Mike Minutes Mastermind 09/12/2023

Oh, whoops. I think I went live too early. Whatever. Let me just fix this. Sorry, let's take me extra minute because I accidentally went live instead of posting this.

All right.

Switch this over to there. Done. Copy save.

All right, Sorry. Usually I have this all done. Drop that there. All right. I wanted to show if you are coming to conference. Conference is now just a month away.

I'm going to show you exactly.

Share screen.

Right.

Inside of the dashboard. If you go up to the top here, this conference here, you can see all the information you'll need in terms the public conference, Tuesday evening dinner and then Wednesday morning at the church which is just down the street from Omni Hotel.

This also gives you the the code if you want to get discounts on the Equip Expo. We do not get any money or kickback or anything from this. There's a bazillion other people giving away discount, the same one for 50% off. It's very standard for them.

In terms of these tickets, if you are coming, we need you to fill this form for anybody. If you're getting more than two people per location, then you would need to go buy a public ticket. But anyone from Augusta needs to fill this form. So I know for Tuesday night's dinner in terms of food, I need to be giving those numbers here pretty soon. If you are thinking of not coming because costs in terms of accommodations in your first, in your. You are in your first year of business, please reach out to a coach.

I would potentially have a few hotel rooms I could get for people that can't afford it in their first year. And I would need to know that though the next by the end of this week. So please on a coaching call, talk to a coach and express that if there is a need, I do not want anyone to not come because of financial reasons. I know there's other like obligations in terms of, you know, people have events have been planning weddings and birthdays and all the rest of it. But if you cannot make it because it's simply just cost prohibitive in terms of hotels etc, please reach out to a coach. They will reach out to me and I'll see what I can do. So feel free. Please fill this out. One per person. It's just a Google form. But we do need to know exactly how many people are coming. This walks you through the same exact information, just the name of attendee and your location. So everyone does need to fill us in. Every single person. If you are coming to conference, you must fill us in. It's not just for people in above two per location. It is every person that's coming. Please fill one out per person so that we can quickly know exactly our limits in terms of Wednesday morning at the church as well as the food for Tuesday night. Otherwise you just won't get any food on Tuesday night. And it'll be very sad because really going, it's going be great, great, great meal. And that dinner will there won't be any speaking at that dinner. Originally we were going to try to cram it all in one evening. Decided not to do that and that's why we got the church on Wednesday morning. So Tuesday evening is just going to be a destination closed door event. There's no one from the public is going to be there. I might say a few things but it's not going to be a.

Talking or keynotes or anything like that. It is getting together, enjoying each other's company and having a really nice dinner and time together. So there is no keynotes on the Tuesday night. It is Wednesday morning so you can refresh, relax two days of intense learning. Then Tuesday evening just unplug, have a great dinner together and then Wednesday we'll all go to the church which is down the way. And the reason we have to do that is because Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, that entire city is basically the tourism. What's it called the tourism.

Basically like the.

Their collect collective or whatever. You can't book anything else. So that's why I couldn't get Ami Hotel. I tried tried like a gazillion other hotels but just down the street is the is a cathedral church place and it'll be cool. All right, let's see what we got in terms of questions.

Present share.

Oh, there's one. All right. Derek Duran. See here. Okay, cool. Am I sharing? I am good. I saw the Derek Durant. I saw the form for opting out of max call said this will mean a higher cost per minute for all phone calls. Has this pricing changed, been specific, specified for what the rate difference is or this just giving a heads up for down the road it will cost more to have a human answer the phone. In your update video it said the cost savings would be in the efficiency of having max, not the rate per minute. Any clarification is appreciated. Yeah, the rate per minute will be affected because it's not only the actual cost of the person answering the phone by opting out of max. It's a matter of the whole workflow just changes at command center. Right. So the biggest like I've said before, like the the biggest cost of Command center is having to staff for the peaks, whereas with Max we don't have to do that. We can be much more consistent and it brings down the overall cost for us at Command center in terms of hiring. So my, my thought process intent, instead of raising prices for people that are willing to have max and are willing to accommodate the fact that it helps us a lot in terms of our workflow management and how many people we have to staff up for that cost should be that that savings would be passed down to the franchisee level. And so I, yeah, it is going to go up. And what do I think that's going to be? It probably going to between 1:30, like instead of a dollar nine cents per minute, which has been that way for four years now. We've never changed that.

Now we have a very good understanding of like what it actually costs in terms of labor. Like we've done it now for four years. We know exactly what the costs are. So I'm still working over some of the numbers, but my thought process is to basically keep the price for Max at the same rate. If someone is opting into max again, 70% of the calls, like the calls still go to Command Center. But the workflow management is so much better and more efficient for Command Center Max at the top. And so we can keep that $1.09 per minute. But then if someone's wanting during office hours to have actual human answering the phone, then their rate would be higher because it just means that those are the people we are staffing up Command center for is the people that are requiring every call to be answered, meaning the peaks and the valleys of the calls are much more impactful. And so I've always said this like a command. The cost is the fact that you have to 20 calls one hour and 200 the next and we've got a staff up for the 200. And so it creates inefficiencies. Now someone absolutely wants their phone calls answered by command. They should just be paying that extra. They should be paying the difference and the extra cost that that incurs and not the people that are willing to have max. And I think over time the delta and the difference between.

The service that both of those provide will just get smaller and smaller and smaller until max is actually better. But.

I'm thinking along the lines and these numbers I haven't solidified yet, but I'm thinking along the lines of like a dollar, like an extra 30 cents basically for every call must be answered by a human.

So if you had say 600 minutes in a month that would be like a couple hundred dollars basically extra you'd be paying per month. If you just want a human during office hours to answer the phone on the, on right away there is no Max. So and then what I'm thinking and I'll talk about this at conference is like instead of ever having these jumps because we've had a jump in the past from $0.70 to $0.90 for full service and now we're having this jump for if you just want, just want.

Humans. Right it be the increase. Well I want what I'm thinking is having just where every at the end of every year it goes up based upon inflation and that the number just slowly would go up a couple percent every single year just to adjust for inflation to reduce the fact of, you know, every three, four, five years having to adjust prices significantly. It's just much more gradual. And then it's our responsibility, command center, beat the beat inflation because wages are going up significantly faster than inflation. And so.

That'S kind of my plan. I have not locked down what those prices are and that's why on that form it just says it will go up because I am still running a lot of data but if someone has opted into Max, all of their minutes are will be lower because it's not just the time of max on the phone versus not because still the vast majority of minutes total are being handled by a human. It's not that it is the workflow that costs is the difference in cost. So hopefully made sense. But I will have more lockdown prices probably within the next couple weeks. I was going to wait till conference but I could, I could do them earlier. I don't mind just sharing exactly what those will be but I'm thinking along based on that math I've been running so far on the data, I'm thinking about a $0.30 per minute more which you know, depending on how your call volume is probably a few hundred dollars per month extra if you, if you're like hey, I only want this to be handled by humans. So. But yeah, I'll give you plenty of heads up in terms of like when that deadline's coming and that date in time. And my hope is that by the time the price has increased that we're already working on the copilot integration, it will make Max even more accommodating. We're working on doing a thing too.

One second here. Sure. Cool. We're working on something with Max in terms of adding in a part where they know that it is a virtual assistant. Because what we're finding is the people who are really, really happy and really, really like it. They actually, they like the fact that they get that, get the, they understand that this is a AI speaking to them. They actually really enjoy it. It's the people who are not happy with it that they feel like, just kind of like tricked. So we're just going to eliminate that. And the reason we've not done that in the past because we want them to keep talking. So for example, if it's after hours, someone calls in and it's like, hey, I'm an agent or I'm a robot, do you want to give me your information? People are less likely to do it. However, what we're planning to do is Max answers the phone like normal, gets what they, what they want to do, and says, okay, great, I'm a virtual agent, I can do that for you. And I can take this to completion. And I think it's going to increase the positive feedback towards Max. And then anyone who is negative towards it can always be like, no, I want to talk to human during hours. No problem. So it'll prevent them going any further in the call without knowing that it's a virtual agent. But there's a lot of people who don't find out till later and they're like, oh, that's so cool. Are you a robot? And it's like, yeah, I'm a virtual agent. So like we just, we're just gonna move that forward in the call and we think it won't change any terms of the workflow. It'll just make people that are happy, happier and impressed. And then people that are unhappy, either A, they can opt out quickly or B, they actually don't mind giving the information. They just won't feel like they got tricked. And we just wanna prevent that from happening. Cause that's most of the negativity we've had from customers is like, hey, I liked it, but I didn't know it was a robot until a minute and a half into the conversation. And I just felt like tricked a little bit. Okay, great, we'll just tell you at the beginning and we'll let them know, hey, we can take this whole call to completion. We can take care of you. You know, we'll get this information to that department, etc. So I think that's all I got for today. But yeah, in terms of the price increase, I will make it very clear in terms of what the difference is going to be. I just made sure that in the form, everyone that is filling out the form knows that the price is going to have to crease in. Increase will happen and I'll definitely give at least a couple months of heads up. So if someone wants to transition over, that's totally fine. But just remember, even if you're opted into Max at the top, you're still 70 + percent of your calls are being handled by a human. It's just the top line funnel that when stuff peaks, Max just really helps us and it's going to massively help us next spring in terms of amount that we have to staff up and therefore our losses during that time. So we should just hand that cost difference along.

In our area. The growth of grass is starting to slow down. Some of the properties can go to bi weekly. Should we make that call for customer or should we wait until the customer request to go bi weekly? I personally recommend waiting for the customer to. Because you think you're doing them a favor by saving them cost. I guarantee there's a whole bunch of them that if you just told them they're switching to bi weekly, they would not be happy. So you're kind of, you're going to get some unhappy customers either way. You think you're doing the right thing for the customer by saying, hey, you only need bi weekly. But there are customers that want you to show up every single week regardless if you mow a one blade of grass. They want to see clean edges and a truck showing up and you to blow things off. So they won't be happy if you just make that decision for them either. I would just make it where they contact you. Then you go ahead and switch it over to bi weekly. And command center knows that when that happens, they're changing the price in the current next visit, etc. And you're probably going to get more revenue as well as a more gradual decrease of job number, job count instead of just doing it for them. And there's this big drop. So that would be my personal recommendation. And then when you're about three to four weeks away from finishing the mowing season, then you send your winter services opt in, opt out email or sorry, opt out email and whoever else, whoever is still in service would be getting that, that email. They've already canceled for the winter, quote unquote and it's in, you know, if it's the end of September, they cancel for the, you know, we'll see you next spring. They're not going to get the opt out email. They already opted out. So you could send them a separate email technically if they've stopped mowing service early and try to upsell them into winter services but just less, less frequency, less frequent. Do people do that? If they are canceling early, they're usually not the type of customer that wants service more consistently and they want the winter services so.

All right everyone have a fantastic rest your week. We're one month away from conference. Make sure you sign up for the conference on the dashboard and if you are wanting to nominate someone for franchisee of the year, make sure you do so on the Facebook group. On last Friday we put up the the form and probably within the next 24 hours we will then all be able to vote. Top three people will come to the leadership team and we will decide more from a business perspective and and everyone that is nominating should be more thinking about who has helped them, who has been contributing to their success in their location, whether it be publicly or privately. So thank you all, have a fantastic day. We'll see you tomorrow.