Mike Minutes Mastermind 08/14/2024

Hey everyone. Hope you're doing good. Let's get started.

The text messages might be get. You might be getting those before I start sometimes now.

Because we recently did this thing at Copilot that allows text messages to go much faster when doing bulk. So you might get them sooner kind of on the back end, rolling it out slowly.

So let's go ahead and get started. I thought I had made a note while I was working out this morning.

I guess more of just kind of a reminder.

I had. I made a post in the Facebook group and that is I just recommend setting a monthly reminder in your calendar to check your Google listing. I looked yesterday and there's like 10 to 15 locations that have verification pending. So usually this need more details of some sort. Submitting a business license or address change. Usually it's the address stuff. Highly recommend. Just doing that every month. If you leave those alone for, you know, a few weeks, all of a sudden I have seen it where they just suspend your account.

And so that suspension can take four to eight weeks usually to get fixed up by the time you get stuff submitted to them a thousand times. And I actually get back to you and make the change and reinstate your account in that four to eight weeks. We usually see people lose two to four spots on Google and then leads drive by about 30 to 50%.

Almost overnight simply because you're not going to show up in the Google Map anymore. You drop on your native rankings, they just penalize us there right away. So highly recommend. Just set a monthly calendar reminder to check your Google listing. Make sure that no information is required. I'd recommend downloading the mobile app, which is actually just Google Maps. But then if you log in, you can go into your businesses and see what's going on there. So highly recommend.

The other thing I was talking, I was thinking about is like good things seem slow in the micro. So every business I've ever built.

When you're in it, it just seems really slow.

I was talking to one owner about like when it feels that way. Like creating more finish lines is sometimes helpful. Like different things are trying to benchmark against whether it be revenue, number of employees, number of trucks, number of estimates sent out in a day. Like as many finish lines as possible can help because in the micro it just seems so slow. Even if you're doing something really awesome. Like if you're building something really cool over the next 10 years and you're in year three or four, it can just seem like this is such a drag. And so sometimes creating more finish Lines is helpful. Also, keep in mind that at the end of that 10 year marker and you've built something really cool and you're getting interviewed on a podcast, you will tell the entire story in three minutes or less. And so.

What takes so long to build up literally will be summarized in your bio in one sentence. And so it can literally take 10, 15 years to build that one. That one line can build, you know, take 10, 15 years to build up that one to two, three minute intro. And that's difficult because it is not easy when you're three, four, five years deep into something.

To stay focused on the end goal. Especially because success is so.

Exponential and you just don't see a lot of returns in the first little bit. And if you shorten down to like six months or even 12 months, you can feel like you're not doing anything, you're at a standstill. Especially because it usually doesn't go smooth up here. Usually a jagged kind of stepping thing. So you'll get a big jump in a year. And you seem like, man, we made so much progress. And then just like for a whole year, you're just like, man, we're just like grinding. We had to switch into profit mode again and we had to, like, pay off the debts and, like, had to get back in doing the work I used to do in the past, it felt like a step backwards.

So don't expect it to be smooth. It'll be more like jagged steps up and sometimes a step down. Like, it's like, oh, man, I gotta go back to being a manager because someone left or I realized that, like, there's big holes in this. I've got to step back and do something different. So don't feel bad about that. In the micro, those things are, like, extremely painful. And when if you zoomed out for every entrepreneur that's quote unquote successful now and does the podcast and does the the books, etc.

They all went through the same thing. And if not, and if they're growing something now, they are also going through the same thing in their current stuff.

All right, let's jump into questions. Looks like we got four.

First ones from Dylan Works from Boise. What are your thoughts on adding a step to text the customers that what day will be servicing the property? The scheduling process had a couple customers recently get very frustrated saying, we didn't tell them we would be coming. I informed them they got an email, which seems to make them even more mad that it was through an email. Would it be a good idea to text that instead. So people are even more likely to see it. Yeah. If you wanted to add it as part of your process, feel free to add as a separate text. Keep in mind, your text messages to characters are much, much less the thank you and welcome email. You'd want to summarize it down to less than 160 characters. And I would probably just say date of service. Check your email, because inside that thank you and welcome email we talk about like for example, the fact that the first few visits. Contact us if you have any questions. We want to get your service dialed in and you usually actually put the notes of what was accepted inside that email as well. So not a bad idea though to send a text reminder like, hey, your date of service is X. We got you on the schedule. Check your email for all the details. Something like that wouldn't be a bad idea.

Jason from Knoxville, Tennessee. Mike, hypothetical question. If you went back in time before Augusta Nation and Copilot and we're just focused on growing your Bellingham location, how large do you think you would have been able to grow one location? I know growth size is somewhat dependent on location, but Caleb and I are realizing that the management skills needed to run a million plus location is vastly different than what is needed to run a location that generates 300 to 500,000. 100%. There are several companies in our area that I am sure do well over 5 million in revenue and I am just wondering how feasible it is to have that as a goal. I want to do whatever God allows us to do, but also want to have reasonable goals. Appreciate your insight. Yeah, it just depends on what kind of business you want to build.

Again, there's nothing wrong with building one location massively. I've just seen between 1 and 3 million. It's a very weird sticky spot that is very difficult to manage. After 3 million, you can start to hire someone that has years of experience and will allow you to get out of operations. But at a $2 million business, you can't afford to pay someone $200,000 a year.

And you just can't. And then especially if you're in operations too, you're taking a salary. And so typically at that size, you also have then like three or four overhead positions, etc. So for me, we grew the Bellingham shop to 1.7. We did tons of projects, hardscaping, et cetera. It has been a five year process of winding all of that out without imploding the business. And, and what I mean by that is if I would have taken out all projects right away when I knew that that was the right thing to do, I would have had debt on my skid steers. I would have had debt on a lot of my equipment. I would not like. The business would have, the revenue would have dropped way too much. It probably would have dropped 80%, 70% at least.

And so now we don't do any of those services. And so it's a bit of a.

Pride killer ego buster to go from 1.7 to say 1.2. However, that revenue is far easier to manage. And so someone like Corey that had six to 12 months of field experience can manage that location. Is it easy? No, because management is a whole different skill than actually running operations out in the field and being a laborer. However, that skill is learnable easier when you're managing smaller projects and the work is just simpler and then you have, so you have different levels of complexity. Right. So if we talk about systems being simplification and standardization, it is simply easier to simplify and standardize things.

That like, let me take, let me say there's a third one and I'd probably add scale. Like as soon as you start scaling something, you can take something that's simple, you can take something standardized. And if you scale it just inherently it creates more management headache because you have more people involved. And so you know, if I had to add a third S to that in terms of standardization, Stan, standardization, simplification, I would say scale is the next one that you're going to come into. And that's what people hit when they hit that 800,000 to a million dollar marker of like you, you, if you want to step away from the business, you need a professional manager. And as someone has been in the industry for 10 or plus years, they have managed 30 plus people and you're going to overpay for them because you're not going to unless you've built the business for 20 years. This is the caveat. If you've been in business for 20, 25 years, you have people in the organization that worked with you for 10 or 15 years and they can move into places of management. But if you're, if you're two, three, four years into the business, there's just no way, unless you go out and over hire, unless you overpay someone to bring them inside, the organization will be able to find someone that can manage a 2, 5, $10 million business. So you will have to overpay if you're going to do that. A lot of the businesses that I look around that are successful at 3 million plus in the long care landscape industry. Have been in the industry a very long time. And usually they have a very good leadership team that has been with them for 10 to 15 years. And so I'm not opposed to that. I think it's a good model. I think the thing is, could they have found less qualified managers, done some smaller $500,000 locations? Likely. And so personally I like the $500,000 model. I have, I have that and I have the million plus. I have both and the $500,000 one, I lose less sleep over it. I have left problems around that one. It is simply a matter of scale. As soon as you take that, if I took that same exact business and I just doubled it like there'd just be so much more headaches because there's way more pressure on the general manager. There's less, there's more overhead because the manager has to spend more time managing. And managing three to four employees is very different than managing 10 plus. And so your revenue per employee usually goes down when you go from 500,000 to a million. And so that's why price increases are very necessary as you're scaling through that stage.

So I'm not opposed. It's just a matter you pointed out. Exactly. Management skills needed to run a million plus locations is vastly different than what is required to do 500,000. And I think most time people like, they just like having big shops spaces. It's just cool. And I would say 95% of the shop spaces that I see that are doing millions in revenue, the owner is still working 60 to 70 hours a week because they haven't simplified, they haven't standardized and the scaling process simply happens because they're working so many hours in the, in the business.

I would just rather have personally six or seven locations that do $500,000 pop. I have six or seven general managers that is 3 million in revenue. And if one of them goes down, I'll probably have one GM manage two locations. The one that's closest to them temporarily while I'm finding someone else and that someone else will likely be someone in the field that is demonstrating leadership abilities. The hardest part is when you, when you scale too many locations too quickly is you don't have people that have been with you in the field for one to two or three years. I ideally want to have a GM at least working with me for a year or two. Ideally when you start going beyond. That's where I've gotten in trouble in the past is someone like hops on two or three months and I make them a gm. You just don't have a track record with them. And so that's just, just my personal preference. And also coming from the perspective of I don't want to be having my businesses in 10, 15 years where I have to jump in. I want their like layers of management between me and the work. And that is going to mean less margin, it's going to mean simplification, standardization in order for it to be able to scale. And so yeah, it's a great if it's observation, Jason, because like I know when you joined Augusta, I think you were on that 400,000 level for like 10 years. So first off, let me also say you're comfortable at that level. You know what it takes you what good looks like at 400,000 because you did it for 10 or 15 years. Now as you're pushing past a million, like first off, kudos, great. You and Caleb crushed it. But like this does. You don't know what it looks like. This is actually something I was thinking, I was talking about Liz yesterday, like a general manager doesn't know what good looks like at this size of business. So I can't necessarily judge them because they don't even know what it's supposed to look like. They don't know what bad is. They don't know what good is. They can't see flaws in the business because they've never seen it what it looks like otherwise. And that's why you typically will if you're a larger business, you will, you will overpay for someone's experience to come into the organization because they know what good looks like. And that ignorance debt is huge, huge when it comes to management. And this is what I'm, you know, thinking about with, with Copilot, for example, like I'm about to pony. I have to pay half a million dollars.

For a CTO that will come in with 20 plus years of experience. And the problems that I'm facing will be an absolute breeze for them. But the amount of rigor around vetting that person, testing that person, working alongside that person and then paying them a gobs of money like that and giving equity is, is very, very scary. And so it just so happens that like I can't break up small little chunks and make it more siloed where each engineer is responsible for a location which I would prefer because that much, that many eggs in the basket of say that individual, it's very, very stressful. And that's what I typically See, as a location that will scale, typically any business that scales and that 1 to 3 million dollar marker is tough, very tough. Everyone's like, I want to get to a million dollars. Great.

When you start pressing again. That's why a lot of times at a million, you'll need to do price increases because getting from a million to three requires another layer of management and your margins go down again.

So. I know, I know. Like, I have probably had at least 4, 1, 2, 3, 45 conversations with owners in Augusta Nation this year that are going from one to three. And this is a very consistent theme, is, oh my goodness, I'm going to have to hire people like that are general managers. I'm going to have to hire estimators. I'm going to have to like do these things that are going to cut my margins and I have to raise prices. And that's another year you'll slow down for a little bit in order to get enough profit margin to then jump to that level. So yeah, great, great. Observation number three.

Matt Salem Morgan, is there a possibility to add an option to copilot to have budget hours as minutes, not decimals? I imagine that this is on the roadmap already. If that's the case, is there in each of this feature. We don't plan on doing this. We want to keep it strictly to.

A decimal. Mostly due to the fact that.

I know it doesn't make too much sense to talk about.

Decimals of budget hours, but in terms like pay for performance, in terms of your efficiency score, all of that is calculated based on decimals. So we're trying to keep it straight. And I've seen where you can toggle it. I think we might even had a toggle on it before. We might have already had this. And then like so many people were getting confused and they weren't using efficiency scores because of it. So maybe it was in P4P. I did that before. I remember we did this before and there was so much confusion around it. I was like, forget this, decimals. Let's just use the same language.

Two, who would you put on the business? Entrepreneurship? Mount Rushmore.

I don't know. It changes all the time. Every year or two it changes for me. Three, do you go to conference trade shows in person, Learning network events? Yeah, there was a lot of that, like in 2023, because I had such a deficiency in so many areas and I need to meet people the next six months. I'm kind of unwinding all of that because I know what I need to do for the next 12 to 24 months. And it is not meeting more people or learning more information. It is finding a great cto. It is hiring incredible engineers. It is getting very, very deep into technology. And I don't need to meet more people to do that. I've met some amazing people and I'm very thankful for that. And I will probably stay very insular to like my coach and like three or four contacts of other founders that are super close to me that I've met at these events that are helpful. But like, if I was an owner inside of August Nation, for example, and I was, you know, thinking of this sort of thing, I would be trying to choose four or five really close owners inside of Augusta Nation that I, that I really aligned with their philosophy on life and there were different sizes of business and then I would just, I would try to stay insular to them and I would try to just.

Keep the noise down. And that's why I think it's important to stay aligned with people that are. You just see alignment in life because otherwise people will take their business advice and they'll be like, oh well that's for them because they think X, Y and Z about life and therefore I can just throw their advice out. But that just, that's what works for me. So because of these conferences and stuff that I've been to in the past, you know, or especially in 2023.

I have people I can reach out to and get help, etc, but like all of 24, 24 just been like head down. There's been like not much of this stuff. I know it needs to be done and it's just going to take 12 to 24 months to execute on it. And when I wake up in 12 or 24 months, I will probably go back to meeting another level of people beyond where I currently am at. And until then just like the work just needs doing.

Ken Lynn the first two years I've been with Augusta, I try to sell winter services and had zero results. Comes down to those type of services aren't needed or expected in my area. Cleaning out flower beds, picking up sticks, trimming off trees off the roofs, etc. So I was going through the winter service checklist again and was wondering how I can change it to a snow central type of service. I was hoping to add or exclude things that people don't need to make it a monthly fee, try to sign up as many people as possible for a weekly visit where they feel there is value added. I would probably just sell this as Call it still winter services, but make it more about the snow. Snow service, like the very first thing would be like shovel snow if needed or salt the walkway if needed and then just make it a flat monthly thing. You could do that. So if you want to make it separate from mowing, you just know, decouple it from the mowing services and the price of mowing if you wanted to, and just say, hey, these are like our, this is our $99 package, our $199 package, and our $299 package. And it includes all these services. And I'd start off with the, the ice and snow and move down to other services. And then I would probably just emphasize on like, timing in terms of like, okay, if it snows and you want us there within 12 hours, that's our $2.99 package. If you want us there within 24 hours, that's our 199-package. If you just want us to show up bi weekly and if there is snow, we'll do it. If not, we'll do these other services. $99. I'd probably tie it against something like timing and then I'd just make it more about the snow and the ice and decouple it from actual mowing services.

But the only thing I don't like about that is then you'd have to. You couldn't really use the opt out, like opt out of widget services. It'd be like, you'd still have to sell this. Like, this would be another service which I'm not opposed to. If you get 50, 60 people, half of your customers doing that, that's enough to pay your fixed expenses and make sure you get through winter, which is better than nothing if you haven't had any winter services in the past.

I really like the opt out ability though, of winter services because then you assume revenue and then maybe half the people don't want it. But that's fine. You keep the other half versus have to sell 50% of them. You just have 50% of them opt out. It's easier from an admin perspective. And cost.

All right. That's all she wrote for the day. Have a fantastic Wednesday. I'll see you guys tomorrow. Take care.