Mike Minutes Mastermind 07/13/2022

Hello, everybody. Hope you're doing super well.

Let's go ahead and jump in a couple announcements right off the bat. I will send off that recording from last night's roundtable. I'll put up later today.

I also last night I put on the Facebook group and then I also put it on the P4P section of the Academy. And that is a 17 minute video that really breaks down P4P from a conceptual standpoint for employees. So frontline team members, that video is made for, from myself and so just kind of really breaking it down from a simplistic standpoint and then really point pushing them towards you if they have questions or things they want to learn more about. So it's 17 minutes long, a little bit longer than I'd like, but something that you could share with an employee that's new potentially in the onboarding process for them to be able to understand P2P, why it's instituted and how it works in terms of the math. So feel free to check that out.

It's on the Facebook group and it's.

Also Underneath the Academy P4P. And you'll see it right at the very top of that. I wanted to show you something from last night that I had mentioned, kind of talking about how the branding is going to be, what our play is over the next five years in terms of trying to get more customers at a lower customer acquisition point. The winner of this industry will be the ones that can figure out how to get customers for little to no cost, whether that be SEO and a website or whether it be from a branding perspective. And from an SEO perspective, each of our microcosms, each of our locations have to figure out the SEO in our markets to become ranking high. But from an overall standpoint, the brand is in that we're working on over the next five years, a lot on. And especially next year, we have some plans to really start investing into this. But I'll show you what I mean by that. For example, right here, let me share this screen with you. Have a couple windows I pulled up. This is from Facebook.

This video here has reached 3.1 million people. Wait, can you guys hear me one second? My audio has been weird this morning. Give me one second.

AirPod. There we go. Let's see there. Okay. This is from Facebook.

3.1 million things or whatever, 22,000 likes, 235 shares. This type of video, if this was an ad to get this type of reach, you're literally looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of probably 50 grand to create an ad that gets this much reach now, it says 3.1 million reached. There's about 2.6 or 2.7 million views on this video. And this was uploaded, what, last Thursday? I think. Last Friday. Yeah, last Friday, I think it was. So this is like a short. And then here's another one from couple weeks back, actually. This was shared by one of our owners. And then I just used it. I asked if we could use it. And this one.

Boom, boom. This is from YouTube. And this one has been viewed 1.9 million times. All right, Now, a lot of times, the ones that pop off are the ones that are semi controversial and get people kind of riled up a little bit. We can see here, like this one, for example. I have all these screens open. Sorry. This one, for example, 30,000 views in the past couple days. 1.9 million views total.

You can kind of see the engagement on the video, et cetera. This is the back end of YouTube Analytics. Again, you know, you don't get make any revenue off shorts, but it's more a matter of how do we create brand. I'm not really caring about the fact that they're carrying sod or that in this video. Oh, man. I keep thinking you're seeing what I'm looking at. Sorry, give me a second. Or that in this video here, that someone is seeing.

Me talk to a customer and have an experience with them. I'm not really too concerned about. What I am concerned about is the fact that they see that shirt right there, it says Augusta. They're seeing our branding of the ramp racks. They're seeing. All of that is branding. And so when you're getting something seen through 2, 3 million times, there's a lot of value to that. And so as time goes on, we will shift more and more to the consumer seeing this type of material. And I don't care if they think it's good or bad. It's about being known. The reason that great.

Personalities we all know about is because of the way they branded themselves. The reason Donald Trump became president was not because he was a good person or a great politician. It's because he's very, very good at marketing. He's very, very good at knowing what to say to get attention. And so regardless of whether it's good or bad attention, being known is extremely important, especially in a crowded marketplace. So in a crowded marketplace like lawn care and landscaping, getting known is much more important than being liked. And so these. These type of, like, you know, controversial shorts and things like that, it's Simply a matter of how do I get in front of eyeballs. And that's the type of stuff that I was talking about last night in terms of the next five years, focusing on how do we go from being known by landscapers, which we've accomplished, and how do we start recovering more where people actually know. Oh, Augusta, I've seen that. Like, I've seen that. That's a funny video. Things like that. And that's what our focus will be over the next five years, because that ultimately is what will bring customer acquisition down for all of us dramatically, because branding reduces it massively. Yes. Connor was the one.

Connor shared the video, and I asked him, like, hey, can I post this? And in the back of my mind, I'm like, there's going to be some roasting comments happening here of the carrying the sod to the back backyard. That was great, though. Let's go. Hey, we'll do it for a couple million views any day of the week, so cool. All right. There were some questions I haven't seen yet, but I saw there were, like, five of them. Let me go ahead and pull those up.

Boom.

All right, I think there's five of them. Yeah. Let me take these other windows down.

All right, zoom in. I recently completed a property cleanup job last week, and today I received a notice from Stripe. The customers claim that they did not receive the product and are speeding the $900 charge. Any suggestions on how to best handle this? I've had this happen once before and even sent in a copy of the signed invoice to Stripe as evidence. But this they disputed was ruled in their favor. How would you prevent the customer from taking advantage of me like this? Unfortunately, credit card processing companies are typically going to vote in the favor of the customer because ultimately they need the customer to use their Visa, MasterCard, American Express, whatever it might be. And we, as the vendors, just kind of fall in line with whatever they want. Unfortunately, like them, declining customer could potentially lead to them switching banks, switching credit cards. There's a lot more repercussions for them. Going against a customer versus a vendor like us, sending in just an invoice is never, ever going to fix it. Honestly, even doing what I'm about to tell you usually doesn't. Usually the customer. Based on What I've seen, 90% of the time, the customer wins. Now, if you want to actually dispute them and win it, you're gonna have to do more than just send an invoice. You're gonna have to send the estimate. You're gonna have to send for you. You're on Zooper. So you have a signed copy of the estimate. You have a signature on it and a date. I would screenshot every time they saw the estimate. That's when they signed the estimate. Any sort of correspondence back and forth. I would also make sure that you send pictures of the product being delivered, which is the installation of the product, before and after pictures. I would go to the customer's property and take pictures of whatever you did because if you did it last week, it still should probably look good. I would go to the property and start taking pictures and they're like, why are you on your property? Like, you disputed my charge. I have written evidence that says that I can be on the property and I'd be taking pictures of what was done. This is why taking pictures is important. Having trucks that are potentially being tracked that location and showing times that they were there, even if it's punching and punch out times of certain employees when they're on the property. Those are all the type of things that a credit card company is going to look at. Far more than just an invoice. Because anyone could just make up an invoice in QuickBooks, send it to them and it doesn't do anything. You got to prove that the product was delivered, right? And so that's going to come in the form of pictures. It's going to come in the form of correspondence from the customer that said the job was done or, or.

Referring to the job being completed. A walkthrough, something like that. Assigned estimate is like great. But it never actually, it never shows that the job was completed, the product was delivered. So you'll need pictures, you'll need evidence. You'll need evidence that the crew is there and that could be punch in and punch outs, that could be track trucks, et cetera. But still.

Credit card companies will usually rule in favor of the customer.

What systems would be required franchises to implement. If you could, from today's Brian video. Brian. Oh, there's an interview with Brian. Sorry.

If I could have any system required.

I would require coaching calls. I would require a certain close ratio at certain times and stages of the business.

Because momentum is so important at the beginning. I would require P4P as the company grows and I would require.

Simplified services and no, not changing P4P in the form of like salaries and modifying it a bunch. That would do the things I would require, basically the things I do at my locations.

Long question. Let's go. All right. Well, you can't see what. Oh, sick. Sorry guys. This is the last question. Boom. From Vlad that I just answered. Sorry about that. Let's go ahead to the next question. Boom.

All right, Garrett, I just had the employee that I hired last weekend to tell me today that tomorrow will be his last day. Oh no, this is probably the employee you and I talked about sick. He told me no amount of money is worth the work. I am trying to have guys work 4 nines or 4 tens so they don't get burnt out. This guy made 10, worked a 10 hour day on Monday and 11 hour a day yesterday. He averaged $74 per hour effective rate. He made almost $300 yesterday but said it wasn't worth the money and just working outside in the heat was too much. I currently have 35 to 45, 40 budget hours per week recurring, 79 clients of just mowing after speaking with Thomas and Lymelton. It sounds like guys are quitting at his location unless he has them work 7 or 8 hours per day in the heat. Has them only work. Okay. Would you recommend trying to go to five days at eight hours and not raising prices or canceling customers? Or would you recommend raising prices knowing a customer, couple customers will quit. But it'll help reduce our budgeted hours per week. I'm somewhat reluctant to raise prices because they are already priced well. We are hitting P4P and the grass isn't growing that much. On top of that, our quality has been so. So that last month and a half and a half due to the person personnel, medical stuff I've been going personal medical stuff I've been going going on in the background. A third alternative might be a hire one full time guy and one part time doing seven or eight day hours per day. Seven or eight hour days, six days a week. I have three to four applicants I'm working through right now. So. Yeah. So in your case, for everyone that doesn't know Garrett had some medicals in issues and is trying to get basically someone to cover for him. He just got started a few months ago, has ramped it up to 79 customers, which is great and has been growing a bunch. But now he cannot do the physical work for the next couple months, I believe. I think that was the fourth question from you. More context. It'll probably be another one and a half to two months before and if I am clear to do the field work again. So really you need a one and a half to two year band aid. Right. And so we talked about this together and you know, if someone's not money motivated like that individual that you just talked about was making 25, $30 an hour. Using that logic, that's gonna be a tough one. If they're not money motivated. They're like, hey, like, I just don't want to work out in the heat. I get it. This is reason why we switched back to five eights at the local shop. We tried four tens, but either A, people complain because there's such long days out in the heat, or B, if people don't show up, you're calling them for the fifth day anyways. So. But 10 hours in blazing heat or pouring down rain is extremely demoralizing. And people do start to question whether or not, whether or not the money is even worth it. And so that's something that we've had to deal with too. And it's not gonna get any easier to find people because people are literally less money motivated and more concerned about, you know, their, you know, not being out in the sun, not working too hard, things like that. And it's not to look down on that. It's just a matter of they're less. People are less inclined to put in the work and the boring work and the hard work for a few years of their life to get started. And they usually job hop like 20 times over the course of a few years. So my recommendation on this would be to go to five, five eights. I would be trying to find a full timer that can get most of those mows done and then someone that can help potentially two or three days a week on things like projects or wrapping up the mowing. So if someone could work say Thursday, Friday and Saturday, or even Thursday, Friday, and they're like a student, like, people always think, oh, I got off full time. There's a lot of people that want part time work, that want a certain schedule, and if you advertise it, you'll probably land somebody. So I would try to go for someone full time and then someone part time as well. The nice thing about in this case, Garrett, is that you able to still manage them. Even though you can't do the physical work, you can still be there, you can be around them, you can manage the projects, be around the guys a lot. And so you don't need someone that's going to run the whole show. And unfortunately, I know that guy we had talked about.

He had that caliber. But unfortunately.

Obviously he's not the most money motivated person.

But yeah, the 10 hour, 12 hour days are going to kill people, heat or in the rain. Ken from Michigan, I'm losing More customers reoccurring money than I'm gaining. I'm physically unable to do many of the projects that would normally come my way. Health issues. What can I do to get more customers? So. Oh, sorry, I keep forgetting to share this. Sorry.

So I don't think getting more customers is the issue. I think there's two things. Number one is you're not able to do projects that normally come. I'm physically unable to do many of the projects that normally come away. Yeah, you're unable to do the projects right now because you. Sorry, I'm looking here. I'm trying to understand this question.

Yeah, so I would focus. Number one, like this time of year, we're going to lose recurring mowing customers because the grass is going to be more dormant and when it dries out, you're going to lose some recurring customers. That being said, I'm physically unable to do many of the projects. So what you're saying is you can't switch to projects right now. Got it.

This is potentially when you'd be looking for someone that is part time that could work with you on a project and do the physical, the demanding work. Because right now trying to get more recurring mowing customers, you're just pushing against demand. Like people don't need. They're not trying to find a mowing service right now, they're trying to get projects done. And so I would be inclined to try to get your mowing done in a few days because there's less of them and then find out someone that you can hire that on a mulch job does the heavy lifting, the heavy work, and you're able to just kind of do maybe the raking out of the mulch around the bushes, for example. I'd be really trying to figure out how can I get someone to work with me part time that can do the heavy stuff on a project because that's what you're able to sell. Right. So I'd rather sell into demand instead of trying to sell something that people don't need right now, which is mowing service and more recurring work. Otherwise your customer acquisition cost will be super high compared to what you could spend otherwise. Going on getting a project, spending some money on an employee to be able to do the heavier lifting side. Right. So if you like, for example, mulch, have that person be bringing the loads of mulch. You're doing the raking around the bushes. If you are doing a property cleanup, you're trimming the bush, they're the ones hauling it to the debris pile. And throwing it in the back of the truck, whatever it might be. But don't try to fight natural demand in the market by saying, oh, I want more mowing customers. At a time when most people are not thinking about mowing, your customer acquisition cost will be really, really high.

How do you guys keep the trucks clean? We don't have any water access at our shop, but we do at my house, 10 minutes away. Can you take a ramp rack truck through a car wash? I've never taken a ramp rack through a car wash. I feel like that would probably be a bad idea. I've never done it. It depends on what type. I guess if it was a, a laser one, like didn't have any of the spinning things, you'd probably be okay. But one of the spinning ones I'd be somewhat apprehensive to take through. But I have to ask our crew. I feel like they might have done it before. I don't know though, honestly, like if you washed your outside your truck with water every couple of weeks, you're probably going to be okay. Like we didn't have water access for quite a while. Then we got water access brought in for a few thousand bucks. But usually if you wash your truck every few weeks during the dry season, it's usually just dust, honestly. So if you can drive it 10 minutes away and wash off, that'd be fine. But ideally.

Ideally you could take it to one of those.

Self wash car wash places like where you have a wand and everything. That would probably be the most ideal if you don't want to have to set up your house with bringing the trucks in and washing them all. And you got clippings everywhere. I'd go to one of those places where hopefully they have, where you drive in, you have a wand, you have a brush and just take them there every couple weeks. That's what I would do. That's what I did back in the day. Cool. Awesome. Hope you all having a fantastic day. Happy Wednesday and we'll see you tomorrow.