Mike Minutes Mastermind 09/06/2023

Hello destination. Hope you're doing well. Sorry my mic.

Is not here today so my little bit quieter on my AirPods so sorry about that. Let's go and jump in. Just paste this into Facebook Real.

All right.

First one is Chad from Valparaiso, Indiana. What is the timeline for copa? I submitted the form to sign on early but haven't heard anything back yet. I thought we were able to switch in September. I'm so ready to switch. Yep. So we just got everyone onboarded in and using it in the July training and when you're ready for the next group we'll start going through that form that was submitted. So if you submitted the form you're good to go. You'll be given a heads up when we're about ready for you. We're waiting probably a week at least though because.

As of if not tomorrow, Friday, their call automation notification will be in in tag, COPA as well as.

The wiki pages will all be integrated. So there are a couple things we're still waiting on that always make it even easier to join to switch over. So also a couple things we found in the onboarding process that would make it easier to come over from Zooper and Service Autopilot, one of them being email validation to ensure emails are all correct and if they're not to prevent double entry of those emails accidentally. So couple things on the importing process that we're trying to make improved.

Devin from Red Deer Should I hire? I'm at 35 bi weekly cuts Tuesday through Thursday, 10 to 15 a day. Ish. Not impossible but could use an easy hand.

I get lots of trimming and cleanups to add in there. Or should I just focus on filling out the schedule and my snow removal schedule? If volume is there in cash, I could get a second truck for snow removal mid October. But right Now I got 10k ish a month in mowing and then probably 2 to 10k plus in projects. I don't know. This is definitely something on coaching call you're going to go over because you're going to be looking at how much capital do you have available by getting that second truck and hiring people. What does that increase your capacity? Are you actually going to hit that capacity within the timeline that you're thinking or is it just better to say hey look, getting another truck hiring once, I'm not necessarily going to fill that capacity until next spring and so instead of deploying the capital now, I can just wait till next spring. So definitely not a bad idea to talk to the coach and see what is the result of increasing capacity? Are you just increasing capacity that it's actually going to be used in six months? The only time I'd really ever do that is for the sake of taxes at the end of the year. Evansville Tell us you suite. In your chat about Subway and their correlation with operators I noticed that a lot of their franchisees have we do not participate in national marketing meaning they don't accept coupons or subscribe to the TV ad pricing. This essentially seems like Subway corporate is throwing money down the drain as almost every Subway I've been to doesn't participate in national marketing but they're still paying the 3% fee for marketing. What is that nexus point that will force Subway to no longer change that? Or do you think it's honestly just straight profit for the headquarters that they would never stop? That seems like a both waste on both ends. So you got to think about it from the Subways perspective. If they just increase brand, regardless of whether or not the marketing campaigns do anything, it does two things for them. One, it makes it when you start a subway that you get more people showing up your door because the brand is stronger. Right. The second part is by having the brand being stronger they can attract more franchisees. That's the balance they have to play because getting more locations actually will help other franchisees because the brand grows. And so the, the, the argument for having national marketing is not necessarily driving leads. Even though that's what I kind of always harp on because like fitness I pay 1200 bucks a month and I never see people walking in the door from it.

But increasing brand does help usually with initial like the initial burst of customers as well as bringing new franchisees more operators which is a compounding effect to the brand. But they went so heavy on that and they forgot about the unit economics of each location that they went up to 27,000 locations had to come down to 20,000. It's because they got, they got in. This vicious cycle of hey let's marketing brings in more operators, more operators, increases the brand because people see it more often and people see it more often leads to a location where it started jumps fast. So I've looked at actually several Subway franchises P and LS and it's what's incredible is that literally within the first three months they get to like their revenue marker. It's not like it takes three, four years to build a business because they open up the subway and everyone knows exactly what to expect. They already have brand awareness. If you open up Mike's Sub shop. Well, it's a bad example. If you open up Bob's Subs.

It'S going to take potentially 6, 12, 18 months just for people in that local area to know who you are and even like have tried you one time and know what to expect. So it's a branding play.

And a lot of it does get, quote unquote wasted from a franchisee's perspective, from the brand perspective, that's how they keep the equation running. It's like, hey, by me spending 1200amonth at any time, increasing the brand of any kind of the awareness of the general public, does that increase my business? Probably a little bit. But what really helps is new operators. And that's always what I've had a problem with the franchises, like, they focus so much on the new franchises. And that's why, like, people that after 10 years, like, I don't want to pay 10% as a royalty because, like, I don't need the franchise or as much. And now my business is a million plus, so I don't want to be paying $100,000 a year in royalties. And furthermore, the marketing dollars aren't helping me because, like, my marketing is way better. I've lasered it and I focused it. What's helping is the initial operators. Like, as we grow to 500 locations, for example, the reason we will increase the initial fee is because that's who it's helping. It's helping the person that when they first get started, if you hit 500 locations, you're starting and immediately your phone is ringing just because your name is Augusta and you will grow. Instead of it taking a year and a half to two years to get to profitability, you can build a dent in three to six months much faster simply because you got leads pouring in simply to the name of Augusta. So that's what that is the case for having national marketing. But you'll notice new franchisees love national marketing because they get the initial burst. People who've been around for a long time kind of know business a little bit more. They're the ones who get annoyed because they know that they can spend those dollars five times more effectively.

Tarrel Eck Boone's Creek, Tennessee Hey Mike, wondering if you have any advice for something I struggle with. My personality is tended toward being all or nothing. When I get focused on something, it's all I think about and the only place I put my energy until it's done. Sometimes I it seems like I'm just so sporadic when I focus, like I'll just Mow away, hammer down. And then that's all I do and get bored. Then I get inspired to do, then I'll get inspired to do, finally do follow up calls, unlock whatever follow up calls for like nearly an hour. And so all kinds of work suddenly because I got really focused on it. And so it seems to go back and forth between being bored with the business and having so much going on that I'm overwhelmed.

Those are just some exam. Couple examples, Bob. I think you'll catch the idea. How can I even it out to make it more fun? Lower highs, higher lows I suppose.

I think defining to finding the definition of low lows and high highs is an important trait of a new entrepreneur. So you know what it feels like and then you can build systems to avoid those things as you go on. And like I still am figuring these out, right? Like what are the low lows? What are the high highs? Okay, great. These are my parameters and I'm going to try to fly a little bit more in the middle of this to avoid it.

But if you're new, you gotta kind of define those, right? You gotta like know what those are, right? So like for example, do you enjoy the follow up process because that, does that make you quote unquote more fun?

And when you're, you know, Lowe's is that like when you're just bogged down in operations and doing the work well, that's a good definition of potentially in 5 or 10 years what the business should look like probably means you might again, if that was true, it would probably tend me tend for me to make me believe that you should probably be more in sales, follow up calls, growth and you have an operations and a gm, right? If the opposite is true or you get on the follow up call and just drains you, you hate doing it. You want to avoid at all costs, but you just love mowing, training new guys, that's then that's the inverse, right? So I don't think it's a bad thing, especially in your first year to a business, to define what the low lows moments are and what the high high moments are. In other words, you can't avoid those markers, you can't avoid those benchmarks without figuring out what they are. Kyle Tarvin Mor, what is the point at which we should be worried about asset protection? Removing your name from the business, putting real estate into LLCs, getting a trust, et cetera. People overthink this way too much. Mostly because the people that talk about it have so many assets that they actually need to Worry about asset protection.

The vast majority, every single loan you get is going to be backed by your personal name. If you're an LLC or S corp, you're an S corp. The business is still attached to you. Every loan you get is still going to be attached to you. Now, from a liability standpoint, that's different than asset protection.

And so I truly believe people think, well, it's way too soon, way too soon. This is something that you should be talking about with your CPA because it's really the only reason to do this in before you get to like 50 million plus in my opinion, maybe 20 million plus is taxes. So like this is on my radar. I think I educate myself a lot about this stuff and I'm not even quite to the point where it makes a lot of sense for me to start like taking my name off of stuff, putting in titles, putting in multiple layers of trust like etc. And honestly, from financial perspective, it's costs a lot. So I would not worry about this. When I get to that point, I will let you know and I'll try to give you what I'm learning.

It's in Vilnius. Davidson. As we are up and running with our Augusta location, what should I do with my old website? Currently received consistent quote requests to the site. I think it has been working well even with any without any ads driving draft. Great. This is what I'd recommend I do. We have a lot of locations do this and that is keep your site up and literally change just the phone number to what go into command center and then right next to where they submit their S request forms. And at the very top of your site just put presented by and put the logo Augusta Lawn Care. So that way you don't have to change anything. You still get these leads coming in. And then what's going to happen when people call or they submit a form? They will not be surprised when Augusta Lawn Care contacts them. And then no other systems of the business have to change. You just get this residual flow of leads still coming in. Then you don't pull the plug on this until your Augusta site is superseding dramatically the lead flow coming from this site to the point where this might get one or two a day and the Augusta one's getting 8, 10, 12. That's the only time I'd ever even pull the plug on this site. Because right now all you can do is leave it as is. Don't change anything. Put at the very top, there's your logo there presented by with the Augusta logo change the number to Augustus to your command center number. So everything can still just flow through one spot and then right where they click submit for the form. Same thing. Even if it's like, however you have your site where it pops up, like, we'll get back in touch with you. Just make sure it has Augusta brand and stuff and you'll be fine. Quite a few locations have done this and sometimes they'll keep them for six to 12 months and then they'll come a point where it's like, okay, my Augusta site is literally ranking number one and now this other one's fallen down to 5, 6, 7 because I'm not driving as much traffic. Then it makes sense to potentially part way with it.

From Nick Davidson. As we have switched to Augusta, some employees seem interested in the opportunities of Augusta. What's the best videos could I send an employee that might be interested in opening their own locations in the future? I really want our team to show them that there's a legitimate and viable long term career path on the dashboard. If you go to deals, there's a 3F program, there's a document that I made for them. And then also I think there's a video in there. Like 95% sure there's a video where I'm talking to that employee and kind of talking about like pros, the cons, what they should think about what they should be doing for the next two years, which is honestly like getting as close to you as possible and helping you in the business as much as possible, like after work, like really shadowing you almost. And so they'll be your best employees if they that's their two year plan, like the next two years. You have a very solid team member. So I think it's, I think the video's on there too. If not, it might be inside of the document. The link to it. Logan from Grand Island Brass. Transition. Transition into copilot. How far is CC into the form you've submitted? Early transition. I'm excited to us to switch.

Oh yeah, here two things. One. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm reading ahead. Okay, so transition to. We haven't started that form yet. So if you like the number one, we haven't got to yet because we just got all the first 10 in we learned. What were any of the hiccups that happened in the transition process? I have a meeting with Eli and the onboarding team. I have one yesterday, Monday, Tuesday. I forget. I think it's yesterday and then yesterday and then I'm assuming like a week or Two, we'll probably have another one and then when he gives me the go ahead that hey, we're ready, everything in terms of features and refinements have been made. Then we'll continue in that form. I will let you know the minute that we start that and we'll work through that form. We will be prioritizing zebra people because it is so broken and a lot of their processes, they are leaning on multiple different softwares and Google and a whole bunch of garbage. So. But we will let you know when that form.

Also I got the attached message from Community Standards. Yeah, this is a scam everyone. Just FYI on Facebook yesterday from Columbus. Is this real or a scam? I haven't clicked the second link yet in fear of being a scam. I also haven't received any emails for alleged violation either. Have you seen this before? Yes, I've seen it many, many times. I think everyone has this. I deleted out of several of my accounts. Think about it from this perspective. All they have to do a few things. One, get a domain that has something to do with Facebook or Meta. Two, change their name to Community Standards or something of the nature. Three, change their logo like their icon, their profile picture to something that looks official. They do those three things like the meta logo. If they do those three things all of a sudden you think that they are legitimate and what they're going to do, they're going to eventually get you to click into something, give you personal information or get your billing information, say hey, you pay for this. It's, it's a scam, so just leave it alone. Trust me. If they actually say you're going to get taken down, you will know very quickly because I have had that taken down. Something was taken down before, it was a pain to get back up and the site like the page was gone.

All right, this is from Anonymous. If you knew you could pay everything off in 12 months or less, would you consider putting something on a 0% card for a 12 month balance transfer? Trying to pay off debt and become debt free and just trying to put as much money towards the principal as possible. One is the high interest card and minimum payment of like $450 and 27% APR. Others are like 5 to 10% items. Just wanted to snowball these payments and really help the bottom line over time. So yeah, this, this is a matter of risk analysis. You are increasing the risk of your business by increasing your debt. You are doing that in order to save 27 interest. Seems like a pretty good bet if your confidence Level in paying it off within 12 months is extremely high. So I see people do this a lot with taking one credit card, the high limit say, okay, I'm going to take this, I have 12 months of interest free. I'm going to go pay off all my other stuff. It strictly comes down to what level of confidence because this is the key indicators new. If you Knew that assumes 100% probability if this was the case, 100% give you the green light. There is Nothing that is 100% your business. So that level of confidence in that outcome is what would determine my risk analysis assessment as to whether or not I would go out and get more debt in exchange to pay off other debt. It's you're increasing risk by increasing your debt threshold and not hitting the 12 months. But you are, if you can do that and save $450 a month, et cetera, pretty good deal. That $450 spent on marketing could potentially grow the business significantly over the course of 12 months. So big fan baseball you shared strictly comes down to your level of confidence in knowing, quote unquote, that you're going to be able to get it all done. And I think a good call with a coach would probably put perspective in perspective of the level of confidence you should be having of that, you know, what is that amount? Okay, how much revenue, what profitability are you going to be able to be? Increasing that much revenue doesn't require more equipment, more hiring, which is actually going to hurt your profitability.

What will onboard and copilot cost of franchises? We aren't charging for the initial call and getting you transferred over. If you want specifically us to help you move every single client over by themselves, that would cost extra. This is something that Eli will go over with you in your individual case. Our goal is to make this as streamlined as possible. And over the next few weeks and a couple months before the rush in October, November, December of everyone moving over, we will have more streamlined videos for you to follow. But based on what I've heard, most of it is done on the onboarding call and they help you transition over and get everything set up. But if you want everything manually copied over, for example, or like you want notes of what's been done in the history, like that is going to be obviously an additional cost from command center. But the onboarding call, we're not charging for that. And I think the vast majority of people probably fine with that. For example, like your office notes from from Service Autopilot do come over into customer notes inside copilot a lot of different kind of tags, things like that. We're trying to improve and that's why I've said if you have like a gazillion tags and a gazillion custom fields, just wait later in the year so that we can add that into the onboarding.

Is there going to be a feature on Copilot where we can sync customers jobs that happen the same day as the moe? Well, this is a long question. Is there going to be a future on coat where we can sync customers jobs to happen the same day as the mos, for example, customers who have once a month trimming and biweekly mows. I'm running an issue each month where the trimming ends up landing on days where they don't have moe and we're making up an extra trip. Of course we are moving them as needed when we dispatch, but hoping Copilot will have a feature where we no longer want to do this. Yeah, we talked about this the other day.

In our media Copilot and I was thinking along this line of something like linking jobs together. So if one moves, they both move. This is something we could definitely address. I think it's actually relatively easy, but we gotta be careful with a few other little things we brought up in the meeting. But yeah, bring this up.

Like end of this year if we haven't already done it. But I do think we can link jobs together and basically that means if one moves, everything moves.

But again, there are some ramifications around that because if one gets completed, one doesn't, then what happens? Like there's a whole trickle down effect of just saying, oh, link them together. They get one move, they all move. There's a whole bunch of other things that are consequences of this. I do think we could do it. We did talk about the other day. We have not put it on the roadmap yet. So I would say bring this up towards the end of the year and then next spring we will have a more formal way of getting feature requests from Augusta than the Franchise Advisory Council. Prioritizing those and saying, hey, these are the three or four we'd like to get them done this quarter and then submitting it to Copilot and then those would obviously be far and above in terms of priority compared to the club. The public doesn't have much to say. It's like our roadmap. But anyways.

I think that's all I got. All right everyone have a fantastic day, fantastic Wednesday and we'll see you tomorrow. Take care.