Mike Minutes Mastermind 09/13/2023

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to an edition of the Mike Minutes. Mastermind, turn up my volume.

All right, let's roll. Let me put this into the chat.

Happy birthday to my twin, Kevin Fairburn. I hope over the course of time, I get some of what hair is on his chin on my head instead of reversing. It's kind of the goal. All right.

Awesome. Quick, a couple updates. Reminder here. If you're watching this right away live, make sure you, if you have not yet already nominate someone for franchisee of the year. That'll probably end within the next couple hours. And then Lee will post a ballot based upon who was nominated.

So if you haven't done that, make sure you do. So second thing you'll see randomly, There was like 10 posts that were just put into the Facebook group of comments that were screened out that I did not know about. I did not block comments on the Facebook group. They get screened out a lot of times, though, if they have links. So for example, there was one from like Ryan Payne a couple weeks ago where he had offered some training for stuff like that, and he put his cash app link. It got screened out in security. Someone else said a swear word. It screened that. I just noticed today that there's a new thing. I don't know if it's new, if I've never seen it. There's like 14 comments or posts that had not been posted. So I do not do that. I never. I don't think I've ever taken it on post in the Facebook group.

Actually. No, there was one. It was way over the line a couple years ago anyways.

So if those randomly popped up, that's why. And feel free, if you got notified that it got passed, feel free to post it again because it's likely that no one knows 2, 3, 4 weeks ago what was going on. So that's all I had on my list.

All right, let's see here.

Five questions. Let's go. All right, let's see. See here.

Five questions. Oh, look at that little lamination. Cool. Whoa, that's pretty funky. Okay. All right, first question is from Devin Red Deer. What's your thoughts on after job photos? I think it's good.

To have them. And inside of Copilot, the client portal, they have a specific spot for before and after pictures. So kind of cool.

It's just, are you going to require it on every single time? Is it going to. Are you actually looking at the pictures? Is it more a matter of someone argues whether or not the work was done? Potentially A good idea to have them. If you can't get your guys to clock in and out of jobs, are they going to take pictures after every job? Right. So.

Devin from Red Deer is Red Deer. Everyone has green bins for yard waste. It's stupid not to use them for clippings. I do every day. Would you? It's there in the city halls away free once a week. If they're full we just pull them out two feet. If it's a ton of debris, we take it. But just a bag or two is fine. Yep. In North Carolina they had something similar which is a foreign concept to myself because we always hauled debris away, whether it be clippings or branches or whatever. But yeah, if they had a debris bin and you're able to use it, go for it. Every single municipality is different. Some don't allow you as a contractor to use those bins.

So Caleb from Mary Island I recently had an H VAC technician come to my house. Their software sent a link to a page with a short biography of the technician coming along with the with reviews. This link was sent right after he gave me a call letting me know he was on his way. It also sent a text shortly after it was done asking for the asking for the review links. I think there was something very charming about being able to read about the estimator technician and learning about the person before they arrive and seems like a good feature to add down the road. Pics attach Also someone mentioned in the yeah, let's address this one first. Yeah, so we have this on our thing on our roadmap. I'm gonna guess they were using Service Titan because this is the one we have already picked up on and they are used mostly by H vac construction, door garage doors and electrical. Those are their main industries and they're solid on those industries. They don't have like a map dispatch board, they don't have as much automations etc. But they have a really good client portal. So this is something that we do have on our our list and that is making it really easy to have like on my way text messages and when they do seeing the who's assigned to the job with a picture of them and then we could add something like this biography to it as well down the road. So these sort of things is stuff that we can add to copilot as we see fit. Also mentioned in the Lawn Care Millionaires group about using Loom to make personalized videos for estimates. It seems like an upgrade of the YouTube link because you can Splash in some branding and personalization for the client. Not sure if Copilot and Loom could ever link up or if we could better off just signing up for that and using it personally.

Yeah, there's really no point in linking them up because honestly, you're still going to use a link from Loom. So whether you're using a YouTube link or a Loom link, it really comes down to whether or not you value having some branding, et cetera, on there. And you can make an argument both ways in terms of having it more authentic and raw versus being more professional and buttoned down in an office with a loom. I. I don't necessarily think there's a right or wrong, but I think either way you're going to need a link to put on the on the on the estimate. That being said, you can attach a video to a estimate email in Copilot, and whether that video came from YouTube, your phone or Loom is totally fine. So you could download the Loom video and then just attach it to the video or attach it to the estimate email inside Copilot. So we added some video functionality to basically accommodate what we current the current workflow of of this, which is command center attaching a video to the estimate email. Down the road, though, I want to add a lot more functionality around adding videos to individual line items on an estimate, especially for big project work.

Similar to company cam Modesto. So we hired an employee to start Monday. He came in Monday and he told me he needed the day off Friday because it was his birthday and his kids had plans for him to go off. No problem, take Friday off, right? Then he works Tuesday and then text me at 6pm saying he was not feeling well and that he will not be in on Wednesday but will be here Tuesday. What would you do in this situation? Fire him?

There's so many other points of context that are required, like is he a hard worker? Is he doing well because there's a chance that someone hi you. You hire someone and their birthday is this Friday, they get sick and they need the next day off. What I am more quote, unquote concerned about is the fact that he texts you telling you he will be off tomorrow.

I think the better approach for a new team member is like, hey, I'm sick. Is it okay if I take tomorrow off? So how they ask for that day off is also important. If they're just informing you that they will be off tomorrow because they are sick, that doesn't usually sit well with me, especially for a new employee. That has not built any sort of a relationship up. And so just informing me that they will not be here tomorrow usually rubs me the wrong way, especially if they're brand new. But whether or not I would fire them, there's like so many other points of context. Have they been on time? Are they eager to learn and they're already hitting P4P? Do they have a lot of experience and like they're going to turn out well and they're just having a rough week? There's a lot of other things that should be taken into context here. But mostly in that situation, the thing that rubs me the wrong way the most is just how they potentially asked, quote unquote, for tomorrow to being off instead of just like telling you I will not be in tomorrow because I am sick, just tell me you're sick and say, is it okay if I have tomorrow off? Because 99.999% of the time I'm gonna say that's totally fine, I'm not a bad person. But if you just inform me, it makes me feel like you potentially are not telling the truth about being sick and you're just using that as a way to get out of work.

Connor from Evansville Any idea on how student loans starting over will affect the economy, extra spending, etc. Do you think it will make a dent or not really much impact? I don't think it'll make a ton of impact. Maybe a little bit on the work on the working class middle class.

That has all of the student loans.

Honestly, it's kind of crazy. It's been over three years and they haven't paid anything on their student loans. So I think this overall will help with inflation because it will just like calm people down from spending so much money on other stuff.

I don't think it's make a big dent, no. If you look at, if you look at the impact to gdp, it will be negligible. But I do think there might be a few people that will be a little bit tighter. And unfortunately they spent all the money from their relief in Covid that was really designed to pay those type of payments off. So they've used all their money up. You look at the data, basically all the extra savings from COVID that people got have all been used. So now they all of a sudden have payments coming back due. Fortunately our interest rates that are significantly lower than what they should be in the current time. But it will just create more political pressure to erase them all completely, wipe them from the book and penalize everyone that worked hard to pay their way through college. That's what will probably happen. Or that's what everyone's pushing for, so. Gotta love it. I think that's all I got for today.

Yep. Cool. All right, guys, have a fantastic day. We'll see you tomorrow. Take care.