Mike Minutes Mastermind 07/17/2023

All right, we are live. Hope everyone's doing super well.

Which is wrapping up training last Friday but we're back in the saddle and let me just go ahead and put this into the Facebook group.

Great group came out last week for training. All of them were growth models. Just a really great, great group. Locations as large as almost doing 800,000 already and then some brand newbies. So really good group. Yeah. So let's go get started. I had two people on the weekend separately message me or email me and say they like the education part of these masterminds the most and like me just rambling and talking about what I'm learning. So. So I will try occasionally to be to share those sort of things and I usually just keep track of my phone and stuff I'm learning and stuff. So I will occasionally share some stuff. I will try to do that more often. If you guys like it, let me know. If not, just skip the education parts. So let's see, let's see what I got right now.

A few of my musings. Let's actually quickly go over a couple housekeeping stuff. One second. Let's do this. Announcements Franchise Advisory Council votes are pretty much in. Almost everyone voted. So thank you very much for your involvement there.

I wanted to clarify one thing and that is I understand that like the Franchise Advisory Council right now the way we vote is like really basic and simple and we, we. I have unpurposely done this just to keep it, keep it simple but down the road we will have where it's more of a rolling like a two year commitment and only half of the this, the board, you know, the advisory council seats come up available for voting so that there's less changes. I think you guys, based on what I've seen so far in the voting, there's not going to be a lot of changes. Most of the time the people that are most involved, they're the ones who continue to be more involved and helping Rangers. It's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. And then there's certain Franchise Advisor Council members that don't want to continue being in that role mostly due to the fact that either A they might feel like they're not as connected as they should be or they just don't have the time for it in terms of making sure they're connected and hearing from their and they just rather not be and that's fine. So right now it's been self kind of self. It's going to work out just fine. But in the future we'll make sure. There's more rules around that. And even in terms of like, can you vote people back out of the Franchise Advisory Council, things like that. I wanted to clarify though on that is the Franchise Advisory Council does not make decisions. They advise me as to my decisions. And so it is a sounding board for me to be able to get what the thoughts are of the franchisees without opening it up for dialogue to hundreds of people, which in which case nothing gets done. So that's really what the Franchise Advisor Council exists for. They do not make decisions. I make the decisions. I need a sounding board to be able to prevent.

Me making incorrect decisions or decisions that are biased without thinking about a broader perspective as owners. And furthermore, in any organization, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, I would want whoever was really helped. And so it's been really helpful for me this past year. But I just want to clarify, the Francis Advisor Council board, they cannot. There's no decision making process. It is an advisory role and that is to make sure that the things that I am doing and saying are alignment with what the owners are thinking and they do not have any vetoing power. I can veto something that potentially they are bringing forward. But usually what happens and what is the whole reason for an advisory board in general is to have where I'm thinking over here, they're thinking over here and it's okay. Where's the commonality and brings it more of a balanced decision making process, which is leads to much more consistent frameworks for us all to kind of work the brand inside of. So just want to make sure that's clear. There is nothing that like there someone was concerned that if someone got in that was bad, they could vote things in that are like bad. It's not going to happen. I can, I will and have vetoed stuff. It is an advisory role because I do really care about what everyone's thinking and I don't want to be in a silo outside of the owners because that's ultimately why a Gust nation exists. So that's the first thing. Second thing, that kind of reminds me about the Thursday roundtable that is coming up on this coming Thursday. I sent everyone a invite for the Zoom call and it should be in your email. All right, let's go. I had to come up with musings here. One thing I was thinking about, and I'll just be honest, these are things I just think about and I write down. So if you don't like them, that's fine. Just, just skip the education parts. I was thinking about the whole premise of, like, what get, get got you here will not get you to the next stage in terms of size of business, any sort of personal development. And I think that's true. What I. What I also think, though, is abandoning what got you to this position will lead you to going back to where you were before. And so a lot of times people think that, oh, if I've grown my business, say, from zero to 500,000, I should abandon all strategies that I've used in the past and move something else. Because, like, that is important. And although you need a change in focus, it does not mean you abandon the things that have got you to where you're currently at.

I was thinking about this from two different angles. One is we've had two owners that have left Augusta Nation, and I keep tabs on, like, how they're doing. And I always. I'm not very, like, voting or like, hoping they do poorly, but both of them have gone out of business and both of them left with the anticipation that they were going to go do it on their own. And it's not to say that I certainly would not hope that they would do poorly, but it is the idea that if I grow and then I move on to something else, or I leave Augusta, or I leave the system and start doing things differently, that I can continue to the next level of success. When in reality, what is required is to take what you've built built and build your skill set on top of it. So, for example, when someone grows from 0 to 500,000, I always say it's all about sales. And then I say, after 500,000, it really depends based upon your leadership ability, hiring, firing, and your ability to lead a team. It does not mean you should abandon sales. It does not mean that you should abandon what's gotten you to 500,000. Because now you might be trying to become a Great Leader at 5, 6, 700,000, but if all of a sudden your lead flow drops, your close ratio drops and you stop following and you're gonna get stuck. So now what happens? You'll get stuck at 5, 600,000, thinking, oh, man, I gotta work on this leadership thing. In reality, you've abandoned the thing that got you to 500,000. So it is not a matter of replacing your focus. It is a matter of building on top of your focus that's gonna allow you to continue to scale and grow. And so I'm very interested about this, like, cause obviously, the gusta, as you all know, like, there is nothing that is holding anyone back from leaving and starting their own thing. And so when, when the reason everyone thought this was crazy, when we first started Augusta Nation, this is just my thoughts. So, again, take it for it's worth. I'm always thinking about, okay, like.

Like all, all the attorneys, they said, the last thing you want to do is build a system that allows people to grow a business and then they can leave and there's no penalty. And.

And so I've always been, okay, let's see what happens. Because there's been two people have done that, and.

In both cases, it is a matter of leaving. What has got you to where you're at and then thinking that you can continue on is the recipe for disaster. Because what got you to where you're at today needs to be built on top of. So your skill set, your ability to sell, your ability to do all the things that got you work, grind hard, get the business off the ground is still going to be required if you're going to take the business for 500,000, a million or a million plus, or do multiple locations or whatever it is. And so that was some of my musings. I had thought about one last musings.

Education, whatever you want to call it. This is more of a personal thing I was thinking about, and that is we all try to be successful, right? Make more money, whatever, as business owners and, you know, following content or trying to improve yourself, whatever. What I think I find really, really fascinating about Western society and where we're going is now it's a matter of if you really hit it out of the park and do a really good job of what you're actually trying to do. It's weird. Now, you, like, that's bad. And I think it's like a very good inclination as to the decline of a society or an empire is when success is looked down on and.

It has become more commonplace. And I felt it more of myself in terms of, like, everything that we're all striving for and achieving for. And then when you hit it out of the park and you crush it, it's like, well, don't be too successful. Like, you don't want to have too much money. Like, then it's not fair. Like, you should then give that to other people. And so I find it very fascinating, the weird juxtaposition in Western society that we've created and that is we all are trying to achieve something that if you actually get it, you're actually going to be looked down on. It's very weird, very strange.

Even Howard Schultz was getting questioned by the House of Representatives a few months ago, and.

One of the Representatives said something condescending as like, oh, you're a billionaire, so therefore you are less than. And like, immediately, he, he, he, he switched. He says, like, look, that is the benchmark of which our society, everyone's trying to go for. So when someone hits that, like, why is that looked down on?

And everyone's like, well, no, no, we're not trying to be billionaires. Like, well, you're trying to make money. So if you do really good job at that goal, guess what happens? You become a billionaire. And so somehow in our society, we flipped it to where now it's not a matter of us looking down on people who don't have any ambition or don't have any drive or don't want to get a job or whatever. We definitely flipped it to where once you achieve what everyone else is trying to strive for, now you're looked down on. It's weird. It's a weird feeling to like, have, have money and not want to appear like you have it. It's, it's the weirdest thing, like a switch. So, anyways, those are my musings. All right, let's move on.

Present Share Screen.

All right, first one. Garrett, Glendale, Colorado. I'm wanting to test Angie's leads this month so that we can potentially use it in winter if work is sparse. I've used Home Advisor, Prior, Augusta. In my experience, if you don't get on the lead within five minutes, a waste of money Is Command center trained to receive the automated call from Home Advisor and use as made when a lead is submitted and then call the client to the OTP and set up a drive by, or is that something we have to do?

Okay, so I'm assuming there's an automated call coming from Angie's List, our Home Advisor that gives you the lead. I have not dealt with this personally, so I do not know what that sounds like. I do not know why they would not send us an email instead of a recorded phone call. It seems extremely antiquated, especially for contractors that are out in the field. So I can't give a whole lot of feedback on that. I know that there are multiple owners that do Home Advisor and Andy's list, and I have heard Command center talk about these. So whether or not this is the automated call you're talking about.

I just also think that they must have an email option. So I can leave this to Liz if she wants to comment this in the comments as to what, whether or not we're trained specifically on automated calls from Home Advisor, Angie's List, but I would imagine there's an email version if you're talking about like speed of getting to it though, and like the phone is the best option. I would imagine at command center, if we have someone's contact information and what services they're wanting, we would be able to take that, no problem. And I know there are owners that are using it. Devin from Red Deer. Do you know how much collections affect Your credit score? 150,25 really depends on a whole bunch of things. So there's really. It's not a percentage, it's a weighting. Right? So if someone goes into collections of certain percentage of your credit score is determined by if you go overdue, if you go bankrupt, things like that. So it's a percent. It's not really a, like a, a point amount. It's usually a percentage basis. And it also depends, like, how high are you? Like if you're, if you're 820 and you have an overdue bill, it might take it down 100 points. If you're at 550 right now, it might take you down 20 points if you have an overdue bill. So it's all very, very relative. There's always like, there's like gazillion videos of all the different factors that go into credit score, but it's not a defined point value system. Ken from Michigan. I have a question about W9. I know if a commercial account asks for it, you are required to give it, but what if a residential customer asks for it? To me, this seems like an unnecessary step and is a red flag that they may be too picky. But I could be wrong. You know, there's a lot of residential ask for it because it kind of proves that you're actually a legitimate company. I would, I would. I'm providing it. We always have a W9 set aside just to be able to send to someone. It's a matter of there's other red flags in addition to that. Then maybe you start thinking about it. But if someone is asking for this, it's likely that they are not going to be going with the lowest bidder because they're going to be looking for people who are licensed and insured and registered correctly.

Ken from Fenton, Michigan. I had another potential customer tell me that you do not have to charge a sales tax in the state of Michigan for a service. I looked it up and they are correct. Should I go back through all my customers that I have been Charging and remove the sales tax. If so, how do I remove it permanently from Super? As long as you've been handing that sales tax over to the state, I would not worry about going back and trying to retroactively refund people. If you, as long, as long as you've been giving that state, that money to the government, you will be have all sorts of criminal charges. If you are collecting taxes that are not supposed to be taxed and then not giving that to the government, you will get in a lot of trouble. In terms of removing it from super, just go into your services and you should be able to remove that service, the taxes from that service. So it's not, they're not being put on there.

And for anyone listening you should just call your department of revenue and ask do you need to charge sales tax for any specific service and give them okay, what about. Because in some states you have to charge on mowing and you don't have to charge on projects or vice versa. And so that's why almost every CRM is going to have a taxable setting for every single service. And so that's what should be determined. We have a thing inside of.

Called tax rates. Oh man, I forget the plugin we use in Copilot that based upon their address we can usually pull most of the tax information. However there even that one's still occasionally wrong because people because states will change what is tax and what is not sometimes and you know, be behind. So you can still change it at this the service level but based upon the address it will usually be pretty accurate in terms of what needs to be taxed. The part that gets hairy is when some services require and others don't. Because like in Washington state any Service is taxed 100 so it's super basic. Some states though require construction and they consider things like anything landscape or project related and then anything recurring or maintenance related is considered non taxable. So just call your Department of Revenue and literally in 10 minutes you'll have an exact answer. Assuming that they pick up the phone. After they pick up the phone in 10 minutes you'll have it. There you go. Sandwich, Michigan or Sandwich, Massachusetts. Jeff. Hey Mike, Please go over your systems and process for paying someone by the hour for door hangers number you expect hang per hour close ratio. Any other metric you pay attention to. How long are you willing to pay someone to do this to see it not working out? I'm probably not. I'm kind of going to do this with a team member as scheduled work is dwindling yeah check out the video I made.

Two weeks ago and I put it in the academy and I think I call it like door hanger math and I went through all of these things in terms of like I would expect to pay them a little bit above base pay so I can get a good candidate. I would then pay them between 5 and $20 per lead or customer So I would rather give someone like say $5 per lead and then $10 per paid customer so there's some incentive for them to make sure that people actually do become customers.

And then.

In terms of it not working out you just got to know the math right. So for example if like someone goes out for eight hours and you don't get a single lead like if that happens for two days I'm probably going to can them maybe three because it's so direct marketing like as soon as the customer gets it I should be able to have a lead. So assuming that the person like if we.