Mike Minutes Mastermind 08/28/2023

Hey, everyone. Let's go ahead and do another mastermind. I apologize if the Internet's kind of hit and miss. We're at a La Quinta in Shreveport. La Quinta. I don't know how to say it. In Shreveport, Louisiana. Here for one day. I'm flying back tomorrow, so I'll go over questions. Today there was a good conversation in the Facebook group, and then what followed in the Franchise Advisory Council about Max. I'm going to save that conversation for Wednesday. So if you're tuning in for that, today will be good, just not about Max. So I have some work I gotta get done in terms of solidifying a few things to update and change on that front. And sorry I don't have a fancy microphone. It's probably a little quieter for you than usual. I just have the. I'm just running this off my laptop. All right, let's jump in, though. Can't miss marathon Monday. It's here.

All right, let's jump right into it. Oh, no. I knew I was doing something wrong. I gotta put this link in from YouTube. One second.

Sorry, it's gonna take me extra second because the Internet.

Copy, save.

Facebook. Thank you.

Sorry about this.

All right, paste in there. Wow, there's more people in here than usual. Okay, let's jump into it. Number one is from Forest. Will we have access to the training modules that new hires at command center are required to watch in their training process? Specifically the modules for Copilot? Yep. Great point. So this morning, Liz actually started adding to this. This. So if you go to the dashboard and you go to the academy, you'll actually see Copilot there. They are watching all of Copilot University, and then they're watching the videos that we're placing inside of there. And what's nice is now we have a much more organized way of putting those videos in there, since originally we didn't even have a dashboard at Augusta. And so the videos from the past for like Zooper and Servers Autopilot were a little bit, you know, some on Google Drive, some in YouTube, etc. YouTube doesn't like when we do screen recordings because it thinks that we're sharing personal information and will actually block the YouTube videos, even if they're unlisted. So we will basically have it all in Google Drive and you'll be able to view the videos sequentially inside of the academy. So also, there was some good talk last week about some changes in general, the dashboard in terms of switching to Google Drive. And that is something that we will do. Later this winter when you get through conference and switching over to copilot before that, maybe take that task on. But it's definitely doable. And I've already put on the media media teams task list in terms of these though, like what we're using at command Center. So like this whole past week and a half, two weeks they've been watching Copilot University and there's videos on the academy for super service autopilot and then copilot and so you can watch those if you would, if you would like.

And for, for command center they learn it pretty quick because the systems are the exact same across all three CRMs. It just literally just semantics of like different buttons or different areas. But if someone knows service autopilot especially, they'll pick up on COPA extremely fast.

Connor from Evansville. Why do customers have such a hard time adding a card on file when signing up? I would probably. I would say probably one third to half of my clients email back saying I can't add a car, it won't let me or something else. Seems difficult on. Seems difficult on for a customer to join when they feel pressured to have a credit card because we require it and the system doesn't work. Is this an essay issue or do people just not read instructions? So that was my first question is going to be did you get the updated email from like YC Update is like a year old that actually shows screenshots of them going through the process.

Make sure that's the new one. So the new one has screenshots of them literally going through each process. It's pretty straightforward.

But you know, this coming. I'm hoping this Wednesday. If not this Wednesday, it should be this Wednesday. If not, it'll be next week Wednesday there's gonna be an update on copilot. So keep an eye out for the Saturday 7:47 update. You'll see how we're doing it. And that is where you can set up where when they click complete or accept on the estimate, it literally just pops up with a credit card form and says hey, this is required in order to accept the estimate. So I'm hoping that's the easiest friction, like less friction. They don't have to have an automation, you don't have to have an email. You know, they don't have to follow instructions, they don't have to log in or create a password, stuff like that. So hopefully that's a lot help more helpful. But yeah, unfortunately what's the worst is the amount of people that can't log in. Because and change their card information because of the login process. So I hope serves all putt can just simplified a little bit. I know there's PCI compliance and like the certain regulations around having financials behind a.

A login, but I think they went a little overboard, honestly. I don't know. Modesto we have one office manager for two locations. One location gets anywhere from 20 to 30 calls a day. The other gets about 10 to 20. The officer, officer manager duties for both locations are currently. Okay. And then you list all of. All of the things. Okay. If they're doing hiring and firing and interviews, they're starting to become more of a general manager than an office manager. The only delineation between that and a GM would be sales like estimates. So I would. That's the only thing that kind of stands out to me here.

Also, if they're doing tax prep.

I'm guessing That's more like QuickBooks management, like getting the expenses together and things like that. The only reason I say all this is because this is a pretty highly sophisticated position, which is totally fine if you know that person's position is gonna be with you forever. You know, people like spouses do a great job in this role because you know they're going to be with you. But like, you know, if you're. If you're trying to hire this position, this is. You're putting a lot of responsibility on one person. And especially if two locations depending on it. That's when I start to get a little nervous that, you know, and that's why command center kind of exists. So I would potentially do. Because I know what your question is probably going to be. Let's see. Kiwini, office manager is overwhelmed with work. Do you think there's a lot for one person to be doing? Do you think it would be logical to find help or find a new office manager who can handle the daily tasks? Right. So like between your two locations, you're probably doing 130, 140,000 per month in revenue. It's definitely a lot for one person to handle. They're probably a superstar to. To be even able to handle what they're currently doing. And I'm sure they are overwhelmed with that size. Again, can guarantee it. And so you're either a going to need to hire a second person and I would say you'd actually want to do this regardless if it doesn't make as much sense financially and mostly due to the fact that you're putting all the eggs in the basket of this one person staying you need to have someone else know how to do this stuff, because the last thing you want is this person to leave, you know, get sick, have to take a week off, whatever it is, and the business literally grinds to a halt. And so just be very, very careful that it makes the asset of your business worth basically nothing as well. Because then if someone was ever to come along and value all hinges on that one person staying. So just be very careful of this. But what I would probably do if I was you is instead of having having to hire a second person, which adds up, like, it doesn't just double your cost, it usually triples it, because now you have to train. And then when you have two people, you have dynamics in the office that create inefficiencies. And there's usually larger office. There's a lot of things that trickle down from that. So I would probably do, if I was you, is when you're busy and know what your, your demand curve is, try to offload some of these things to Command center during the busy time, and then in the other six, seven, eight months of the year when you're not as busy, then you could take it all back on the one person. But I would be very, very careful if you're doing this, that you are following the systems to where if this person ever falls out, you can hand stuff back to Command center and things don't fall apart completely. I'd be very, very careful about that.

Like, there's a definite.

Something to be said. Like when Liz was my only person in the office before, you know, Lonnie came along, Rachel.

Another office assistant, charity before any of them were assistants in the office. There's a really good chance that if Liz ever left and she was my only office person, like, the business either would have stopped, like, I would have just quit, or it would have stunted growth for three years because it would have been so hard to find that person's replacement. Once you put all the eggs in the basket of that one person, so you have to replicate the person and you have to cross train other people. And I think it is a crutch sometimes that we use as business owners because like the spouse, you're like, hey, they're not leaving. I can just put all on them and I know we're together. That's fine and good. Until something happens to them in their health or.

They have to step away from the business for whatever reason, or you go on vacation. Well, now everything grinds to a halt. Like, the whole crew has to basically go on Vacation. So that's where I'd just be. I'd be careful with and I think diversifying. So if you've got command center, everyone is cross trained in multiple departments. So if anyone drops out, something happens. People know where to pick everything up, including my role, Liz's role. Everyone's role is cross trained enough to where if that person got hit by a bus, it wouldn't affect the business. It's extremely important. I think a lot of times that's what leads to small business closing down. And that's why divorce is not necessarily, I would say as much, sometimes not as much about the emotional side and financial, but literally they built the business on each other. And so when one person leaves, it literally crumbles to the ground because all the key information of the business was held in the brain of some one person. It's very risky and in my opinion, not really a great. Not really being a great steward of when you have employees depending on you. Nick Marysville. I should know this, but in P4P, how would I note this? Oh, Nick, if you don't know this, I don't know if I'm gonna know it. Okay. One guy is catching all the mistakes another guy is making and he's frustrated. So I told him to track how long each of the fixes take and I'll take from the other guys. P4P. Oh.

So let's say one property takes eight minutes for him to fix another employee's mistakes. This is for mowing. So would you just take 33 of the hourly rate, which for me counts out to 29 0.7 divided by 60 minutes, which give you 50 cents a minute. No, I would not do this. I would pay. I would pay him at base pay for those eight minutes. I know that sounds horrible, but you're gonna have way too much math to do this on every single property.

I would also say you still want him to resent having to do it, so he puts the pressure on the employee because you don't want to just make it where it's like, hey, anytime you want, just tell me how much minutes. And like I'm going to just add it to your P4P. You want this app base pay. So I would just say, hey, eight minutes. Eight divided by 60. How many hours is that? Multiply that by your hourly rate, tack that on as a.

Manual adjustment, and that person's going to hate the guy's guts that's making all these mistakes and probably talk to them. And you would rather have that than him being Very happy just to tell you how many minutes it took him and you're attacking it on to his P4P. So it's not a bad thing to have a little bit of tension between the guys on these matters because they are the quality control. Right? You don't want the P4P necessary to be the arbitrary of quality. You want it to be them between each other. In this case, telling the other person like you stink at this. This is how you should do it. They'll take it just fine from a coworker, they won't take that from you. And so you that's why that exists. And so I would just make sure you don't over incentivize the guy that's fixing all the guys problems and you know, give him compensation at base pace. It doesn't hurt him on PvP, but it's also not rewarding him. Would be my recommendation. But I can see where you know, for a short season of time, maybe you add on to that or something like that, I'd be okay with that. Or maybe you add it, you add you to keep track of the minutes and at the end of the paycheck, whatever his hourly rate is on P4P, you tack that on if you want to do that. You could. That'd probably be the easiest. Honestly, if you're trying to go outside of just regular base pay, tack on for manual adjustment.

Nick from Marysville, also stemming from that last question, if employee A is fixing the mistakes of employee B and he's supposed to be compensated for it so it doesn't affect his P4P, what if employee B has no performance pay to begin with because of damages or something? How will employee AB get fairly compensated? Yeah, that's why I would just say compensate employee A regardless of the performance of employee B. Right. So like a yellow slip regardless of whether or not employee B has any P for P, employee A is going to get compensated. So that's why I just make it pretend like this is a yellow slip. Right? These should all be yellow slips paid out at base pay. And if you want to be ultra generous because you think this is a short term problem for employee B, I would tell employee A at the end of your paycheck, we'll add up all the minutes and I'll pay you whatever your hourly rate is for that paycheck on P4P. I'll add to that for whatever hours you spent fixing these mistakes. If you want to be really generous. I wouldn't foster that in the long term because then you're gonna. They're gonna always expect that. And you really do want a little bit of that tension for the guys to keep each other accountable, in my opinion.

No other questions. All right, Everyone must be tired. All right, I will. I potentially might miss tomorrow because we're flying back, and I will be on here Wednesday morning, and I'll chat a little bit about Max and stuff like that. So appreciate all of you, and we'll see you. If not tomorrow, I'll see you on Wednesday. Take care of.