Mike Minutes Mastermind 08/21/2024

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Mike Vince mastermind. Yesterday there wasn't any questions or maybe there was one I think so I did not go live. Couple quick announcements slash reminders. Today is the very first command center webinar. Today they're going over automations. They will be topical so.

For the sake of everyone else viewing try to keep them keep your questions I would say topical otherwise it'll go in a hundred different directions. Most of the questions would probably be masterminded if they're business related questions but if you have questions about automations show up. If you just want to have your admin staff kind of get re educated once a month and kind of have that forum also great to have them on there. So it's going to be a collaboration command center will bring in.

Specific people from departments as well as co pilot media team if needed etc for specific webinars that they're doing. The first one is today 2:00pm Eastern sorry 2:00pm Pacific Standard Time 5:00pm Eastern Standard Time. Liz is going to post the link in the Facebook group right before I know she sent it out like a week ago but she'll send it out right before on Facebook and then also get a text message out to you guys as well.

Yesterday I sent an email out to everyone with updates etc. It does have an unsubscribe button on there remember so it could potentially be in your in your spam folder.

In it had the survey thank you to everyone that submitted that. I think there's about 50 that have already submitted the surveys for owners. Really appreciate that GMs are welcome to fill it out but really we're looking for the owners to get feedback directly from them. There's usually what we do is the same couple questions each quarter va give you know what's helping you, what could be improved and then sometimes we might throw an extra additional one specific thing and so this one there was specifically about Command center. What's one thing that they could do to support you more.

So there's already the form I know that goes to Liz on the dashboard if you have like feedback or questions about how things can be improved at Command center. But if you have specific stuff also great to put in the survey, super helpful. We go through every single one of those, the leadership team goes through every single one of those and then synthesizes that for me and we take action. So really do appreciate everyone that submitted last quarter and then we will continue to just make it better using those feedback surveys. So it's a lot of work. I know, for Nick to go through all of those and digest it all and put into.

Actionable steps for us. And obviously we can't do every single thing, but if we see common denominators, we're going to move mountains if possible to make it happen. So even last time there were several people that asked specifically for like live dashboard of seeing.

Command Center Bill. I don't think most people would really use it, but there was enough people for us to like, hey, we're gonna. We're gonna see what we can do. And we spent quite a bit of resources on making sure that that can be an option in the future. So I'm still shooting for September, October to get that done. If not the very latest towards the end of the year. Like going into January, we have that finished, but we do take action and actually read every single one and make sure that we review it, the leadership team. So. All righty. In the way of announcements, let me make sure that's it.

3.

Yes. Webinar today. Very good. Cool. That'll be their first one. There's gonna be quite a few collaborators inside the group. It's going to be a YouTube link, so if you can't watch, it's not zoom. If you just want to listen while you're working, totally fine. It's going to be on YouTube and then you can make comments on there if you have questions. So if you really had to come on to video, they can invite you if needs be, but probably leave it to just comments to keep it simple. I know a lot of people will want to just listen to the background, which is totally a. Okay.

What have we got today? We got three questions.

Boom. Now we're talking. Okay, first question is from Kyle Tarvin. Zoom in a little bit. There you go. I have always thought of myself as a lifelong learner.

I always like reading and observing so I can take in more information for later use. Lately I have had some pretty big light bulb moments in business and in my personal life. Some of these things I have learned years ago, but for whatever reason, they never clicked with me to wait to where what I was reading and learning was put into place or made sense to where I was reading, ready to use that information. They say once the student is ready, the teacher appears. I feel this is true as you can learn all you want, but until the information you are consuming is relevant to your life or you have the mental capacity to use that information, it's useless. Ignorance is not blissful. Looking back, I could have saved countless years by just being Mentally aware enough to where I could act on this information, put it into use in my life.

If this statement is true, how do you open up your mind to be able to realize this information is something you should put into action, even though it's something that may be further ahead than where you are at currently?

I'd say getting multiple opinions and perspectives on things. That's why, like, having the multiple coaches is helpful. You see, like, someone sees from a different angle. They have different sides of business. They have a new background. They came from a different industry. These are all, like, valuable points of having multiple people. That's why community is important. That's why families are important, because otherwise we get lopsided. Having someone that's close enough to you, that actually loves and supports you to give you critical feedback is probably the way to get this. And so that's why community in general is important. Whether you're talking about a family unit, church unit, business organization, etc. People that will actually love you and give you critical feedback, it's like a rare commodity. And so.

Even in families, sometimes they're too dysfunctional to actually give critical feedback without hurting people's opinion feelings. Will you give us a breakdown of how your Bellingham location is doing financially? There's a video coming out in, like, a couple weeks. I break the whole thing down. I did, like, a public breakdown of the turnaround over the past year. How do you project 2023 will compare to 202324 in terms of Prof. Topline revenue and net profit? How much do you anticipate spending on marketing? 2023, 24. What do you learn this year from pushing growth in the spring?

Sorry for the sniffles. Yeah, I have a whole video. It's probably gonna be, like, almost an hour long. Breaking down the last 12 months of the Bellingham shop, because they basically had a GM come in and really push us down by, like, 60, 70% of our recurring customers left. So I think we started this entire year with, like, 75 recurring customers. Pretty bad. Again, a great location can be put in the hands of it, a bad manager, and very quickly be deteriorated. And I saw that firsthand. And then to rebuild that back up to what they have now, which is like, 3.75recurring or whatever it is, it takes a year. So we have to go into growth mode, basically get back to what we were last year. So, you know, the second half of the year will definitely be profitable. But the first half, it was like, yeah, lots of massive growth. The first time I've ever spent more than $5,000 a month in marketing, like usually was. Like, we only spent marketing money on marketing in order to be able to test stuff for the franchise. So yeah, like, I will probably at the end of the year give you the full breakdown internally, but I did a video in like very much depth of all the things that was changed over the past 12 months, including like pricing. They moved the like P4P percentage down because they were able to raise prices high enough. So that'll obviously like massively impact profitability. So but you can't do all those things at once. Like they had to wait for that full year. Like get, you can't, like if you've lost all those customers, you can't like, oh, it's raised prices. It's like, no, like you have massive amounts of capacity, excess capacity. You got to fill that and then raise the prices. And then even two, you know, it's like, okay, do we need 15 trucks or can we get away with 12 and just make them nicer? And you know, as you, as you get further in business, you've been in business for 10 years, it's like, I don't want to be fixing trucks anymore and I'm willing to take a lower return on, return on my equity in the next three to five years, knowing I'll have new trucks for the next 10 years. So, you know, I can get trucks for 26, $27,000 that have less than 15,000 miles on them. I know they're not going to have issues and I can get away with having two or three or four less trucks.

That increases my capacity. In other words, makes the location more profitable. So that 12 month whole like turnaround really like essentially, I think the video title is like I turned around my own business.

So I just walked through the last 12 months of them going from like 75 recurring customers to 375. All the things that, to change in terms of culture, accountability, etc. And they're still dialing things in in terms of little things that need to be changed and adjusted and like brought up to spec. So it take it like when you actually have a location that's drilled into the ground like that, which can be done very quickly, it takes, it takes a while to turn around. So.

Yeah, I'll share, I'll share internally the destination at the end of the year probably and you'll see like this massive swing from first, first half of the year to second half of the year because the price increases. But first half of the year was not profitable. Like typically like typically, excuse me, sorry. Spring is profitable.

But it wasn't because we had to invest so much into marketing to get our recurring customers back up. The second half of last year was profitable also because we just focused tons on projects and was able to get revenue back up. But then when you come back in the spring, you can't go into Spring with 75 recurring customers. So we just had to go all in on getting that back up to 375. So I'll share all that stuff later. But I think they've been averaging. If I remember correctly, I haven't looked at the month. I have been looking at monthly PNLs. I still remember all of them. I want to guess between four and five grand a month they've been spending on marketing this year, which is like five to six times more than we ever have in the past. So kind of stinks. But.

At what point do you get a new manager? My manager inherited. Oh, in terms of. Sorry, I don't think I answered one part of that question. One second.

Oh, top line revenue. Top line was probably going to go down this year just because the spring was so brutal. It was like our worst spring. Mostly because it's like, well, isn't there new management? It's like, yeah, but all the damage was done last year and you feel it the next spring rush. So last like for example 2023 going into spring, we had the 300 some odd recurring customers. So even though there's a bad manager, they still had a decent spring rush from a financial perspective. But if you losing customers fast enough, eventually you have to get them back. But you can't get. In our market, we can't get recurring customers once. Like it's super hot and likely later in the year. It's, it's the spring rush. All of them come in the spring. So we just have to like divert attention. So I'm not there in a daily basis anymore. Nick is regional manager, Corey is the gm. They do a great job. So they've turned like the biggest part to the business around, which is the pricing and like P4P and like percentage of labor revenue going to employees down to 25%. And so that's like the hardest part. And then all the little things need to get dialed in. So things like getting all the trucks wrapped the same. I want that all looking good. Stuff like that.

Okay. What point do you get a new manager? My manager inherited a 200k per year location earlier this year. My intention was to grow to 400k this year. We are currently attracted to earn 200k again, which isn't enough revenue to be profitable after paying the manager and all other expenses. I don't want to go year after year losing money when of course the point is to earn money. How might you handle this? Any suggestions? Okay, a location that's in its. In its second year. I'm guessing this is a second.

Okay. Okay. So they got. Okay, got it. Okay. Yeah. I'm assuming last year did 200, 000 new GM comes on, doesn't grow it. That's a huge red flag. This means that this person might be a good person in terms of a working GM but probably is not a good starter. Very different skill sets. Like if they're not busting butt to do door hangers, door knocking, getting out like follow up, like they're just relentlessly trying to grow the revenue of the business, they might not be a bad gm. They just might be a good starter in terms of generating sales, getting follow ups, converting more jobs, increasing close ratio, getting more leads. So I would first look inwards and say okay, is this an incentive issue? Do I need to incentivize growth more? Because they're going after profitability which they'll never get to at $200,000 they a GM ran location if you're not there.

And so.

Like I've seen some GM ran locations that are 300 plus be able to make it work by raising prices dramatically. They're usually charging 100 to $120 an hour. They got GM and one employee and they can kind of make some money. But if you're charging 60, 70, $80 per hour and you have a working GM at $200,000, you're just not going to make money. You're just not because you have two employees plus the gm. So.

I would say like.

I would be looking at your cost per lead from last year compared to this year. I'd be to hey, these are the benchmarks. I try to make sure your incentives are correct. And then you've got to really ask yourself like is this the right person? Is this person better to run another location that is already at size and just needs to be maintained? Well, because it might be a great working GM or, or is this person.

Just not a built like they don't have the ability to sell and they'd be better as a working jam. That's, I'm going to guess that's what it is because a great salesperson, they can take this location to 400 like the second year especially you should be able to jump this pretty quick. So I don't know if this is an existing Augusta location or is if you brought this one in and then it just plugged into Augusta this year. If you just plugged in Augusta this year, like make sure you have a good salesperson next spring because that's when you ramp on leads. We see it across the board bar, no location. The second spring rush, things take off. You want to make sure you have someone that can sell. And if this was their second spring rush and they did not capitalize on it, I would probably say they're probably a great person, great gm, probably horrible at sales. And that's fine. They just need you, a good gm. Once a location is in profit mode, you're asking them to be in growth mode. So I don't know who this is. I have no idea whatsoever. So I'm just trying to give general advice there.

All right, we got some other comments here.

Okay.

This is from Augusta Longcare. Fenton, you had said at one point that you would rather have multiple locations doing 500k annually than just a few locations doing over a million.

I didn't say a few locations. I'm guessing you meant one. Can you go into a brief location nationwide? Because I don't want to be there. Right. So if you're going to be there, it's better to have larger locations. It just is.

If you're going to be there. If you're going to be a passive owner or an absentee owner, once you go over a million, you're going to have to have a very highly skilled person. It's hard to find and replace them. This is why I went through the Bellingham shop. It takes a year for them to get through a spring rush, figure things out. It's not like I'm popping them in. It's like, hey, go work and do a few estimates a day. It's like you've got to manage, you've got to like do marketing. You've got to do way more stuff at a larger size business. And the man of management experience is like significantly more than like, hey, it's you and a few other guys working and you're guys going to make four to six hundred thousand dollars a year and we're going to put in the profit mode. And if you don't have leads, just send a one click estimate email or text message and we're good to go like that. That is an easier management position and easier to replace. Easier for me to know that if someone left, I'm not like handcuffed them. The worst feeling is when you're an absentee owner and knowing that you can't fire anyone because if you did, like, the business would fall apart because they hold all the keys to the business. I don't want anyone having that over me.

I want it to be where I can unplug someone that's underperforming and plug it back in with someone else. And it's just easier at the smaller size. Now if you're going to be in person, you can be there. Going above a million is. Is would be my recommendation.

When do you personally slow down growth or let opportunities pass?

We have another opportunity to buy a competitor. That's a good deal.

Okay, Connor, because I know you follow Alex. Alex says this saying is like, you can judge an entrepreneur not by what opportunities they say yes to, but what they say no to. And so as you grow, the opportunities will get better and better. You will have to say no in order to focus on the thing that you're currently working on.

And like, I know, I know Alex does this because I know the back end of what's being offered to him. And he says no for what he knows will take five to ten years for him to build.

And there's faster opportunities being presented to him that he says he declines. And so I would say you have, you've had this massive jump in one year. You have another one that's going to jump again next year. Because the one acquisition.

I would take, that I would perfect it because you and I both know exactly what you're working on in order to be able to do this. And that's the general management, the training of them, et cetera. That's a skill set you got to learn in order to keep going at this pace. Once you have that acquisitions that come, you'll be able to accurately judge and plug into a model that is working right. So you're creating the engine down the road. You can copy and paste that and you replicate like. So I always look at like car manufacturing is a really good model for duplication of locations. And so the first production hell always happens using when they're like, they're not. They haven't figured out scale yet. So all the tests, the cybertruck issues and things that happened the first couple months, it was like lots of recalls, they kept coming back. It's lots of problems. Like the brake wasn't working and then they're shutting off while you're going through a car wash. And like all these problems, it's Cause they hadn't achieved scale where they're pumping out hundreds of thousands of these. And so realize that when you're in that first period, you're have a lot of quote unquote bugs. You're gonna have issues and problems. It's gonna be way more stressful. You're not gonna make money. You're actually gonna lose money on every single quote unquote vehicle. But is required in order to be able to create the machine that is in the car manufacturing perspective, the, the factory that builds these at scale, profitably and efficiently. And so I would focus on the factory right now. And so that's why Elon always focus says like it is like anyone can build a great electric car. No one. Like it's very hard to build a million of them a year, like to scale it. And so that's why he focused so much on the factory. And then for so long, everyone like look down on Tesla is because like he just maniacally focused on the factory. If you build a great factory, then you can start pumping them out. It's just going to take longer because the factory is harder to build than a great electric car. So in this case it's like it's harder to build the framework to train general managers and pump out locate like that. That machine will take you a few years. That skill of training, retaining, managing, incentivizing GMs will take a couple years. If you do that, acquisitions down the road will be easy for you to take advantage of right now. Plugging in too many of those things at the same time will keep you from the factory. You'll get focused on the branding, the market. This is my problem. Last year with Copilot, we did a great job of marketing the branding, but we got way too much too ahead of ourselves in terms of users. And then the factory wasn't ready for it. So what do you have? A bunch of recalls. And so, you know, we've been unwinding that for seven, eight months now. And so the whole point is like, focus on the factory first. And you know, you'll never see me roll out like I did with Copilot in terms like marketing and branding is like, go sign up. The product will speak for itself. You don't see ads around the cybertruck. They just build a really, really good product. And yes, there's still going to be problems. And yes, there's still lots of people that say it's the worst car ever and all this other garbage and there'll be videos about it, but they'll produce millions of them, so hopefully that helps a little bit. All right, folks, that's all we got for Wednesday. Mike, Mance, Master Mite. I hope you all have a fantastic day, and we'll see you tomorrow. Take care.