Mike Minutes Mastermind 09/14/2022

Hey, everyone, let's go ahead and get started. Welcome to another Wednesday quick announcement. The dashboard for the websites where you'll be able to make changes, add banners, etc. We need two more weeks. I'm sorry, I know. I was trying to shoot for this week. You're really pushing for the Christmas lights and we. There's just more stuff we got to do from a security standpoint. We can't have it where someone can get into there. So we have to do one more layer of protection. Give me two more weeks. I apologize. I know I said it was this week, but we're just. We're just running behind on. It's just a lot more work than I thought to create the back end for it. So I know it seems like it should just be like a Google form. That's how I kind of went into it. But when you're actually making changes on a separate URL, there's cross security stuff that. It gets very weird. So I apologize. Give me two more weeks. That dashboard will be ready to go to where you can add banners, add service pages, change your hours, etc. So if you need your Christmas lights stuff done, let me know. There's that form where you can fill it out. But just give me two more weeks. We're working hard on it, I promise, but that'll come out in a couple weeks. So give me till the end of September. It will be done, though. I need it to be done. So as we go into fall season, et cetera, that'll be ready to roll. Over the next few days, you will see across the board a rolling out a new background video for the website. Oh, no wonder people aren't on here. I didn't put my link in here. Give me a second. You'll be seeing a background video to the website being updated. That's going to include more leaf cleanup, fall cleanup type of work, and they got some really cool shots. Let me just add this in here. Give me one second.

YouTube. Boom. Throw this in here. Cool. So there's a whole bunch of questions. We'll get to those right away. I have not gone through them yet, but let me go ahead and add this in here. Sorry, guys. YouTube. Boom. Okay, sorry. I'm just adding in the links for YouTube since sometimes that is a problem.

Okay.

Save.

Okay.

Let'S go ahead and open up the questions. There's like 10 of them.

There we go.

Oh, 11 used on a roll this morning. Let's go. All right, Nick, you said you love the questions, so letting them fly. I have never Been so been come. I've never been comfortable with Google Ads. Every time I set them up, they change something on the platform. It doesn't match up specifically with the tutorials on the dashboard. I set them up wrong. In the spring I spent close to 600 and got zero return because something wasn't set up properly. Right now in September, I've spent $184 and my cost per click is $6.60 and I've gotten five leads and closed two. My customer acquisition cost from Google Ads is $37 and last year was $18 for September. I know 37 is relatively good, but it's a huge jump from $18 this time last year. Am I worrying over nothing? I just want to make sure I am not setting up the ads. Incorrect again. Is there any chance you can update the tour or maybe talk about setting them up? What matters and what doesn't? Yeah. So Google literally changes stuff every single day on their platform and that's why it's hard with the tutorials. And they change it in different areas of the country before they roll things out. So what I've been trying to do is making a tutorial when they roll things like they complete a new feature and roll it out officially because like they're literally testing multiple things in different areas of the country. And so some people like oh, there's this new button and then everyone else is like no, there's no button. So I kind of try to wait until.

There is a completed version of their ad platform to make a new one. That being said, when it comes to Google Ads, remember that it is intent based driven, which means September of last year when you did your marketing, if it was say Rainier in Washington, you would have had more leads coming in because there'd be more demand for mowing. And some stuff have started growing. We're in the middle of September, we still haven't had much rain. Stuff's not growing, everything is still dormant. No one's looking for the services. So because there's no search, your cost per click speed higher. Right. So the typical when demand is high cost, customer equity cost is low. Right. So it's very good chance if you get, if we get a bunch of rain next three or four days and stuff just starts taking off. Your cost per click go in half the last two weeks of the September. Right. So it's not really perfectly fair to compare a sell small seller a couple weeks or a month even because the weather is such a massive driving indicator of demand in this industry. This is not like going out to eat. That changes relatively small throughout the year. Maybe 20, 30% increase. We're talking about mowing, which is like the difference between slow season and busy season is like 10x the amount of leads that come in and then on demand people coming on Google looking for our services. Right. So just keep that in mind. I wouldn't say, you know, obviously $37 customer acquisition cost is fantastic. I'd be doing that all day long. It's just a matter of obviously if you had 18 before, you theoretically can. If you have $18 customer acquisition cost, it means that probably within a week or two you've recouped the cost of acquisition. Whereas this is like a month that's meaningful. That that definitely impacts cash flow. Right. So I would just not look at such a small subset and realize that I would. I typically only will compare quarterly data when I'm comparing Google Ads because literally two or three weeks can change everything when it comes to weather. And this industry is so fickle to weather that it's just very difficult to track that. So that'd be my only caveat, especially when you're comparing something like Nick, like a September where our market is, it's a inflection point. So that inflection point cover like the first week of September when the rain comes, or it could be the last week of September and the difference in those is like massive.

I have two questions, so feel free to pause in between to answer them one at a time. How does funding another location work? Do you just move money from your personal bank accounts into your business account? Does there need to be a paper trail? Yeah, there needs to be a paper trail. It's going to be under owner contribution. In terms of your balance sheet, it's a balance sheet line item. It is not a profit and loss item. And so if you, if command center is doing your, your command QuickBooks, just say, hey, I'm starting this new location. The first $50,000 I put in as cash is owner's equity, owner's contribution, same thing. And that's going to be a balance sheet line item and not on the P and L. Don't make it an expense or a income. It's not. It's a balance sheet item. So typically like what I do is I'll put a certain amount of cash into the bank as starting capital and mark it as owner's equity. And then that way all the expenses have been tracked from that account. And it's pretty straightforward. Clean after the business is fully funded and trucks Are ready and working. Do you start taking money out of the business once it is profitable? If so, how much? Personally, with my second the like my other locations, I, I usually give it a year to build up cash flow and then I determine what my, what I can take in terms of distributions. So for example, you know, let's just say you start a location, you spend $50,000 and after a year you start taking a thousand dollars a month as distributions. Really small amount. Theoretically that's a 25%.

Let'S see. Yeah, 25% return on investment. Right. So if I put $50,000 in a year later I'm taking a thousand dollars a month. That's $12,000 per year. It's about 25% return on investment. That's not bad.

That beats a lot of other investments. Now if you can make, you know, $2,000 a month, well, you basically are able to do 50% return, get 24, $25,000 in a year back of your investment. That's great business. So I typically like it to run for a year. It really depends. For me though, my general managers, because they want to keep growing, the cash stays in the business. But if we are optimizing for profit, I'll take start. I want to start taking distributions within the first year. That's the goal. The first three months we lose money and basically are eating away at the owner's investment, that equity, that opening equity position. And then over the next nine months we the goal is to build up cash reserves. So that way after that first year I'm taking distributions.

Is profitability the only metric you use to judge a GM's location success? How quickly will you pull a plug of a GM location is underperforming. I would quickly take the GM under my wing and coach them up. But just curious how you would approach that aspect. Yeah, like if you had just one location and you were either A they were running your first location or B they were starting a new one for you, you'd probably do a whole lot better managing than I have in the past few years of my loc. Because you'd be much more hands on. And this is why I'm hiring Chuck in part of his role is regional manager to manage my GMs because they haven't got the support they need and I'm not involved at all. And working GMs need more support than an owner.

So. And I'm never there. So that's really what I'm doing. So in terms of what I judge their metric, I'm Judging on growth or profitability in my mind is the only two things that really matter in business. Either the business is growing and therefore I'm okay with it being unprofitable, or balance, it's being profitable and spitting out cash. If it's not doing one of those two things within 12 months, like it's gotta go, how quickly will I pull the plug? I'll pull a plug within the first month or two. If I see someone's not committed, I'll pull the plug after a year if I'm not getting distributions. And most of the time it comes down to gm. Like I said this pretty consistently. Every location, whether it be GM or owners, is almost always tied back to the direct correlation with the GM or owner's capability to run the business, be a leader, be a salesperson, et cetera. So if any point I feel like that, that comes into question, I'm going to pull the plug and then give, you know, one, two, three months of, you know, hey, this is happening, these numbers are not performing and give warnings and then just pull the plug as quickly as possible if needs be. And just strictly look at the numbers. You can't look at getting emotion stuff because if you've invested into the business for an entire year.

The worst thing you can do is just keep going and going and going doing the same thing. So you, the number one thing you're going to do like with any sports team is you're going to try to change the coach, I. E. You're going to try to change your gm. That's typically the first thing you want to do because that usually again is the indicator of success. So I would do that first before like trying to just shut down location unless it was like just getting started or really small. I'm trying to get back up to capacity. I have four trucks and four guys right now, including myself. We have, we have been running just me and one other for the last couple months and have been between 20 and 30% profit. I am getting up to capacity, but I'm think I'm just thinking about how much I am going to have to spend to pack the schedule and double our current workload with mainly projects for a couple guys the next few months and the ramp up time getting them trained, which is about eight weeks of unprofitable negative time, counting two weeks of me training each person, their time, my time combined and I feel like I'm just going to wipe out my profit going into the end of the year. The goal is to get a solid team set up for the spring. But I can't help feeling like I may be making the wrong decision to hit capacity again. I worry that I will lay them off in the winter when it gets so and they won't come back. And the four months I spent training them and selling work at break even or loss just to keep them busy will be all for nothing. I may be overthinking. I know it's essential I get a team set up going in the spring next year, not during. I may also be underestimating how far I can book out in the fall because I can book out a few weeks and raise my prices and I'll feel much better about that. Currently I'm on track to profit maybe 10 to 20k this year. But if I burn through money next couple months, we will easily be negative and not have good cash reserves going into spring. Sorry, that was a lot. What are your thoughts? First and foremost, let's assume that you spent $3,000 on marketing to fill a schedule, right? So let's run the math on this. So here's the thing. When you, when you have excess capacity, when you're growing to capacity, that revenue is extremely profitable because you don't have any more fixed assets you need to buy. You already have the trucks, you already have the equipment. That's why I'm so bullish on grow to capacity. Even if it seems like you're lowering your prices because you already have the fixed expenses, the only extra cost is the labor. So you can be very profitable on the extra revenue. You're already paying for the insurance. You're already paying for these trucks. They're paid off like they're sitting there doing nothing. So usually growth to capacity is the most profitable form of growth. And I think you'll be surprised at how profitable you actually are. Let's say you spent, you know, right now you're doing, I think you'd like 24,000amonth in revenue last month with one employee, which is phenomenal. I really think you can get to 40,000 easily by adding those two more employees. And so let's just say you added 20,000 in revenue, right? By adding those two full time employees, you already have the trucks, you already have equipment. So that's not a question. And again, this is not to say you need to grow. This is just like, let's run the math. So $20,000 in extra revenue, let's assume a 30. Let's assume 40% of that goes to the employee. Because we're like, we're really budging hours low, etc. And we're trying to win the job. So higher percentage of the revenue is going out the door to the employees. So $20,000, let's say 40% of that 4, 10 grand. So was that like 8 grand? $8,000? No. Yeah, $8,000. $8,000 is going out in the form of, of wages. So we have $12,000 more. Let's say there is now some extra fuel. You know, some things break, little things like that. Another $2,000. Again, that's 10,000 out of 20. Now let's go ahead and take out your $3,000 in marketing cost you're going to spend to keep those guys busy. That's $3,000. Okay, great. So we're still looking at $7,000 out of the 20 grand in revenue. That's profit, which is what.

Like a 35% profit margin? Right? So you can bump that number up from 3,000 to 4,000. Still works when you're not at capacity. That that revenue gap is where all of your profit is at. So even if you're bidding lower, you will make more money than you think. So run the math on that. Like say, okay, if I quote, unquote, lower my prices, that revenue goes. Percentage of revenue of wages goes to 45 or 50%. Like what happens. Just run the math and you'll convince yourself. But if you are, if you have paid off trucks sitting in your parking lot, that the revenue to fill those trucks is almost always your most profitable. So I would not underestimate that. And that's not to encourage you to grow. But I know you're now in a psychological mental state, Nick, to where you can handle it. And don't overthink it about them quitting during the winter. Who cares if they quit? They probably will. Just count on all of them leaving, right? And you being just having Matt, your one employee going next spring. Just count on that. That is what you're going to depend on. But you're going to get the experience, you're going to fill capacity. You're going to be more profitable, I believe by doing this over the next few months, even if it's just the next eight weeks. If you just filled the capacity, did one click estimate emails out to Wazoo, and did three to $5,000 in marketing, I wouldn't even spend that much, honestly. $2,000 in marketing, $3,000 in marketing, you'd have $40,000 months and you would be shocked at how much more profitable you have. You'd have more cash to set aside.

What I'd be focusing on is how can you do sell jobs that you can throw them on and not spend eight weeks worth of time training them. That's going to kill you. You can't be doing that. You gotta be able to get them in the truck. So even if it's like you sell mulch, you sell a cleanup, it's like, okay, here's a, here's a project video, here's the notes. Go do project. Maybe you don't throw them on mowing, maybe you don't train them on mowing. We only have a couple more months of mowing. Train them up on projects, leaf cleanups, mulch. That's like you train them in 30 minutes. As long as they go to work ethic. Like they're good to go. Focus on those things. That's what you're going to be selling anyways. You don't need to do a train them all in mowing. Just in time for the mowing season to be over. Right. If you have excess capacity, fill it up with jobs that are simple. So you can just insert entry level labor into those positions to fill the work. Right? So maybe you throw two of them on with Matt for a day and now they get 20 budget hours done instead of his. Just eight or nine. Right? Because they just need. You just need hands. You need people to rake up the leaves, you need people to install mulch, you need people to trim bushes, Maybe just collect the debris after mat trims. Like think about it more like that. Don't think I need to train them up for eight weeks. Don't be doing that. That's why, that's where you'll run it. Problem because you won't be at 40% of of revenue going to the employee. You'll be at 80%. And then the numbers don't make sense.

I currently have search ads going $20 a day and I've only gotten five leads this month. Can I increase the budget and that will get me a lot more leads? Or am I fighting against natural demand? Because September, always traditional been a slower month for us. And if I am trying to book out three guys for projects the next few months, what should I. What is the most I should spend acquire customer given my circumstances? Only asking because you may know since I am close to Bellingham and the market. Yeah. So like I just said about your earlier question, in September we're still dry. There's nothing growing. No one's thinking about anything in terms of lawn care. Everything's just dormant still, right? The rains come in three to four days. I'm not saying they're coming, but if they come in rain for three or four days, everything changes immediately. You're going to be getting four or five leads for mowing a day. You're gonna be getting fall cleanups, like the whole nine yards. Right. The leaves would start falling in like a week or two. So it happens really fast. I would say, in terms of what you spend, don't think about in terms of cost per day or cost per lead. Think about it more like, okay, what's my capacity? What's that number? Here's how much revenue. Here's how much I can afford to spend in order to make this very profitable. And I just. I just used the term of 3, $4,000, and it still makes sense. So it's a matter, though. Can you plug the labor in efficiently to get that work done without training them for eight weeks? If you have to train someone for eight weeks, there's bigger issues we got to talk about. Either, A, you're too much of a perfectionist. B, you're training them on everything inside the business without letting them become profitable at something.

And that's. That's. That's the issue. Right? So if you're going. If anyone's. September, October, November, you have tons of work you know is going to come pouring in. Then I would just really recommend getting employees that you aren't tied to, you aren't trying to convince them they're going to get work all winter long. Maybe they leave you during the winter, but get simple services like leaf cleanups, those sort of things you can plug them into. You don't need to go train them on all the mowing. The mowing's almost over, right? So don't waste two months. Definitely not on training someone up for mowing.

Good morning, Mike. Is there any way to pump up the volume of in the production of your videos so they can be better heard while working? I use Bluetooth earmuffs, but due to hearing loss. Compliments on the. Okay. I'm assuming you're talking about these masterminds.

Okay.

I will think on this because I could plug into my amp and everything. I'm just not always around my amp, which makes. I can make it way louder. So, Val, if there's ever a specific time, like, okay, that one's way quiet, let me know, because I'll just avoid that amp or microphone. Or I'll just know that that one I need to bump up because I obviously can't hear myself right now, so I don't know how loud it is. Streamyard basically regulates the sound. But yeah, if there's a specific, because I used all the different microphones and different spots and computers. If there's ever one like, hey, this one's really quiet, let me know. Or even just put it in the chat, like, hey, can you get louder? I can't get louder on the AirPods because it's all regulated with the software. But if I'm ever on a microphone like this, let me know in the comments because I can just boost it, like, to wazoo. So good note.

Besides P4P, are there any other metrics we need to watch for the crude a daily basis on P4P, it's getting. There is more metrics that we're going to roll out. But, like, the efficiency score is extremely important. Like, the efficiency. Here, let me show you. Let's show you. Bellingham's is the number that, like, really, you only really need to watch, honestly, because P4P. The whole goal of P4P is to manage labor and make it efficient, right? Make the unmanaged labor be efficient. So let me share my other screen here. Stop this one. Share this one.

Give me one second. Let me switch to Bellingham.

Boom. All right. Share window. P4P. This is P for P for Bellingham. You can see the scoreboard to the numbers I'm looking at. Number one is dollars per hour earned by the employees on average. I'll glance at this like, there's obviously a job that looks like it's over budget hours a little bit. But this is the number you're looking at, right? If this number gets under 70%, that's when it's, like, not great. If it gets under 65, really bad. We saw someone the other day was at 35 or 40%. Not good. Okay, so this is the number I'm looking at. This is basically a score of budget hours divided by clocked hours. You can see the numbers up top here. It's the only number that really matters when it comes to the measure of efficiency inside of the business in terms of labor. So that'd be the number I'm watching all the time. It's the most important because it takes so many things into account in terms of budget hours, clocked hours, efficiency of that labor, et cetera. All right, more questions. Boom. Boom. No, no.

Window. What in the world?

Oh, there it is. Okay, questions. Here we go.

Next one. Here we go. Vlad, how much do you recommend we have saved before going past 200,000 in annual revenue? Good question. I would say determining how much capital you need to get to 500,000 and fixed expenses. Right. So if your capacity is at 200,000, how much do I need to spend on trucks, equipment and the cost of employing people to get to 500,000. So do I need two more trucks, do I need a trailer, Do I need a zero turn? What are all those costs? And I'd be in the perfect world, have literally all that cash ready to go. So that way in one spring rush I vital I spend X amount on marketing to to fill the funnel and I go for it. But if you do it during a spring rush, typically you don't have to fill the funnel much with marketing because there's so much demand.

And for most of Augusta Nation it is not a demand issue in spring rush it is, do I have the trucks, do I have the equipment, do I have the employees and do I have the cash to buy those fixed assets required to get the work done? So I would just be really looking at, okay, what do I need in terms of physical assets to get to five hundred thousand? Itemize all those things. Let's say it's a fifteen thousand dollar truck times two gauges. Thirty grand. Okay, a zero turn, eight grand. I need some miscellaneous equipment. Okay, I need forty thousand dollars if I'm going to do this without any capital injection or loans and debt. And do it very, very systematically. Okay, 40 grand. That's what I'm working on. Great. That might take you an entire year to stack that money aside, but it's going to be the most sustainable way to do it. Yes. You get the trucks on debt and do this with 10,000 or 5,000. Yes you can. So it's just your level of risk is going to be what's going to determine when you do that and how much you have stacked aside whether or not you take debt.

Can you remind me who to contact for website edits? Great question. It's on the website or on the directory on the dashboard. So just do franchise and augustalongerservices.com that being said, the dashboard that we're building should replace that 100%. So if you need it right away, Definitely email me franchisegustalongerservices.com we'll push it through. But that is what this whole dashboard that we're building on the back end is going to be built to do to be able so you can change hours, add service pages, turn on and off leads, a whole bunch of stuff. And we'll be able to keep adding to that over Time we got to build this infrastructure. That's security issues.

Last week. Oh, it was a long one. Let's go. Last week I went out and did an estimate on some empty lots. Some of the solo guys helped me out with the bid. So shout out to them. When I turned the estimate in, they immediately called me in for an interview. During the interview, we went over all the details of the quote. Basically, they told me I was too low. They said their last landscaping charge them more, but it was basically because they were driving an hour away and they wanted to stop cutting because it was inefficient for them. So the client agreed to pay me more than my quote. But they said they want me to get workers compared to. I told them I waived my workers comp because I'm a solo guy. They told me to get quotes for the workers comp. And next week we'll sit down and add the bill to the quote. What would you do in this situation? Some of the solo guys told me they wouldn't do it because they don't want to get workers comp only for one job. And if I lose the job, I'll be stuck with the bill. I've never had a client agree to pay more. These lots are residential developments. The clients are builders. And they said for the next 12, 9, 12 months, they need me. Also have the opportunity customers when they sail. What's your take? Ooh, that's a tough one. Yeah. So typically, you as the owner don't have to have workers comp. In most states, it's only if you have employees. So first of all, first of all, I would go in and get the quotes. I think it's always a good idea to know what that dollar amount actually is. So you actually are comparing numbers against numbers. I'm just gonna throw some numbers. Okay, so let's say It's a thousand dollars or $2,000 for a year. I'm just making up numbers. And they're offering to pay an extra 5 or $10,000 on a contract. That might make sense. The next question is, is this contract so big that you as a solo operator, it's gonna become 50% of your revenue like that? Especially because you already know it's short term. Right. Obviously, this, this, this is interesting. Right? You can hopefully upsell people, get them on on board long term. But.

In most states, you can turn workers comp off on yourself. This is the thing. Within nine to 12 months or a year or six months, you're probably gonna have employees anyways on workers comp. And so you're not gonna like turn off. Turn it off necessarily, but you could turn off on you. Right. So like I don't have workers comp on myself either, obviously, because I'm not out in. I never did have workers comp for myself mostly because I was just trying to pinch pennies. Pinch pennies. But I would just be. This is not really a matter of the workers comp versus not. Because that's strictly what's the. How much more are they offering you and then what's the cost for it? I'm more concerned about. This sounds like a big a lot of work for you as a new business owner. And if it's 30, 40, 50% of your revenue, that starts to scare me. And if people start concerning themselves about the workers comp in my business, I start to wonder do I really want to do business with this person? Because what else are they going to try to dictate and change my business to accommodate their requests? That's what I get worried about.

Leaving the name anonymous just because the type of question. Okay, that's fine. I have an employee who called out.

What'S M and T mean? Okay, I apologize for not knowing what this means. Mnt, meaning employee. What does that mean?

MT.

Manufactures and Trade. What? No, not that. Okay. I don't know what the MNT is. Sorry. I'll probably figure it out though. I have an employee who called out MNT Tuesday. He finally went to doctor. Okay, so some sort of injury. Okay. From doc from back and foot pain not caused by work. However, through X rays and scans, they found he had degenerative disc disease at 2032 years old and will have flare ups here and there. I was talking to another friend about the issue and he mentioned workers comp would likely chew me up with issues if something ever happened and mentioned that I should. That I should unfortunately phase this out because of the liability. I'm trying to figure out the issue of how I phase him out without being discriminatory due to his newfound issue. However, at the same time, he's always been a laborer and has no degree and only a ged. I know it's not my fault, but this is his third season with me. It's a monster on the field. He's a monster in the field and stapled him to any of his help. Okay, so this is the big kicker. He's. This is his third season with you. That's totally changes my answer compared to someone who started two weeks ago. Okay, so again, you got to have context for this question.

I would work with this person personally if they're that good for you, they've been with you for three years. I do feel like there's an odd level of obligation that we as owners, when someone stay with you that long, that we need to, you know, be a little more flexible on things. I would honestly, number one, have a really open conversation. Sorry, give me one second. Give me one second, guys. I'll be right.

All right.

So, yeah, so sorry. There's packages getting delivered.

All right, so the first thing I'd be looking at is talking to the employee, just having open conversation and be like, hey.

If you ever gotten hurt on the job, I want to make sure you're covered for that and.

That sort of thing. Just have an open conversation with them and then go talk to workers comp. And just be like, hey, as an employer, what am I supposed to do? Come up from an educational standpoint, be like, hey, what am I supposed to do? If someone has an existing condition and I'm concerned about obviously my liability, and if they get hurt on the job, I want to pay for it. Like, it's my responsibility. But how do I make sure that I'm opening up the business to more liability by.

By doing. Having this person on board, what am I supposed to do? Ask them that. Because in that case, they might say, okay, well, these are the forms that the employee. You could have them fill out that says, hey, these are my existing conditions. I'm not. This is not liable in the business. Here's the thing. If they have that kind of regenerative type of deal, there's a really good chance that they do something and it slips up. Right? And then you are liable if it's done during. On time, on the clock. Right. So it just. I'd be really open with the employee. I'd be open with workers comp. Honestly, and just come. Come to the workers comp meeting in a matter of educate me, please, please educate me. And then, you know, they'll. They'll give you pretty good advice, I think, in terms of know what you should do and what you're going to be liable for and what you cannot do. Right? And you can just be honest with them. Like, I don't say, like, hey, I'm thinking about firing this person. Don't say that. But just be a matter of like, hey, like, what do I do to protect my business and make sure that I am liable for what I am liable for, but that I don't open up the business to extra liability? I would have that conversation because nothing's happened and they're gonna communicate with you. And depending on your state, some states have like confidential lines for workers comp that you could call and ask and you could even call like there's some workers compensation lines that are just for the employees. You call and say, hey, I have an existing condition and how does it work with. If I get hurt on the job, is my employer liable? And just ask questions like that and see where they're all coming from. But I would definitely spend an hour or two and do some homework and work on this one because it sounds like this is a really good employee that has been pretty faithful to you. So just my opinion. Okay, questions that are in here, give me one second.

Are there any one click. Emails for fall cleanups. There's gonna be a couple coming out.

On this weekend and I'm putting up one for snow, one for fall cleanups. If you're in service autopilot, there's already a bunch. If you're in Zooper, there's probably only one, if not zero, depending on when you sign up in your marketplace. So if you're a super user, that's answer this question. There is probably not a fall cleanup. If you're relatively new, we will be having that this weekend in Zooper and in service autopilot to new ones. For winter services. Do we charge the bi weekly amount for mowing since winter services bi weekly, even if they are on a weekly schedule? Yes, that's what we've always done. Sometimes you'll get some questions about that. But again, if you set weekly and bi weekly prices in the mowing quote, it's in there already. And you can sell them on the fact that it's a still cheaper price per month. The cost per month is low. The reason we do that is because we found if we do weekly, because we could stick to that, it's just very difficult to get stuff and there's for anything to be done needed on the property. After two weeks, there's always something to blowing things off. Branches fall down, leaves, weeds edging the beds, checking the gutters. There's so much that can be done. After a week though, it can be tough. Like January, February, it's like, okay, like what are we supposed to do here every single week? So we've always done that. And there's usually. There's always a couple of customers. Like I always get charged $40 per timing. Why is it 60 now? With winter services, it's like, hey, we switch it to biweekly you'll be paying about 120amonth instead the 160 if you were doing every week service. And that's the same price as your biweekly mowing service.

I have a friend that started a landscape company this year is interested in the franchise. He is, he always asked me for advice and the advice I give him is either based on experience or the advice I've gotten from you or Lee. But he doesn't listen to any of it. He's not sure about what he's. Or how to do it. So he's. So he, so he, when he asked me, I tell him this is what you should or shouldn't do. And then he does the opposite. Would he be a bad candidate for a franchise?

I don't know. That'd be a conversation to have with Lee that that person needs to have with Lee. We a lot of a franchise, we've gotten better at doing this like just looking for the ones that are just not going to listen. It's just very difficult on a, on a call. No matter how much onboarding and training we do with them before, it's hard to, to really determine whether that someone's going to listen. And you know, you can, you can tell everyone the exact steps of what to do and they just won't listen sometimes. That being said, sometimes it does take what we have found to be helpful and we don't want to judge someone too quickly is because when they join a franchise and now we have skin in the game and like they have a partner kind of in the, in the deal, like someone's in their corner, sometimes they'll listen then because they know that someone has skin in the game versus now. You're just telling them as like a competitor, as a friend kind of thing. You're not telling them as someone who has a joint stake in making sure that the brand is upheld. And so that's why we do the fee structure the way we do. That's why we build everything. So that way when you hear something being said from a coach or myself, it is, we want you just to do well and succeed. There is no other opt like no other thing we're trying to increase or enhance. And the reason for that is because otherwise people will do exactly your friend is doing because they think, okay, this is my friend, this is a competitor. They don't have any skin in the game. They don't really care about my business doing well. They'd probably actually do better if my business did poorly. If you're in the same market or are close by. And so that's sometimes why people won't listen. But yeah, like, it's, it's the worst thing. I hate when I, I try to help or give feedback. And like this morning I made that video about growing to 500,000 revenue. Like the comments, people are like.

No, you can be way more profitable at 500,000 compared to 200,000. It's like, okay, like I said in the video, yes, there's gonna be some people who will make more at 500,000. They optimize at 500,000. But the bottom line is when you take a revenue producing employee that was doing 120, $130,000 by themselves, the owner, and you turn that person from being 50, 60% profitable to someone who now costs the business 3, 4, $5,000 a month, there's a massive amount of overhead and your margins go from 50, 60% at 200,000 if you've optimized at that level to 10, 15, 20, 30% at 200 at 500,000. And most businesses have not raised their prices to actually accommodate that chunk of loss in margin. So we can tell people everything until you're blue in the face. And sometimes people just have to do it themselves. I've kind of come to this conclusion. I don't judge people so much now. It's like, hey, some people have to learn by doing it and making the mistakes or just like they're forced in the situation. I've seen this time and time again when it comes to price increases, like, how many times can I tell someone, like, get the customer, raise the prices. Most of them will stick with you. But some people just have to figure it out and get to a point where they have to raise their prices and then they do it and like, oh man, I should do this like, you know, ages ago. So, you know, just try from my perspective. And for your friends, like, just live in front of them, the business that they want and keep showing the numbers. And you know, my goal with having all the locations is like, to be able to like, own my own locations is to be able to say, like, look, if you want to start another location, here's the steps I use. It's worked nine out of 10 times and I really recommend it. And it's up to that person whether or not they want to go, you know, try to make something up on their own or just follow the system of starting a second, third, fourth, 10th location. And you know, so can only, you can only prove someone with numbers and data. But eventually people have to make decision themselves, right? So cool. All right, guys, have a great Wednesday. We'll see you guys tomorrow. Thanks for all the questions, and have a great day.