Mike Minutes Mastermind 07/24/2023

I need to.

I made a note on the Facebook group but you absolutely should and can go ahead and put your.

Hours of operation on your.

Google listing your.

Google.

Local services and even on your website. So if you want to you can actually go on to the dashboard, open up the.

Website editor and then just submit that you want to change your hours of operations. So that is fine.

Cool.

All right, we got questions.

21. Why is it 21? Sorry, let me add this into the playlist. So yeah, definitely feel free to do that on all those different channels. Max can take all of the calls in terms of dealing with them all and right now he can take the completion all the lead side of things. Obviously the customer service invoicing, stuff like that is still going to be just mostly a ticket for command center to.

Then follow up with them.

But definitely would recommend especially on Google Local services because it actually says open 24 hours or it says closed if you're outside of the hours when the person is scrolling through. And same thing with Google listings because on Google Maps it'll show people if you're closed or not. And if it's after hours your time, you know it's 89 o' clock PM.

They might not call you just simply.

Because it says closed. And you're less likely to rank higher if there are other locations around you and other competitors that say open because Google knows that they're less likely to be of service those listings to the user. So keep that in mind. Highly recommend on all platforms in terms.

Of Google and your website having that change. 247.

All right, let's jump into questions. Present.

Number one, Max Harwood for Burnaby Question related your musings about big big making big claims in business etc. Billionaire. Does this mean you have to you are going to stop marketing the Mike Annie's brand as Lawn care billionaire or saying you have started 130 locations. Honest question. Not trying to catch you. No. So in terms of the 130 locations that's a hard number. There's. It's indisputable, there is no murkiness around the fact that there's 130 locations at Augusta.

And then in terms of lawn care billionaire, I don't know if I've talked about a whole lot on here with you guys but I've actually the only reason I'm using that is because Service Autopilot came after me for using Lawn Care Millionaire and I have the trademark. So instead of fighting them because like I literally have the trademark in my hand for Lawn Care Millionaire I am going to just probably pivot to Lawn Care Billionaire in terms of, like, website. The book we got changed the name. They went. They came after me like a whole laundry list. So I have a whole bunch of this stuff recorded, like, my phone calls with the lawyers and all the rest. I just asked everyone, keep this on the DL for now.

And so there was a bunch of back and forth. I basically want to make sure that Serge Autopilot does not get damage. Any of us that are still in service, autopilot. And so that's why I just stepped back and said, okay, no worries. I will not touch, you know, Long Care Millionaire anymore. I will just use Lawn Care Billionaire. So I have a copyright and a trademark for that as well. So that's the only reason why I switched to that. I really don't like the idea of doing it, but they kind of forced my hand on that one, to be perfectly honest. So my thought is that when we change. Change the book title, I'll probably put like a paragraph at the beginning and like a audio saying, like, hey, look, I am not a billionaire. Here's exactly why I had to do this. Because originally Lawn Care Millionaire. So.

Yeah, so I. I don't like using the billionaire thing, but it is literally, we're kind of pigeonholed into that now with this whole lawsuit stuff. And so I just wanted to make sure that everyone at Augusta was safe and service. Autpot wasn't trying to do anything stupid by just saying, okay, great, I'll do whatever you guys want. I will not use the trademark. And I promise that by next year, I'd have everything changed over. So when I change everything over, whether or not I make a public deal about it or not, I don't know. We'll see. It just depends on how hard they keep pushing me. But they have a legal team that's not really connected, their business team or their support team. Because I've actually maintained pretty good relationships with their support and their, like, actual operations. But their legal team is out of control. They just, like, throw lawsuits and, like, threaten all the time for me. So it's. It's pretty bad. So. But then when I bring those forward to, like, so whether or not, like, I pull all stops out and actually share that stuff publicly. Like, if I did, it'd be really, really bad for service all pets. And the question is, like, well, what's the point of that? I don't really want to see them, like, do poorly. It's just a matter of. It's embarrassing what they've done. And if I showed it publicly, it would be extremely, extremely bad for their public image because they did all sorts of threats. They did all sorts of threats against me that were lies. And then I basically pulled the. I have the trademark. And then they had to like, whoa. They had to really back up. And so I have a lot of ammunition. And so I'm just kind of holding onto it just so that way we kind of have leverage against them. I know it sounds horrible, but. But that's how I'm.

I'm posting it right now in terms of my headset. My mind on that one. It's not been fun. So I just want to kind of like, tread lightly right now. And then when I have to make all the switches to the more public things like the book, I've got to change the whole cover. And like, you know, every mention of. I've said I would change those things. And I will basically then have to share why. And if I do, that's probably my jab is like, here's why I had to change it. Because someone that had this used this trademark years ago and it no longer has the trademark, threatened to sue me to wazoo and all this other stuff. So anyways, that is that. Let's move on. The next question. Max Harwood, Burnaby question regarding AI service. How does Max do with accents? A lot of clients, my service area speak English as a second language and don't necessarily have the best pronunciation. Do you know how AI will respond to these situations? Yeah, 100%. So if it doesn't understand, the first thing it's going to do is ask for them to spell it out. The next thing it's going to do is take what we have, put it into a ticket, and then Command center is noted that, okay, this is not. We're not confident in this answer and we're going to follow up with them because what we don't want to do is put in this loop of like, can you say that again? Can you spell that out? And like, we can't get what they're saying. So we will put. Make a ticket of it. And then Command center just knows if anything is empty or incomplete to basically call the client and then try to do it manually. So that's. That's kind of the route we've gone. And yeah, like, it's pretty good with accents from what I've seen. But what it's really good at is just rolling with the punches if it doesn't understand it and then giving Command center enough information for a ticket for us to be able to then follow up with them. Number two, can max answer calls in different languages or would the AI have to be trained on this separately? Again, a lot of people might service areas speak different languages, so it'd be awesome if the AI could handle in Cantonese or Punjabi. No, there's definitely no way we could do this. Every single language would have to be trained differently. There's so many different ways. Yeah, the short answer to this is no. I would say in five to 10 years, maybe five. I think five, five years. I think this would be probably something that we could do, but we would have to train a new model for every single language which would be quite literally millions of dollars because the first thing would be probably like Spanish would be the biggest one in terms of people that call in and are not first language. And then you start going down the list. You just literally every single language would be a couple hundred thousand dollars for us to build out a model right now. I think in five years though, it'll be a lot different. My hope is that we're doing like second and third languages when everyone else is trying to figure out what we're doing right now. That's probably would be my expectation. But the way from the customer's perspective, it's a nice way it handles them. Really it is. Joe Dilmore, Cherry Hill.

With our first bark mulch install last week. Huge thanks for the advice. We have always done color mulch by the way to your to answer your question. That brings us to two questions for us. One, it seems like a lot easier to use actual to actually use bags. And now that I know I can get an entire pallet dropped to the house for less than it costs to have the guys go pick up trips to make trips to pick up molt. I seriously considering doing this. Is there anyone who uses bags regularly instead of of bulk truck trailer drops and do you recommend this? Highly recommend this if you can figure out the pricing side of things to make it work for you.

And the only time I think bulk is actually faster is if you're doing wide open areas where you can get like a loader on there and spread a whole bunch of stuff or dump and like make a whole bunch of dumps and then spread fast that way. But yeah, if you can get the pricing to make sense I think everyone, if you've never done it should definitely look into the cost of.

Of bagged mulch. Everyone should do that. And in some areas it's two to three times more the price in other areas. If it's very comparable, it's definitely something to consider in terms of palletizing bags of it.

Again, if you're going to do 20 yards, there's going to be so many bag loading a view from a pallet into your truck and trailer, you might just want to get delivered or you might want to put in a dump trailer and then if you have an open area where you can dump it slowly over time and make a bunch of piles. So two as you are getting bigger jobs, I'm thinking more and more about deliveries. Making multiple trips to the nursery is getting time consuming. Obviously the easiest thing to have the delivery dropped as close to the job as possible. But I've seen problems with heavy delivery vehicles damaging driveways. Who is responsible if this happens? Or us or the delivery company? Not sure if saving an hour's worth of hauling is worth the liability. Yeah, if they have a massive dump truck.

Regardless, you are going to be held in the customer's view responsible for any cracks or damages to their driveway. So I'd recommend just avoiding their driveway and using the curb. Or you're getting a dump trailer that's lighter and you could back then onto their.

Their driveway. But.

You are going to be held responsible in the view of the customer whether or not you are legally you could probably fall back on, you know, the the delivery company, but a lot of them have when you do a delivery, you waive the we waive damages or liability in terms of property damage.

So I just I I typically if doing a heavy load, I'm probably umping on the curb if someone's delivering a ton of material, especially gravel.

Tracy, CA General Manager Access at your locations in North Carolina, what do your general managers have access to in the business? I. E. Bank accounts QuickBooks Email Franchise Dashboard Please list everything you give them access to when they have them set up for the best success. We give them access to everything. All of the above.

QuickBooks they might not. No, they do. They do. If they wanted access, I know that we'd give it to them, but just that command center mode I'm probably dumping on the curb if someone's delivering a ton of material, especially gravel.

Tracy, CA General Manager Access at your locations in North Carolina what do your general managers have access to in the business? I. E. Bank accounts QuickBooks Email Franchise Dashboard Please list everything you give them access to or the QuickBooks they like your general manager should have them set up for the best success. We give them access to everything. All of the above.

QuickBooks they might no they do. They do. If they wanted access I know that we'd give it to them. But just that Command center manages the QuickBooks they like your general manager should. If you're running it like a regular general manager which is the manager runs the whole location, they need to have access to all of this. Like there's no way you're not going to have your bank accounts. There's no way you're not going to give them access to QuickBooks or their email. For sure. Like Franchise Dashboard you want them to give you're running it like a regular general manager which is the manager runs the whole location. They need to have access to gain training and listening to masterminds. So everything like how I view a general manager is they are the owner of that location. I am taking all the financial and risk and the liability of starting and I'm going to treat them and train them like an owner and they're going to get more support from a regional manager, etc. Kind of like the training wheels to get things off the ground, but they are going to be treated like an owner. Vince from Medicine Hat we're currently booked out three weeks on projects and incoming leads are slowing down with the summer weather. Our marketing focus is currently door hangers and we currently have three follow up calls going to Command center five days after estimate ascent Would you prioritize next day follow up follow up calls or instant quote door hangers? I would prioritize both.

Next next day follow up calls is not going to take you a long time if you're doing five or ten estimates per day to do next day follow up calls will take you no longer than 15 minutes a day. So I think we can all scrounge up 15 more minutes per day and do next day follow up calls. I just genuinely believe that.

And then obviously instant Cool door hangers is more of like you're going after new leads. But I would always prioritize following up with customers if I had to choose between two because they've already got the estimate, you've already done all the work to get the estimate. There's no reason to go out and get new customers when you literally have someone you've already made a quote for. And so I would prioritize this definitely over instant go door hangers because they're already existing lead. However, I just genuinely believe that everyone can do follow up calls the day after as the estimator have the most impact and do it in less than 10 to 15 minutes a day. 100% believe that and One thing one of my general managers was saying the other day is when he sent when he does a follow up call he will resend them the quote if he gets them on on voicemail. So the next day he calls them and then if they don't pick up he's like I'm gonna go ahead and resend it just in case you've missed it or anything like that. Even if you saw they opened it up and send it again. I would also say this is a great that would be a great point. Once everyone's in copilot to send it via text message would be a great option there as well. If you get the voicemail on the follow up call.

G Crazy California GM Compensation Plan I am hiring a new GM for our Tracy location. We are trying to figure out what the best compensation plan would be based off based off of our distributable cash. Initial investment was 80k. Monthly revenue May through July is 19, 20 and 14. Current bank balance $3,000. Monthly bonuses Our new GM base salary is $26 per hour. After the first year when distributable cash kicks in, does he get monthly bonus and quarterly distribution? Yes. The answer to this one is quite is yes. So the monthly bonus is based upon what we currently have in our compensation agreement and that is they get monthly bonuses based upon the revenue and quarterly distributable bonus. Keep in mind you did hit 20k so if you're using our exact model technically they they would be going down in distributable cash. For the Tracy location there is an office manager in place that is paid from a desk location on salary. Office manager duties are all of these other things new. The new GM duties is the working GM estimates from 3 to 7 every day. Door hangers every day. Please note if any changes need to be made as far as job duties between GM and office manager.

I would say.

In terms of job duties I think those are pretty well said. I think I I like follow up phone calls being done by the the GM the day after. I just really believe that.

This part here is going to be pretty cash heavy the way you're doing this because if you're doing estimates every single day wide open like that.