Mike Minutes Mastermind 07/08/2024

Hello, Gusta nation. Let's get this party started. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend.

Okay, cool. We'll jump right in.

We're officially at the halfway point of the year.

Second half of the year is where the profits are made. So it's not a matter of, oh, we made it through the spring rush, we're done.

The difference between having a decent year and have a super profitable year will likely be how you execute in the second half of the year when your team is much more solidified, less customer churn, less new customers, so you can become very profitable. So.

As tempting as is to like let off after spring rush, it's actually the time to actually buckle down. Then the second half of the year is where most of the profits are made, if not all in some cases.

All right, Matt from Salem Morgan. In regards to Christmas lights, will CC be doing OTP estimates? In short answer, no. They'll be setting up drive bys and then you can set them up. You can acknowledge them as you would seem fit. Most people do not do drive bys or anything. They just simply will send a price out. We're not doing the pricing from command center this year at least we're gonna go into a little bit slower, make sure we execute first on just the aspect of adding lights and then we'll entertain this idea. Next year if we wanted to OTPs for lights, but for now it'd be like, hey, the Christmas lights manager is gonna get back to you. And then you could literally just send them a quote or if you really wanted to go visit them in person because you're only doing a few of them and you want the experience, that's up to you. 2. How will CC answer the phones if they're doing normal appointments and Christmas lights appointments? Well, we have a separate phone number. If we do lights, no separate phone number. As soon as someone hears the words Augusta.

They are typically going to roll with it. And they haven't had an issue with explaining like, hey, this is Christmas lights, this is lawn care. We do the same thing. We are the same company. So most, most of the leads are going to come from your website though, because you're going to be driving traffic to an online web source. And that's where like Christmas lights is known for. This is why, like a lot of companies are built around like lead.

Lead collection. In Christmas lights, they usually charge like $100, $120 per lead usually, at least. And the reason for that is because it's all driven by search. Because such an acute period of time that it's needed for. And so this is less of a calling game and much more like find online. So we expect most of the traffic to be estimate request forms.

So.

My thinking is that my Christmas lights will essentially be a separate thing so that we rank really well nationwide. I remember you saying we will need a new GMB listing. Are there any other separate components that are our responsibility? I don't think you need a new Google My business listing. You could if you wanted to. You're more than welcome to do that. I think I would probably just for that superior time on your list. On your Google listing you could add Christmas lights as a service or put Augusta Lawn Care slash Christmas lights. You could do those things.

If you would like. I think having a banner on your Augusta Lawn Care webpage that says we offer Christmas lights is also helpful. You don't need a new Google My business listing. It's already going to be connected to your Augusta one, which is going to have way more reviews. So especially your first year, I would probably leave that one on your website even if you're going to make a second one, which is totally up to you.

Separate things. Yeah, it's not as separate as you might think. I don't want it to be too separate because we want to be able to cross sell people. So anyone that you market to, let's say you get 20, 30 houses, I want you to be able to get half of those on mowing next spring rush. And so having the strong affinity between Augusta Lawn Care and Augusta Christmas Lights is going to kind of stay consistent throughout.

And so I don't think it's a bad thing to have your Google My business listing still be the one that's on the website organically. If you started another one, I would probably build up quite a few reviews this year and then next season switch it over.

Because your site's just going to do better. With a site if you currently have a Google listing that has like 60, 80, 100 reviews versus starting with like one or two, we wouldn't even be showing the schema of Google listing unless you have five or more on the website. Thanks for putting so much focus and resources on the Seasonality challenge. Yeah, so basically basic gist is if someone calls into command center about Christmas lights, first off, we're making sure that you offer it and then we're setting up a drive by and we're telling them that the Christmas lights manager will get in touch with them with either a quote or if they need more information, they'll Contact them. But from there is really all we need to be able to get them a quote. You can either look at the Google list. A lot of people just look at Google Maps. A lot of people that are brand new like to go there in person just to get the experience. So I, I've talked to several of the owners that have done Christmas lights in the past. Their first year. They did them in person and then they switched to just doing everything remote and like just looking quickly at their house and giving them a price. Also, you already have the ability to kind of give a price range on the website, which is really handy in terms of the pricing ranges.

So there'll be little things that we will refine and then make this better for next year. And we could potentially add more services from command center in terms of doing over the phone estimates for Christmas lights. The customization though is pretty extensive in terms of people having different types of lights, offering different upsells in terms of things like reeds, bushes, et cetera, palm trees. Also, like the type of material that the house is built out, like stucco, wood. If you're doing like press, like, there's just so many different types of little variations. For now, we just want to get the lead for you and then pass that off. And so the goal and objective is like collect that information as fast as possible.

Sorry, one second.

Cool. All right, number two, Cassandra Turner from Henderson, Kentucky. Regarding the automatic charge to a client card once the invoice is sent. How did the payments fail like shown in the attached video? We have a client that reached out regarding not knowing why our car not won't automatically charge, but wants it to. I've realized there's an issue with the other client as well. I don't know how to fix it on our end because I've heard it a card issue. I have it set up in the settings to automatically charge the card on file, but I'm not sure what to do regarding these failed attempts. All right, let's see here.

Okay, so it looks like it went through on a couple invoices and a couple others it did not.

So I would zoom in on stripe and like, you know, I would also click on these invoices and see what's up here. But I would go into stripe and see like, why is this not working? And the fail will give up. Like a much more like, okay, is it a wrong card information? Is it insufficient funds? Is it a wrong payment, like wrong address, etc. But usually if they have entered the car, information just gets validated. So I'm gonna guess this is not the same customer. So basically you're saying some auto charges are failing. If you want to drill into it, I'd be looking at in a stripe, like take this transaction, go into stripe, look up the customer, and you see like, why is the exact reason, Is it a card file that expire non sufficient funds, etc. That's where I'd be looking first. Because basically how we do it from, from Copilot's perspective, we just, we throw this@ the API of stripe. We don't do any actual payment processing and if it fails on their end, we can only return it failed. You're going to look at stripe and be like, hey, like, why exactly did this fail? Wrong card information, expired card, non sufficient funds, etc.

I, I bet you could drill into this payment information too and get more information like Copilot. But I would look in stripe.

Yeah, so if you're, if you go to stripe, you'll get like much more granular detail. Cassandra. And then if you need help with this, reach out to atc. They can guide you through like some of the common practices and best ways to handle this in terms of like the failing side of things.

Coach Connor. I've been wanting to switch over to weekly or daily billing for a while. However, after listening to Garrett's question last week about switching pay frequency, he made me realize that it's likely not as smooth as what I thought. Is it really going to be cleaner to just do that next year? Or how would I go about billing monthly to billing weekly? I assume the first month is the hardest switch because if I bill out on the 1st, the month previously, then bill out the weeks, other weeks or days accordingly, then someone may have a 500 bill in one month and not be able to afford that switch, et cetera. Yeah, so Garrett's was a little bit different. So like, I don't mind the switch from monthly to weekly or daily. I don't think that's a big deal. He was wanting to go like further though, and go to prepayment. And so I look at payment schedules as a continuum. So if you look like the best form of collections, it's like prepayment at the beginning of the month, then like the next would be like credit card on file same day. Then you get like credit card on file end of week, then you could have like end of month credit card on file. Then you could have like end of month, they can send a check. So like, there's a continuum of how good is your cash flow. And I would say, like, he was jumping two steps, right? And that was kind of. My thing with Gary was like, hey, take one step. Which is like, hey, let's switch the billing frequency before we go to prepayment. I think trying to jump two steps in that continuum could cause more friction. Um, again, if you're at capacity and you're completely overwhelmed with work, you don't care. So you could just go ahead and pull the trigger no matter what. But in general, the frequency, if you change frequency, like, by too many steps in that continuum, is when I see the most friction or people being unhappy in terms of losing customers. Again, if you're at capacity, you don't care. So I'd be looking at that as the guiding light as to how fast you change someone's billing frequency. Or if you go to prepayment, or if you go from.

Monthly to weekly to daily, or whatever you want to do to increase, it's better for you. But you can only take the blowback from customers if you have excess leads coming in. So I'd be looking again at capacity to be the guiding light in terms of whether or not you do this. And then, like, lead flow is helpful too. Like, if you're having tons of leads coming in, you're going to be more confident in doing this, knowing that if you lose some people, it doesn't really matter. Adding prepayment also adds friction to new sales. So it's just, again, like, how many leads are coming in? Are you at capacity? Is the determining factor of, like, how fast you make this change. Like, if you just raised prices last month and leads are starting to dry up, because end of spring rush and you're not at capacity, might not be the best time to do it now. Unless you're in a massive cash crunch, in which case you have to peel the band aid off no matter what. So.

Fantastic. All right, everyone, I hope have a fantastic July 8th. And looks like next week or the week after, we will have the. The media team will be wrapping up the new dashboard. And on there is the recordings of the Memphis trip and all the keynotes there. So it's looking good. The dashboard's looking good as well. Much more organized, Just looks better.

Easier to read, easier to find stuff. All the training from initial training is searchable through transcripts. So if you're ever trying to think about, like, oh, man, I know something was set at training, it'll be searchable at transcripts. The YouTube videos, I. E. The masterminds can't be done via transcripts, but the videos we actually upload into the system are. So we're doing that for all the initial training. So there'll be. It's just a platform that we can modify and make better changes to in the future and build on top of. For the dashboard and the Academy. So that'll be coming out next couple weeks as well. All right, everyone, have a fantastic day. We'll talk tomorrow.