Mike Minutes Mastermind 07/11/2023

Hello, Gusta Nation. This is going to be an abbreviated version of the Mike Minutes Mastermind, simply due to the fact that I need to jump over to training. We have, I think, 10 new locations this week for training, so I got to jump over there. But first, I did not want to cancel this, so I had a couple meetings prior, but let me jump in.

Cool. All right, let's just jump right into questions for today.

A quick reminder, though, if you have not, make sure you submit your franchise Advisory Council vote. Those are being counted this weekend. And then on next week's franchise roundtable, the Zoom Call, I will announce who those are. So looking forward to that. But thank you for everyone's participation. I think 75 or 80% of the locations have already submitted their votes, so that's awesome. All right, Max from Burnaby, if you were seeking feedback from employees on a quarterly basis, what kinds of questions would you ask them? Here's what I have so far. How's the job going? Is there anything that could be improved? Is there anything I could do improve? Doing differently to support you? Do you have any questions or other things you want to discuss? No, I think it's good.

This one's going to be a little too open ended, in my opinion. Um, they're not going to say anything like, it's too open ended at the beginning because like, the, the natural inclination is like, yeah, it's going good, pretty good. Like, I can tell you what every single person would say, so I would probably.

Just nix that one. And then I'd probably put something more along the lines also of like, you know, what's your future goals? How can we, how can we like, move into the words that, like, staying in touch with their. What their goals are is important and seeing if the company can align with those by giving them more responsibility, like if they want to learn estimate or project management or work on other jobs or etc. Or if it's a matter of like, okay, like, let's, you know, it has nothing to do with lawn care. Let's figure out how over the next year you can take some skills and then go do school or another profession or whatever they're going for. And then it gives you to a better roadmap of when people are going to be exiting and just better planning on your part too.

Kyle Tarvin, would it be a bad idea to do a mass reorganization of our mowing routes? Now, the routes aren't too terrible as they sit, but I think we can make them more efficient. When everyone, when anyone says mass Reorganization that gets me a little concerned, especially when it's followed up by. It's not too terrible now, because my question is the time it takes to do that, if that was spent on something else in the business, that's higher priority. A lot of times I see people doing what is an easy, like, we know you could be more efficient by reorganization. Like, everyone loves reorganization because there's always efficiencies to be gained. The question is how incremental are those and the size of those compared to the other things in the business that need to be dealt with. So, for example, is your time better spent reorganizing your mowing routes and optimizing it by 2 or 3%, or is it better creating or is it better used creating a better onboarding system, creating packets and pamphlets for your employees? And that's the bigger issue because you can't retain people, so you have to prioritize these things. And in winter, this is not an issue because, like, of course you would reorganize because you have nothing else to do and you don't have a lot of work when, when you're in the middle of the season, you've got to prioritize these things. And if it's 2 to 2 to 3% efficiencies gained, I'd probably nix that for how do I make my onboarding process better, have everything printed out and spend a few hours like really optimizing that. I'm not saying you shouldn't do that. I'm just saying that's how I would look at whether or not to do that in terms of prioritization.

Sorry, my phone's blowing up. Give me a second.

Okay? Devin Sheridan, Red Deer. Do you guys use instant payouts on stripe to use to your debit card account? I would not recommend instant payouts. You're usually paying 1% depending on your account, sometimes up to 2% extra fees. And if you actually extrapolate that percentage route, it's like literally 30, 40 interest. I would not recommend doing instant payouts. Wait the extra day or less than 24 hours and get the money then.

Kyle Tarvin Moore, Oklahoma. I'm planning on using some personal cash. And the reason how you get that percentage is you extrapolate the fact you're getting one day extra and you're paying 1%. Like literally the percentage of interest you're paying is absorbent, like 20, 30% a month. I'm planning on using some personal cash to purchase a truck for one of my locations down the road. Can I purchase the truck in my personal name, use it for a while, then transfer into the business name. Yeah, you can do that. I wouldn't recommend this.

Because this is the thing. When the, when the business buys it, you need to have.

An asset that's worth something to depreciate. If you buy it in your personal name, say for 20 grand, and then you just give it to the business, well, now you have nothing to depreciate. You have nothing to write off. I'd rather you have a big purchase price going to the business so you can depreciate it. And you don't really want to sell it from yourself to the business at a high dollar amount because now you're paying a whole bunch of extra taxes. So in terms of like licensing and sales tax, et cetera, and you're just relicense, the truck usually is going to cost you. So in the perfect world, I would probably lease it out the business from yourself or I would not do that for again, the amount of time people spend on that is absorbent compared to what actually saves you. But like ideally though, you just want the. You want the asset to be held in the business's name so you can actually take it as an expense instead of all in your personal name. You can do it. It's not illegal to do what you're doing. I'm just saying from a tax perspective, you want the asset to sit on the balance sheet of the business. Joe Dilmore from Cherry Hill. I know you said that. Oh, and by the way, if you gift it from like your personal to the business, if you gift it to yourself, you can't have the asset sitting on there because like there was no value. You didn't like pay for the licensing fee like you do if you ever got audited. They'd be like, well, why didn't you pay tax on that sale? And you'd have to register it as that value coming across to your business. And in some states they don't tax it a certain way. So you might get around that. FYI, Joe Dilmore, Cherry Hill I know you said that the new MO mulch cleanup estimates are getting another version changed to say front. Only two things. Can we please say that have them to say mulch. Just say mulch. Or on my estimates I say premium mulch. Since it's just the nursery calls it sound fancier. It might not be a bad idea instead of a specific one. No around here ever uses bark mulch. And I've had try few occasions. We'd just be happy to use One color to use color mulch. These specifics are tough because. So for example, if you add words that describe mulch, you're gonna have more and more questions. So I'd recommend when someone accepts an estimate, you confirm these things. The reason is because if you start saying color mulch, then people have too many questions they won't accept. If you say premium. Now they need to have another variable to get over before there's friction. You're adding before them accepting. What you want them to do is accept and then you call and confirm these other fine details.

That would be my recommendation because as soon as you start adding these adjectives to the the mulch etc, you're gonna get more and more questions and those questions will prevent people from buying number two. Of course, my luck, for the first time in three years, someone actually wants the bark mulch and mentioned on the door hanger I gave them. And the three regular nurseries I use the only type I can you find Canadian cedar bark mulch. It's triple the cost at 100 per yard. And now I'm in a bind. What kind of bark mulch is it everyone else uses is it try to find it. And I if I can't find anything else, I just turn down the job. If they insist on bark mulch, the mulch will literally cost more than I could the entire mulch install I would do bagged from Lowe's or Home Depot.

I say premium mulch.

Sorry, I'm a little confused. It sounds like almost like you use pine straw, but like you don't mention that anywhere. You don't. So you don't use mulch at all or it sounds like there's a different type of mulch you use.

But like in terms of you're trying to get the mulch now, I would say most Lowe's and Home Depots have it by the pallet and on bags. And it's honestly the, the labor savings substantiate the cost differential in terms of the product in most cases. So that would that be the second part I do bagged and I would most homes, home improvement stores have it. And in the top part, I would just call and confirm this stuff prior to doing the estimate. Because if you add too much detail on the quote, you're going to get people not accepting. And the goal of that is just like cast a wide net, catch people in reduce friction so they accept. And then if there's details like that, I just confirm it after they've already accepted something. All right, guys, I got to run. Thanks.