Mike Minutes Mastermind 09/16/2024

Foreign.

We're live.

Good morning, Augusta Nation. Hope you're doing good. I got a new camera for all of you. The camera on my laptop doesn't shoot in high definition, so hopefully this is somewhat of an improvement. 60 frames per second. Gonna see my.

Mug shot in high definition now. All right, 60 frames per second, baby. All right.

Let'S see here. Cool. All right, we got five questions came in. I'll go ahead and jump into those. I do have training coming this week. I'm creating a framework similar to winter services for all sending of quotes. I think that there needs to be a framework by which you do more work per estimate as you're booked out less. So when you need more work, what's the steps you actually are taking to follow up with the quotes? More than just sending that than just doing follow up phone calls. When do you actually submit a loom video with them? When do you actually make a personalized video for each quote? And so I'm going to create a framework for that. It'll come out later this week. I think it'll be helpful and I'll walk you through how to make a loom video for a quote and walk through it with you, etc. So I think it'll be helpful and you can do it. You can make the framework based upon either close ratio or you can do it based upon how far you're booked out in terms of weeks. So I think that'll be helpful for everyone. I had the thought in the middle of the night, woke up and drove out my remarkable. Let me show you.

I think it was like Friday or Saturday night. It's like the middle of the night. I woke up, I was like, wait a second. This should be for all estimates, not just winter services. So it'll look something like this. At least this is what it came to me as. And so I'll get it all.

Looking beautiful with the media team and then I'll make some training around it.

So that way as you fill up your schedule, less time is spent on estimates and more time is actually spent on doing the work in terms of production and then vice versa. When you need more work, you're spending more time. Oh, I see what's happening here. It's focusing on the words.

You spend more time on the estimate, the follow up process, etc. When you need the work and there's not work on the schedule. So. All right.

Share the screen.

All right. Landon.

Tallahassee, Florida.

Hey, Mike. Over the last two years, for me, winter has really set me back not just in the lack of revenue, but in the amount of customers we straight up lose. I've done winter services the last two years, but this has still been the case. I've recently noticed a couple customers trying to cancel as they do just do it themselves. I don't believe it's a quality issue as our retention throughout the year has been pretty good. I'm aware I might be wrong in this theory, but with everyone who cancels all of a sudden the next couple months, I would be inclined to think it's a weather. It's the weather causing the cancellation. Yep, you're right. End of the season. My question already. I really don't want to take those same steps back this year with losing customers. Do you think I need to reach out in regards to wind services way sooner than I Normally do? Yes, 100%. My thought is to get them on a change before they get to me. Do you think they are any downsize this or better way completely? What is Yalls current situation with this and what do y' all do to prevent the drop off from year to year, not just during the winter, but simply just making sure people come back the next year. Yeah. So I would be much more aggressive with in terms of your timing on winter services. So I was speaking with my regional manager the other day and where we still have a solid.

Two and a half months before our mowing season ends. October. Yeah, two and a half month mowing months. And I say hey, this is the time to get on it. Because although we end in two and a half months, there's gonna be customers starting to leave in a month because like it's just kind of like they fade off towards the end of the season and they cancel. I want to get ahead of that with using the new winter services sales tactics and getting in front of them and actually being aggressive about it. So that would 100% be what I would recommend here. Reaching out to them before they even think about quitting for the season and getting ahead of it. 100%.

Mr. Enormous when it comes to marketing, would it be a bad idea to think about it this way? Example, I want to do 100,000 per month in revenue. So I need to be spending 10 to 15,000 per month in marketing to be able to hit that revenue number. How do you determine how much you should spend to hit the revenue you'd like to? Yeah, this is a good theory. The thing is you have diminishing returns so spending 10 to 15,000 in marketing can be difficult if you have, you know, 40, 50,000 people in your market before your customer acquisition cost starts to balloon. So if you pour money on, say, a Google Ad, it's not like you're going to get way more clicks to some extent because there's only so many people searching for your specific keywords.

And so.

Be careful about just like, oh, I'm going to spend more money. Therefore this, what I've gotten to customer acquisition cost will scale. That's the assumption you're making, and that's the thing that usually leads to people wasting money. In marketing most Google Ads, in most of our markets, if you're spending more than 20, $30 a day on an ad, most of the time that money ends up being wasted or like, I should say, massively reduced in effectiveness because there's only so many people searching for your ad or your keywords. Sorry. And then you can, yes, you can pump the money into Facebook ads, but it's the same thing. It's like, okay, so instead of getting in front of someone two or three times a day, I'm going to get in front of them ten times a day. Is that going to be effective? Maybe, but it's going to triple my budget. Will it triple my results? Probably not. I might have a 20 or 30% increase, but I'm not going to 300% increase. So there's a law of diminishing returns here. And so in theory, what you're talking about, yes, it would work if you spent $10,000 per month for an entire year. In theory, if everything was held constant, like demand for leads, demand for clicks, and demand for your services, then yes, you would probably have 100, $100,000 per month business in a year. I would venture to assume that the first $500,000 per month is two to three times more effective than the second $505,000 per month that you'd be spending. So that's the thing you want to be careful of.

Coach Connor, with Q4 being your big fix over the next few years and saying the Christmas lights must be the fix for that Facts. Oh, it's. I. No, it's one of five tracks. Could you explain why Bham is not. Bellingham is not going to be offering Christmas lights if you are not doing lights. Would you care to explain why you would tell us to do lights but the same suite, but the same. But the same suit with your locations? Yeah. So there are five tracks. And I know the. The economics of the Christmas lights. What I want to prove is that for the other half of the locations that are not doing Christmas lights. They're the ones that are going to struggle this for this year going forward. I know that if you have Christmas lights, I know that you will be able to keep your crew busy for at least an additional six to eight weeks out of the year. And even if you're, even if your off season quote unquote is 10 to 12 weeks, if you can cut six to eight weeks out of that, it will feel like, hey, like, let's just have a couple weeks vacation before spring rush and we're good to go. There are currently still half of our locations at Augusta Longcat that do not do Christmas lights. And there are various reasons why people don't do Christmas lights. And so as soon as I make the investment at my locations to go into Christmas lights, it'll be very difficult for me to be able to test the other four tracks. And so, excuse me, sorry. We've done snow in the past up until two years ago at my locations. And so I'm pretty confident that we can make that track next year. And I have a lot of the stuff ready to go for that. And then what I want to test out this year and going forward for my locations is the other three tracks. So lockdown.

Doing winter services and then trying to sell more mowing. And so that's really what I'm focusing on because I'm, I use my locations as a way to test for the, for the other locations. And as soon as I would make the investment into lights, I would have to go all in on lights. And so I really recommend, like, if you're going to go on lights, you're probably going to do a split thing between winter services and lights for the vast majority of locations.

And maybe in some markets they'd split between snow as well and Christmas lights. But, but I really want to test this winter services thing because I genuinely believe that most people do lights because we need to. And I would really like over the next couple years to figure out a way where you don't even have to do Christmas lights and you can still at least get 50% of your monthly revenue. And so I'm working on that with, with my locations because before we would have really profitable winters when we did snow. And so I know how to do snow and make a profitable off season quote unquote.

But, and I'm very confident Christmas lights, once you make the investment in the upfront, especially years two and beyond, you're going to be profitable. It's, it's the people that are not going to do that for a myriad of reasons that I want to solve that problem. And so, excuse me. That's what I'll be testing mostly.

Bryson from Colorado Springs. Since Augusta is going all in on lights, would it make sense to be able to make a new service area in CC for that mowing project, Christmas lights, or do we need to edit our project one? Jason mentioned traveling a decent distance for higher ticket jobs. I wouldn't want to travel for a cleanup. Thanks. Yeah, so you just, just for now do your project. It's gonna be under your projects.

And the reason for that is like, otherwise we're going to have literally dozens of service areas and it's at command center. As time goes on and we get more and more locations, you're not going to be able to have a 30 mile radius for Christmas lights just because there'll be more people around you. And so we can't have literally 10 different service areas at command center. It'll cause more and more confusion. So we have two. It's for recurring services and it's for projects. And when you come into Christmas light season, I would adjust your projects one to be as far as you want to move out. And yes, that may mean like, maybe there's a time where you get a project that gets accepted far away because you have it set out far for lights. And then be up to you whether you just want to cancel that lead or if you want to go do the pricing for it and just jack the price up in the event to warrant the fact that you're traveling extra 15, 20 minutes or whatever it is. That'd be up to you. For now, we're going to leave it at 2. I'll monitor this throughout the off season and see how often this happens. But we got it. We got to prevent the slippery slope of having a service area for every single service because this has been requested before for other random things like, hey, for irrigation we'll go further. Oh, for grading, excavation will go further. For drainage, we'll go further. And so all of a sudden we would literally have 10, 15 different service areas at command center. And it just dramatically increases the likelihood of making mistakes. So I will track this though, throughout the off season.

Matt Hope Mills, North Carolina. Good morning. I will attempt to keep, keep this to the point. One, My last coaching call was about three weeks ago. I had a part time helper. I was at 45 budget hours a week and the plan was to push hard to advertise to bump my budget hours to 70 to 75 in order for the part time guy to be full time. Last week I had to let go of my part time employee due to unreliability after posting a job on Indeed, I've been inundated with applications. I recognize that this isn't the ideal season for expansion and recruitment. 3. I was motivated to hard charge in the offseason until I had to deal with firing and hiring. I'm undecided about whether to go for the layup and finish strong on my own or wait to hire someone in the spring. For context, I am still in the military and will officially retire next spring, May 31st. I have $5,000 in monthly overhead while bringing an average of 12,000 to 15,000 per month solo. Currently have 37,000 cash on hand to battle the Q4 collapse. I plan on offering winter services and leaf clamps since we have a large debris loader and a leaf box. Okay, this is great question.

And you've done a great job Matt, in terms of your first year here just ramping up solo like right to capacity and being profitable. So congrats. I would lean because you all you are, you still are in the military. I would probably lean in the direction of staying solo. This is what, this is the caveat. If you can find somebody that is more flexible with their hours, that if the work comes to you, you, you can put it on the schedule and have someone help you, then I'd be all for it. I happen to think that as the off season goes, you will still be able to. If you have like lots of leads coming in, you'll probably still be able to get 12 to $15,000 a month by yourself. So I don't think I'm going to need to want to expand your overhead, that is your wages, knowing that you can do 12 or 15,000amonth by yourself and knowing that a big chunk of that's going to be decreasing because of the natural growing season decaying. So I would probably stay solo. I would stack this cash with the lower overhead throughout the winter and then go into next spring hiring right off the rip because you know, middle of spring rest essentially towards the end you're going to be getting out of the military and having full time to be able to like pour on this thing. And so there's going to be all sorts of more issues around hiring and team, etc. Next spring when you have someone full time and then you'll be able to jump on it full time and actually focus on it. So I would probably be going in that direction now. That being said if you know that marketing is getting you customers at 60, 70 bucks a pop and you have all these applications and there's some really strong candidates, now it's just a matter of risk. Like are you willing to try to make the jump to 25,000amonth? And then the question is, what's the likelihood of those leads continuing throughout the winter? Right. So like in North Carolina, you do have substantial amount of leads that can come in throughout the winter and you can usually stay relatively busy. Your confidence level in that lead flow is the determining factor as to whether I would hire.

So there's kind of a balance. Like the more conservative approach is keep your schedule busy, keep stacking cash, stay solo focus. The more aggressive approach is, well, what if you can get, you know, sell into services, get some mowing customers? Because you can, you guys sometimes will mow like right up through December. So like could you potentially stay default aggressive, get to 25,000amonth in revenue, have a full time employee and then if you do that, Matt, I would just make sure that when you hire this person, you don't guarantee 40 hours a week. Just like, hey, you're guaranteed 20 up until, you know, March 1st of 20, 25, then you'll be guaranteed 40 a week, like full time work. But I expect 20 to 30 hours a week throughout the, you know, offseason. But I'm not guaranteeing anything more than 20. I think if you do that, you'd set the expectation correctly because most of the time the pressure is just from ourselves that we need to give them like all this work and then we go out and spend a bunch of money on marketing when they're like, they're fine with 25 hours a week. So I think it just depends if you want to go default aggressive on this. I think going into next spring, being aggressive throughout the winter is going to probably lead to a 50 to 60% increase in revenue compared to what you would do other otherwise if you just like hit the ground running next May. So it would be much more aggressive to try to start, keep marketing throughout now, get an employee, et cetera. It would definitely lead to a much larger business. But from a cash position, it would definitely be much more conservative to continue stacking cash. You'd probably get to $50,000 cash on hand going next spring and be much more ability to jump. It completely depends on your risk tolerance as well as how fast you want to grow. And I think based upon knowing you, Matt, your history, I don't think the slower approach is a bad move. I Think you've been used to growing a little bit slower. You've been solo for a while. I would stay with that. Keep stacking the cash that when you can jump in it, you have plenty of cash available. You're not stressed out of your mind and you don't hate the business because that's a lot of times what I see when people kind of pedal it too soon when they have another part time thing going on or a career like in the military is sometimes you just start to resent the business. And it's not because it's a bad business. It's because you were pulled in so many different directions when you had the full time job. And then when you do have full time, you just are burnt out on the business. So that'll be my concern.

Dustin, just a quick question. What are the reasons behind Bellingham, Mount Vernon not doing Christmas lights this season? I think I answered that question in the other one.

Hi, def. Let us know your skin rotary routine. That's hilarious. Are you getting the new Remarkable paper Pro? Got mine on order. No, I'm not. This works just fine. I'm tempted, honestly to get more of an iPad because there's so much more you can do with an iPad versus a remarkable. And the costs are like basically the same. Like, if I could go back, I'd probably just get an iPad. But this is very nice for actually taking notes. It feels very much like paper and pen and that part is really nice. And I've gotten used to it and it connects to my computer really well. Best of all, it's super light and it lasts weeks on a charge. Like weeks on a charge. Whereas an iPad might last like a day or two. This I probably charge once or twice a month, which is nice, but it doesn't have color. Etc, but I can show color on it. It just won't show color on my screen. So anyways.

Third, you know, first world problems over here. All right, everyone, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day and we will stay in touch. See you guys tomorrow. Take care.