Mike Minutes Mastermind 07/14/22

Hello, Guess nation. Let's go ahead and get started. Let's go ahead and jump right into questions. I saw a couple of them and they seem like they're really good. So let's go ahead and get started on those. Let me share my screen.

All right.

First question is from Max Harwood. Random question. Did you find out about Alex Hormozi because you own a gym and were connected with that world Also, did you ever join Gym Launch?

So I heard about Alex, yeah, back when I owned a gym. But what was funny is I actually heard about him originally because other gym owners were saying the stuff that he was doing they didn't agree with in part because the way that he runs his six week challenges for gyms is, was new several years ago and that was you do a six week challenge, you basically advertise as a free challenge. And what you do is you charge say 400 bucks. The six week challenge is you get your money back at the end of six weeks if you lose £20. So it's like a weight loss challenge, basically, and you get the training three times a week, you get the diet and accountability side of things. But he would advertise as free because at the end of that six weeks, if you didn't lose your £20, you could take the sum that you paid and put it towards a 12 month agreement of training. So it was free. It was very controversial several years ago in the gym community because it's kind of like false advertising because it's not free, but you get your money back if you keep training. So it was very slow to take and there were a lot of people that didn't like it. Some people did like it. Obviously it worked and it really proved how much free, the power of free and just how much more of a conversion you have. And I've actually played with several years ago with trying to use that in the lawn care side of things and trying to how do we take free and still make it.

Make it an appealing offer that could work inside of our world. It's just much more difficult because you, in a gym and setting, you have high fixed cost and low.

Variable cost. In other words, you have big rent expense, you have trainers that you already have working, you have equipment is a big, you know, you spend 7, $800,000 building out the gym. So there's a lot of fixed expenses and your variable costs are lower. Whereas in lawn care and landscaping, your variable expenses are really high, which means giving away something for free. You're, you're actually giving away A lot. It's not like you're just giving away another spot. Thank you sir. On you know, an endless amount that you can give away because there's so much more variable cost in terms of labor and the supplies and materials inside the landscape world. But I heard about him quite, quite a while back when he was a very controversial figure.

So yeah, if you watch the Layla Hormozi video tomorrow, it comes out. She and I talked off camera a little bit about that, specifically the gym and everything. So yeah, tomorrow I was pretty vulnerable with her honestly because they obviously have a lot of experience with companies that are in our size, which is kind of a weird size of business. You're not small business anymore, but you're not a massive corporation. And so I was able to pick her brain and be somewhat vulnerable. Interview just to kind of actually learn a little bit. So that was good. Evansville context for listeners New franchise still merging over some customers to new systems. We now only accept credit cards on file or pre made prepayment for commercial. We have a handful of customers who pay by check and want a physical invoice mailed to them. We use the service autopilot USPS option for these individuals and they used to pay within 5, net 5 or 7 but lately all these individuals are paying net 10 to 15. They give us a lot of work, just old school, probably about 5k per month in just these 5 or 6 individuals. Makes me wonder if a mail system, if it's a mail system issue or SA issue considering it's all five or six of them instead of just one or two of them. I have drastically seen slower mail times since the elections. Just my own thinking. I wonder if they just had never really recover from that massive task and it being around Christmas time and all as well. So I'm not an expert in this field but I do know that in October the usps, the Postal Service basically came out and said hey, we're going to increase delivery times in order to save costs. And so they increased what is the expected arrival times of most mail by a few days. So that's probably playing into it. I know they did the same thing in April. The USPS is extremely inefficient as a government program. Honestly FedEx and UPS run laps around them in terms of efficiency. So you know, I don't expect them to honestly be around in 10 or 15 years because they're bankrupt and they lose money and yet they still have a monopoly on having a mailbox in every address and they still can't figure out how to become profitable. So yeah, they just extended out how long their mailings are going to take. So I think it was in October it started and they did another one in April. So like first class is now like three to five days and like they moved everything out. So I would imagine it's something along these lines on that one.

Nick, can you teach us about, can you teach us how a balance sheet works and how to read one? I know there's very few people talk about this and I know nothing about it. Yeah, no one talks about because boring is all. Get out. Let me quickly show you one thing here. I can do maybe a more in depth video next week, Nick, on this topic. But.

Basically I won't try to draw this out. I'll do it next week. But basically a balance sheet, you have your assets and your liabilities and assets must equal your liabilities. And cash can be on either side of those equations. It can be an asset or it can be a liability, depending if it's a loan like you, it gets a little bit convoluted. So if you really want a deep dive on it, honestly Nick, I would recommend go to the MBA for Entrepreneurs course. I do like four or five different lectures on this and explain it from a very, very simplistic standpoint and then ramp it up. So I started with like a lemonade stand and how like inventory, it moves from one side of the balance sheet to the other side, etc.

But the basic gist of a balance sheet is when you start balancing everything out, your, your assets have to equal your liabilities. If those are in, in, in check or in balance, then you're out of balance. That's what a balance sheet is. Assets equals liabilities and making sure those things are all squared away. Typically when people talk about balancing the books, they're also talking about ensuring that their QuickBooks or their software is in sync or is balanced with their bank accounts.

Which is typically just kind of rechecking all the categorization of different transactions. But a balance sheet is assets on one side, liabilities on the other. They must equal the same at the end of the day.

So I can maybe next week do a little bit more of a deeper dive on this, Nick. But everyone here has free access to MBA for entrepreneurs. Just use the coupon code Augustination. One word and there is at least three to four videos. There might be like five or ten videos about a balance sheet because I started it with a little someone like starting a lemonade stand and where someone gave them a Loan and it started on one side. It moves from an asset to a liability as they get cash. Where that cash goes as you buy supplies and materials, how that all works. So it's actually really interesting. The thing is as you scale and grow, especially with debt and especially with when you start amortizing things, all that fun jazz, that's when our balance sheet gets beyond even what I like to even deal with. Like now with my companies having like where we have I'm loaning 11.

I actually like do a personal loan to myself and all that sort of thing. It gets very convoluted. And so I don't even touch my balance sheet anymore. I just have my the accountant balance in each every quarter.

But it's good to understand how to do it with our locations. Transition to credit card on file and with Zooper adding mandatory cards on file. How do we navigate commercial work typically requires a longer payment terms. Net 15 is the longest we allow. I have had success with requiring the first payment down and then we bill from there. It's not a complete thought yet, but how do we navigate this? So I haven't actually done this, to be perfectly honest with you, and that is my take on this is that just doing ACH is where we want to be moving towards. So there's no checks. If someone has sends you a check, you can theoretically just take the account number and the routing number and the account number and you should be able to run an ACH transfer inside of Stripe. And so currently Zooper doesn't have it as a portal right now where the client can add in their bank account information. I know they're working on that, but even if they didn't, if you only had a few customers, I would personally, once we're everyone switch over to super next year, I would just go into Stripe, charge their account. You can add ACH to a customer's profile and then. And then mark the invoices paid. I have not done that though, to be perfectly honest, inside of Zooper using that software. But I've done ACH transfers quite frequently inside of Stripe. And that's just a matter of it's very, very simple. It's super easy and it's cheaper. So I'd be trying to do that. I'd tell the person like hey, if you if it has to come out of a bank account because the property manager or commercial account, great. But we're going to charge ach. We just need a routing number and account number.

And maybe you know, send that first page, first check in we'll take the account information off of that check and that's where we're going to process going forward. So I would be trying to move in that direction. You're always going to have that one or two people. One or two people, like no, we got to have a printed off copy, whatever it might be. And that's when it's just a matter of, you know, do you want to service them? And if you do, then you're just gonna have to put up with the different payment terms and you'd want to bake that into your pricing. So. Cool. Got another question here. I haven't visited the course in a while. Great idea. Cool. Will Zooper have a tag system? Could have a tag for commercial clients exempt from CC on file so they can accept an estimate. Oh, that's a good question.

They do have a tag system. They do. But.

I will be seeing. This is a good question.

Because there might be occasional customers you don't want to have where you require credit card on file. I would say in that case, honestly what I would do if it's so one off that you would just contact the client or even put it on the estimate, say credit card is not required on file. Please email us if you'd like to accept this quote so we can get your ACH transfer.

Process. That being said, I don't think they have this now where the tags are going to align with who requires a credit card on file, but it could definitely happen. It's just a matter of I don't think that that's currently there. But they do have a tag system. Yes, they do. And then that second part though, I don't think. I know they don't have a tie right now, but definitely something that could be probably made, I'm sure on there next year.

Good question. But I think, I think the workaround until it was fixed would be to.

Basically put it in the estimate that credit card is not required in order to accept this job. Please email us at because typically whoever is requiring a printed invoice, they're old school enough to also want to email you back and tell you or call you and accept the estimate over the phone or over email. So cool. All right, that's all I got for today. Hope you're all doing super well. Good reminder though to check out MBA for entrepreneurs. Any of my videos online, just go to the in the links, click on that at the checkout. Just put augustination and hop in there. I haven't added a whole lot of courses since January February. But one good section in there, definitely. There's like a couple hundred videos at least in there. One of them is about balance sheets. So it's pretty hot. Kind of higher level theoretical business stuff. But part of that is balance sheets. And I think it's a good. A good one to learn on. So take care, everyone.