Mike Minutes Mastermind 07/22/22

Good morning, Augusta Nation. Hope you're all doing super well. Couple things I said yesterday, today I'll be trying to get that one click estimate email finalized for the Christmas lights. Again, we have it in service. Autopilot. I'm just trying to get Zooper wrapped up. They have their new editor, and there's just a few little tweaks on there I need them to do because it's not yet done. So that will hopefully come out today. I'm sorry for the delay. And then we did have a meeting yesterday with the web development team about creating that landing page. And Ryan Payne sent me over what has been created in the past by their other provider. And we'll try to basically rip that off for the web page. We actually found some ways we could actually improve it. So the design will be matching Augusta's kind of overall arching. It doesn't look like a completely different website when you go there, so that'll be good.

Other announcements? I don't think I had any. Let's go ahead and jump into questions.

Oh, yeah, I did have one more thing I was gonna go over. Okay, cool. Let me go ahead and pull up these questions and then I'll go over one more announcement. I wanted to go over what we're. What we're learning at Command center in terms of making sure that we have enough capacity, but then also balance that we don't have too many people and we can actually make it a sustainable thing. So what we are doing is what we're seeing now because this is now our second year of really doing full service and, like seeing a full spring rush. And obviously spring rush is our most busy time. So Liz and I have been talking a lot. We were able to talk a lot on the trip to Memphis. And what we're thinking of doing is actually using a lot of contract labor. Not contract labor, temporary labor for about four to five months out of the year. And we'd have this rigorous thing where it's like you get trained for one month and then you get four months. Basically you're on the phone, you're doing everything. The reason for that is because Command center, like when you guys, when a location gets a new customer in spring, you know, you mow them the rest of the year, but you shouldn't really hear from them a whole lot. There shouldn't be a lot of questions back and forth. You don't have to do estimates all the time. It's really that spring rush where you get a ton of estimates, a ton of phone calls, and then it slowly kind of peters off throughout the rest of the year. What that creates the command center is the fact that we don't keep that customer. And in terms of them keep calling and more emails and all the rest that goes away. So we have this intensified and even like a magnified aspect of spring rush because we have to have enough capacity in terms of people answering the phone and emails and all the rest of it during spring rush. But then after that, it drops off really hard. So even right now, we have people. We have volunteer where we let people go home early. And we also have. We fired several of the. All the lowest performers are all gone. So it's just a matter of the massive drop that we see after spring rush is tough. And so it's always been really hard to be like, okay, because I've always thought more of the mindset of like out in the field, like where you want to keep the guys year round and all the rest of it. So what we're going to be working on is next spring rush, making it where that spring rush. So February, we train them March, April, May and June is when it's just netbar factor six. That's when they would be working and we would simplify it to where we could train them up in four weeks instead of taking a couple months to really get them all on full service and knowing everything about it. So that's what we're working on. On the backend Command center is currently now taking this opportunity that it is slowing down for them to be able to all get trained up on Zooper so that at conference they are very, very apt and ready to switch over, but more importantly, able to answer your questions when you're trying to switch over your client base and all the rest of it. So that's what they're working on right now. And I think it's going to help with transition significantly. All right, let's jump into questions.

Answer these ones here. First question, how many square foot. How many square foot does the $40 mo cover at Bellingham? So I think we might have moved this to 45. Now, I don't. Don't quote me. I apologize for not knowing this, but the Bellingham shop has recently raised all their price by $5 a square foot. So I think they raised this to 45. I could be wrong, but I know that the minimum is.

4,000 square feet. Is the minimum. So the minimum used to be as of like, I know a couple months ago, 40, 60. And that was for 4,000 square feet. And when I say 40, 60. I mean weekly, bi weekly. Used to be that. I think they've increased it since then.

Will it be an easy transition to Zooper, where CC can import all customers, jobs, et cetera? Not jobs, but it will import Office notes and custom fields. So this is what we are working on right now. See how much data we can extract out of service Autopilot. At the very height we're obviously going to lose credit cards. I'm not really too concerned about that, honestly, because we're doing it at the time of year when you go into Spring Rush, there'll just be a button that says they can put their card information on. And with Stripe, it's so much easier than Clearant. They don't have to do passwords and all the rest of it. Like, literally at Command center, like, I would say 20% of the questions in Spring Rush, when people were getting ramped up was just like, my password, I can't log in, I can't pay. Like, people calling all the time. And it's a waste of all of our time and money. So all that to say we can import customers. Yes. And we can import office notes, which is a huge win. I didn't think we could do this, but you can. And so we're figuring out how to import it correctly because we can export it out of service Autopilot, which, by the way, I'm kind of amazed that they allow that because, yeah, most softwares do not want you to export information because they know you're taking it to another provider. But jobs, no. And so we're gonna have a sequence of, okay, what do you do? That's why we're all going to switch over at once. And we're all going to do it in January. So that way it is for most of us, not Spring Rush. It's not like we're crazy busy. You're gonna have the least amount of jobs that need to actually be put back up on the schedule. So we'll have a sequence on how to do that. All right.

Does everyone have to switch to Zooper? You do not have to, but if you want to use Command center after in next year, you will have to. Because otherwise, if people call, we will not know what's going on. The response time. Just. Just by having the Ring Central integration on super, we're able to pick up phone calls one second earlier, one to two seconds earlier at Command Center. So the tip feature is 100% already ready to go, Kevin, and is already integrated thoroughly into Zooper.

We removed every mention, the Client portal. Yeah, like we talked about on the Facebook group. It's like being tech support for a bunch of 16, 70 year olds is not easy. Oh, man. Some of the funniest things, I would walk through Command center and just hear people talking like, okay, Mr. Jones, so on the left hand side. No, no, no, no. Not outside of your window. Inside of the window you're open. Like on the browser. In the left hand corner of that. Oh, that's my start. That's like the start menu. No, no, no, that's on your toolbar. It was hilarious. Anyways, okay, let's jump into questions.

As we get closer, by the way, to January, I will have more and more information about that transition to super. But there will absolutely be training prior to conference that I'll make sure everyone, excuse me. Is aware of and able to listen to. So you're already kind of know where things are at and stuff like that. Let me just be very clear. If you know how to figure out service autopilot, you will figure out zooper in a flash. Right now we are training people at command center and within one day they are up to speed. And every single person at command center sees the potential of it, number one. And number two, gets trained up super quickly because stuff is so much more. There's not 10 ways to do every single thing. And now what that makes is less flexible software. And that's why servers all py. In my opinion, the past has been so great is because it's super flexible. You can make it really whatever you want. The problem is it is there's 10 different ways to do every single thing. And it leads a lot of owners I've seen going down rabbit trails and wasting a lot of time, as well as.

The learning curve being massive for people getting started. I usually see owners, their biggest struggle is service autopilot. For the first six months of owning Augusta Lawn Care. And that's not how it should be. It should be like, hey, this thing on the side helps me. It doesn't like. It's not a pain in the butt for the first six months.

Is there going to be a worse franchise? I don't know who this is, but that's funny. Who is this?

Oh, man. Let me refresh. Sorry, I got to see who this is.

Forest. Oh, man. Gotta love it. Okay. All right, back to the form. It's a Friday. Let's go. Add to stream. Here we go. There's five questions that came in. First one is Vlad.

Sorry, I haven't read through these yet today, but I will jump in. My only employee is interested in health insurance. Is there any percent you can recommend for employer to cover cost only QuickBooks I can choose what percent I cover each month and employee pays remainder. For example, I can cover 50% each month and company pays only pays 148. Would this be smart to retain employees? You know what, to be perfectly honest, I think health insurance in the lawn care landscaping industry is more of an attraction tool to be able to pull people in. Very few people actually use it because most people that are in this income bracket are also able to get free insurance or very subsidized insurance from the state. And so it's very hard to compete. It's impossible to compete with that in terms of your rates for whatever policy you do get, whether it be from QuickBooks or another provider. So you know, we currently.

We cover the first $200 a month and the reason we don't do a percentage is because it then depends on what plan they have. And it depends on if they add sibling, if they have.

Kids or wife, or if they want to add more to their policy. So what we do is just every Single employee gets $200 per month towards whatever plan they want. So they have three different plans, they can choose whichever one they want. The reason I do that is that the way I'm not paying more for another person because they want a $600 incredible plan and then someone else just wants to get by with a $200 plan, right? So I just have hey, up to $200 a month, I will cover that. That is very generous compared to most because if you're doing 50%, you could probably get away with like $150 as the bonus. The only reason this is considered a benefit is because it's a non taxable event for the employee and you can still write it off. That's why it's a benefit. But again for the actual guys in the field, like command center eats up health insurance, like they love it, but the office, most of them are a little bit older, etc. But the guys out in the field working like frontline employees that are just getting started out of school, whatever it might be. Most of them don't know really what health insurance is. Never go to the doctor. And three, they already have great insurance plans through their state. So that's what we've done. Literally out of the 20 guys at the local shop, I would say two, maybe two of them actually take advantage of health insurance. So. And then what's nice, what is nice though about retention is you can have after like 90 days, that's when it kicks in, allowing it to be more of a retention tool. So I think it's more of an attraction tool and then slight retention. But it's not.

Everyone. You can talk about it in the interview and it sounds really good, basically, but very few people actually use it. You emphasize living frugally. What point do you think you'll pivot and stop living in a closet? So I have two houses, right? So I have the house in Bellingham. It's a one bedroom apartment. And then I'm here in where the closet's at, right? I'm back and forth all the time. It's not a great lifestyle, honestly. I always forget stuff in between. But it's the most efficient, right? Because the, the way that our county is set up, I can kind of be around all the different offices. And it also allows me to record late at night in a commercial building. So in terms of frugality, it's really not. It's not frugal to have two locations, but it's the most efficient for me right now. And if and if push came to shove, I would probably not. I'd probably turn my air, my one bedroom apartment to an Airbnb and just live here because I could definitely make that work. So it's not frugal what I'm doing right now with having two locations. But. But it's the most efficient and it allows me to be 30 minutes south, which is close to the Mount Vernon location, right next to the Bellingham shop. So just really, it's more of an efficiency. Sam, I. I would rather have my current position now than go and getting a really nice condo on the water. I just would. So in terms of pivoting out of frugality, like, I don't think frugality is something I'm forcing myself into. I really don't think I'll ever be spending a lot of money. It just. I realize it doesn't bring me a lot of joy when client. When clients who are signed up for weekly mowing call into Skip a Mo command, will modify the mowing schedule, will not add a one off MO at the bi weekly rate. Any way to avoid this? Max, if you could send me a screenshot of the one that you were talking about, that'd be very helpful.

Because what I'm thinking is happening here because they should be that that's what should happen when someone cancels a one off. What could be happening here is because of the scheduling thing, they Might not be touching that. So please send me a screenshot of this specific one. Max, if you have that, that'd be great. Just email it to me and then we can address this. I will actually make a note of this for their meeting today as well to make sure that we have a system in process for this. I know that we're supposed to be though I apologize that I'm not always right in the sharp. I'm not the sharpest when it comes to Command center those v really detailed stuff because I'm not in there every single day for 10 hours a day like I was in Spring Rush. But I know that is supposed to be happening and I will communicate that across. Is there a way or could it be set up for someone at Command center to take weed take to take or weed through indeed applicants and see if they're they would be worth doing a phone interview or taking the next step in the process. Don't just don't seem to have the time to look through all the applications each day seeing which ones are worth calling, screening, then setting up phone interview or working interview. This would be an ala carte service that Command center could take off our plate, screen the applications to make sure they are they fit our needs, then giving them a call to make sure they fit already. So this is what I would recommend because Command center does this quite often actually. And it's not like it's a separate service. This is something that on full service you could reach out to your people on Connecteam and ask them to do and this time of year they're going to be able to do it for you. During the Spring Rush, they that would be a stretch. They would not be like right on it for you now. They will get it done the same day. And this is really important. Tying into what Chuck was talking about at the Memphis meetup about getting in touch with the applicants right away. And he says how like he gets a ding on his phone, he'll stop his mowing and immediately call them immediately text them. That's extremely important. So if you're letting indeed applicants stack up for a few days, you're probably leaving 30 to 40% of the best people off because they're gonna go get a job immediately. They're gonna get whoever contacts them first is gonna probably get them. So this is definitely something you can reach out to. Connect on connecteam to Command Center. There are several reps at Command center that do this specifically. Now, I might be speaking out of turn by saying this, but they will make sure this happens. I know yesterday I was walking by and Eli was screening a bunch of applicants that had come in. So the bottom line is you will need to reach out to them on connection and say hey, can you go screen them? And then what I would do if I was you is ask them to screen them and then give them a window of time to book interviews every 30 minutes. That's the best way to do it. Say hey, I got a whole bunch of indeed applications, could you please weed through them, call them all and if they answer, could you please set them up for an interview and start with say 10am till 12 and just book the first four that you get? For me they'll do that. Absolutely. And honestly, if someone just answers the phone and they look half decent on paper, I'd probably be putting an interview. You would want to give them the ramifications of what weeding out is in terms of if you want them to have experience, if you're just like hey, if they look like good people and you talk to them and you like them, set them up for an interview. That's what I would do at this point when there's not too many people trying to apply and show up to interviews and if you're really really booked, like you're really really busy, I would do every 20 minutes. So I tell them hey, I want 10 o', clock, 10 20, 10 40, 11am, 11 20, etc. However you want to do that, just let command center know what's weeding out, what qualifies them for an interview, when you want them to be scheduled for interviews and then let them have it. They have it done within a day for you for sure. Like that day.

You said, you've said before that you think small towns could be a huge opportunity for Augusta locations. How small is too small? Obviously a town of 100 people couldn't sustain a thriving location. But a thousand, ten thousand, where do you think the lines? I think honestly 5,000, you need that if you're wanting to scale, if you're trying to do the working manager model, you could probably get away with like three to 4,000, but that's very minimum. If you want to grow a million dollar business you do need at least 5,000 people. Now we make sure that in every everyone's territories that they have 100,000 people and that's again I think it's plenty, plenty to build a large business. But I think 5,000 would be the minimum for a growth model that I would want to see. And then in terms Of a solo operator or someone that just wants to do a working infield, working manager, working GM. I would say like, you know, 4,000, 3,000 minimum. It's. It is getting squeaky though, and it's gonna take longer to get to those size and revenue. If it's like three or four thousand, I like seven, eight thousand kind of my mental minimum, to be honest with you, because that's what. And. And it makes me feel better because that's what Blaine is at 6 or 7,000. And I know we did it there. So I feel confident in saying that you can build a million dollar business in that size. But that's why the first three years ramp so quickly in Blaine is because literally I could hit every single address for 1,000 bucks. You put a Facebook ad and I'm paying a few bucks a day and hitting every single person on Facebook because there's only 500 people that day in our entire market that was on Facebook. You put several yard signs out and everybody thinks everybody sees them. You put.

A few trucks in the same neighborhood and all of a sudden they see you everywhere and they think you're huge. So the brand awareness is so much easier in those smaller towns. So you get density is really tight and brand awareness just goes off the charts.

Are you guys still offering treatments? At Bellingham, we are only offering core aeration, dethatching lime.

And that's it. So basically things that are have nothing to do with chemicals. And honestly, like Bellingham is very, very green. Like people love the green thing, so it sells really well. But I think it's the trend in most of our suburban areas is people want to not have chemicals. And so if you can sell them on, like, hey, instead of putting a band aid on with chemicals, I'm going to actually fix the root of the problem, which is deeper roots, thicker grass, top dressing, overseeding. Those are the type of things that we can still sell and have great margins.

Oh, that's great. Max Carwood. What I do to catch those lawns that get skipped is at the beginning of the week sort all mowing by last service date. The clients listed at the top will be any that were skipped the previous week. That's a good call. Good call. So let me touch base with command center on that one specifically and make sure that we're all on the same page. But I know that's what's supposed to happen. Someone just randomly says, hey, my grass isn't growing. Can we pause today or cancel today's service? Our immediate go to is trying to get them to commit to biweekly so they don't keep doing that to you. But if they just say, this is the challenge. If they just say, I want to cancel this one, what needs to happen is we need to go into the next service and manually change the price. And so if that's not happening, we need to fix that. So thank you for letting me know. I'll address that with Liz and get back to you all. Awesome. Have a great Friday. Great weekend, everybody. And like I said, I will be trying to get that wrapped up with Zooper today with the lights. If I do not get today where Zooper is able to get the light one click SML exactly the way I want, I will get the service autopilot up today and then I will get the Zooper one as soon as that one is done. Because I know most people doing lights are using service autopilot. So I will have that today for servers autopilot for sure. And if not today for Zooper, as soon as very much possible for the Zooper folks. So take care everyone. Have a great rest of your weekend.