Mike Minutes Mastermind 08/21/2023

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Mike Man's Mastermind here on Monday. Hope you're doing good. Let's go get started. Make sure my audio is right, which it is not. Quick.

Cool. All right, let us hop in.

Okay, sweet. Let me just drop this into Facebook. Cool. I wanted to go over something really quick. It's. I know what to call this announcement. Education. I don't know, but I wanted to just mention really briefly, paste that in there. Just keep in mind, when you are interacting on social media, when you're interacting in other groups, etc. Just remember you are representative of Augusta Lawn Care, especially if you have it on your personal account. People are seeing that and they're watching that. I never take action on any reported franchisees from the public ever. So if someone screenshots something or takes a picture of your truck or says something that you're doing, I never take action on that.

I never take action directly, I should say, because I think it's second. Secondhand information. I'll take more action based on things that happen at command center, coaches, first party data, and people that I have a relationship with who is reporting someone. So let me put that caveat on it. But just keep in mind, when you are in Facebook groups, when you are commenting on other things, you are representing Augusta. You. You have a direct impact on every other owner. And we are accountable to each other to ensure that our behavior outside of our personal life, in terms of the public side of things is reflective of something that we would be proud of wearing the Augusta uniform, doing.

So calling people names online, swearing at people online in the comments is very, very small boy stuff, as you all know. I don't like small boy stuff. And so I. There's nothing like super specific that I'm talking about. I get reports from people all the time because keep in mind, when you have a whole bunch of people watching on YouTube and they know that I'm the founder, what they do is they go try to play tattletale and they try to be the hero that tattles on someone and I react to it. Those people don't get a response ever from me. All right? The only people I've ever responded to their report are employees. And I typically usually tell them to go talk to you. If you. If your past employees or pre. Even current employees, if they reach out, I very ever rare. Only I ever have actually got involved with them. You tell them to contact you when it's public, people, I take it with a massive grain of salt simply due to the fact that it's not first party data and they're also usually competitors of yours. So, so, so that being said, how we behave, how we talk about people.

I think very little of people who on social media can say negative things about any human being, including the people that just said something really negative about them. All right, I understand there is what you call low hanging fruit on social media. People that say stuff and it's like, man, I could just say something here or do something here or flex on them and like throw them in the, in the wastebasket. I understand that.

The true sign of someone who is really a big person is someone who can overcome that feeling and take a little bit of an ego hit and not post that. I understand that when someone has a weird username that commenting back to them based upon something they said hurtful back to you or like a slight comment back to you, you responding based on like their username or their profile picture, calling them a name is fun. It gives you a little bit of a, it gives you a little bit of a boost there for a second. You got to get over that. And especially when you have all of Augusta Nation and all everyone's businesses riding on that brand, it is something to be cognizant of. All right, so I'm not calling anyone out. I'm not saying anything's bad. Just I've seen a few things and most of it has to do with people commenting in social media. And just remember you're representing of the brand and we do have standards that are above that of what you would say in the locker room. All right, top in. I haven't pulled up the questions yet. My bad.

All right.

Cool. I wanted to share this with all of you. Now. I don't know, I don't think I'll share this publicly for quite some time. Please just keep this internal for now. But I wanted to make sure you came from me instead of hearing it through the grapevine. I have bought out Patrick Cash as a big piece of his equity. He still owns 10% of Copilot, but I have bought out a big chunk of that. I felt like I need to have more control for us all in the future as well as giving us ability to be able to give pieces of the equity down the road to key, key stakeholders inside of, of the company. So.

Yeah, I thought it was really important just for us to secure that. And it's, it's, it's not easy to pay a lot of money for a company that's still losing money. But I know what the. The future in the long term is. And honestly, I just believe so much like compounding greater levels of magnitude higher than him in terms of what we're doing as well as the amount of work I'm putting into it. And so to avoid any future resentment, I really thought, thought it'd just be best to buy as much of my equity out as possible.

So I don't know if that helps or the increases or decreases the pressure, but it does give me more control and so I think it'll be beneficial for Augusta in the future. He still involves all every single day. That 10% is still valuable and he has to earn it. But I just want to make sure everyone here knows and hear it from me directly. It's happening this week is is that buyout? So, yeah, we'll see if it's either gonna be the best deal of my life or the worst deal of my life. We'll find out. So. But I'm taking a basically a big bet on what we're doing and that it's gonna be play out in the long term.

Okay, jump in.

Share screen, Mastermind. Boom. Zoom in.

And for now, I don't. I don't really care if people know that, by the way. I just, I'm trying to keep it on wraps because I don't want people to think less of Patrick right now. I'd like him to come to conference and feel a little bit of a celebrity and a little bit of what he's never felt in person before because he's been on social media or he's been behind the scenes for 15 years building lawn Pro. I'd like him to feel that a little bit and people not be like, oh, he only only owns 10. So I'd like that to be just between us for now because I do want him to feel that sense of accomplishment at conference if he's able to attend. So that's why I haven't shared it publicly. I won't talk about it publicly, but I did want to let you all know so you don't hear it from the grapevine.

All right. Kyle Freeze, Bloomington, Illinois. I might have missed this, but any idea on Thailand or recent aeration overseed instant quote door hands? Yes, we submitted them to vistaprint Thursday last week, I believe it was. They should be up and available on the pro shop. When did you submit this question? The 19th? Yeah, they should be up. If they're not, Vistaprint is delayed by a day or two maybe, but they should be up. There's the core aeration, overseeding and fertilization 1. And then there is also the fall cleanup and leaf cleanup. Instant quote door hangers Joel from Lafayette Does COPA have an automation trigger for employees first day or could it be added sometime in the future? I'm thinking about creating automated check automated text or email sequence for new employees first two days to complement the training checklist. Each text email would have a short Message congratulating their first day of their work, link to P4P, explanation, video link to how to mow efficiently, video review how different bonuses work, etc. To help reinforce information provided in the new hire packet and day one orientation.

There is text messages. There's not a trigger based on number of days someone has worked. This is something we could definitely add. It actually wouldn't be that difficult because inside Copilot we do have the ability to text employees and that's something that is sometimes difficult, but we do have that ability. So this is a trigger we could add. I would put a caveat to that and that is like right now in P4P in the app they already get notifications based from like their first day above base pay, their first pay period above base pay, the first time they get above budget hours on a.

Beat budget hours and project. However, those aren't customizable. So definitely COPA is much more customizable in terms of that automation look like. And I'd recommend if you're going to send these videos out like this, I would definitely recommend spreading that out over the course of a week or two. Right. So I like this idea a lot. This is definitely something that you know down the road, especially once we hit 2024 that when we have features collectively as gusta the Franchise Advisory Council then be able to vote on. Okay, these are the ones that are highest priority. Please get these ones done this quarter and that's something we can take action on. But this is something that is actually pretty easy. So I would rec. What I would recommend is once you're in Copilot, if it's not done already, depending on when you're getting in, just put it as a feature request and then it would go into our usual sequence of how we kind of filter out what we're going to be doing, et cetera. But down the road in 2024 we will have a specific one for Augusta that we kind of have our own feature request backlog. And then the Franchise Advisor Council would be able to help me prioritize those and choose two or three. Hey, these are the ones that we want to make sure we push forward.

Ken from Penn, Michigan if we do a video showing some awesome work or great new product or explain how to be better at our job, do we email somewhere for the media team? I would normally just send it to one or two people I was trying to help or answer a question but if it can be used for all Augusta be on YouTube or in training video, I'd rather everyone benefit or is it not a sync with our goals to be told so in private so I can change my thinking? Yeah, feel free to always send it to the media team. They have a pretty clear filter on what goes up and what doesn't and what needs to be on brand for it to be posted on social. So you can always email some mediagustalongerservices.com they'll always filter it. They probably won't respond back necessarily if they're saying why it can't be in there or something. But you're more than welcome. I encourage you to send stuff like that to them if you think it could be used for everyone. They have a very clear filter of like if it's going to go on everyone's accounts, what it needs to entail.

Out Vernon Tim, Just curious why OTP would try to be done for one time mows or any mowing estimate that is also requesting cleanup or other work. Seems if an OTP was sent separate and customer didn't like the price, they likely wouldn't accept a separate cleanup estimate. Sorry, one second.

Sorry. The goal in doing this I 100 to your point and we wrestled with this for a while and that is like okay, someone's on the phone, they want mowing and they want to clean up. If I give them a price for the mowing and they don't like it.

That'S problematic because maybe they won't take me up on the property cleanup for example.

The thing is this. We have the price for the mowing and if we can close them on the mowing, your cleanup is basically in the bag.

If they've already accepted it, like yeah, let's go like you're going to come next Tuesday and then on Wednesday I'm going to meet you for a property cleanup estimate in person meeting. They're going to accept that property estimate, property cleanup no matter what. Also, it's also a screening mechanism because if they think you're way too overpriced on your mowing, they're probably also going to think that you're cleanup is going to be way too overpriced. They're the person if they're like 40 for mowing my garage? Are you kidding me? No way. If they're that way on the phone for, for mowing or just they get the mowing quote only, for example. And then it's like hey, we'll schedule for this estimate on Wednesday. We'll be there for your first mowing on Tuesday. And they're freaking out the price. Probably a good chance that the same person is gonna be like $200 for a property clip. Are you insane? I could do this for $50. So I would, I would just keep that in mind. I know some locations prioritize pricing of different services so you might have like a lower price for mowing to get more of those and then higher prices for property claims, etc. But in general I would say that that is the case is if someone is going to balk at prices for mowing, they're probably going to back at prices for property clips. Also this is the better thing. We already have their client information by the time we're sending this estimate, which means they're in your system.

You can always upsell them in the future using a one click estimate email. So we already have their contact details and there are is some stuff we're working on from the website perspective that I'm looking forward to sharing within the next couple weeks that I think is going to potentially solve this problem and I'm very much looking forward to it. I think it's going to cut down on how many people have to call in.

And it's be good so that I would look forward to that. But also I would say that.

The increase in the amount of people that accept because you get the estimate to them faster for mowing is greater than in my opinion the people that you would lose because they accept they did not like the pricing on one service but wanted the service of wanted a different service at that pricing. So I don't know of anyone in Augusta Nation that has their pricing is so different between services. Like I'm talking 30, 40% where someone that is complaining about pricing of one service is not going to complain about the pricing of another service. In general, most of us are within 10 to $15 per hour between different services. So it's unlikely that someone freaking out about a 40, $50 mo is going to not freak out about whatever pricing you're using for property cleanup. Because honestly we're, we're using hours as a metric.

So. All right, did I cover all of those things? I did. Fantastic. All right, everyone have a fantastic rest of your day and great week and we'll see you tomorrow. Take care. Some cool stuff coming down the line. Looking forward to sharing some stuff.