Mike Minutes Mastermind 09/21/2022

Everyone, hope you're doing super well. For some reason, my Facebook is acting all up this morning. So give me a second here. I'm going to. Hopefully you all got notified. It was acting weird. I think partly is because we have to change our password on my Facebook account the other day, so it's not letting me post correctly. So hopefully you are on this. I will probably post the YouTube link into the group afterwards just to ensure that you actually able to see all of this. So let's go ahead. Do have some announcements. I'm just trying to see if you guys are actually even able to get in here. Give me one second. I'm going to post this into.

Post this in the group. Give me a second.

Refresh. Yeah, it's not going live. There it is. Cool. All right, we're good. You post it in here. Okay. Got some announcements. Announcements, announcements, announcements.

First is by the end of this week, you have the ability to book a coaching call with Chuck. So if you are growth model, you get one every month. If you are solo operator, it's every two months. But now when you go to this page. Let me go ahead and share my page with you. You can just go directly to this page right here. When you get here and you book your coaching call by the end of this week, that is going to be where then you can either book it on Lee's or on Chuck's. And you don't have to do. You can stay with one of them if you want to stay with the same coach all the time, or you can go back and forth just whatever is more convenient for you. You're not going to be dedicated to coach. This is in part due to my experience with anytime fitness having some coaches that I click better with or ones that I was like, hey, this person's not available for the next three or four weeks. I need a coach coaching session now. Sooner I can just book with someone else. I haven't had a coaching call in over two years with them, but back in the day, that's what I wish we could have done. And so that's what we're doing here. So there'll be both of them, Lee and Chuck, and you can book with either of them. We do have an internal tool that has all of our notes on your account, keep track of all your monthly max metrics. So it's not like booking a coaching call with a different coach. It's gonna be a big transition. They see all the notes from the past calls. We try to get documentation like we do for customers. We try to keep it for each of you. So if there's big problems or things communicated to Command center, they go in there and they add notes to your account just so we're all on the same page to help and support you. So that'll be available at the end of this week. And Chuck will not be starting until October 1st, availability wise. And his availability might be somewhat limited because he is still transitioning out of his GM role into that of the regional manager. So that is that. Secondly, taxes. I know we're still pretty early in this, so it's not a big rush, but I did want to let you know that for all the franchisees, we are going to make Brad available to do your tax returns and it's going to be a set dollar amount that you'll be able to select from in terms of you're a single, single member LLC or an S corp, whatever it is, he'll be able to do those taxes for you. And if you need like ideally everything's reconciled and good to go. If not, then there'll be an hourly charge on top of it. If you, if your books are an absolute mess, obviously he's going to do a lot more work and he's going to be creating his own tax prep business and then we're just going to be using that so that way he can get insurance and get everything separated and then. But we'll bill you from Command center. But I'll go through us still at Command center and you know, he still works here. He works right next to me here. And you, he'll be able to set up a coaching call with you in terms of onboarding in November, December. So that way you're able to ask questions about this upcoming year, what you might want to do for section 179, things like that. So all that details are going to come on that there'll be a form that you basically fill out. You'll know exactly what the price of. There'll be set prices and if you use Command center for your QuickBooks that that's going to be this. We know that number because we already have. We know your data is clear and clean and everything's reconciled. If you come to Brad with piles of receipts and your bank statements are not reconciled with QuickBooks and all the rest of it, there's going to be additional charges as it would be with any CPA. So Brad has worked for years at TurboTax and he's done this many times virtually for people. There'll be a portal where you can drop all of your tax documents and et cetera. So more details on that coming up. I'll make a separate video on that once we're ready to roll with a form that you can fill out. And I think it would be good as long as you don't like four or five locations. If you don't have multiple businesses, a bunch of real estate, you probably want to go get a tax team similar to what I have. It's very, very expensive though. I spent over $20,000 on my tax returns this year. It's very expensive. And so our goal is to kind of not. We can't have that level of service with Multiple tax and CPAs in different industries and stuff like that. But Brad is going to be great because he knows P4P, he understands the Augusta system, he understands how QuickBooks is already being process at command center here. And so, yeah, he'll be a great resource for all of you. So all that will be coming down the road and it's going to be very professional in terms of the portal. Everything be online, ran through the software and Brad will be great for that. So more, more updates on that to come and we will be making as price competitively as possible. And we aren't going to be making money at command center. We're just going to move that cost directly on to all of you.

Last thing. Oh yeah. Really recommend a couple people touch with me in the past 24 hours. Really recommend your. Especially if you're smaller, like 2, 3, 4 employees having your first day or two, being very much in touch with the new employee. The first couple days when they're getting started, it's very important. Like the first day after work, you're communicating and texting them like, hey, how was your day? You know, if you're sore, I understand it takes a couple of weeks. Sometimes they kind of break in the body. How are your boots? All of these things are very important because of what we're seeing is people getting ghosted after a day or two of work. You know, they were good employees and it's like they didn't show up. Like communication is why they didn't show up. Right. And so I really recommend after day one, texting them, touching base with them that evening, text them the next morning. How are you doing? Looking forward to seeing you today. If there's anything I can do, let me know, you know. Here's your P4P for the day. Explain that to them how it works. We're trying to build some of this into P4P software where there's automated push notifications and emails that go out to them on those first few days to break them into P4P. Encourage them, keep them motivated. But this is something that you as a general manager, you as an owner must be doing on your first few days. Like the first first week, you got to be very hands on with communication. How are you doing? How is today? How is your trainer? I know you're going to be sore. They've never done outdoor labor. They're going to be sore as all get out and not wanting to come to work the next day. So you got to be like, hey, that's. That's common. Usually takes a couple weeks. You'll break your body. And make sure you get some good boots. If you need a hand, let me know. I can. I got a couple of good suggestions. You don't want super heavy ones. Like, those are the type of things that's going to keep them coming back in day two, three, four, etc. So if you're having trouble with someone ghosting after a day, it. A hundred percent is communication. 100%. You got it. You got to stay in touch with them. Text them, text them, text them. Day one after day one, the morning of day two after day two, like constant. Especially if you have under five, 10 employees, there's no excuse. You start getting 20, 30. It's me very difficult for you to be as the owner texting everybody. But it's very important. Their first. When we had less than 15 employees, I would go out with them for lunch. The first day we would do orientation the first day I would text them that evening. I would text them the next morning. I would text them after the second day, the third day, the fourth day and the fifth day, like just, hey, how was the day? Oh, great job. I saw you're on so and so's project. How is mowing is things making? How's the edging going where you'll use a zero turn the day like touch base with them. So important. All right, let's go ahead and jump into questions that were submitted. I have not viewed these yet. Let me just go ahead and.

Zoom in for you guys. Okay. Six of them. Let's go.

I had a team member back into a car. Oh. And caused slight damage. We're paying for the damage out of pocket to take care of the individual who was involved in the accident. Are we required to pay for them to get a rental car for two or three days or is that up to them?

This is a little hairy because this is the thing you could do out of pocket. Be very. You gotta make sure this is all in writing because what can happen then is the is they then then they create a rental or say a insurance claim and we'll still get the money from the insurance and from you. So be careful about this. The rental car side of things again should be covered by their insurance. But if they're not going to their insurance, you might need to pay for that. Like if my only apprehension is I've seen this happen before. People give money like oh hey, don't contact your insurance. I'll just pay out of pocket. They get them a rental car, whatever and then a month later they just make a claim and so they basically get double paid. So be careful of that. Just have everything in writing if you're doing it that way.

When it comes to like actual collisions, I don't know how much of an accident like it seems like there might even be some injury here. I tend to just go through insurance. But it sounds like this might be minimal. But yeah, like just be careful if you're doing out of pocket that you are have things in writing. You have a documentation of you paying the money. You're not giving them cash, things like that. That'd be my recommendation.

I'm trying to access landscape business course but can't log in. Is there a generic login for franchisees? I need something to listen to while I work. Yes, there is a code and I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's Augusta Nation only.

I'm pretty sure it's capital A Augusta Nation capital N only. All caps O N L. Yes, all one word, no spaces. If that does not work, send me an email. But it's in everyone's train document and we recently did change it so.

May have covered this before. But why can't I see Google Ad on Google Search? I see my granite website but not. But my ad is not on any of the first three pages. A few different reasons why this could happen. Number one, if there's a whole bunch of competitors in your market that are also advertising for the same keywords that will cause your ad to be seen less potentially. The first thing next thing is you could be out of the age limits that you put on your ad. Also like net worth, it could be also that your address is outside of the target area. If you live outside of that area it could be also this is why using a VPN is sometimes helpful. You can.

Put get into a network that is inside your target market. So, for example, you're, you're, you might live on the edge of your area that you're targeting, but if your network is connecting to something like a couple miles away, you're the, the Google Ad will think that you're still outside of the market. So, you know, making sure you're inside the market. Even things sell, like cell towers, for example. Like if you are beaming two miles out to a cell tower, you, you could potentially be out of the service area. So things like that can happen.

Definitely, but usually it's the age and the income and the, just the area where you're at or something to do with the network that is causing you to be outside the service area. What are your projections on what the stock market will do in the next 12 to 24 months? I honestly think that unless something crazy happens. So today, like interest rates are going to be announced. Let's see if it's already happened. See here.

No, I think it happens at 10:30. Usually it's like 30 or 40 minutes. The Fed's going to come out and tell what the new interest rates are. I expect it to be 3/4 of a percent. So 0.75 increase. If they do like 1%, it's going to crash the market. If they do 0.5, market will go up. It just. They'll do 0.75.

And so in terms of what the market's going to do, I feel like the market has already calculated in the.

Rate increases. That being said, if the Fed comes out and does something really crazy, like 2% increase, you're crashing the market by 30%. So they might do that though, because of inflation being so entrenched and not going down as quickly as they thought. That being said, I really do believe that inflation is going to come down. Like, look at the cost of commodities just tanking. Fuel's gone down a little bit. So a big piece of this though is you do have midterm elections that are coming up. And so that's a big piece of this whole puzzle. And so, you know, what I believe personally is going to happen with stocks is I don't see a huge downside over the next few months. And typically the stock market moves quicker than real estate. So we saw the stock market crash over the course of December, January, February, March of this year. The real estate market is just now starting to really be hurt. In some markets like Boise and other zoom towns, Austin, they've been affected a little bit longer. But the majority, if you look at the calculus of the entire country, real Estate is only now really being impacted. Real estate moves a lot slower than the stock market. So in my opinion, stocks went down, now real estate's coming down. I. I believe stocks will go up before we see an increase in real estate. I think 2023 is going to be a bloodbath for real estate. It's kind of why I'm trying to sell some of my properties right now.

Because I think if I wait until we need the money next spring, they're going to be all worth 10% less. So, yeah, this is my personal prediction. 12 months, I think, I think in 12 months, though, I think that, I think, I believe that stocks will go up after.

Before the real estate market rebounds.

Just because it's so liquid. Like, you can just push a button and buy stocks. So it's so connected now to, like, what the Fed is saying, interest rates. Like, as the Fed U turns at the end of the year or January, February, next year and says, hey, we've stopped increasing rates and we're gonna, we're gonna be more commoditive when it comes to our policy, that immediately will spark like 30% increase in the stock market. So it's very quick. And then usually real estate lags. So that is my personal opinion.

I know it's a dumb question, but we don't have, we haven't done aeration much before. Do you require customers to have sprinkler heads and utilities flagged before we do it? If there's damage to unmarked utilities or sprinklers, is that a cost to the customer? Yeah, great question. So.

Utilities typically are low enough in the ground where you're not going to damage them. Sprinkler heads, on the other hand. Yeah. Like, we've played with this idea of we don't have as many sprinklers as most markets do. Right. I'd say one out of three or four of our dual ones have. A lot have sprinklers. So ideally, usually they're home and you tell them, hey, can you turn on your sprinkler system? And then you mark them real quick.

But honestly, if you just are careful of where you're aerating because, like, they're either going to be just outside the lawn, that's where they should be, or just inside the lawn. And then only reason there'd be one in the middle of the lawn is if it's a massive area. Right. Like we're talking a large lawn. So those are the ones I'd be most careful of because as long as you're Six inches off of concrete by the bed. Unless one really did not know what they were doing when it came to installing sprinklers. There shouldn't be any sprinklers there. So.

We do not require them to do it. But we do mark the sprinkler heads when we're doing coration. But again, if you avoid the 6 to 12 inches around the edges and you kind of mark those out first, I'd recommend that for sure. If in the perfect world you told them, hey, you're home, can you turn the sprinklers on real quick? We're going to mark all the heads. You could try to make the customer do it, but again, you're going to show up to a customer's house, it's not going to be marked. And then the question is, do you do it or do you not? Right now you're getting kind of gray areas for the guys, which is never good. So we, I would recommend you tell the, tell the customers if they can mark it, that'd be great.

I think you should still tell your crew to mark all of them, check them as well as avoid those areas. Like, I do not go up against concrete. I'm sorry, I do not care about the last couple inches of lawn up against concrete when I'm using a Core Raider. Because if I chip that concrete, I could literally be looking at a thousand dollar, you know, repair. If they're going to be really picky about me cutting out the concrete and resetting it and all the rest of it, it's not going to look good. So avoid the 2 to 3 inches next to concrete. Avoid the 6 inches around the perimeter when it comes to flower beds. So you can avoid most sprinkler heads. But I think too, like, when you get to the property, usually you can tell, like, just find a couple of them and okay, this person knew what they're doing. They installed sprinklers. They're in the beds. There's. There's not anything in the lawn. Okay, great. Like, I'm good to go. I'm of good confidence that there's not going to be any hidden surprises. If you get to a lawn though, it's like there's random sprinklers. They're 12, 16 inches out into the lawn and out, not in the beds. They're, they're all janky, like left and right because they've been there for a long time and roots have gotten there. That's when you really got to take your time and make sure you mark everything out.

You might need a bit of advice here. Our Google business account got suspended. That's not good. I just had our address verified via postcard at our storage unit or construction company office a week ago. Then our account got suspended mysteriously due to specific activity quality issues. You have any idea what could have caused it? Just not sure what I should try to change before I fill out the form for reinstating the business page. Any ideas? I hope you get. Yeah, just fill up the reinstatement page. This can be a host of multiple reasons. It could one, just be a glitch. Two, most likely is just a competitor being a dummy and reporting you and saying something stupid. Then Google immediately takes you down. Like last week my Instagram got taken down. No idea why. Likely to someone that. Oh, you know, it was. Someone said I was like being. I was doing hate speech. So it immediately was taken down. I had to fill out the form. And this happened multiple. This happened multiple times for my Facebook. Happened once to our YouTube channel. Oh yeah, you guys remember when the YouTube, all the tutorials went down for like a week or two. That was because somehow their algorithm was marking our recorded videos in training that we did as unlisted videos. They were somehow marked as hate speech and harassment. No idea why. Like, and they can't even explain it, but their system just kept tagging every single one. Like when we would make a recording, a screen recording and then send it to somebody. So like it was Liz, she would be making screen recordings and sending it to owners, showing their account and stuff. And then that was being marked as whatever. And then that took down our account. And I don't know if you guys remember, for two weeks we couldn't. We couldn't do any sort of YouTube ad, we couldn't do any sort of tutorials for all of you. So yeah, that's what it is. Fill out the reinstatement page. And then if there's more information, like specifically about your address, for example, they'll tell you after you do that reinstatement page. And then you might have to play around using different address or your home address or something like that. Sorry about that.

With. With many owners hiring GMs or going towards that direction. Are there any specific books or podcast suggestions leading into and beginning the GM position? Give me one second. Let me see who this is.

This is Kyle.

One second.

In terms of podcast suggestions, I know Marcus is putting together some stuff in terms of GM training. I know Chuck, that's going to be. His main role is really ironing out the training of GMs as we begin to scale up the regional manager model, so really look for more of this over the next year. I could definitely throw out a few, but it's more a matter of like, we will have a very defined system by the end of 2023 of how to start multiple locations at the same time, how to hire GMs, how to manage them. Lots of internal dialogue right now with Chuck and myself in terms of like what those systems look like in terms of having very clear, hey, here's where to get the insurance, here's how to set up your bank accounts, here's up your credit cards and all this other stuff so that we can be done all virtually. You don't have to be there in person. It's very simple for the working GM to not have to do a lot of admin work, like adding cars to insurance policies, things like that, and getting them onboarded, all that good stuff. So we are going to be ironing that process out very heavily next year and there will be a very much of a step by step by step. And what I'm thinking is that when someone wants to start a second location, part of that training would come then because I'm not going to train solo operators or people even just getting started as a growth model on how to start five locations tomorrow. It's going to be like, hey, when you, when you're ready for your second location, there'd be a separate training, not in person, just virtual that you go log into, you have other videos. Chuck and I would walk you through how we're doing everything. It's very, very systematic. That's the goal. I want to have it where it's like literally copy and paste. It's like, use this insurance company, use this bank account, use this credit card, use these forms for your GM to fill out. And we'll actually end up creating an entire different website that the GMs can go into to communicate with the regional manager. So all of that we're working on throughout 2023, that is a big focus of ours because we do want to start selling 10 locations at a time for owners that are really looking as an investment. So they come with a regional manager and 10 GMs. But we also want to give the opportunity for all of you to be able to use those systems for your second, third, fourth location, et cetera, and just immediately have the step by step how to find the gm, what to do in terms of the interview process, where to post, what to post, all of that good stuff. We're going to be ironing out. That is the reason I'm hiring Chuck and putting him in this position. And he's going to be hands on, obviously, managing the GMS as well. So he'll be able to get good feedback in terms of what works, what doesn't for that type of model.

Awesome. All right, guys, have a great Wednesday. We'll see you tomorrow. Take care.