Mike Minutes Mastermind 07/25/2024

Hello, destination. Hope you're doing good. Let's get this thing kicked off. A couple quick things. We'll start with education.

Ryan had posted about it in the Facebook group, but I've seen it work a lot too. And that is the.

Facebook not having jobs anymore where you can't post a job. But what you can do is, is just make a post as a job posting, link it to augustalongerservices.com territory, name careers. They can fill out the form there and then just put in a bunch of pictures and videos as the media for the post. So, and then what you can do is just boost it to your local area for the demographic of like, say, 18 to 35 or something like that, 18 to 40. So might be a good thing if you are struggling to find people to hire.

Cool. I was thinking about this last couple days, and that is like what you do with little, you will do with much. Kind of goes like the old verbiage of like in. In the parable of the talents, which basically was like, hey, King gives three guys.

Just call it money, like $5,000, $3,000, and $1,000 comes back months later, is like, hey, what'd you do with the money? And the guy with, you know, $1,000 was like, hey, like, I just buried it. Didn't really do much with it. But hey, here it is, like, I preserved it. And the guy with the $3,000, he went out and made, you know, $6,000, right? He invested it, turn it into a business, whatever it might be, turn the. Turn the 3,000 into 6,000. The guy with $5,000, he did the same thing, went out, made a business, grew it up, made $10,000 out of the 5,000, was able to give back to the King extra money. And so.

At the end of it.

The King takes the talent or takes the thousand dollars from the guy who didn't do anything with it, gives it to the other guy that had actually done something with his talent. And you could have some serious excuses and say, hey, you gave him more money, you gave him more talents. Therefore, this is not equitable that you are giving away mine to him. But ultimately, it was a matter of taking what you had and making more of it. And so I think if you can be faithful in the small things, you'll be faithful in the large things. And what you do.

You know, the way you run your business at 100,000 is the same way you run your business at 100 million. And so I think, you know, it talks about how the King goes Back to the guy that did something with his money, say, hey, you've been faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things. And so I think the analogy applies in our own businesses. And it's like, if you can be faithful in the small, little, tiny stuff, you're probably gonna be faithful in the big stuff. And everyone admires everyone with the big stuff, but then they realize they fail to be faithful in the small stuff. And so you can break this down a lot of different ways, but if you can't do the basics, like sharpening your blades, cleaning out your truck.

The basics, how can you expect to be to kick butt and do really well on the big stuff? And so it's the reason why uniforms are important. It's the reason why keeping your boots are clean in the military is important. It's a little stuff. And the way you do some stuff is the way you do everything. And.

So I just really recommend like going back to the basics, especially this time of year, after the spring rush. It's like, okay.

Am I doing all those small things right? Cleaning out my truck, washing it, you know, weekly, sharpening the blades, Am I making sure everything's lined up at the end of the day, or throwing stuff in? Is is directly tons of trash inside of it or is it cleaned out? What does your shop space look like? You know.

You can look at most shop spaces and actually know if the business is profitable, to be perfectly honest. Because if they don't take care for things like cobwebs, weeds, things are broken, just kind of laying around, stuff's not locked up. If that's the way they treat the small stuff, you can guarantee the big stuff of the business being profitable is also left in ruins. So I recommend being faithful in the small things and then you can be ruler over many things. Let's go. All right, let's jump into questions.

The same thing applies in my opinion, because, like, health, if you can't eat right, like, if you can't control this motion.

How do you expect to be able to like, run a business and like.

Manage people and be a leader if you can't do this one thing, if you can't manage that one thing. So I guess goes back to the notion of like, being faithful in little things, being a ruler of many things.

Alright, here we go. First one's from Andrew from Bentonville. I haven't had a chance to book a call with certified lights or watch their zooms yet. Do you know a recommend starting budget? If we're starting from Scratch. It's not really a matter of having a budget because it depends upon you sell. Right? Like if you're gonna go sell 150 light jobs, well, your budget's gonna look very differently if you only sell 15. Right? So I wouldn't look at it like this. I would be looking at more matter of, like, what are you willing to spend on marketing, what your customer acquisition cost, and knowing that, hey, you don't really make money in the first year. It's once you keep the lights and you get them on the second year and third year, etc. So I definitely would do exactly what you you mentioned here. Book a call with Ashley at Certified Lights, watch their Zoom recordings. I think one was, if not today, it was yesterday. I think it was today, 11 o'. Clock. So the recording will probably be up tomorrow, the next day. Highly recommend.

Yeah, 100% lightsgustalawncareservices.com will get you directly to Ashley for if you want to do that individual call. All right. Vince from Medicine Hat. Oh, Mike, I need some investment advice. Okay. We're having our fourth.

Baby in January. We're considering renting instead of buying a larger home as well. Wait, didn't I just do this yesterday?

Oh, no, this is different. This is different. Same situation, but a little different. It looks like. Okay, a larger home versus buying as we'll likely move cities in the next two or three years to start another location and don't want unnecessary closing costs. Okay. We need an extra $2,000 per month in income to afford the rent for the larger size home size we're looking at. Okay. I'm considering some different investment options.

I thought I did this yesterday. When was this submitted? No, that's today. Okay, either I'm having like a weird epiphany or I thought there was something like this yesterday.

Okay, let me redo this. Sorry. Okay, we need an extra $2,000 per month in income to afford the rent for the larger home size we're looking at. I'm considering some different investment options to acquire the extra $2,000 per month. Our current home is mortgage free and fully paid off and should invest 8, $300,000 after closing costs. I'm looking for a stable investment option that generates monthly cash flow with low risk as we need the income to pay off pay our living expenses. Would you recommend investing in bonds, a real rental property of some sort, or do you have better suggestions? How would you go about making the decision? Thanks in advance for your insight. Okay, this is how I would look at it okay, $2,000 of quote unquote stable income. That is low risk. Let's assume like a 5 to 10% return. Like, you're going to have to invest somewhere between 200, like to get like say real estate. Right. If you're going to go buy a real estate property, for it to net out $2,000 per month, you're going to probably have to be doing like 8 to $10,000 per month in rent. Well, the 8 to $10,000 per Month in rent, you're probably looking at.

Like a $2 million property. Depends on where you're at, I guess. But yeah, probably two million dollar property. So $250,000 down, like, so I would do real estate. If you're trying to make $2,000 per month in extra income, especially right now with interest rates the way I wouldn't recommend it. I genuinely believe this is doing extra, two extra property cleanups. It really is. Like you have a long care business, you have a landscaping business. It is your unique advantage. You're better than 99.9% of people in your market when it comes to mowing grass and doing things landscaping wise. So if you need extra $2,000, go get two property cleanups that are $1,000 each per month or every weekend, do a $500 cleanup. It's going to take you a morning, you're gonna do door hangers until you get the job. 500 bucks and you clean up someone's property like it just is the best way to do it. It's also the most immediate because you need some, some door hangers and you hit the ground running. You don't need to go spend a bunch of time educating yourself and finding property and doing due diligence and then finding investors, finding a bank, finding a loan, then all the investment money that goes into that loan, like 25% down. So.

When you need to make incremental amount, like 1,000, $2,000, $3,000 more per month.

It is usually pounding pavement to get that revenue. When you have a business. I would say the same thing. If someone has a sandwich shop, like, oh, you make an extra thousand dollars. Okay, so that is three extra sandwiches a day. If you make a dollar in profit per sandwich, great. How do we get three more sandwiches a day? Oh, we're gonna stand next. When it's slow, we're gonna stand up with a sign next to the road and get people to drive into the restaurant. Like you have this crazy thing called a business that allows you to be able to dictate Your income. So like, to generate a.

At my peak, I was doing a little over $40,000 a month in rental income.

And because the way I was doing it, I wasn't really profitable on it because we're kind of fixing up the properties, stabilizing them, selling them off. But I would probably now be netting out like 10 grand a month from that. But that portfolio was probably worth six or seven million dollars at its peak before I started selling. So to actually afford that property, that type of property, you'd be looking at spending a few million, like at least $2 million. It's commercial loans, $2 million in cash. So I would just ask, is it easier to go get $2 million of cash to go buy the property, or is it easier to build a business that does $10,000 a month in cash flow? The real estate's lower risk in terms of how fast to get there. The business is usually the route. So that's why people usually get it backwards. They go the slow, low risk way first, like real estate first. When it's like, look, just build the business. If you focus on the business for five years, you have enough cash flow to buy five times as much property.

So.

Mr. Anonymous, what's the difference between burnout and depression? How do you tell the difference? I'm missing my goals so much, it's making me question my position in agostination and even my career as a landscaper.

These are three different things. Burnout, depression, and then the fact that you are not hitting your goals, if you can, if you take the emotion out of it, and that is that you can be depressed, you can be burnt out, and you can run a successful business. These are possible, these is not binary. And so I would.

Get help for the burnout and the depression side. I don't have enough information to give you any sort of advice on that whatsoever. But what I can tell you is good news. The goals and growing the business make it more profitable, whatever that might be. That is a solvable problem independent of how you feel. And so if you can actually disassociate how you feel in terms of burnout and depression from business results.

And take actions towards making that change, you can, you can, you can be depressed, burnt out, and running a successful business. And it happens to be better than being burnt out, depressed, and running an unsuccessful business. So from a strictly like, because I'm not getting any information on the burnout depression side, from strictly the money side, you can fix that. It's a fixable problem. The burnout depression probably Is too. But I have no information here and I'm not a doctor. I don't know if you need medication, I don't need know if you need better diet, health, exercise, et cetera. Don't know. But I can tell you one thing. The goals in your business are fixable. Business and algorithm is simply a matter of inputs and outputs. It is not rocket science. This is lawn care and landscaping. It doesn't matter. What are you doing every single day? How many door hangers did you put out today? What's your close ratio? These are numbers. These are things that actually predict whether or not you're going to succeed. Because it's tried and true. There is no crazy hot sauce here. The hot sauce is going to come in the form of the burnout depression. You're going to have to figure something out that's going to be more complicated. You're going to need someone to help you out. I would go to someone that is a professional. I would go to people that love you. I'd go to people that you trust in, especially on the spiritual side. Really realizing that many of these like depression and burnout stuff is a function of not taking care of your body. Your body is simply an input to the output you're looking for, which is high performance. And so if you're burnt out, I. E. You're not performing at the level you expect yourself, or depression, you feel like you're not attaining the goals and you're. The comparison that you have between where you're at and where you want to be is so low you get depressed.

Many times. The biggest input that we all fail in is what we literally stick into our mouth and sleeping and drinking and exercise. So I'd point you in that like general direction for those things. But in terms of the business, I'd get on a coaching call, I really would, and have someone else look at your input and output equation because that's what, that's what a doctor is going to do on the other end. So everything is like, okay, look, you're deficient in this chemical in your brain. Your inputs are whacked. A, you can get medication. B, you can exercise. C, you need to sleep more. D, and they're going to work through the input and the output is the fact that we hopefully don't get burnout and depressed. I would also then say again, this is like really this nebulous because it's such a vague question, but I know it means a lot to whoever wrote this. I would also say your goals, if unobtainable or inconceivably.

Unlinked from the assets you currently have. So for example, if you have $10,000 in the bank, one truck, one employee, and did $10,000 in revenue last month, and your goals are 200,000 and your time horizon is that you need to get from where you're at today to where you want to be at tomorrow in a matter of 24 hours. Yeah, that would cause anyone to get burnout and depressed. So having realistic goals is important. And so if you, if you set your goals so high and you're measuring up and feel inadequate.

Comparison is a thief of joy. People say that, don't believe it. However, when people compare where they're at today where they want to be at tomorrow, if you then judge yourself because of that gap, you will get depressed.

Also realize another question you could ask yourself is like, okay, 10 years ago, if you would have asked yourself that you'd be doing what you were today, would you be depressed and burnt out? You probably would have been pretty excited.

If you would have told me when I first got started 10 years ago that I'd build a million dollar business, I would have like literally thought I would have been retiring genuinely. So realize your problem at a treadmill as well causes burnout, depression. So you could likely have such massive goals. So if your goals are unhinged from reality, like you want to do these massive goals in a matter of like two, three years and you're like, look, it's going to take you five, it's going to take you 10 years to do that because you just don't have enough capital, you don't have skill, you don't have reps. And so I'm kind of shooting in the dark here because I don't know who you are and I don't know your size of business, I don't know a lot of things here. But I would say number one, go get help from medical, like someone with health background as well as spiritual background. Burnout and depression stuff. On the missing my goals part, I would say.

Make sure they're realistic. Talk to someone else that's done them before, like literally who's at your current goals. Talk to them like, hey, these are my goals. Are these realistic? Because if not, maybe I'm just causing depression and burning myself up trying to get there when realistically it's just not going to happen.

And I just need to, I need to be more realistic about them so I don't put that much pressure on myself and realizing that if you hit half of your goals, you'd probably be super successful.

So yeah, talk to a coach, talk to nick on a junk 6 manager.

Kenlyn, you would said you would said that Max A can handle almost infinite number of calls. So going on what you said there. Do you think it is possible and profitable to open up that answering service to other people? I was thinking it would be a nice add on to copilot. If you sign up to copilot executive model you can add 24 hour answering service and then you could charge whatever you need to per minute to make a profit. No, I'm not really interested in just cost us more than what we charge per minute. We would have to charge what at least three or four dollars a minute and then it'd be a whole other division. I have to open up. Like no. Yeah, you're trying to maximize revenue. Yeah but like this is our moat right now. I think people have already started to copy it and that in two to three years what we have today will be pretty commonplace. And my hope is that in two or three years we've connected with copilot. Max can take credit cards, Max can change service schedules, accept estimates like do a whole bunch of stuff. So I don't really want to give away our moat right now. I do believe it's piece a piece of the moat and everyone's going to copy it over the next 12 to 24 months. There's a few people who already seem to do a decent job of data collection. It just.

What we're investing into this for like even Christmas lights and stuff like that. It's definitely unique enough for us not to share it. So remember like my goal is to change the level of professionals in the industry not to make the quick buck on the technology we built. So if we get far enough ahead, more people have to join Augusta. Getting a thousand locations will put the pressure on required to.

For people to actually listen. And so.

All right, I think that is all we had for questions today. All right, I'm going for a leadership meeting. I hope you all have a fantastic rest of your evening. I was a little bit later today so if there's not any questions tomorrow might not have a mastermind. But feel free to submit follow ups on those couple questions that were a little bit vague. Happy to do it. Love you all and we'll see you tomorrow.