Mike Minutes Mastermind 08/10/2023

Hey, everyone. Hope you're doing super well. Let's go ahead and get started here.

If you did not see it yet, I will be emailing out the update I posted on the Facebook group yesterday about Max AI calls.

Yeah. So I'll send that email out later today.

Basically, with the CRM, what we have internally, we have a cap on how many emails were less than the day. So I was not able to send it out yesterday.

But in your inbox yesterday, I did send you a form if you are wanting to get on the waiting list for switching over to copilot. I was incredibly surprised at how many people filled that out, to be honest with you, especially people in service autopilot. So we did get it all in there. We're going to keep a file.

Eli had a good idea. And for, like, each. Each location in Augusta, we're going to keep track of where you're at in the onboarding process, making sure that process is as smooth as possible for you and just being. We'll keep it as organized as we possibly can so that way you don't have to worry too much about that process. So we've done tons of imports already in terms of sample and zooper. And so we'll just make sure that each. Each location inside of Augusta is accounted for in terms of the transitional where they're at in that process. So should be good.

All right.

I don't think there's any other announcements. Sorry. I have this new thing I'm trying. Instead of saying I'm stressed, I'm trying to say I have cortisol pumped into my blood instead of just labeling it as stress. But, yeah, a little bit stressed out, I guess. I am now on three lawsuits all outside of the state, different ones, and they just like, hover like a dark cloud over your head all the time. Even if you think you're fine, even if you think. Don't think it's gonna be crazy. It just, like, hovers over your head and it's not good.

And then, whoops, oops, one second I dropped my airpod.

And then.

The copilot. We released a really cool feature yesterday, and it just broke a ton of stuff. I don't know how. It was dumb. So it's very frustrating. Anyways. All right, let's hop in. I think we've got some questions. I know at least someone from the fac system said they had submitted some, so let's jump in.

All right. You got nine questions on a Thursday.

All right, let's rock and roll.

This is from Nobody. When you get to. When you get to a working gym location that's at 500k, what should the owner be taking as regular pay if they are not there? Should profit sharing or distributable cash be calculated before or after paying the owner? If it's a working GM location where you as the owner are not doing anything, then you should just be getting paid as distributable cash because you don't want to be giving yourself a W2 if you can avoid it. You do not need to be giving yourself a W2 if you're never there. Now, if you're sometimes there, then you should be taking out your pay like a regular employee. And your wages should be coming out in the top line like before the bottom line if you're actually doing work right. So like my locations that I don't ever show up to, I don't take a W2, but I do from Bellingham because the IRS is going to be like, if you show up there, you got to pay yourself if you make decisions, if you do anything, like you have to pay something. So I minimize that as much as I possibly can. But that's taken out with wages. It is not redone on the bottom line. That is distributable cash based upon distributions. Okay, so if you're paying yourself a W2 or paying yourself a salary and you're working in the business, you should be putting that in the wages of the business. It is not considered part of distributable cash.

Nick from Marysville, what would you do if you had a past employee going to the door to all your clients since they remember the route as an unlicensed operator saying bad things. Augusta. And offering a cheaper price just to steal the clients. I know we have the non compete in the contract, but at what point would you take action? Let's say this person has stolen 10 clients so far.

They've actually taken 10 clients. That's kind of crazy. See, what I would typically have said if you didn't put this last line is like, just let it run its course. Um.

I would not do anything about this. You're going to create more damage by bringing this up to all of your customers than just letting it go under the bridge. Honestly, like, if I was you, I would say, okay, can I go? Can I have $50 customer acquisition cost? Can I do 80 customer acquisition cost, multiply that by 10 and go replace those customers. And think of this as like a $500 or $1,000 mistake or like error or problem. Instead of blowing this out of proportion and be like this is a huge deal and emailing all your customers and they're creating questions and they're asking you about what happened and all this other stuff. Now if you know these 10 clients, those ones I would probably go address and just talk to you one on one. I'd probably knock on their door too, like hey, so and so came by. If you want to go with them still, that's totally fine. I just want to explain on my end as the employer what happened and then, you know, let them make their decision from there.

One second, let me check my audio. Okay, cool.

Nick from Marysville, thanks for making that video about AI super concise. What do you think? It wasn't super concise. It was 25 minutes long. It's too long. What do you think about what do you think would happen in this scenario? Client gets frustrated and gets calls and gets frustrated with Max and hangs up. CC calls back when they can and client doesn't answer. So we leave a voicemail. Client calls back and it's Max again and they hang up. Do we just play phone tag until they answer? This would most likely happen with an existing client since the initial gathering info Max is really good at. So if a client calls back and they don't want to talk to Max, they just have to say that and immediately it's getting transferred. So the only way this even happens is they are deep into the conversation with Max and then get frustrated. We are doing something right now and I'll let you guys know once it's finished.

Exactly we're doing to prevent this from ever happening and that is the client ever getting in a conversation with Max and then realizing it's AI or something like that and then being mad. We are doing something right now to fix this.

But in the event, for example like they this hap is happening or happened, as soon as they say I want to talk to someone else or they say I want to talk to anything besides I need an estimate. They're getting forwarded directly to command center. So I don't foresee this happening outside of that two or three hour window. It's like three hours window on Monday when this loop was happening and they were not able to get transferred to to command center. But other than that I don't see that foresee this happening. And we're, we're going to solve this first part altogether.

I'll share recordings once we have it done. Some questions during this time. During this time every Max call is being listened to the back end by cc. Is this just during the initial stages of the rollout to help facilitate the improvement or will this be permanent? Is CC taking the hit on the back end the time listening calls? The Command center is not looking at listening to calls. Myself and all the developers are. What is the procedure now for OTP estimates? Client calls in their info and gets it to Max ends the call. Max creates tickets, CC types of quote and emails it. How long does it take for an OTP that way versus doing it actually over the phone with a rep? Do you believe there is more value to a sub 2 minute call with Max just gathering some quick info and getting their quote emailed versus an OTP estimate with a rep? If we are talking about saving the time client, I think that Max taking the calls will be better. Thank you for taking the time to address these questions. Yeah, so right now if someone has an OTP and they call in and they leave all information for Max, we can sometimes get the quote to them just as fast because that ticket comes in and Command center is right on it. The better thing is this now because not live on the phone, you're going to get even more accurate of quotes. And I know like Nick, in your area you've said you've never had to change an estimate ever for otp, but now instead of having someone on the phone for an extra three to five minutes asking them extra questions kind of honestly, you're burning a little bit of time when you're trying to like quickly measure the property and things like that. And then sometimes what's not a great user experience is we do all of that and then it's like, oh, like this is too large of a property and we need to have an estimator come or oh, I'm going to have to have an estimator come because of X, Y and Z based upon your parameters. And it's not a great user experience. Now those quickly get their information to Max, Command center will get that ticket immediately and be right on it. There are times that you could literally have the estimate in their hand and us calling them back within the same amount of time as the phone call would otherwise have been. The important part here though is now when Command center walks in the morning, every morning, there's 20, 30 of those leads that came in overnight instead of voicemails that we have to contact them back and get them that get them like get their address, get their email, all the rest of it. Now they're coming in the morning and those are all sitting there for them and they can knock them out and they can call the customer, send the invoices, or send the estimates via email. And once we switch to copilot, part of that standard process would be sending it via text message as well. So yes, it's not like you can call in right now and in 10 minutes have everything set up, but it's, it's.

Many times faster. And more importantly, we now can do that for all the after hours people. And the big thing is they stop contacting other providers. That's the big thing you're trying to do. And so once they've given their information, they said we're going to give them a quote, we are trying to still beat them back as soon as possible with that quote in their inbox. And I truly believe that like within a matter, especially once within the copilot, that once they ask for it within a matter of a few minutes, we can have it in their, in their text messaging and be just as fast, if not faster than if they would have stayed on the phone and talked to a real person. That was like dropping pins and asking those questions and putting together the estimate and all the rest of it. So it also, it just prevents that customer frustration of like, oh, this customer is too large or this property is too large and we need to send an estimate anyways. Or in a lot of our markets, lots of tree cover, 20, 30, 40% of your estimates. Even once they pull up the property, we have to then set up an estimator anyways. So it makes it a little bit easier for the for command center because they see that with the ticket and immediately then it's a matter of okay, let's go ahead and just set this up as a drive by for the estimator Instead of having to kind of have the false expectation of the customer that like, oh, I'm gonna get this quote. And like oh, just kidding. We guys set up an estimate because there's too much tree cover, or the property's brand new, just built, or it's too large, etc. So it's not perfect. But the reason.

I'm bullish on this is because I know that down the road we can have Max actually do the estimate on the phone and that's the most perfect scenario. But it's going to require huge amounts of technology for him to actually understand what the rate matrixes are and then be able to give the price, collect card information, put that card on file and tell the customer when they're on they're coming up for service. So I understand these initial phases are not perfect, but that's where it is going to go and we can only get there by teaching Max a lot right now and giving him a lot more information and feedback. Jason from Knoxville, have you worked out something with Equip Expo on tickets or should we just order them directly from them? The tickets double in price after September 7th and double again. No October 15th. Just for everyone's info. Yeah, if you go, Jason, onto the dashboard under conference, there is a part about Equip Expo and they give us 50 off. So use the coupon code that they gave us there and that should get you 50 off of whatever the price is. So yeah, if you want to get a ticket, I'd do that sooner than later because then yeah, they have their tiers of increasing price. Devin from Red Deer Hey Mike, I'm picking up my second truck next week and getting it painted too. If I have the cash to buy a third truck in October to have three trucks for snow plowing starting November 1st, should I do it? I know, I know. I can fill out out three trucks doing 35 plus driveways per truck a month. Then come spring I'll be locked and loaded, hit my first 100k month in May. Yeah, it really comes down to your cash reserves and then your your level of confidence in this last part and that is can you fill those trucks to capacity? I would not rush if you just bought a second one. Unless you are very, very confident you have you can or have already sold those contracts especially for snow, you could be selling them now and make sure you actually have the 35 per truck before you go to get the third truck.

Kurt Kyler, Plainfield Mike, I use QuickBooks to bill and take credit card payments. Can I still use QuickBooks through quot to collect credit card payments? I do not use stripes for credit card payments. Also, can Copilot work with the payment platform Zelle? I have a lot of clients pay with Zelle. We do not work with zelle. We have PayPal. If that's something you want to do directly in through Copilot, I would not recommend once you switch over to copilot using QuickBooks. I know right now you're doing that mostly to get around Zooper. I understand that we do integrate with QuickBooks, but it's not like where the customer can go in through their portal to their portal. They can only use Stripe and PayPal and I would highly recommend that.

I don't know how you're doing it currently. Like I'm Assuming you're probably sending the invoice. Yeah, you're probably sending the invoice and then they're paying from there. I would recommend just doing through Copilot the stripe integration and PayPal integration is sufficient in my opinion.

So I would, that's what I would recommend. But I understand the apprehension. If you're already been in QuickBooks, I just think you're going to see a much, a much better user experience when the invoice and everything is connected in one CRM and one software versus trying to do it with two. And I'm just not. I just never Recommend Integrating with QuickBooks. Honestly, I've seen too many horror stories.

Caleb from Caleb Mare Island, I'm looking for some clarification on recent changes to gamifying the P4P app.

My guys are getting the congratulations confetti for not missing days. Even if they have missed a day. Is there a way to mark in feedback called out one day without them having a time card for the missed day? Yeah, so there's training on this but let me just, I'll walk you through real quick. Give me one second.

So if you go to PVP University or just go to p4psoftware.com training, there is training on this. So when it comes to call outs etc. If someone like doesn't show up, for example, like you said, there's not going to be an ability to be able to do the following. Give me one second here. So if someone shows up late, just I highly recommend like if they're, they're three, four, five minutes late, whatever you know that they are. Oh come on. Let me just create a time card real quick.

3:00Am.

Okay, so got a time card. Let's just say they're late. All you have to do is click this. That's it. Then do everything else normal. Now if they don't show up, there's not going to be a time card. So what you're going to do is you're going to go to their user account, go to their employee account right here. And I had the mark days right here. You can just pay. Okay, there we are. No show. Said they ran out of milk.

No cereal. So you could just put this in here. Like that is for the other day, boom, added in. So I would recommend everyone right now, if you haven't been doing this manual, just putting your lates and your no calls and your no shows into your P4P app. I highly recommend start doing that again. Calling out or being late is super easy. Just checking that box on their time card. But if they are, if they no show or if they call out, you do need to do this here. Highly recommended. I know we're adding these little things to people or basically pulling everything into one app. Right. So this used to be probably on like either a Google Doc or it used to be on like your user profile and service autopilot or Copilot, et cetera. Put it all in one spot in P4P is our goal because we want this to eventually be able to do profit sharing and that's going to be tied directly to these numbers, those inputs that you're giving it right there. So yeah, so if, if you're, if you guys are getting those congratulations and they're out of place, which they likely they will be, they'll just be taking all completed time cards since they started. Really what you'll want to do is just go in and manually add the last day that you know they were late and then it'll be accurate from then on.

Like the goal in doing that is like you don't want them, you want them to get that feeling like, oh man, I don't want to break the streak. Right. Like I have, I'm at 48 days. Right. I don't want to break the streak. That congratulation thing. And then when they clock out, it tells them how much money they've made and, and then it alternates with how many hours they've worked with you. So just kind of adding layers of like a little bit more psychology around.

You know, is breaking that streak worth them getting up five minutes earlier to make sure they're on time? For some people, that's very, very motivating. The reason why a lot of apps do that.

There's. That was not the end of the question though. So let me continue. A new hire got a notification saying Congratulations, you made $101 on PvP. Even though he's not earned above base pay yet. Yeah. So P4P is, it's adding that total amount of dollars. It's not about base pay, it's about total dollars. Because the reason they're a new hire is this probably their first day. What's going to happen is over time this number's gonna become larger and larger. 20,000, 30,000, 40,000, $50,000. And so what you want is especially when someone's been like with you for a year, two years, that number might hit $100,000. And then what you can end up doing is like, hey man, congratulations, you had a hundred thousand dollars six figures you, you made on P4P. Like that's really cool thing to be able to celebrate. And furthermore they again it's a number, another number they see going up all the time. So this is total P4P. This is not performance dollars or payroll bonus. This is just total P4P being calculated there. There are certain things you need to monitor daily to make sure these things, these notifications are more accurate. The only thing you'll need to do is make sure that on the time cards you are tracking days late or late when they, when they're late, just hit that time that thing up top the box and their time card and then no shows and call outs. Track those manually on their employee car, the employee profile. And the reason you have to do it in the employee profile is because there's no time card created if they're not clocking in.

Nick from Marysville, congratulations on the parabolic subscriber growth. You are at like 119k now. Why do you think it jumped so fast? Well, there's this good looking guy named Marcus. He came onto the channel and had a short that went viral. Let's see here, how many, how many views does it have now on, on Tick Tock? It has over 10 million on YouTube. I think we're at 20 million.

Yeah, 17 million. So you know Marcus has a future if not in lawn care in Hollywood. So that's what I'm attributing all the growth to at this point.

Nick from Mary's real. Never mind. I answer my own question. It's Mark.

Oh man. Gotta love the guy. Gotta give some credit to the media team too. They do a great job cutting everything up.

Really cool stuff. Looking forward to next week. The.

Turnarounds are going to be coming out. At least the first one is. And then probably the week after we'll do the second one, it'll get released and then probably within a day or two I'm gonna, I'm gonna release a much longer version with me reacting to everything that's happening and sharing with all of Augusta Nation more of what I'm thinking because like the way we gotta cut to for YouTube now, like people have short, short attention spans. It's like we gotta cut pretty quick. What I'm gonna do, it's, they'll probably be 20, 30 minute videos. I'll probably sit down for another 30 minutes and like watch it with you and like break down certain parts of it and take it slower, break down math, stuff like that. So just be on the lookout, watch it publicly because it's super exciting. But then wait for that extra video for me. I'll put in the dashboard and I'll let you know when that's happening. All right, Thursday. One more day after this in the week. Let's go. All right. Have a fantastic day. Fantastic Thursday. You have cortisol pumping through your blood. Share yourself a smile. We're still kicking, breathing air. It's great. All right. I'm getting messages that we have slow Internet command center. Great. All right, have a fantastic day, everyone. We'll you see.