Mike Minutes Mastermind 07/24/24

Hello, guest nation. Happy Wednesday. Let's get started. Sorry you're gonna get this text message late because I didn't have time to wait for it to go out. Usually it takes about 10 minutes to everyone for everyone to get it. But let's go get started. Let's actually start with quick announcement. Franchise Advisory Council. The new seven members are now updated on the Facebook group. They'll be updated on the dashboard. I will send an email out about it. They're all four members of the FAC that wanted to be. Wanted to be re elected. Were re elected and there are three new ones. So Bryce Claussing, Jason Murphy and Connor Hutchinson are the new members of the FAC and so welcome to them. Thank you. To the members of the FAC that didn't go up for re election but have served that couple years. Really do appreciate them as well.

All right, let's jump right to education and I'll jump. Questions? Looks like there's three today. Let's see here on one thing.

A couple things I've done over the past couple years. Most of Lee though the past like year just to kind of create more time, less distraction. There's a really good book called Undistractable by the way. Might be helpful if this sort of plagues you. If you want to get like really ruthless with distraction in your cell phone, turn it to grayscale. You'll stop looking at your phone essentially for anything that's distracting. But other things I've done, I deleted the news app a couple years ago. Any news apps, anything whatsoever? No news apps should be able to hit my phone. There's nothing in like the widgets for news. No news whatsoever. Even the Stocks app. No.0. Uninstall apps monthly. So basically I do an audit each month. When I do my taxes for the month, that's when I go to my phone real quick to make sure there's any apps I can delete.

Do not disturb always being on. In case you have a.

An iOS device, you can just do that from right here. Do not disturb. I would just leave it on all of the time. I never turn it off. Literally never. If you do that, you will never get a notification. You'll never have a ding, you'll never have a buzz, you'll never have a phone call. Literally your phone will just never notify you of anything. And that's what you want.

Highly recommend. I don't have a single push notification. No push notification will overhear this phone. This phone will never ring. It'll never buzz. You Will never sit with me in that phone will ring or vibrate or anything like that. Cause you to be too, way too reactionary. These are just things for me not right for everyone.

On your home screen. Oh, sorry. So do not disturb, always on, always your, your ringer always off. So little thing on the side here. If this is what you've tied it to make that ringer off all the time, it never goes on.

Ever, ever. So if you just did your do not disturb and your ring are off all the time, you cut down how many times you look at your phone so much for just like needless notifications, like your steps and like you need to have a calm day and you know people liking your posts on social media like whoop dee doo.

Other one here. Home screen work apps only. So every time you unlock your phone, the first screen you see if it doesn't make me money, it goes on a different screen. So if it's social media, if it's picture related, if it's video editing, if it's anything that doesn't directly make me money, it is not on the home screen. So my bank apps are on the home screen. Slack email, WhatsApp, Connecteam, Notion, a tiny scanner app where I do a lot of legal document stuff. All my banking apps are in a little folder.

All of my finance stuff. So things like Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, Venmo, Cash app, all that stuff is there because it makes me money. And then I swipe over one and then that's when I have things that are a little more distracting. Things like Audible, my calendly, Amazon, social media apps, etc. Again, this is not for everyone. Just hopefully these are helpful. I've mentioned this one before. On your email, just put a filter. Anything with the word unsubscribe just goes to your archive. It's there. You can just go to all mail, you know, everything and search. So for example, this morning the gym is doing a big promotion. They need to send me an email. I know it's going to say the word unsubscribe in it. So I just go to all mail and I can see it. But what's cool is I also missed out on.

6084 emails in the past. I guess it'd be since last quarter. So three months I missed out on 6,000 emails because they said the word unsubscribe in them. So.

I did that when I had, when I had a personal assistant they started doing all these sort of like hacks and I just kept them. So you don't need a personal assistant to do that. Just go to your email, gmail, go to your filters. Anything with the word unsubscribe in the body of the text just goes to your archive. You can find everything. Just remember one click STMLs are going to go there. Any of your tests that you do in Automations will probably end up there. So keep that in mind.

A few times people have done exactly what I said and they're like, it's not working my one click estimate. I was like, yeah, you have the unsubscribe thing on so just keep that in mind.

Okay, cool. That's all I have for education. Let's jump into questions.

Oh, there's four now. Someone added one. Okay, see here. Boom, boom.

Alrighty. First one up is from Nick Denelbit from Cordova, Tennessee. Does my personal 20 year term life insurance 1 million dollar policy go in the balance sheet as an asset? Is it also a liability since I pay you $126 a month? Policy was issued April 2018. I am 42 years old now, so is in effect until I am 54 or April 20, 2038. I am 99.9% sure this does not go on your balance sheet. It has no cash value. If you had like a, a life whole life insurance policy, I think this would end up becoming different. Brad can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I am 99% sure this is not going your balance sheet.

Yeah, I'm like 99.9% sure. Brad, correct me if I'm wrong. If you have a whole life insurance policy be different. You have term life, there's no cash value.

Brian Connor from Augusta, Georgia, will you show me step by step from the dashboard how to find the document we need that has the code snippet used for the thank you page when setting up a Facebook ad. Looks like you get a picture here. Let's check this out.

Oh, I gotcha. Yeah, it's in the folder of the done for you ads. However, you don't actually need this anymore. So. So to answer your question, in the done for you ads folder there is a template word document to copy and paste this. However, you don't need it anymore. Here's why. Let me share this other screen. Can I open the dashboard there. Okay, here we go. So from the dashboard. Am I sharing the screen now? I am. Let's go from here. Go edit your webpage.

Here we go. Wait, why is it. Oh, there you go. They go here.

Let's rock and roll.

And then you're just going to do, add something. Do add tracking snippets for ads. And this is where you're going to paste the stuff. In terms of finding that. Give me, give me like two seconds here, Brian. I've just got to find it in the Google Drive. This is going to go. Oops. Here, share this step store. It's going to open up my Google Drive once I go to templates and downloads.

Oh, whoops. I'm not sharing my screen anymore. Ah, one second. Give me 48 seconds here.

Okay, here we go. Share the screen. Cool. So I'm inside of the dashboard. Digital marketing and logos Done for you ads. Facebook.

Either one of these will work. These are all the secret. The media. Oh, this might just be the media. Video ads.

No, I'm in the wrong spot. Give me one second here.

Digital marketing and logos. Digital templates.

Doing something wrong. Give me a second here.

Where is the actual tutorials? Oh, they're in here.

Sorry. Give me a second here.

Academy done for you ads.

Okay. Share this tab.

So academy done for you ads. And then the thing that I think you are missing.

Is the actual doc attachment right here. Okay, I apologize. Okay, so basically I went to academy. I went to done for you ads. I went to the Facebook ad. So this is actual videos. Here's the attachments. And you're looking for the thank you page script right here.

Hopefully that makes sense. And hopefully I was sharing my screen. Very good. Cool.

All right, Present share screen. Hopefully that was helpful.

Okay, sorry, I was looking for the creative inside the dashboard Google Drive instead of on academy for the actual video training.

All right, Number three is Corey from Augusta Bellingham. Good morning, Mike. I have two questions. Okay. One, would you be willing to share your thoughts on leverage and maybe what criteria you use to determine how much leverage you have on things and how you prioritize tasks? Leverage is kind of a nebulous topic. It's basically you get more output for the input you put in.

And so.

You know, how much. How much do I determine leverage I have on things? No, I don't really determine or try to quantify it. I just try to increase my efficiency and like time management and things like that. I'd say how do you prioritize tasks is, I think, different than use of leverage. Like leverage typically is like you leverage things like money. You can leverage money. You can leverage time, you can leverage resources, you can leverage employees, you can leverage relationships.

So you can leverage relationship by like taking someone out for dinner.

Is the input. The output is you close A business deal or you have a great marriage, it's like, well, what's the leverage on having a personal companion? Well, the input is that you're going to put time, energy into it. And the expectation is that there's a greater return on the output than the input given. Therefore you have leverage. And so, yeah, like, I think any sort of transaction, there's leverage. And you can use money, time, attention, resources, relationships, and leverage them. So in terms of prioritization of tasks, ask yourself, like, will this be remembered in, you know, will this actually impact my life in five years? If you do that, like, literally all of a sudden, 95 things, 95% of things don't matter. And then if you focus on the 5% that does, and you spend maybe instead of only spending 5% of your time on the 5% that matters, spend 50% of your time on things on those 5% that actually matter in five years. And all of a sudden you're like, you'll move things so much faster.

So trying to get rid of the 95% is really tough. That's just like, brutally difficult. So, like, even when I talked about at the beginning of the, of the, the education corner side of things today, like, that is the thing that, that allows you to then focus on the 5% that actually moves the needle, right? And no one's going to like you if you cut out 95% of things. Like, I'm a huge proponent of, like, going against anything that I feel obligated to do.

It's because it's the 95%. So, like me going to someone's party or event because I simply feel obligated to socially, is it going to impact me in five years? No.

Do I care enough about them? Maybe. Maybe I do a social obligation around that. But like, there's, there's just so much time you can get back if you just get around things like that, 95% of things will not matter in five years. So therefore, spend, spend 50% of your time on the 5% that will matter. And all of a sudden you'll do what you thought would be done in five years. I'll do it in two.

Number two, I am pretty committed to using my life to revitalize the American railway system. Okay. But I won't break that down on the mastermind. You've educated me on the constraints of retail business. Would you be willing to share your thoughts on the constraints of the transportation industry? Aside from initial capital, the tough part of the railroad industry is a lot of its legal tape the railways are owned by and there's massive monopolies in this area. So this is very, very difficult to break into because of the companies that have come in and just monopolized it. So for example, transportation of people. Amtrak has a lot of monopolies on specific routes. Like you cannot drive on a certain route with passengers unless you are Amtrak.

And so industries that are very old typically get monopolized.

Because the big winners win and they buy out all the competition because that's the only way for them to grow is essentially consolidate. And then what they'll do is to protect their moat of their monopoly. They usually bring in legislation. So they'll basically lobby and make sure they do whatever they require to get legislation passed that no one can break their monopoly. Right. So let's just play this out. Let's say that in lawn care there was a monopoly. One player controlled 30, 40% of the market. What they the best interest for them to do would be to go and lobby for massive government requirements around certification for lawn care providers. Like you have to have a certain certification otherwise you could lose your business license, things like that.

Because then it would force the small competitor to get wiped out. Same thing happens with something like railway. They basically make sure that they have monopolies. They have 20, 30 year contracts with the government. They have, they lease certain areas of the track to make it in basically an impregnable moat that no one can use. And there's only so many railways. You can't build a new railway. Like it's just not happening. You're not going to cut through a new area, the amount of land issues that would require it just warrant in terms of the cost as well as the environmental impact and like the new regulations around that. So like this is a very difficult industry. I'm not saying you can't do it, Corey. I'm all for it. I'm all about beating up boring industries like this. But when it's that old and there's that much money involved, typically it gets monopolized eventually. And it has. And then lobbying happens to make sure there's regulation that prevent competition. So is it anti competitive? Yes, probably. How does it get passed? People get money in politics.

Nick Dennels Bick from Cordova, Tennessee Follow up question My life insurance policy. A follow up question to the life insurance policy. What do you know about living trusts and if we should have one of those in place to say what should happen to us, the business or assets, life insurance money, etc. What should be spending on what should we be spending on something like that? Thanks.

Yeah, so I went deep on this earlier this year. I have very, very detailed living will.

Medical stuff around. What's supposed to happen to me, who gets the business power, who gets equity, like the whole nine yards. So I've been very deep into this. I have spent like seven or eight months figuring it out. So, yeah, I think everyone should really think about, okay, if you got hit by a bus today, what happens? Make sure there's people you love are taken care of. So the people I love includes the Guston Nation. I want to make sure that everyone here, their business continues to thrive. If I get hit by a bus.

Hit by a bus, Fill in the blank, whatever it is, that includes even just like your mental health. And so I think it's the right thing. If you're trying to be a good steward of what you've been given and what you're responsible for and for the people you are responsible over. I think it's really smart. You shouldn't be spending gobs of money on this. If you just have a decent will.

And usually inside of a will, they can include things like living trusts. They can include things like.

Usually living trusts are typically overblown. Like, just talk to an attorney about this and they'll give you good advice.

You'll be able to know if they're trying to sell you a bunch of stuff. But usually this is not complicated, especially if you have one or two businesses, especially if you have less than $10 million in assets and your net worth. There's some new requirements that I had to pass based upon that recently. They have certain things around net worth that if you have a certain amount of assets that you have to do some specific stuff for taxation and things. But just talk to an attorney like, hey, I want to cover these instances. I die. I go incoherent. I'm on life support.

What happens to my liquid assets? What happens to the business? Should it be sold? Is someone's going to manage it? If so, you probably want to tell them and then have instructions on what they should be doing. So I specifically, in my will have, like, who needs to know what? I have video files and I have long videos explaining exactly what duty to the businesses who. Who should be doing what, how. I want things to go down to make sure that, like, everyone I care about is taken care of. And I think that's really responsible. I did that since the day that I had employees. I felt like, look, if I get hit by a bus and these people lose Their jobs, yes, they could get other jobs, but in the ideal world, the business continues to operate and their paychecks are protected. And so to me, that is an important thing. I've done it from day one. I literally, when I was 19.

And then I have an insurance policy to basically make sure that there's nothing that gets locked up in any sort of court issues with my. With my, whatever it's called, will. So that way, immediately the business would have cash to be able to do stuff, even if stuff got locked up for whatever reason. Obviously, you do your very best to make sure things don't get locked up, but stuff happens sometimes when people die and then there's insurance involved. Say, for example, there's a car wreck. So you just want to think through all the scenarios. I think that everyone should have a very basic will and you're going to pay usually less than 500. You could go on Legal Zoom honestly, and usually get this done pretty simply. And then it's just like, how many layers of protection do you want and how many scenarios are you trying to cover? And then how complex is your assets? So, like the real estate, right? So like I have land right now that has all the materials for a headquarter building sitting on it. So if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I need to make sure that there's enough money to build the whole thing. And I need to tell whoever's going to be getting equity, like, how is this all going to break down all the different LLCs? Like, think about each and every single one of them as separate entities and how it's all going to happen. Very important. So as you get more and more entities, it gets more complicated. I address it usually once every two years with my attorney, but I would just say, like, just get started now with a basic will inside of it. You could literally fill this out on Legal Zoom or Rocket Lawyer. Rocket Lawyer is great. You can usually just for most states, look it up in your state. Most states you could literally get this done, like Rocket Lawyer or whatever, printed off sign and notarized at your bank and then put inside of a safe deposit box and you're probably good. Like most states, that's the way it is. And then you can always upgrade and actually get like lawyers and attorneys involved and then they file it with the county or whatever as you gain more assets and actually becomes more consequential. So, like, it's very important to me that if I get hit by a bus, everyone here continues to succeed. And like the roadmap of Augusta continues. And so like that has been a massive emphasis for me over the past six to 12 months as more and more people join. It's very important. And so I know that without me like Augusta wouldn't be the same. But I do believe from a business standpoint, everyone could succeed. Even the leadership that I'm hiring, I know could continue on the roadmap that I have in terms of a technical perspective and the business would be would do very well. And the brand of Augusta like I have the roadmap done for the next five to 10 years of what needs to happen to support owners more. The more what we want to do in terms of owners, owner success, etc. So it just be a matter of, you know, it's worst case scenario. I think it'd be better if I'm around. If not, you know.

Wouldn'T be good. So you never plan for those things, but I think it's a responsible thing to think about. All right, I think that's all I got for today. Happy Wednesday. Hope you all have a fantastic day. We'll see you tomorrow. Take care.