Mike Minutes Mastermind 07/02/2024

Hey everyone. Hope you're doing good. Let's go get started. I know the text messages hasn't got out yet. I gotta get rolling here.

Of course the book is supposed to be coming out.

And I'm trying to get the audiobook done. Turns out two of the chapters had audio glitches from the recorder. So gotta go re record those and try to scramble here, but we'll see what happens. Might not come out with the actual book on Thursday. We'll see. All right, let's get this party started.

Boom. Oh, quick reminder, I'm going to send this out in the email too, just to remind everyone. I know we've talked about before, but screen sharing was canceled. What does that mean?

Okay, in July, as per usual, starting yesterday, we have the.

Inflation price adjustment for Command Center. So I will send this out as an email. The CPI inflation data comes back at like 4.1, 4.2% for 2023. So we wait six months and then we adjust it July 1st so it moves them all up like a few cents per minute. Doing that is better than trying to do it every few years by like 20 or 30 cents to be able to cover the cost of inflation. So I think that that price increase will go down because inflation should be coming down to more like 2, 3%. But it was a little, little hot in 2023, but nothing like 2022 and 2021 when it was like 9, 10%. So we didn't raise prices throughout that time. And we just want to make sure we at least stay up with inflation and make it nice and gradual. But I anticipate that usually like the Fed is shooting for 2%, I think they'll overshoot it and probably go to 1.5% which would then rid out unless price increases because our labor costs, et cetera, would be not going up as much. So also as a reminder, again, I know we've talked about it since last October, it's now in the training for all new owners, et cetera. But I'll have those exact numbers for you. Again, that does not apply to your most recent invoice that is all June. It's going to be the invoice you see in August and beyond.

Also on this most recent invoice, you may have seen refunds for any sort of ACH fees simply due to the fact that inside of copilot we can't charge for credit card processing fees but not for ach. We got to charge it for everything. So some people still like the ability to pay with credit card, especially during periods of time for certain points, etc. So we give that option. But then for ACH we are refunding any sort of fees you've accumulated over the past six months. We'll do the same thing at the end of this year and until the point when we allow for copilot to be able to delineate between ACH versus Credit card processing fees. So you can charge a client or not charge a client processing fees based on credit card versus ach, but that's not an option yet. It's just either you charge them or not. So all right, let's jump right into eat.

All right, first question is from Coach Connor wanting to have a straightforward, simple way to help owners find their break evening that doesn't take hours and can get them set up on a coaching call in the right direction. Is there anything that is plug and chug? I would assume that break even is only fixed cost. If not for variable cost, how do you figure out how much to assume in your break even is there? Is this where budget forecasts come into play and you have to go off the previous year's expenses, multiply by expected growth rate of your coming year, etc. Just want a framework to work with for other owners since all the profit as made after the break is made after the break even point? Yeah, so here's the most dirty rule of thumb, but it's actually usually pretty accurate. So I usually take 20% of last month's revenue and then I add $5,000 per employee. So for example, let's say last month they did 60,000 in revenue and they have five employees. So.

20% of 60,000 is $6,000 plus five employees times five, that's 25,000. So in this case their break even would be $31,000 if I did my math correctly, because five employees times 5,000 direct cost of labor plus 20%, which 20% of 60,000 is, sorry, $12,000. So 12,000 plus 25,000 is 37,000. There you go. Their break even would be $37,000. Not to say that everything above that is straight profit, but that would be probably their break even point. As a very very very dirty rule of thumb, the the 5000 usually covers full time labors in terms of their payroll tax, etc. And then the 20% usually covers admin and.

Sales related tasks. Very dirty, very rudimentary, not perfectly accurate, but usually within 10 to 20% accurate and is usually better than nothing because you asked for a straightforward simple way. So 20% of last month's revenue. I account for sales and admin costs. Assuming they're not like way out of line and they don't have a massive shop, et cetera, then it's going to go usually more than that. But for Augusta I usually use 20% because if your admin can be between 8 and 12% for command center you still are left with 12, 8 to 12% going towards sales related things, which is your estimator etc.

So where it gets real, where that gets least accurate is when you start having a bunch of part time employees. Right, because I'm assuming $5,000 per employee full time on the field. So it can get a little bit dicey if you don't do that otherwise.

Dan from Lexington.

Have been having issues with clients except they're mowing online. Since we are not collecting their billing info, we go ahead and start them up. But a good amount are not getting back to us with putting their billing info on file or even just paying their service. We are sending an email, text and trying to call to get this resolved. I am sure if this possible solution has come up yet or been discussed, but what are your thoughts on startup fees? Kind of what gyms do on their end where they will run sales on their startups where their pricing is always the same. I feel like if we start charge a small startup fee on our websites, say it is reserved their spot, credit it towards their first mo and this would make it so they give us their billing information. This could be a possible solution to this issue. Yeah, I see where you're coming from. I like the idea.

This friction is slightly more than just getting their card information. Actually asking for payment without any sort of services rendered puts a really big roadblock. We're focused more on just trying to get the card information from the instant quote form. And so the talk I gave in Memphis kind of shows what that roadmap looks like in terms of what we're working on. But we're really focused on just getting the card information because that will be a lower barrier to entry in terms of people like dropping off. Because if you actually ask them to pay something, people will drop off. It also makes it difficult if you do need to change the price on them because they chose the wrong selection. But then to your point you could be like hey, I just want to start at a flat $20. Just like charge their card.

Yeah, like I see that that perspective. I think the drop off is going to be greater and.

Someone like just getting their card information is gonna be the main goal here. And so that's what we're working on in terms of having it where on the form they can actually get their card information collected and it's put on into Copilot. But like I said, the recording from last week should be available hopefully by next week, and it'll kind of give that roadmap of what we're working on. I think you're doing the right thing. I would potentially, in your emails, Dan, and your correspondence, just say, like, we can't start service until this has been done. If you change that slightly, instead of just me, like, get it set up, then I would just make sure it's like you. You check and make sure, like new, new when before you put them on the schedule, they have to have their card on file, right? So it's like, hey, thank you for accepting. Really appreciate it. We just need your card on file and then we'll put you on the schedule. And so before you put them on the schedule, you require the card on file. Our hope is to be able to put that on the website so we can collect that information. There's just a whole level of PCI compliance that's required when we start collecting payment information from the website, and we want to make sure that does not hurt our SEO and then also make sure it's integrated with Copilot so that, you know, double entry where people have to put it there and then also put it in their client portal. So. Good question. Though I do think that there will be some people choose not to have credit cards required from the website because it's another level of friction. But I do believe that the vast majority of Augusta Nation will want the card and file to be enacted like that rule and then collected from the website itself.

Hutch, do you think it is better for team morale and the business to try and get most crews to finish around the same time by mowing, moving, mows around as the day nears an end or let the team finish as efficiently as possible, and some leave at 2 or 3 and others at 5 or 6.

Generally, I like everyone finishing around the same time. If people are more efficient throughout the day, they're gonna make more money. But I generally try to get everyone ending around the same time because even for people, like, even if you know in your heart you're doing it because you want to make it most efficient for them, they will see that as like, why did I have to work so much longer than them yesterday? And you're like, no, I was trying to help you make more Money be more efficient in your route. I just generally try to make sure that everyone's finishing around the same time within the same hours. Most ideal. Um, even if it means a slight less efficiency. I just want everyone consistent like workflow. So that way no one's thinking that I'm playing favorites with different crews or different people. And that's a big problem that people have. Even with P4P where you're like, it doesn't matter. Um, especially when it gets hot and guys are tired, if they think someone's finishing at 2 o', clock, they don't know that they finished twice as many mo's as them and they're finishing at 6 o'. Clock. They just don't even see that. They just see, you know, Hutches, hutches playing favorites. He's letting them off at 2 o' clock cause it's hot and you know, like they just crush their mowing route. But I do try to make sure people end up around the same time. So the workflow, the hours worked is relatively similar.

Mr. Anonymous, what are your thoughts on using Send Jim to market around current customers neighborhoods you want to service inside of? Do you think it would be worth going through through them rather than USPS every door, direct mail? Is there any plans of making them integrate with copilot so we can trigger five rounds like Service Auto was able to do in the past? No, I don't have a huge.

Plans, definitely don't have plans right now for this to integrate with copilot. The vast majority of people have used this specific thing back in the day with Service Autopilot when it first came out. We originally integrated with sendgem from Service autopilot. Didn't get great results and had much better result. Literally just doing our five rounds with the actual crew because we could hit the same day we were there instead of like being around the same week. So we have another thing that I'm coming up with that is going to be really good. I'll show you here on the dashboard here. Pretty soon the media team is working on it. It's going to be very similar to this and can be done very similar to send gym but much more controlled and I think I'll have better results. So anyways, yeah.

I haven't seen anyone rave about this and I've tested this, the send gym thing out and just haven't seen awesome, awesome results. I don't know if it's because it's just the markup that they charge in comparison to every door, direct mail and then Therefore, my CAC wasn't as good, but it wasn't good enough for me to be like, yes, this is great. And I've tested it twice, a couple years in between, both with the integration and then separately. Um, so I. I don't have any plans, to be perfectly honest, to integrate that.

There's other stuff we want to do with every direct mail down the road inside of Copilot in terms of tracking and stuff like that, like door hanger tracking, but that's quite a bit down the road. Again, if for everyone that wasn't in Memphis when those recordings are out, I would appreciate it, and you'd probably enjoy the recording I made from Saturday, kind of giving more of a better roadmap on copilot. P4P, max AI command center, kind of like where they all kind of align. So I think it'll be helpful. All right, that's it for today. I hope everyone has a Fantastic Tuesday. Happy July 2nd. July 4th is two days away. Let's go. Always enjoy this weekend because everyone's out of town chilling out. Time to get ahead. Let's go. So I hope you all have a fantastic week, and we will stay in touch. Take care.