads, what would you recommend reducing it throughout July and August. It really comes down to how far you're booked out, right? So the local shop is not spending a single penny on marketing because we're six weeks booked out, probably more now, and we're cutting down on services and we're raising prices. So there's no reason to be spending a single penny on marketing.

Now if you're trying to grow and expand, I would be really focused on how much dry powder and cash can you have set aside for next spring and making sure that that is protected. And then decide what can I spend throughout July, August, et cetera during those months. But make sure that you have enough dry powder for next spring when your marketing dollars are going to be twice or three times as impactful.

How do you set up or put a yellow slip on the dispatch board correctly? Is there a video I missed or. Yeah, Kevin, I will make a note here. I can send this to you directly. Yellow slip video. I think they have a video on the academy. And then there's a separate service inside of service auto part for you that is specifically for yellow slips. So the crew actually sees a service called yellow slip. They can punch in and out of it. So it's easy for P4P.

When Command center is selling an over the phone client or setting up estimates for mowing, can they be clear? The client with the bush trimming mainly just ask them do they have any bushes that will need trimming. That way if we're doing a drive by, we can include the bushes. I'm sure some clients want the bushes trimmed. They just don't say it because they think it's part of mowing. I know this is in your area. This might be something that's very centralized like in most parts of the country. We don't have this issue and that is people thinking that bush trimming is part of the mowing service. So what I would recommend is in the verbiage of your mowing service for a zooper or service auto pipe, make sure that your standard verbiage says under the mowing part, that mowing does not include bush trimming as a separate service, something like that, to that effect. Because even though someone's over the phone, we still send the estimate to them and so they have it in writing. And that can be in there, but It's. It'd be. 99% of people don't think that trimming, like 99% of locations don't believe that trimming is part of mowing. But I understand that in like Florida, that's almost like, you know, something you do every week or two. So I would more be inclined to put that into your estimate because most people would just be very confused if we ever said, like, do you need bush trimming with your mowing service? Most parts of the country, it's something that you do maybe every few months or even a couple times a year. It's not something that's done every week or two. So I would actually put that in your verb bridge of your estimate proposal underneath your service.

I'm looking to buy an investment property in the next 12 months. I would love to buy with cash, but I know it's not easy since all the property in my area start at 300K. What do you think about Toledo, Ohio, Birmingham, Alabama or Detroit, Michigan area? Most of these cities start at 20K and I feel that's much more affordable. Start with. I know the rent would be low, but at least it would be affordable for me. I've been listening too much to too much Dave Ramsey. Now I'm trying to pay cash for everything. What are your thoughts? So in my opinion, the only reason you get into real estate is because you don't have to use cash leverage. Leverage is the. The reason that real estate is so awesome in terms of investment. Because if I have a hundred dollars to go invest in the stock market, I can invest $100 and let's say I get 10% return. I get $110. At the end of the day, I got $10 return on my money. With real estate, I can go and get with that $100. I can go $400 worth of an asset because there's leverage. I go and put 25% down on a property, basically any loan. And so if I have a now, let's just say I have 5% return on my money on real estate. Well, if I have 5% return on $400, that's going to mean that I have $20 return or I'm going to have $120 at the end of the day. So I put $100 down, I'm going to get $20 in return if I just have a 5% return on 400 because I have leverage. So the advantage of real estate is leverage. And the reason that real estate is so awesome, because you're able to put a dollar down and get $4 worth of an asset. And if that asset can produce income and cash flow, great. But furthermore, if everything goes up by 20% over the course of a few years, 20% now of $400,000, let's say $420% of that is going to be. Now that property's gonna be worth 480,000. Right. Versus if I put $100,000 in the stock market and I get a 10% return, we're talking about again, 110,000. So the difference there is 10,000 versus $80,000 return. So you have a multiplicative effect by having the ability to leverage. So when it comes to real estate, that's why the 30 year, 30 year fixed mortgage is like incredible. You'd be amazed at how, how unpopular 30 year fixed mortgages are in Europe, Canada. 10 year variable loans are much more common. So the 30 year fixed loan is like, you know, a blessing from the government for the US like to basically make real estate an incredible opportunity when it comes to investing. Now again, as I always said.

Can we have more videos on your other page since the economy is heading down? Yeah. So yeah, in terms of the economy and things like that, like, I would definitely not be spending $300,000 or any cash full price offer on real estate if I can get a loan against it. And if you're like, well, I can't get a loan against it, then the question is, do you really want it as an investment property? Because if the bank isn't willing to put their money behind it probably could pretty good indication you don't want to put your money behind it. So the problem is you can go, yes, you go to Michigan, get properties for 20, $30,000, but guess what, they were 20 or $30,000 20 years ago. There's no appreciation in those markets. The reason why coastal regions, typically in suburbs of certain cities you pay so much more for is because they go up in value, right? And so you're paying for appreciation and appreciation you don't pay taxes on. What you pay taxes on is the cash flow. So people are like, oh, I'm going To go buy this house for $50,000 in Michigan, I'm going to rent out for 500 bucks a month. My mortgage is going to be 200. I'm going to make $300 cash. First of all, probably a really high crime area. There's going to be no appreciation of that asset. The value is not going to go up. And furthermore, that $300 a month that you're getting sent every single month in is going to be considered taxable income versus if I go buy a property, let's say it's in a really hot market like Austin or Seattle or New York, whatever, now, not right now, but just say in general, in a highly appreciative market, I am not going to get 50% of my rent is not going to be profit. My mortgage is probably going to barely be covered by the rental income that I get. However, over the course of five or 10 years, that property value will probably double and I'm not going to pay a single penny on that in taxes and I'm going to be able to take a home equity line of credit or refinance that and again, not pay a single dime of taxes on that appreciation. So appreciation is the game of building wealth. It is not cash flow. Cash flow is a protective measure to ensure that you're able to pay for that asset. And you want to make sure that that cash flow covers the cost of that mortgage so that you are protected. However, generating more income, once you cross the business threshold and start investing, you want appreciation that you can take loans out against, right? Like Elon Musk doesn't have a lot of cash. What he does is he takes loans out against his stock, against his assets. This is why people with lots of real estate will go get really cheap debt like that none of us can get because they have all these assets. They're like, hey, I'll take this really cheap debt against that piece of property. And that asset that has appreciation has all this equity inside of it. So as time goes on, you realize that generating more cash and more cash flow and is actually not the most ideal thing you want to get rid of that cash put into an asset that goes up in value. And you know, if you are wanting to live a very.

Mid income, middle class kind of, you know, paying cash for your property, smart. But I will never ever pay off my properties, ever. They're the best form of piggy bank in the world. Build up equity, take out money away from them, cash without having to pay any sort of taxes on that appreciation. Have a home Equity line of credit. Credit and be able to use that when times get really tough. Like having all my lines of credit right now open. Maximize. I just got another one increased. So that way in a year, if everything's 50% off, I'll have the liquidity to go buy it. Right? Real estate is a piggy bank. And if you're thinking about paying cash for any real estate, I would not do so unless you cannot get a loan. And then the next question is, if a bank is not willing to give me a loan, is it really worth me putting my eggs into that basket? Because there's a reason why they're not putting money behind the deal. Okay. Basically, any loan, if you can come up with 25% down, a bank should be wanting to finance you. They should be wanting to do that because that's how they make money, is they sell loans. If you give 25% down and they're not willing to put money behind it, you should be backing up and asking yourself why not? And trust me, they'd much rather fund a $300,000 deal in Birmingham. Birmingham.

I'm sorry, no. In places like Austin or Dallas, whatever, growing places, they'd much rather put money behind those deals than some place in the middle of Detroit that is, you know, tons of crime. And, you know, that property's been 20, $30,000 for the past, you know, since the last recession, there's no appreciation, there's no job growth, there's no population growth, and there's a declining population growth. So just keep that in mind. Look at where big hedge funds like BlackRock are spending money. They're not spending money in the middle of Ohio. They're spending money in places that are growing.

What would be your advice to all the brand new franchisees who do not already have a steady client base? As we enter a recessionary period.

It'S our goal as the franchisee to get revenue as high as possible as quickly as possible to lower the percentage of gross sales going to franchise fees. This becomes more difficult when. When there are less leads and a lower close ratio. How would you progress over the next 12 to 24 months if you were a new franchisee? If I was a new franchisee, I would realize that I would rather put sweat equity than cash right now because cash is going to become more valuable over the next 12 months as marketing gets cheaper, as hiring gets cheaper, as trucks get cheaper. All that's going to happen in the next 12 months during a recessionary time. And so you want to preserve as much cash as Possible, which means to go get the customers, you're going to put more sweat equity instead of cash. So I would be focusing on knocking on doors, emailing property managers, knocking on the doors of overgrown lawns, doing door hangers, nine arounds of every single one of your customers. And focusing on route density. I'd be focusing on that massively. So that way I can keep as much cash available so that as we head into recessionary times and people start to close down shop, like this winter, we're gonna have a record number of closures of companies going out of business. You're gonna see tons of landscaping companies for sale on Craigslist. Tons every single. It was quite a few this past year. But there's going to be crazy because people are just going to like, look, I just worked my brains out this whole year and didn't make any money. And this is just not an industry I want to work in. And there's plenty of jobs to go get right now. I'm going to go get those. And then as we head into recession, unemployment will take up. It'll become harder for them to find jobs. And that's the opportunity to spend money. Right? You want to spend money when things are cheap, right? So right now I would be trying to save as much cash as possible, but you still need to get more customers. So what do you do? You go put sweat equity. You go pound payment, you get the Google reviews, you cold call, you cold email, you go and get the, you know, like literally you can go get 50, 60 Google reviews if you just start talking to people. If you go on some local Facebook groups, if you go on to landscaping Facebook groups, if you ask your friends, your family, the people you've known, like, you can get those. That does not cost you any money. And so I would be focusing on the things that cost me sweat equity and time and just not money, because the money will be More valuable in 6 months, 12 months, your time is going to be the equivalent. The value of your time is going to be equivalent now versus in 12 months. And so I would rather spend time right now and so I can conserve cash so that when the recession's at its heaviest, which is going to be next spring, by the way, that you're able to deploy money and really ramp. So you were going to see so many Chuck in the trucks, little small Lawn Care businesses, 3, 4 employees go for sale this coming winter. It's going to happen. And so when all of those people will not be able to sell and they come in the next Spring rush, you're going to have a whole bunch of people looking for service because their vendor went out of business. That's what's going to happen. So if I was getting started right now, I would be like, okay, great, time to buckle my boots on. I'm going to do door hangers on every single one of my customers neighbors every single time I go to their property. Like, they're literally like, I want you getting calls of people and like stop putting door hangers, stop calling me, stop emailing me. Like that's the kind of thing I'd be focusing on because that costs you nothing. Okay? It costs you a little bit of time to go walk around a couple properties, knock on people's door, send a few emails to property managers, you know, ask people for reviews. Like that stuff does not cost you a lot of money. For less than $1,000, you could do door hangers on every single one of your customers neighbors for the rest of the year. You could get 50 to 60 Google reviews. You could do one click estimate emails to stay busy. You could.

Do so much that just like again, email property managers, contact contractors, ask companies like a bank locally saying like look, during the winter I'm, I don't have a lot of work, I'll go mow some foreclosures just to stay busy, stay revenue command, making sure I'm stacking my cash for next spring. So the Companies that were 100,000, $150,000 last year for sale will become 30 to 40 grand because they just need to get out of the business. They will not sell. And next spring you're going to have a whole bunch of people calling and be like, hey, my guy didn't show up. We're already getting a whole bunch locally. We're getting more mowing customers right now locally than like the spring rush. Like we're getting crazy amounts and a lot of people are calling in. Mark, I was talking to Marcus on the weekend, he said a lot of people are calling in and the notes that I'm getting on my estimates are my other guy didn't show up, my landscaper guy didn't show up. And so this is a massive opportunity just to stay in business and get market share. And those people are going to go out and it's not going to be easy because we're going into recession. You're going to have margin compression massively. I mentioned on the weekend, but like the local shop, I'll probably have half as many distributions from that company, from that location as I did last Year. But that's the pain of switching from, you know, 40, 50% recurring to 75, 80% recurring. But I know we're shifting that in a very positive thing. So in 2023, I go up in distributions instead of going into. When a recessionary time, most people like go negative. All right, so.

Remind me to never disappoint Mike. I don't, I haven't done any of these things, but I'm feeling that me and your mother are very disappointed in you. Feeling. That's funny. Well, it's a mother's love. So. No, I just want what's best for you and for your business. And I hate it Pains me to see when people have a lot of ambition and then when that ambition is actually starting to materialize, but there's heat and there's friction and there is pain in making it a reality. They cave. And if I can do anything to inspire, like, look, this is part of the journey, this is part of it. But like last week we had someone on a six week plan for emergency and there's a great plan for who needs to be fired. People with salaries, who needs to have more work because they're going to leave because they don't have enough hours. Like give that, give the salary person their work to the person that is high producer and wants to work more and there's projects on the schedule and say, hey, look, you got to work Saturday, Sunday, we got to get these jobs done. We're way behind. And then that person just be like, oh, I'm, I'm going to be gone this week. I'm on vacation this week. Okay, but you have projects, you got new employees, your payroll, your guy in salary is sapping the clock and lazy. Like, you can't leave during that time. You can't.

So a leader does not cower away or does not turn their back in the time of battle. Like, think about it. If you, if like the president during like 911 or like when we got attacked or like World War II was like, oh, like I'm out. Like all of a sudden we don't see him. What's the first thing they do within 24 hours? They get on TV and they get in front of everyone's face. They what the whole reason they're doing it's a PR move to make sure that they realize that hey, we have united front and we're going to be, we're staying. Like I'm here. That's all they're saying. And so for a leader, when your business is doing poorly when employees are leaving, when you're way behind. And I know you want to just be like, forget this. Like, I'm out. Like, give me a break. Give me a week off. I know that's what you want to do. I know that. I've been there, right? Like, at Command Center a few months ago, when we literally were behind by thousands and thousands of emails. And I knew that, like, if I literally worked 247 for weeks on end, we would never get through it. Still, like, yeah, I just want to leave. I want to go take a vacation. But, like, that's not what happened. And so, as a leader and as a business owner, you have resigned the luxury to do that. And if you're not willing to put those few years of that level of expectation on yourself, you're never going to get to the place where it runs by itself, runs on system. You have a great team. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. Okay, so there's a long episode today. 36 minutes. Mercy. All right, you all have a great day. Happy Monday. Maybe tomorrow will be a little bit more in a joyful mood. No more Salty Mike. All right, see you guys.