Mike Minutes Mastermind 06.30.22

Hello guest nation. Hope you're doing super well. I will go ahead and jump right into questions today. I thought I was gonna have some announcements today but they actually all ironed out and everything was already taken care of once I talked to command center. So we are good to go. Let's go ahead and jump into some questions. Share. Boom. Boom. I think there's at least a couple that came in look like cool. Zoom in here. All right. I'm planning to save money to get into real estate. Would you get another side job or just focus on growing your business, either a side job or night job? Just wondering. I would 100% say focusing on the business.

As a business owner, getting a second job is really, really honest consequential from a tax perspective. You're basically getting more W2 income.

Versus in your business. You have so many write offs that you can take advantage of. So I wouldn't recommend doing that. It's very rare that going getting an hourly job in the middle of the night is going to make you more money than spending that equivalent amount of time grinding on the business. If you spent that time doing sales, marketing, following up, et cetera in your business, you'd probably double the business in that amount of time. So I would not recommend getting secondary jobs. Honestly, long term landscape is a great way to get started and may do it on the side, but I would definitely not recommend a business owner getting a second job as a means to make more money. Typically the best ROI for your time is going to be simply.

Getting more work, more jobs and growing the business in the long run and in the short term. Because honestly, if you just spent an extra hour a day following up to sell a project, that $1,000 project you're able to close because of that is probably going to lead to let's just say 3, $400 in profit. Well, that 3 or $400 in profit is the equivalent of working two full days doing a side, you know, working at night or something like that. So.

I've seen it where people go and do side jobs or night work, for example, like a second shift, third shift SW.

And they run their business. And I look at their business like, okay, you're not following up your estimates. You're not door knocking, you're not putting door hangers out, you're not doing the grind of investing time in the business. Why would you expect anything other than not really having that much to show for it? So in terms of I'm planning to save money to get into real estate, I would not Recommend doing this. This is why in the seven stages, the seven steps of wealth procrastination, this is later in the game, right? So if you're just getting started, honestly, like, I know when I talk about real estate and stuff, people are like, oh, like, that's what we should be doing. It's like, no, Again, make sure you do it in sequence. Think about. Real estate is literally beyond the second half of the seven stages. The first stages. You know what? Tomorrow, let me make a note, we'll go over the seven stages again for those that are new steps of. Well, you know what? Why don't we do it now? Forget tomorrow. Let's just do it now. Give me one second. I'll pull it up. A good, good moment to do so steps. Well, let me just pull this up.

Here we go. All right, here we go. Let me. Perfect. Let's show this screen. Stop this one. Share this one. This is a good recap, even if you've seen this already. Okay. No, not that one.

Pop it into here.

There we go. Cool. All right, These are seven steps, okay? So we go over this each year at conference, and then you create a date around this. So for some of you, a bit of a recap. The seven steps, right? So first one is you got to grow past 500,000 in annual revenue. So again, I wouldn't even think about real estate or a second job or investing until you get past this stage, right? Because you're gonna. Getting past the stage means you get out of the wilderness of 200 or 300 to 500,000, right? Where there's that. That window of time, we don't see any more extra profit. I want you to get through that stage before you even think about moving forward, right? So if you're thinking about investing, you're literally the seventh stage of building wealth.

If you haven't done number one, I won't even spend my time thinking about it. I would be educating myself, like listening to podcasts, listening to audio programs about those things to educate yourself. Like, I listen to bigger pockets a lot. I listen to a lot of real estate books for years. Like, literally six. Six years before I ever bought my first real estate deal.

So you can do that for free. I would not be spending any money or any serious time on it until you're past stage one for sure.

In terms of preparing yourself for that, you can absolutely go to, like, open houses. You can stay in tune with your market. So, like, for example, I have a thing that notifies me certain parameters inside Zillow. You can have it send you.

An email. So if you just want to keep a pulse on your market, it's a good way to do it. You can kind of see what your market's doing, where prices are going, people are lowering their price, how long things are staying in the market, etc. But in terms of actually like getting involved in spending money in real estate, again, that's seventh, right? So first stage is growing past 500,000. Second stage of wealth is build two months of payroll and safety net. So if your payroll is $25,000 a month, you want to have at least 50 grand in a bank account locked up. And I would not be touching that to go do anything else with it.

Systems. This is the goal is to get out of the field, have command center do over the phone estimates. This can be can be sped through stage three if you've built the business correctly at the first stage. A lot of times what happens though is people grow the business really quickly. They kind of get all over the systems. They don't kind of get out of the way. They're doing their own little thing. They're not doing over the phone estimates. They're running around doing estimates all day long. So sometimes this is why I have to have step three in here, is because a lot of times I have to kind of recalibrate the business to get back in the systems. And that's when you get out of the field. Things run on systems you have over the phone estimates, et cetera. Then you got to scale is when you're past 800,000. And when you do that, then you're going to go hire a general manager, you do a profit sharing program. You're not going to have any daily operational activity inside the business if you want that. And then it's a matter of repeating this, right? So you can do multiple locations, you could do other business ventures, you could start to invest in Stage seven, profits outside of lawn care, first tax shelter, and that's when real estate becomes a real thing. Now in the process, I'd be listening to stuff about whatever you want to invest in throughout this whole process. For example, in stage one, you might be at 200,000 annual revenue. I would be listening to leadership books and figuring out how to get to stage four, which is you're going to need to hire people, you're going to be a good leader, have team meetings, etc.

So don't think two things are bad. One, I'm not in that stage. I don't need to have anything to do with it like, oh, I don't need to think about real estate right now because I'm only in stage two and I'm just trying to focus on making this business profitable. But when you're driving, when you're working, when you're going to the next estimate, while you're waiting in your car, you can spend time educating yourself on the future steps of the business. That being said, you also don't want to get in the position of getting so far ahead of yourself. Right? Like if you're at 100,000 revenue just getting started, you should be listening to things like sales and hiring books, not real estate and how the stock market works and how macroeconomics work. It doesn't matter in the next couple of years. So just make sure you have those, those kind of lined up correctly. Realizing the short term, where am I at to get the next stage? In the long run, I might do 80, 20, like 80% of my time is going to be spent on what is going to be useful in terms of educating myself for the now and getting next stage, which for most of us is going to be sales, marketing.

Leadership, how to hire, how to be a good leader, et cetera, like that. And then 20% of my time I'll think about the five year, ten year plan, which is potentially number seven. Okay, so that's how I would recommend kind of breaking that up. All right, next question.

Share screen. Boom, boom, boom. All right, I think there's one more.

There we go. Max. I currently have two full time employees. Our average budget hours per week is 60. I was planning to hire a third employee, but no one is sticking around. For the last month or so I've tried out four different people and each said it wasn't for them. Also, there's little new work coming currently coming in. Do you think I should hold off on hiring someone for now and wait till spring, till September, the second spring rush, or should I just trying to keep finding someone? Really depends Again, in your market, if you're not like in your market, I know you specifically because you're 30 minutes from here, max, you're gonna have a slowdown in July and August for, for work just because the mowing is going to slow down so much. So the goal is going into July and August in your market is to be booked out far, right? So like the local shop is six weeks booked out. We don't have a fear of slowing down because we know that all we got to do is sell two to three weeks worth of work in the next two months. And we'll get through that kind of lull. So the goal is, especially after your first, it takes a couple of spring rushes to really getting good at gauging your market when you start slowing down and usually pretty quickly. So like, you know, in our market, Max, is in the last week is when we've really seen the sun come out and it gets hot and stuff literally immediately starts to dry up. So you start to know that after a couple rushes, spring rushes, after a couple seasons, it takes a few years to really get good at timing that and knowing how many weeks booked out you want to be. Because otherwise you'll hire too many in the spring rush, having a 12 week backlog, but then you hit a two month slowdown and you don't have enough work for them. Right. So in your case, Max, I would probably say keep the two guys that you have, because at 60 budget hours, if you hire a third person, there's not gonna be enough hours to go around. And you're also there available probably to help fill in if needs be. So 60 hours is very doable, Very, very doable for a crew of two. And then if you're there too, like, might be able to get away with 70 or 80. So I don't think I would be hiring if I was you right now. I'd be focused on those two people because in the worst case scenario, you could jump in and help if one person left. Right. You're still of that size. So.

In terms of September, though, that would be an opportunity to hire someone. You're giving them the idea, hey, I'm only probably gonna need you for three months. September, October, November, and then I'll make sure you come back during the spring. That would be what I'd be kind of shooting for in, in this case is what I would recommend. Unless you're trying to continually grow. Like, if you have a lot of cash aside and you want to keep growing this time of year, just realize your customer acquisition costs can be higher. Demand is going to be lower during the next few months. Right. So you could potentially keep that powder dry, wait till September, and kind of put some money into marketing. Hire second or third person doing that during September, the rush of September. Okay. Remember too, that when we come into September, we get another rush of fall cleanups. And this is the local shop. Like, man. Okay, we're six weeks booked out. We know we have eight weeks of slowdown. So we'll burn through the six weeks. That's fine. We only got to fill up next two weeks. But then literally we're in to start thinking about leaf cleanups and fall cleanups. So they have. No, no, they're not gonna have any slowdown this, this summer because there are six weeks booked out going into the two month lull. Right. So the longer, the more seasons that go by, you'll get better and better at figuring out, okay, what's the backlog that I need? And that way that will really dictate your hiring throughout the spring rush. So someone leaves like, okay, well, we're only two weeks booked out. I know I'm gonna have a lull for two months. I'm not gonna hire anyone else and I'll just book further out. So I would say max, in your case, if you're not booked out more than three or four weeks, I'd probably just stay with the two employees. As if more work comes in, just book a little bit further out.

All right, we got a question, Dustin, to leapfrog off of max, we have 76 recurring budgeted hours each week. Okay, let me write this down. 76 BH occurring.

The issue I'm running to after skips or call offs from customers, we are down to maybe 60. Wow, that's a lot of call offs. I'm booked out about three weeks, but with call offs, I could see this easily being 1 to 2, 1.5 to 2 weeks booked out. Should I hammer marketing cleanups, bushes and molts to keep guys busy? I'm not a big fan of spending money during the lull because your customer acquisition cost is going to be higher.

Also remember that I think we're going to see it worse than ever this year. When it gets really, really hot, as it has for a lot of you, you're going to see more people quitting. Now.

In this labor market, I think it's going to change in six months. I think unemployment is going to go back up. But.

What I would say is try your very best to focus on upsells. And one click estimate emails. Try to really emphasize to your crew that, hey, we don't have a lot of work on the schedule this week. Thursday, Friday, looks is looking a little skinny. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. If you see a job that needs to be done on someone's property, if you can see the opportunity, upsell them on a mulch job or bush trimming. Send pictures, make notes on your on your dispatch board, and I'll try to sell those. Well, when you tell the guys that all of a sudden they really do switch that gear on. And then when you have to let Them off early on a Friday or Thursday because there's no work. It's like you guys didn't get anything for us, right? So when you all of a sudden you have four or five guys out in the field looking for work on every property you can really sell a lot. So that's, I'd be focused on that and one click estimate emails during that summer lull that most of us have because mowing slows down and people cancel, et cetera, and then focus. If you're going to spend money on marketing, I'd wait until fall to that fall rush. And I know for some locations, as I'm saying this, I'm thinking about locations that are like still getting 5, 6, 7 mowing customers a week right now. Obviously in your market it's still growing, you're still on the upswing. So take all that with a grain of salt. But for those of you who are slowing down, don't fight the inclination like oh, I should be spending a bunch of marketing, like inflate my supply of leads right now. If you can get away with it, try to keep that money, that powder dry for either the September rush or next spring rush. And then in the meantime, focus on trying to get your customers to do your employees do upsells and then doing one click estimate emails. Right. So I know for a lot of us we haven't even sent out one click estimate emails because you've just been buried in work. So knowing that, you also realize there's gonna be pent up demand. So when you send a project based, you know, property cleanup, one click estimate email in the middle of July or August, you're gonna get a lot of response, which is great. With booking out. We should, we should we shoot for like 125 to 135 budget hours to be booked out? Yes. You probably have like five employees. Four, four or five employees I'm imagining. So yeah, with projects and things like that, that's what I'd be trying to double down on when it comes to the summer lull is can I upsell existing customers using my employees? And because again they get $10 if they just literally take some pictures and make some notes. And if you, if they know that them having hours depends on them getting those jobs now, you kind of put it back in their lap. How would you recommend selling that work to existing customers? Just drop them an estimate or have CC call them and see if they want that estimate. No, like I said, I would have the employees take pictures and put some notes on the Dispatch board for you. And then you go to the end of the day, okay, great. They need a weeding cleanup. They need whatever. Or even just have them WhatsApp you a video and then you can literally take video, that's the project management video and then make the estimate, send it to the customer. That's what I would do. I would just send it out, take the notes, copy it real quick, throw it over, across. A lot of these are like three or four line item estimates based upon the video. Just tell the crew, hey, just WhatsApp video me a video of the project and I'll try to get the estimate out to that customer later that day. You get 10 bucks if you get that video to me. $10 as a referral.

Is there any. Is there usually a rush of mowing customers for bay ham shop in September two or just fall cleanups? There's not a rush like spring, but there's definitely a tick up. Just it's just going to simply follow the amount of grass growth, right? So in our market, you know, April, May and the first half of June is a lot of mowing for spring rash because the grass is just taking over, starts to slow down from here on out. September, you have like two to three weeks where it takes off. All of a sudden you get your first rain and it just takes off. And that's when we get more customers as well. But again, your spring rush is still going to have the best customer acquisition cost. Behind that would be your September, usually rush and fall cleanups. Is that something you really focus on? I like Kevin out in Mississippi, really goes heavy into leaf cleanups. Then you can. That's a potential opportunity to spend marketing dollars then. But outside of those areas, I'd be focusing on winter cleanups during the winter or winter services, I should say. And then during the summer lull I'd really all in on. Can you get your, your employees to do upsells so that they fill their own schedule? And secondly, I want to click SME. I know that first one a lot of you probably haven't done before. But trust me, when you tell your crew, hey guys, you know, glad people are canceling. The grass is starting to get dry. We have maybe work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday a little bit, but we're looking pretty skinny Thursday, Friday. I'd love for you get guys to get to give you the work. So on these jobs, send me a video that night. I'll throw together an estimate and let the customer know and try to sell that for you. And if you do you get 10 bucks and you get more hours when you start doing that to your crew. And if they want hours, they will literally, all of a sudden, half their mowing jobs. They'll have a video for you. Because think about it, if you were on the property, every single time you go there, you'd be able to determine, oh, this person needs a bush trimming. Oh, this person needs mulch. So if you can make them turn them into the salespeople and them trying to get hours for you, very, very advantageous. So don't underestimate the power of that. When you are having less hours or a lot of people canceling like that's happening with D. Destin, I would really, really lean into that. And one click. Estimate emails big time. All right, everyone, have a great rest of your Thursday, and we'll see you tomorrow.