Mike Minutes Mastermind 08/27/2022 (Overall Jims Mowing Experience)

Hey, everyone. Hope you're doing well. For you all, it's probably evening Saturday. It's Sunday morning here for me. I'm just about to head to the airport. I'm making this now because I have a good feeling I am not going to be making one on Monday morning. I get in late Sunday night and I just don't know if I'll be able to have the morning on Monday for the Mastermind. So there was no questions that came in. Feel free if you want to add some. Feel free. Now. All I was going to do is just kind of go over synopsis of my week, what I learned, some things that will be changing because of it and things like that. So if that's not super important to you, feel free to just skip this one. Just kind of going to go over what I learned at gyms and some of the stuff that I'm going to adjust and. Yeah, stuff I learned. And if you have questions, feel free to hop in. This is the first live one we've done all week.

Excuse me. Yesterday I talked the entire day, so. And they didn't have a microphone at the last part, so I had to yell. So yeah, so this whole week for me was really good. I'm glad I came.

In part when I get back on Monday. The reason we might not have one on Monday morning, a Mastermind is because it looks like we are putting together our kind of own memorial and service, slash just celebration of life for one of the team members at the local shop that unfortunately took his life last week. So we let all the team know on Friday morning, or Marcus did, I should say, and Liz and Lee come were there and helped support and so Monday evening though, we actually are renting a facility, community center and are going to kind of have a bit of a service there just for all the local team, command center, et cetera. So to support the family there, et cetera, they're having an out of state, I think memorial like from over on the down south out of state. So we're gonna do something internal. So that's kind of why I feel like Monday morning I won't really be having time to do the Mastermind. I'll be just trying to put all the last things together for that and putting together some. Some words to say as well. So. But in terms of what I learned this week at Gems, there's. It sounds weird but like it's always good to know your competition's at. And even though I don't see them as competition, just like other people that Provide my same service and see where they're at where. And then benchmark myself against it. Not so much to be like, oh, like we needed to improve in this area, or like, we're doing really good in this area. Not so much about that, but like, just to have a comparison against, okay, where are my flaws and where should I be focusing the majority of my time on compared to someone else who's done this for 33 years? Right. They've done this for approximately 11 times as long as I have. And so they've obviously, you know, gone through a lot of bumps and hurdles. And to see their, you know, first few years when they were in a, you know, Jim's gym's living room doing training and then seeing the failure rate back in those first five or 10 years versus what they've done the past 10 years, where they do a much better job of training, according to them. And what they. They really upped their ante in terms of investing the facility and getting people actually in person instead of doing it all external. So that was really interesting. Definitely the numbers they showed me in terms of virtual training were abysmal in terms of success rate during COVID The people who came in person versus the ones that did not. The numbers just did not lie in terms of success rate. You need to have in person training, no matter how much you do quizzes, no matter how much you do live streams, it just doesn't work the same way in terms of training. So that was good to see as well. We never have really considered going 100% virtual, but we did allow several people to go virtual during COVID and fortunately most of them worked out fine. But just a good thing for us to know too, in the future. Like, it's not something we should be trying to invest in or figure out virtual training, because the numbers that they showed me is like, the success rate is three times as great when they come in person versus not. So basically like a 10% failure rate versus 30% failure rate for people who show up versus not in their first year. So that was really interesting. So I learned that I don't really have any notes today, by the way. I'm just kind of going off like, first things in my head. Next thing was software. Lots about this that I was just observing. Um, first and foremost, I. I got very close to the media team who happens to be the, like, some of the closest people to Jim himself.

And so they really like the one, Joel, he worked there for 11 years, so he knows, like, everything that Jim goes through on a daily basis. And he said like, still his biggest headache to this day is the software. And they spend millions of dollars every single year in software. And.

It was a warning to me not to fall in love with the software to the point where I stay on a sinking ship. And I truly believe like what they have right now was probably great 10 years ago, but we've moved on in terms of software as a service and technology. And.

To spend millions and millions of dollars on something that I really feel is technology that's from 10 to 12 years ago, is a warning to me not to fall in love with whatever software we're building and just keep investing it to the point where.

It'S becoming archaic. Right. And so that's like how I look at Service autopilot. In 10 to 15 years, that's how we'll look at service autopilot. And right now it's fine. And five years ago I thought it was like ahead of its time, you know, great software. Now it's like becoming basically standard. And I think in five to 10 years it'll be like, man, this stuff is like archaic compared to what's coming out. So.

You know, it's not to say that one day potentially we don't build our own CRM, but I just don't see any reason to if you can open source, take whatever software you are building and be able to plug into it. Right. So for example, like Zooper, you know, the main reason we went with them too is they're open source. Part of our contract with them that we are paying them for is to build an integration with P4P. So that way there is no need to have to do a.

Manual entry between the two and it'd be way faster in terms of calculating PPP in terms of what I eventually want for our franchisees, which is a dashboard for the employees to go see live throughout the day of their performance and how well they're performing, how much they're earning. All of that is important. And I'd rather focus my time on the integration, which is the differentiation, because no one else will have that versus trying to build the next super like, who has is just raised like $10 million to, to like, why would I try to compete with that? And so I really, it was a warning to me to just be very careful about going into building our own CRM. And if, if we were going to do that, the amount of money that we would need and the commitment to constantly changing it because there's companies that are just doing CRM that's the only thing they do. And they spend millions and millions and millions of dollars. They have the best technology, the best software developers, the best resources, the best, the best access to capital. So why in the world do I try to reinvent the wheel? So that was a really eye opener to me. The fact like that they're. The software they use internally.

Doesn'T send out invoices that you can pay from. There's no payment integration. And I understand why, because as soon as you start moving money and numbers and employees inside of a software, the security level goes through the roof. You experience this with P4P. And so I understand why they're not doing it, but I also look and be like, okay, it's a Stripe integration. Why would you not just put a stripe integration to the button on the invoice and you literally, for, for less than a quarter million dollars, they could build a stripe integration into their current software and not own the IP of Stripe. Yeah, you don't own the processor, but just use it. It's so much better than sending checks for everything. And people, they all get the Square app and like swipe people's cards. Like, I, it just boggles my brain. So, you know, like yesterday I didn't mean to be, you know, derogatory or anything because obviously they helped me a lot just by allowing me to be here. But like, we're doing scheduling and routing using a Word document and like, literally they said like, you know, put these all into a map, figure out your route. When you get a new one, you move these down, place them like it was just so, so manual. And then I really feel like their software is a thing limiting so many of their franchisees to 100, 120,000 in annual revenue. Like, how can you start to accurately route, dispatch schedule and keep track of the job notes when you're doing it in Microsoft Word Beyond 50, 60 customers, like, I understand why you wouldn't be getting a lot of employees. So even yesterday there was like probably 100 franchisees. They had their top franchisees come on site. And then I did a couple hours talk with them and I asked at the beginning, like, hey, how many of you have employees? And we're talking less than 5% of them raised their hand. And so I think though, that the software limits that. And so it was one of the biggest things I learned this week is the risks of software. The temptations of the seductions of being wrapped up in our own software so much and trying to build something that is new when really it's there's other people running laps around us. So, you know, the only reason I built P4P is because there was nothing like it. There's no reason to build a CRM. In my mind, there's a thousand CRMs that are great and there's quite a good handful of them. They're open source that you could tap into and make better. And so, you know, that's why we're signing with Zooper. We pay them to do these integrations, we pay them to make these changes, but it's a fraction of what we'd have to spend if we actually built our own CRM. So I think right now that was a good decision. Now this being here fortified that for me, at least in the next five to 10 years when I want to focus much more on the pieces of like investing the pieces of software that make us different than focusing on a CRM that is very much like there's so many of them and there's so many good developers making these. Why would I build my own? So that was important. What else? Training. So this is something I was, I was working on actually. This is not solidified yet. Can I pull this up? This is something that I am working on for the new training. And over this whole week I've been redoing all the slides and everything for our initial training group. Let me show you this real quick. This is just kind of a rough draft. This is not locked in stone or anything. But now it's going to be four days and it's going to be a little bit different in terms of like the hands on software skills. This is the biggest thing we see issues with in the first.

The first six months of new franchisees is just actually learning the software understanding. So we're going to actually get a skills test and a final exam. If someone does not pass the final exam, they won't be able to have their onboarding call with Lonnie. So we're adding these in here. We are adding in a part about equipment specifically. If I can find it.

There it is, equipment and trucks and actually breaking down like what type of truck, what type of equipment to buy based upon square footage of property averages 80th percentile. We're looking at, okay, how can I serve 80% of my customers? And then going from the smallest equipment to that.

Putting it together in terms like the three stages of most profitable size of business, you know, which is 200, 500, 800,000 plus the five stages of growth and then the seven stages of wealth and Actually aligning those all together. So it's a very clear roadmap and of expecting what you're going to be base, you're going to be hitting up against each time and then align that with capacity based growth in terms of growing to where you are fully using your, your assets, your trucks, etc. And stopping there, raising prices. Like, what boggles my mind is yesterday, you know, I asked them, who here has a problem finding work? And no one said they had a problem with like, no, a single person said they have problem finding more leads and more work because they pay for the leads, right? So Jim's has a lot of leads for them and they can. And I'm like, okay, so let me get this straight. You want to grow your business, but. And you have a ton of leads. That means the only thing you need to figure out is hiring. That's the only thing. And if you're not going to try to find, figure out hiring and get more employees, why are you not raising your prices? Like if you've hit capacity, if you, you're, if you're maxed out capacity, like when we talk about capacity based growth, if you've maxed your capacity, in other words, you got to buy more trucks and equipment in order to keep growing and you're not raising your prices or actively trying to hire and grow and like build the business you, you like, it's crazy. You got to either raise your prices or grow There, there. Like there's the only two options. To do the same thing and basically turn off your leads and then not hire is like, it's just, it's just, it's just crazy. You got to either raise your prices once you get capacity or keep growing. And so if you're at that point right now where you're like, man, I don't really want more leads. I have way too much work. Raise your prices unless you want to keep hiring and growing. But if you want the capital this year, if you're like, hey, we're kind of late in the year, let's do that. I'm going to grow next spring. You should be raising your prices. I know couple owners last week raised their prices and no one's hitting up against a lot of friction against this stuff. So see here, we had a couple questions come in here. Wait, is this one, this one. I was thinking I was watching the Public live Saturday. Q and A. I thought, wow, we are being so transparent about Zooper and Serves the mastermind. I sure hope this isn't Live Mercy. Oh yeah. No, this is definitely not the public life. I was gonna do the public live. I was supposed to this morning on the schedule. I just did not feel like it, to be honest with you. Takes a different level of energy to go live publicly.

Just was not feeling it. You. You have a franchise training scheduled the week before or after conference. Isaac is interested in going one. We never sent anyone from the Rockport location. We don't. I'm guessing this is Ryan Payne. We don't have one scheduled around France. The conference, it was way too much last year for me to do three days of training and then jump right into four days of conference.

And so we were not doing a January training. I know that is a little bit inconvenient, especially for those who want to send like a gm. I get that. But it was just too much for that week. I want to be more invested in having Wednesday evening with all of you at a dinner. Really being able to spend all of Thursday with you doing the conference and not being like, where last time. I'm just drained by the first keynote because we just went through three days of training. So including in this training, now going forward to. There's going to be slowly pieces and parts that I give away to like Nick. Nick Reed's going to come up. I just confirmed with him on the phone. He's going to come up and actually talk a little bit. And over time, especially get more franchisees in Washington. I'll ask more and more of them to come up for 30 minutes an hour and take pieces and parts of the training. I thought. I thought that was a good part that I learned here at gyms that they do, their franchisees do the entire training, the entire thing from start to finish, and they basically just have them come in and they just always do it. There's one guy been doing his training piece, his one little session for like 11 years, so every month. So.

I think that was a good thing for that. That they did too. That I learned from is like try to get your franchisees involved. So it's not just corporate doing all the training during that initial period, but we aren't going to do one in January. We will do one in February, but that's going to be, you know, four weeks after conference. So what we learned over the past year is not to do one in January because of the conference. We want to focus a hundred percent of our time on that. Especially with the zooper transition. We got to get all of command center. We're going to have a separate room for all of you during that weekend, et cetera. I'm actually trying to get Zooper to be up there. Actually have representatives from the company. I have a feeling I don't. Can't commit to this. I have a feeling CEO will come up.

But I want to really focus on that. That transition is huge, and I think it's really important for that zebra transition to go smoothly. So we got. We got to focus on that. We're not going to have anyone doing training. Well, it was a long one. Okay. Who is this? Let's see. Knowing who it is is just so helpful. Sorry. Because everything has context, especially these longer questions. Give me a second. I'm just refreshing my. This is Liz. Okay. I got my first training on super this week. Even though I've been having all the coaches trained vigorously, everyone on our team is fully trained now. I honestly got so excited. Everyone, like, so excited. It was love at first sight. Lonnie teared up when I said how much I loved it. How much her pushing of Zooper to get things done on our timeline. I've probably used service off longer than anyone. I love sa, but younger, better looking, sexier, soft. Where just showed up.

Oh, man, that's hilarious. You guys will love it. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. It's been a long year, honestly, trying to get Zooper to where we need it to be. We signed a contract, paid them last year for the first part to get it to, like, our roadmap. And so, as with everything, everything costs twice as much and takes twice as long when it comes to software. But there's a lot of changes. If you compare where we started in last, like, we're talking like last July versus till now. So it's been a year. Right. So there's been a lot of changes inside. Super stuff that we've had them customize for us. And again, like, I just think that's the best route to go versus us trying to build it ourselves. We would not have been able to make all the changes we've done in the past year without having a core group of engineers to tap into without millions and millions of dollars. And we don't have that. So, yeah, yeah, no, it's gonna be good. I'm looking forward to it. It's gonna be a massive change, though. And so that's why, especially January, we don't want to do any training for new franchises. We want to really focus on this transition to transition at conference, having support there for all of you and not being where we're not all burnt out already from that. So what else did I learn this week? I learned something yesterday. It was not good. It was a note for me, again, like, really important. I feel like.

The culture and people being a little more unified. Like yesterday, the. The media guy, the. The main guy has been here 11 years, decided he's not gonna stay here anymore. And he talked to me privately.

Because of how they ran their Saturday. Like, so they had all. They had about 100 franchisees come, and it was, like, their best franchisees. It was the first time they've ever done this where they've had, like, their top performers. Performers come and do, like, a bit of a training event and have different franchisees. Myself, I talked for a couple hours, did Q A and did, like, a dinner for them or lunch for them and stuff. So it was, like, kind of a reward for them. But what happened is, like, no one coordinated everything correctly, and it ended up with a media guy ran the event like he was the mc. Like, who was going to come up next? He ran which questions are going to happen? And the people who were supposed to be there, they were there for the first hour. Like, the people, like, in the. From the call center and, like, the head. The head office, they were there for the first hour in the back, and then they left. And so, like, he was really frustrated, and so he actually said he's gonna become a franchisee, probably, and just leave head office.

So I think part of it, too, is what I don't want to happen is.

He was really honest with me about it, and he just, like. And it's not a bad thing. Like, getting. Getting a business off the ground and growing really fast is different than what. When a company's large. And so, you know, they still. Like, he. He was on to me, just like, he. It still runs here like a. A dictatorship. From Jim's. Like, everything is Jim's world, right? He lives next door. He owns the conference center where everyone stays. Like, everything is about gyms, and that's fantastic. It's very strong brand. Same thing with the software. He owns the software. Like, he doesn't want to do. Do any sort of integrations or any sort of outside stuff. And that's definitely what's very beneficial. It's been very successful. However, as a company grows and you start having other leaders growing up inside the organization, it's important to not have everything revolve around one. One person. And this is something that. Again, it was a warning to me, like, this cannot happen inside of Augusta, where. No. And this is what. This is what Joel said to Me, he said, if Jim passed away, I don't think this company would keep going. Like, he's like, everything runs through Jim and everything is hinging on his opinion of everything. And so it was an eye opener and something that I always believed in. But, like, it's important that that not be the way we run Augusta. And so that's why, whether it be from coaching to command center to the stuff that we're doing with software, like, even though I have my fingers in it, it's not like I'm the final decision maker, only person that can make a decision and things like that. So as much of it, there's like this balance of like, transparency and openness because he is very transparent. He is very available to the franchisees in terms of like, they all have like, contact. They can all call him if they need to. They like office hours or whatever. But on the flip side, it makes it where everything has to go through him. And that's what Joel was talking about with me the other day is like, it's just very frustrating. Like, nothing can be done without a rubber stamp from, you know, from. From Jim. And that's fine when a company's growing really large, are growing really fast because you need to have, like, very clear direction. This is the direction we're going. And everyone falls in lines or jumps ship, basically. But then as the company grows to the point where now he's 70 years old, he's not around very often, he's not available for office hours very much. Like, people can't get a hold of him. He's not as like. So that becomes more and more difficult to run a larger organization that way. And so that was interesting to me. If I'm 7 years old and I'm starting to slow us all down at Augusta, like, it's time to get rid of me. Unfortunately, his name is on the brand Jim's, and so that's going to be. It's going to be a hurdle for them. And so it's just something I learned too. So anyways, that's all I had for you all today. I really appreciate you all letting me get out go over here. And I think it was a good experience overall. Some things that, like, for me to learn from, improve the training warnings to myself as we do grow, pros and cons of the way we've built, seeing where we measure up in terms of things like software, command center, etc. The services that we offer to our franchisees, the level of support, being able to benchmark that against another Franchisee, a franchisor has been really helpful.

Very interested, but not interested in pursuing it. But it was interesting to see the structure, the way they have head office, divisional franchisors, franchisors and franchisees. And the franchisees don't really have any direct access with the head office besides just getting their leads. It's really the franchisor.

And I think that the challenge that I would have with that is you're letting the, like, the franchisees. Success is now hinging on someone outside of head office, which is, you know, great because you have to hire coaches and a lot of support team. But.

I just don't know if I could allow that to be part of the brand. And I would never want that. I would want, I want to be where we have very clear head office, all of our franchisees and we support from the top. And I know that's top heavy. I know we can't scale as quickly, but it's the best way in terms of keeping control of the brand, keeping control of each of the locations, knowing where everyone's at. So, yeah, you should go scout out. This is, this is the reason why I came here over. No one will let you do this. No one.

I shouldn't say no one. I guess I've never tried, but, like, to my knowledge, no one in the US that I've ever talked to. Like, I know quite a few franchises would let me come in or any, any franchisor come into their company and get training because you, you get to know everything you really do. Especially because, like, as a franchisee, you get like, hey, this is the information I'm getting for starting my business coming as a franchisor. I see behind everything. I see behind how they're training, I see the interaction between franchisors and franchisees. I see the head office, I see where all the issues are at. I see like their, their call center board. And I know where, what, what the problems are, what times they're having the, the issues when, like, I just see everything because I know what it's like to try to do it from behind. And so most franchisors would not want me to do that, or anyone to do that for that matter, because you just literally get to see everything. Everything. So it was a great experience. I learned a lot and it'll be, it'll be a good learning experience for me. So thanks for letting me come over here. It was a great time. Probably won't see you all Monday. Can't promise again late Sunday night. And I gotta get ready for the Monday evening memorial service we're having, so take care, and we'll catch you next week.