Mike Minutes Mastermind 07/23/2024

Hello, Gusta Nation. Hope you're doing amazing. Let's go and get started.

All right, quick announcement. Later today we'll be announcing the new Franchise Advisory Council. So all the votes have been cast, everything's been collected. We'll be working on updating the dashboard. And I will announce later today the new Franchise Advisor Council. Let me take this moment though, just to say thank you to everyone I served the past year.

And just being a sounding board for myself, the leadership team, we keep them in the loop on things that are great, things that need voting on in terms of policy. So everything around the Give Back program that we made earlier this year was ran by them. Just a lot of individual cases where we want owners perspectives being heard. And so thank you to everyone that has served the past year and thank you to all those that will be voted on. Well, have been voted in. And I will be announcing later today. But big shout out to the Franchise Advisory Council for serving the past year. All right, let's go ahead and jump right in. Looks like we got six questions came in today.

All right, first one's from Joel from Lafayette. Just watched your talk from the Memphis conference. With the increase in technology to reduce certain admin labors@cc, do you see a future where the hiring department offers something like a placement service for field technicians? I am thinking of CC doing everything from running the DDAD to doing video interviews to running background checks to handling the employment paperwork. This is an owner GM could fill out a form to say I need a field technician ASAP by Y date and CC would produce a field tech. Yes. This is exactly what I wanted to be able to do eventually. Yes. Seems like it could be more efficient and produce better results, especially for owners or GMs who are not used to hiring and may not have enough repetitions each year to get good at it. Though there's the obvious recurring issue of having to staff up such a department for a couple months before spring rush, then downsize the most of the year. Yeah, so this is a great. This is a great. All these things are exactly. I'm thinking it's also the concerns of like, like such like 70, 80% of our hiring happens in three to four months. So again, it'd be a seasonal service I have to add to command center, which is difficult. It'd be a very highly skilled thing in terms of interviewing people. But this would be the goal. It's like, hey, I need someone by this date. Get me it. Go for it. And then they run the ads, the whole nine yards for You So it's definitely in the cards. This is what I want to be able to do. And that's why the technology of being able to outsource a lot of the simpler tasks to technology is the goal.

So there's also factors around this of like, well, what, what level of need are you in? Because there's times where like if you're dying for labors and need them right away, you're willing to reduce your sort of.

Threshold and standard slightly. So we it also be a sliding scale of like how like sometimes you'd be like, well, let's run some hiring ads. You know, if someone great comes along, we'll hire them. Other times you're like, hey, if they can just. If they've just done some mowing, I just need them right away. So they'd be a big variable there too. Cause only you usually know that. And so creating systems around what is a yes or a no for that department is tough because a lot of times that's dictated by how bad do you need labor. So it's something that we will think about and down the road is certainly the goal because especially during spring rush, that kills owners. When you're trying to book like five, six, seven interviews, one or two of them show up and you killed half a day just showing up to them and both of them aren't great. Well, you could have just had someone else take the video calls for those one or two people, save you half a day and you go out and produce 5, 600 bucks in revenue. So that would be the goal down the road. LAN Smith Tallahassee, Florida.

Hey Mike, do you think it'd be possible implement some sort of system for door hangers clients to be informed on how the initial MO works and add their credit card on file? My biggest struggle with the door hangers has been the initial MOEs. Most clients are fine with paying more for their initial, but not when they aren't told that up front. Obviously my only workaround if I found for this is to call each client individually and tell them how it works, then send them a quote where they accept and add their card. This has worked really well, but it's something I'd like to for CC to be able to handle if possible. I know the instant quotes could have the initial mowing price on them, but that requires a lot more thought, skill, time and error room for error when having someone else help with them, help out with them. We also have people call in way after they get the door error to accept. Like I said, most are good with paying more, but that just needs to be communicated to them. And was wondering if we could implement some sort of something because this has by far been the hardest part of onboarding my new customers. So these customers will still get an accepted estimate with this verbiage sent to them. I don't want to add a whole other layer of friction like, hey, I'm going to send you the quote, you need to accept it. I'm going to assume the acceptance, send them the quote with the verbiage at the first visit. I would also say you can cut some of these out, but like if they're overgrown, you're not going to put a regular price on it. Even if you just told your door hanger people, if you're doing like hiring someone to do that, just skip those, they're completely overgrown most of the time. Most of the time someone who has an overgrown lawn, it's completely a wreck and is going to take 500 to get up to spec, is not going to be taking care of their lawn, doing upsell services, etc. Like very general rule of thumb, that's not going to happen. So I would probably just skip the ones that are overgrown. If you're not confident in the person being able to give a one time mow or initial mo as just like a little asterisk, for example, I'd probably just skip the ones that are overgrown. And then I would also realize that if this happens one out of 20 or 30 customers, I might be willing to eat that simply due to the fact that I'm not creating more friction in that sales process. Typically if you're doing door hangers, you're in growth mode. And so I don't want to be adding a whole bunch of friction of like, hey, well you gotta, we're gonna send the quote again, you gotta accept it, you gotta read the fine print or I gotta call you get it. Like I just be careful with that. Definitely down the road, as we integrate instant pricing on the website with Copilot down the road, the goal would be that they actually put their card on file when they're, you know, when they like scan a QR code, for example. So like right now it's like email us a picture of this door hanger down the road. It'd be really cool if like scan this QR code. As soon as they do it shows the pricing, they click accept and put their card information on file. So but we have to integrate with Copilot in order for that to actually work. So.

Like that's the long term solution. So I'm working towards that. I would say in the meantime either a realize that this is going to happen once in a blue moon, it's a cost of growth or two, if you're hiring someone that is incapable of doing estimates out in the field, just tell them if the lawn is completely overgrown, just skip it. Usually those customers are the ones that are not going to pay. The ones that aren't at their house, they're not going to do upsell services. They're the ones that complain a lot because after the first mow because they're taking their lawn from like a foot tall down to 2 inches and it's not going to look good. So Tim, are estimate videos being put in copilot able to be done or eventually be will eventually be able. Yeah. I talk about this at the Memphis meetup. Significantly there's not the video itself is not attached. You can embed a link if you would like right now, but the actual video being inside of the job notes or like on an estimate is not possible. You can attach it to an email right now. That's it.

Vince from Medicine Hat. Hey Mike. Our fourth child is due at the beginning of January and we need to upsize our home to make things work. We're considering selling our home, which is fully paid. Congrats, dude. And netting $300,000 after closing costs. We're planning to move to a new city in the next two to three years. So buying another house for that short time period makes less sense than renting. We need to. We need to net an additional 2K a month in income to afford to rent a house that would work for our growing family. We're considering buying a multifamily home of some sort. But when I crunch the numbers, we come short of our goal of the 2000 per month we need. I'm wondering if you have insights on how to invest the $300,000 to make that work. Thanks in advance of any help. It really, really would depend on the deal that you're looking for, right? So if you have $300,000, you know, you could technically go buy out, you know, a property that's 1.2 million. So if you get a 4 plex for example, or 6 plex or something like that.

I think you could get within, within $2,000 a month of break even.

So I'd be looking at that also. That would be like the most leveraged way of growing wealth because like when you move, you could then put someone in the apartment that you're currently you'd be renting for that period of time. Getting debt on anything more than a fourplex right now put you into commercial loans. It's me tough ideally if you could somehow get a.

Because if you're going to be living there for a while you can get a. If you're living at the house it's no longer an investment. If it's 4 Plex or below again check Canada. Some of this stuff might be a little bit irrelevant.

But.

I would probably be looking into fourplex. I'd be trying to. If you're selling a house for 300,000 you can probably get some for a million which means you can have a little bit of cash left over which I would recommend after the sale and then being able to get a 4 Plex rent 3 of the units out, make some small upgrades like over the winter for example when you're slower in the lawn care side. I'd be upgrading the property so you can increase rents and then when you move out of town now you move someone into your fourth unit and you probably start cash flowing on the deal. But then I would just make sure you don't spend all that money because moving costs etc. And then you're going to have to probably buy another house in two to three years though you should have the cash reserves built up then to make another down payment house down the road and then you would have stayed in the house for two or three years. So if you needed to sell the four plex for example you'd be able to get out sell it without having to pay capital gains if you would have lived in it for two or more years. So lots of options there. Talk to a really good agent. What's the definition of good agent? Look at who's been selling the most in the past 60, 90 days. That's who I'd be going after. They know the market the best. They would be able to have deals off the market for you in terms of triplexes and fourplexes. Like it's all about who you know. Good ones usually don't hit the market. They're. They're transacted between brokers and investors. So.

Hutch update to South Park Mowing purchase October 1st handoff. They bill at the beginning of the month with level billing. So Lindsay will take October's revenue 58k plus 15k 20k cash as down payment. He wants to as close to 80k as possible. Okay, so basically you're going to be footing the cogs of October. Okay, that makes Sense. So you will probably have cogs of.

25 to $30,000 that you'll be fronting. But I see you're going to be doing that in terms of labor. Makes sense. Okay. I'll be responsible for fulfillment of work and payroll. Starting October 1st, we'll collect our first payment from clients. November 1st, 315k purchase price, 5.5 interest. That's a great deal. $10,000 monthly payment. Okay, so basically, yeah, cash flowing, IT balloon on February 1, 2026, with SBA ruling all debt into one, no equipment, five team members who currently do all the work. I know it will help us jump ahead down south in Charlotte in general. Is this stretching it too much? Look, this is the thing.

Stretching it too much is an objective measure. The thing that's also objective is the amount of effort that someone puts into it. Knowing one thing about this entire transaction is what makes this work, the name or location. And so knowing you, Connor, like, I know this will work. You will make this work. I think the interest is very, very fair. I think the fact that you're going to be able to essentially, in two years, get all these customers and it's going to cash flow itself. It's really a matter of, like, you're going to have a rough winter. From a cash flow perspective, you just are mostly due the fact that you're going to have 25, $30,000 of COGS in October without getting any sort of revenue. That's going to be a cash suck. So really prepare for October. Like, do whatever you can do to get through October because that's going to be a rough month.

Because you've outlaid cash. Plus you're going to play the cogs. So really you're going to have more like a 45 to $50,000 outlay. That's not bad considering that in two years you pay this down. Like, it's. It's a good deal. I like it. And again, I say this because it's you. If someone else came along to me and, like, put this on the random, you know, Q and A thing, I'd be like, you're really stretching it thin. Like, you have two different things going on. Like, all that sort of thing. Connor, you're gonna figure it out. I think it's a good deal. You're gonna be able to wrap all around.

Charlotte now.

And immediately. Like, literally next year, you should be able to easily do 2.5 to 3 million just by having this acquisition under your belt and a little bit of growth in your other locations. So Kudos to you, man. Yeah. Is it stretching? Absolutely. Can a $3 million business sustain the debt that you're going to be rolling into the SBA own? Absolutely. And in the five years that you, say, pay off the SBA loan or pay it down over, say, 10 years.

You have an asset that's pretty phenomenal after that period of time. So congrats to you, man. Good job with that deal. That one comes down to a reason why you stay in touch with your competitors, you stay nice with them, etc. I met with the owner when I was down in south park, and just cultivating that relationship is what allows you to have opportunities like Hutch is having now. Good job, dude.

Tim May I missed it. But what is the new URL going to be for replacing us? Franchisecon currently looks like that's the link note. So if you go to augustafranchise.com right now there's, there is a option to be able to move over to the new to the new dashboard. AugustaFranchise.com will eventually automatically go to the new location. We're just not hosting the new dashboard on augustafranchise.com so that way if someone has something in the old account they like to find in the new dashboard wherever they can. But eventually when you go to augustafranchise.com it will just go to the new dashboard. But for the next couple weeks we will transition slowly. So that way if there's any files you're looking for that you know they're in the old dashboard, I don't want those to be, you know, it's tough to find, etc. If you're used to the old system, but highly recommend keep using the old one or the new one and then we will transition over to the new one in a couple weeks. I just don't want to do it abruptly and then you can't find things and you don't, it gets confusing, etc. So the reorganization of the Google Drive will be super helpful though, for that sort of thing. But yeah, a couple more weeks and then augustafranchise.com will go to the new site. But for now it is just a link off of the old dashboard for now. But yeah, it will eventually just be the URL augustafranchise.com all right everybody, I think that's it for today. I hope you have a fantastic Tuesday. See you guys tomorrow. Take care.