Mike Minutes Mastermind 08/04/2022

Let's go ahead and get started. Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing super well. And yes, I have that. Cool. A whole bunch of questions came in, so let's go ahead and just jump right into those. And then I do have a little stuff I'll talk about based on some people asking me questions about multiple locations, etc. And how I think about that. So I will get into that afterwards. But first, let's go through these questions. I think there's like four, five of them. I have not looked them yet. Share screen.

Boom. There you go. Cool. All right, first one from Evansville. Those of us who do monthly billing, could we possibly have our ALC franchise invoice come out on the 5th or so, at least a couple of days after we invoice and Clearance has deposited funds into our account? I had payroll, CC bill and credit card payment all at the same time this month and then my account went negative when ALC franchise invoice was processed 15k expense week. I emailed and asked CC to hold off a couple days, but it was already processed by the time Lonnie received the email. We have enough money coming in, but just recovering from paying for a new engine and paying off debt. It's just a cash flow timing, but I think waiting net 5 after the first would give everyone plenty of time for the credit card payments to process. Or maybe just me. Yes, we've delayed it by two days. So instead of the first, when you get the invoice, basically two days later is when the account will be charged and most of the time it won't even come out the next day. So I'll talk with Lonnie, go over a couple things and see what we can do. But currently that's how it is. You get the invoice in your inbox and then two days later is when it's actually going to be deposited withdrawn. So the goal in doing that is that you're able to charge everyone the last day of the month of the first, and then within two days it's already in your account. But I saw notice the same thing with Clearance. It took us two days this past month to get money in too. So I, I'll take a look at that. I'll. I'll do some investigating.

What's the best way to categorize credit card payments in QuickBooks? The problem I'm running to is I'm worried when I initially categorize the expense made with the credit card and then go to categorize the credit card payment that it will appear as two separate expenses rather than just one. Resulting it looking like my business has twice as many expenses. It really does. Hope this makes sense. Yes, it. When you are categorizing expense inside of QuickBooks, you need to make sure that you mark it as a credit card payment and then you'll match the two payments up so it'll actually do this automatically a lot of times. But if you have your checking account and you have your credit card in the same QuickBooks account and you mark one as a credit card payment, it'll usually look to your other account and see if there's any matching amounts. And I'll actually match those up and ask you if you want to match them up. But you've got to make sure you record them as.

Credit card payments. Okay. You can also do it as a transfer, but you just need to be consistent. Okay. Because basically, yeah, it's not a P L line item when you're moving money in and out of a checking account to pay off a credit card. So very important that you do that.

Feel free. If you ever have questions on that, let us know. At Command center, we obviously do the QuickBooks categorization for everybody, so we can help you if needs be. Or even just put it in here, which man, I totally forgot 1 second picture.

On form QA. I will make a note here and try to put a spot where you can attach photos to this Mastermind form. So that way it will allow you to do that because that sort of thing would be helpful.

Is Zooper going to have the ability to build estimate templates? For example, we can upload our products at predetermined prices and when we are doing an estimate, we can just click on that type of service and add the products and quantities to build quickly build an estimate. Furthermore, are we going to be able to do this on a mobile phone in the field, not a tablet or desktop? In terms of this first part, yep, absolutely. There's planned estimate templates just matter of what you want to build.

And what's really cool is down the road they already have the.

Products and they call it products and something else. Basically products you can add to an to an estimate and down the road that will replace the need for Command center have to use the estimate calculator in Excel because all the products and services will already be in there as products in the database. And then it'd just be a matter of Command center using your numbers from your estimate and plugging in inside of Zooper, which would be much more useful than using the Excel spreadsheet, but there's a few things we want them to change next year before we fully roll that out. But down the road, we will not need to use the Excel spreadsheet for your estimate calculator. And it would just be something inside the software, so it'll be much more. So you can go in there and change things. And it just, it's seamless in terms of command center being able to use that for pricing.

This is probably the same person. All right, I'm going to get salty here. Okay. I appreciate all the ambitions of other Augusta owners wanting to talk about real estate and other things, but I think that is diluting what we really need. One second here. Make sure I'm showing this. Cool. At the last. At the last conference, you talked about building your main pillar and not getting distracted by other things. I've also heard. So let me clarify real quick when. Keep in mind that when we're doing these masterminds, there's people at all different stages of the business, right? For example, people asking yesterday buying real estate already have next to an $800,000 revenue business. When I talk about buying real estate, similar things, there's people at all different seven stages of wealth inside of Augusta Nation. So when I do a mastermind, like I always talk about, you have to take what's applicable to you. Right? And that's why if you're in that first stage of growth, the only thing I talk about is close ratio. Like, you shouldn't be thinking about real estate. You shouldn't be thinking about anything. But I also realized that as people have in their, you know, start getting into their second, third, fourth year of growth and they're doing a larger business, they're going to need information about things like real estate diversification, getting multiple locations, GMs. And I know for someone getting started, that seems like, wow, that's so overwhelming and like, above my head, I understand that you should not listen to those things. Those should be the things that are designated for people that are in further stages of wealth. So that's why we have the seven stages of wealth. And the very first stage is literally grow your business to 500,000. That's the only thing you should be focused on. But keep in mind when I'm doing a mastermind for 100 owners, that there's gonna be some people that are in the sixth and seventh stage of growth and need that information. Right. So let's continue. Though I have also heard you recently say to the effect of going all in on the one main thing, the one. The point that I'm trying to make is I also that although it may feel redundant to you or others, I do believe that a lot can be accomplished by continuously pounding the basics and fundamentals of the Augusta System. I would compare it to the Bible. Each principle is in. It is taught over and over and over. Is that because God gets a kick out of boring us? Probably not. He is doing it that way because he knows that knowing the fundamentals like the back of our hand will get us far and a continuing focus will keep this foundation strong. I hope you can watch the catch. The vision. What I'm saying here, yeah, totally makes sense. I think what it really comes down to is different stages of business. And I'm very clear in the stages of growth, during certain stages, what you need to be focused on. And in stage one, it is absolutely not real estate diversification, multiple locations, GMs, management of people, it's not. It's simply sales. Stage two, it's simply trying to get out of the field and hire more people. Stage three, 200 to 500,000. It's rapid growth to get above 500,000. It is after stage three of growth that you're even at the first stage of wealth at Augusta nation, which is 500,000 in revenue. All right, so if you're in those stages, everything I talk about on the Mastermind in terms of real estate, getting a second location, you know, all this other stuff is completely noise to you at that point. However, to other people that have been in business for years, it's exactly what they need. Because if you're thinking about getting a shop and you have 8, 10, 12 trucks, getting a piece of real estate that you can also rent out and cover the entire mortgage and basically get your shop space for free is extremely valuable information, right? So it's not to say that information is right or wrong. It's different stages of growth and of business.

And if I was really smart, I'd come with something up in my head to match your analogy with the Bible, which would probably be something along the lines of rules change throughout the Bible. So, you know, as things progressed, it was like, hey, at the beginning, the Old Testament, you got certain rules and regulations that were not necessary in the New Testament. So, you know, people progress, people move, things happen, right? And so you get actually really deep with that. But we're not going to go down that rabbit hole. But it's definitely. You got to realize that, you know, whether you're looking at the Bible and the principles that were given. And whether you look at the business principles of growing a business that as time goes on, the context of what is being said needs to adapt to the actual size of the business or what's actually happening. And so whether it be in business or in the Bible, you could take one thing in the Old Testament and look at something in the New Testament, say they're contra contradicting when they're not. It's just different scenarios, different people and different.

Circumstances that the advice being given is different for those different circumstances. So it's not to say that one is right or wrong. It's simply that's a different time, a different person, different situation. And what needs to be understood is that when you hear someone else giving advice and getting advice, that it's contextual to that person. So therefore not everything is applicable to you. So if you are in the first stage of growth and you hear about real estate, you buying real estate is like way off your radar. You have, and I've say this a few times like someone's saying, hey, I have 3,000, $5,000. I'm just getting started. Focus on your business. Your return on that $3,000 will be far greater investing in marketing and hiring somebody than it would be getting a piece of real estate. But if you have a hundred thousand dollars sitting in the bank and you're looking at trying to get a new shop space because you're outgrowing your current spot and you're getting jacked up on your rent, figuring out the real estate game is extremely important and you're going to build value in an asset instead of, you know, putting into something like rent that is short term.

Logan, I have been doing my own accounting for the last five years or so. I took a few classes in college for it. I'm looking to find someone that knows more than me to take over this year. Most accountants in my area aren't really tax strategists trying to save as much as possible. And that's what I'm looking for. Do you know of any places online I could look to find a good accountant? So.

For people that are, this is somewhat premature. So this is not a formal announcement. But down the road this year, next couple months, I'll have an announcement about this. We do know Brad is actually sitting next to me right now. He does. He's a CP and he can run taxes for people. Our opinion is that we can only do it more efficiently than anyone else if we have all of your books currently at command center. So if command center runs your QuickBooks for you and everything. It means that we have very, very clean quarterlies. We have everything in your payroll we know is buttoned down. We know we can do that most efficiently. And he's done TurboTax and everything like that. So he has a lot of experience in that side of things. So we are going to roll that out probably end of this year for everyone to be able to do their 2022 taxes again, assuming that command center is running the books for you. If they don't, or you're looking for an account outside of that, I would say.

It'S not easy. Because if you really want tax good tax strategy, you need a team of accountants. And I've learned this recently. Like to, when I really like, it kills me to pay as much as I do with accountants. I hate it. But at my size now it makes more sense. And it's like again, it's contextual. Like you can go up there and you're going to listen to a podcast and you're going to listen to some billionaire dude say, you know, just hire accountants because like they'll save you way more than what. And that's not contextual to where you're at if you're a small business owner just getting started, right? So again, advice, it has to be contextual. And so besides your business, if you're doing let's say 500,000 revenue, you should not be spending 10, 15,000 doll dollars a year to get your taxes run. That's just ridiculous, right? But on the flip side, you know, at my size now, or if you're talking to someone, a bunch of businesses, they should be spending 10, 15, $20,000 a year and getting good tax advice in order to be able to save a hundred, $200,000 in taxes, right? So I think if you're smaller than a million, it really is going to come down to have an accountant that.

Knows how to run how to do taxes for small business owners. And the more complex your tax return gets in terms of having real estate, multiple locations, multiple income streams, multiple LLC and entity structures. That's when you start really need to invest into a team of accountants. Because now like when I sit down with my quarterlies for my accountants, we have, you know, you have tax audit, then you have there's multiple, like when people say accounting, right? There's so many different areas of accounting and there's specialties like a doctor, like if you get a gm, I'm sorry, a gm, a general, a GP in doc, like a doctor, you go do like family medicine or whatever, right?

They're not going to be a specialist in the heart or the foot. They're going to refer you to someone else. Well, as you grow, you start to afford and needing a group of specialists when it comes to your taxes because you need like someone who is good at auditing. Then there's someone who's good at, like, there's like forensic accounting. Like, there's a whole bunch of different stuff that like specialties of accounting. And so you start needing help in all those things. But at the beginning, I would say mostly get someone that.

Has multiple small business owners, a lot of small business owners using them in your local market. That would be like baseline, right? If you're trying to look for an account. And then over time, a lot of times the reason people think, oh, I need a better account, I need better account, because they're listening to people who have many entity structures and a whole bunch of businesses talking about like all these tax savings and credits. And like, you got this loophole and all this. It's like, look, the cost of you just going and hiring an accounting firm to do that for you potentially could be far greater than the savings you're going to get because you're still relatively small. Right? So I didn't get a team of accountants until this year when it started just becoming like there's so many entity structures and it's very, very confusing. And my returns are hundreds of pages long. Like, it's until then that I think getting a good accountant that you can trust that you know that they do a lot of small businesses in your local area. I think that's probably the thing I'd be looking for. And like I said, if you have Command center doing your QuickBooks by the end of this year, we'll have a formalized program for it and Brad will be able to help us with filing your tax returns. And we'll be most efficient at. Just because we know we have the books clean already from Command center and we can do it much more efficiently. We aren't going to open up to the public or anything just because most people, when they come to their tax account, it's like, here's a whole bunch of receipts and a bunch of invoices and a P and L that is not balanced. And here's a balance sheet. I don't know what it is. It just has a bunch of like random numbers on it. It's a negative and doesn't match up with QuickBooks. Like, that won't work in terms of if you want your accountant to balance your books for you, you're paying a lot of money. You're paying 100, 200, $300 an hour for an account to basically do the work of a bookkeeper. That is a value of maybe 50, 60, $70 an hour. So you do not want to have that level of disorganization. And so we know we can do it efficiently. As long as Command Center's been buttoning the numbers down every quarter and balancing everything out, we should go run everything pretty smoothly. So I'll formalize that for everyone later this year, but that will be for everyone that has QuickBooks being run by Command Center.

Could just be me, but I feel like clear deposits take longer and longer at times. Yeah, it's really weird. Like, I know Andy Burrowson said it's next day for him all the time. I know a couple people have said that, but I've been noticing the same thing, like two, three days. It used to be like the next day every single time. And honestly, where these credit card processing companies make good money on is the holding that, that weird period in between. They make good money on that because they're able to hold a whole bunch of cash. That's how they, you know, use it for investing, et cetera. But anyways, yeah, I don't know if this is a consistent theme. I don't know. This is something that is just periodic. But it seems like some owners it's always next day all the time. Other people it's two, three days. So I don't know. I apologize. I'm interested to know for those of you use stripe with.

With the super, how that's been doing. Cause I know typically it's like still same next day or day after depending on when you run it. But yeah, I just ran CC on Sunday and I got deposit Monday also. How do you feel? How do you handle. Wait, you ran it on a Sunday and you got the deposit on Monday? Yeah. That's weird. See, I. As of yesterday, I still didn't see the Bellingham shops come through. And we charge them right on the first. So it's two business days that hadn't come through. Also, how do you handle customers that want a set price versus $1.50 per minute for initial mo's. I feel like it's outside the system. To do set price, you'd have to do. You would have to do an in person visit at the property, even if it was a drive by. So.

You know, if someone's really pushing, like I need a Set price on the first mo and you have drive bys available, Command center is probably going to set you up for a drive by and I've seen that before too actually I think I saw this yesterday when I was doing some estimates. You'll see in the vlog next week. I had a few estimates just to stay sharp. Um, but the.

What I had was someone asked for an actual price and it was like a foot and a half, two feet tall. So they probably like scared by this notion of A$50 cent per minute. Most people don't care. They like, they just know that first one's gonna be a lot and then some of them will have an issue with it and then you gotta deal with that afterwards. But some people will win an exact price and then you can set up a drive by walk, you know, drive by the property and get more exact of a number for that initial low price. So must be the bank. I could potentially be the bank. Every time, every time we bring up a clearance it's sort of like yeah, we don't really know. It could be your bank, it could be this. It's you know, your time of the day. Different types of credit cards, like they are kind of all over the place. But for some reason I get my batch report that evening. Right. As soon as you charge your cards, you know, batch report that evening. But then sometimes it goes through in two or three days. Sometimes I've seen it the next day occasionally. But in some locations it seems like every single time you charge it one day, the next day it's in your account, which is great. So anywho, I think that's all I got. I'll talk a little bit about what I was going to do. Education. We had a bunch of questions today so I'll go over some of this other stuff tomorrow in terms of multiple locations and stuff and looking at cap rates and return on investment, etc. So. All right, thanks everyone. Hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you tomorrow which is Friday. Oh, we had someone here had a call from unemployment office that someone who quit wants unemployment. Yeah, yeah, like don't stress out about this stuff. Honestly, first and foremost, if someone claims unemployment and it's just they haven't worked for you for an entire quarter, it rarely affects your rates because they go based on the quarter. So if they work through like a month and a half and they take unemployment, probably not going to affect your rates first thing. Second thing is, don't get stressed about this. Like I know it affects your Rate. And I know it's annoying, but, like, I originally would, like, lose sleep over this stuff and get really mad because people were filing when they were either fired or they quit themselves. But fill out the paperwork and just let it go.

You're not going to get rich on saving 10 cents an hour, so just please. I had to learn this the hard way because I just. It just let it, like, fester in your head too much and like, they didn't deserve it. I fired them and now they're getting unemployment. And I have all the reasonings. And here's all the. Like, don't go too deep into it. Give the information that you have for the. The information for the paperwork that's sent to you if you wanting to fight it. And honestly, for me, if it's under three months now, I don't even fight it because I know it's not going to affect the rate. So we. We had to fire someone a few weeks back, and they had worked like two and a half months. So I was like, I'm not even going to fight their unemployment claim. And it says right there, like, they even say, like, fired, lack of performance. I'm like, seriously, you think this is going to get accepted? So I don't really care if it does or not. At this point, after 2020, when everyone was basically getting unemployment blindly, like, even if you had a job and you filed, you'd get it. I kind of became numb to unemployment. I was like, look, I'm not going to focus on that defensive measure as much as the offensive. So when. If someone. When what if someone has. Has never even worked for you and are filing? Well, that's weird. Then you just have to fill out the paperwork. It'll be pretty obvious. I don't know who this person is. I had that happen a few times in 2020, and I did fill out the paperwork. It's easy. It's like, I don't know who this person is. No record of them ever working for here. This is a false claim or whatever it is. Feel free to submit that. And you can even, like, screenshot your employee list or something like that if you wanted to do that. But yeah, awesome. All right, everyone, have a great day. Take care.