Mike Minutes Mastermind 09/26/2023

All right, it's show time. Let's go get started.

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Couple quick announcements before we get started on questions.

Number one.

Go through. Come on. Thank you.

A couple quick updates. We have started transferring locations away from Zooprint into Copilot. So far so good. We are learning on every single one. They have meetings about this in terms of making sure that the process is improved. A couple of the notes I wanted to go over is I would recommend once you are given a date for Command center to do an onboarding call. I would then probably think about when you are going to.

Have your last day in your other software and when you want to have collections be you do. So for example, if you are in super right now, you're not probably not getting charged. It seems like they're not charging some people. So if that's the case, I would probably just leave your account open for six or 12 months. Just because if you ever need to go back in there, you can go check out someone's account or for whatever reason, but Command center will not have access to it after January 1st and and therefore it's going to be mostly just in some internal purposes. Otherwise if you're going to close the account, whether it be zoopro or Service Autopilot or whatever, definitely have that date locked and loaded. Because before that you want to do as much of your collections as possible, et cetera. And then what I would personally do is probably go down to the lowest level of subscription for a couple months. And I've always done this like we bought a company that was an LLMN before. We bought people that had other Service Autopilot accounts before. And we would just take it down to lower subscription and keep it over a few months. And it was amazing how like once I had the date selected that was moving everything over, we would go back like once or twice for account. It was very, very rare. It was like way less than in my head, I thought. But it was peace of mind just knowing that if the worst case scenario I can go back and see some job history from last year or something like that. Tomorrow we are increasing the amount of imports coming into Copilot from Service Autopilot. So your custom fields and several other things will also be able to come in in the importing process that's going to be getting deployed in COPLAT tomorrow. Probably won't be a big deal made about it, but it's going to be happening just looking at some of the notes in their meeting.

Cool. There are a few little Things that we are still working out in terms of sequence automations from that are getting deployed by Command center. But. But those hopefully next couple of days should be ironed out as we keep onboarding everybody. So those of you that have had a call with commands and already done your onboarding into Copilot, you might have heard like hey, don't touch the sequence automations quite yet. It's happening because this week we're bringing those out of beta and there's a whole bunch of functionality going in which will basically empower all of those. So just keep that in mind. I would not send a one click estimate email in the next two to three days. That's basically for now. It'll be working out here shortly. We just want to get all. We still need to get all of the templates from one click estimate emails into Copilot. And so that's a big task that we got to get done. We will redesign. They'll have them all in there for you. You will not need to redesign them yourself. You don't need to do any of that. And then the videos will be added over the next few weeks as well in terms of Copilot on the dashboard. So if you are moving into Copilot, you'll be able to see step by step by how to send out that one click estimate email for example. So cool. Those things are other internal things. Compile. Okay, cool. Other news.

This is the new design of the website. It's being rolled out. The last few locations are getting completed today. So not anything revolutionary besides mostly just the overall design. Kind of using a bit of a grunge feel. So you can see this top bar now is. Has the grunge. The, the text here has the grunge kind of look to it. If you ever. Here see. I'll go to that later. There you go. Max is waving. So a little bit of movement on here. There's gonna be some cool options coming for the estimate form down the road which I will. It'll be optional, you'll have to opt into.

And then you got the truck that moves in down here on the bottom. Now that's kind of a cool touch. So that is that, that is the new site design. There'll be lots of little stuff that we are improving and options in the future that we're going to be working on. For now, that's what we got.

I did look forward on one of the questions the day I saw. You don't look at the questions, but I did today and I saw someone mentioning about if they want to change this away from landscape construction. I'm sure we'll see it in the question here in a second. But if you ever do want to just change this word to say landscaping instead of landscape construction, you can absolutely do that. Just send an email to web augustalongases.com give us a couple days because right now we're going through everyone's site and making sure everything is perfect. And so if your old site had landscaping, it's a good chance it's going to be changed here in the next couple days. But if you ever wanted this changed, you could send it to web@augustalongersurfaces.com.

That can be changed for you. All right, that's the site. What else do we got? We got.

New snow deal. All right, stop sharing that one. Let's go into here.

So if you use any sort of snow plowing.

Equipment, you'll want to go to the dashboard. If you go to deals preferred vendors, scroll at the very bottom.

So Douglas Dynamics is the name of the company that has owns Western Fisher and Snowex. Most of the discounts are 25, 25 or more. There are a couple that are at 20, so that's why I just put 20 to 28%. If you click here share this tab you're gonna get open up to this which has five PDFs for each of the different types of brands and or whether it be non truck or truck. So like plows versus salters and spreaders for example. So feel free to go through these. This has the exact. Sure. I can actually show this to you.

Cool. This has the exact pricing manual that we've got with them and you should be able to take this in to any dealer and they should be agree to it if they do not.

Contact. This is our our national sales rep, Bill Blauy or Bill Blow. Billy. It's Billy Sick. Billy Blau. That's his technique Bill. So that's his name. Contact him. Canadians, they have a different dealer network. We're going to be having that contact and pricing information coming very shortly. They are working on that. But we wanted to get this out as soon as possible for the US at least so they can make any orders for the upcoming season. But yeah, the.

Canadian dealership, they have a different entity so we have to do it differently. So we're working on that. That'll get done. Thank you, Lee for working on that the past couple months.

All right.

Let'S jump into questions. That's all I had for announcements.

Present questions. I did look through these today. I usually don't, but I did look through them because I was waiting for something to load. Okay. Abraham Oscaro. Hey, Mike. Not really a question, more of an observation. I just opted out of Max answering phone calls during office hours. I listened to a lot of the calls and most customers get frustrated with simple questions that Max hasn't learned how to answer. And we end up losing the lead when a caller does provide their info. I noticed that Max is promising an estimate even when the address is out of our service area. And I don't see any emails going out to these customers notifying them that we won't be sending them an estimate after all. So they are still probably waiting, waiting for their estimate and it's not and is making us look bad. I think Max needs to ask customers area code first and tell them right then and there we won't be able to service them. Trust me, I'm all for Max and saving money, but I really don't know if that's just the case yet. Thank you. Great. So a couple things. Area code isn't definitive of a service area. Like if they're way outside of service area. Yes. But 99, I'd say almost every. I would say every single service area is not defined by area code. And you got people that have different area codes, etc. We can't do it by area code. The hope is that down the road with Copilot's integration, we can connect it to where it would know based on their address that they give. We'd be able to immediately tell them using Max. I will also say the reason you don't see an email going out is because we are not current going to create a profile for someone that's outside your service area. So Max is going to get that information. He'll say, hey, I'm going to get an estimate to you. And then what's happening is every single one of those tickets are dealt with by command center. And then someone would be calling that person and they would be telling them, sorry, you're out of our service area. When we looked you up for the quote, you know, you're out of our service here.

The next thing is I was gonna say.

Sorry, listen, if you ever get one where someone's frustrated, please send us the. The recording, whatever you're listening to, please send that to us. You can send it to command center directly. They will get it right to the right person. We're listening to these, but if you see one that you think someone's getting fresh With a simple question, we can fix that. So please, please, please, this helps us tremendously. Send that in.

And what I would also say is.

I don't know if yours is Tuesday, it's supposed to be today or tomorrow. Max will now tell the client before they even talk to him that he's a virtual agent. So that way it sets the expectation that if it is after hours or whenever it is, that they expect someone else to reach out to them with the actual quote. For example, they expect someone else to potentially call back and say, hey, sorry, you're out of our service area because they've been told that he's a virtual agent. And that also gives them the option if they don't, they can just quickly go directly to Command Center.

So it's either Tuesday or Wednesday. They said they were going to be rolling this out. And that is Max hears what the person wants and either forwards that command center because it's something he can't handle, or he says, great, I'm the virtual agent. I can go ahead and, go ahead and handle that for you. And I can do that fast. The fastest method. So if they want to opt out of that, they can always, they'll go to Command center. Otherwise they'll know it's a virtual agent. So the way that they communicate will be better, they'll be more clear, they won't go rambling on about things. And they'll know that if it's like, hey, if, if there is.

A follow up required or like someone says, hey, you're out of our service area, that's understandable because they like, okay, I was talking to a virtual agent, so I was triple target. Either today or tomorrow, this is happening where it's just changing the workflow slightly. So people know right from the onset that they are talking to a virtual agent. And then that way they, they usually communicate better with the, the agent as well as if they don't, they really don't like that. They can just say, no, I, I want to talk to someone else. And that'd be fine. So, but please, please, please, if you have these voice, these recordings where he's not getting a simple question, you would help us tremendously if you send this to Command center because every single one of those we look at, we say, okay, what were they talking about? What word is it getting confused with? And then we try to diagnose it. But in terms of the actual address part of things, until we have the connection with copilot, it's not going to be.

It'S not going to be able to like see whether on a map or use area code. But.

Keep in mind you're not going to see that response back to the customer because we're not putting them into your system. We are simply calling them back from the ticket that came in and notifying that they're out of your service area. So. So you won't really see a trace of that necessarily. The same way that you wouldn't see a trace of someone called in to command center and did the exact same thing, which is they take the customer's information, they go to the address, oh sorry, you're out of our service area. You will never get any sort of notice of that. So the same thing is true with Max.

Matt Hope Mills, North Carolina this is the one about One Click estimate. I am trying to use the one click estimate emails templates. How do I get the links to work? For example, the opt out link for the winter services. Do I need to create my own link? How will it notify me if they opt out? Same goes for the one click approval link. I have been unsuccessful in copying and pasting the entire document. I assume I have to recreate it in my own email. Thanks for your support. Yeah, within the next little bit here, I'm hoping by end of the week we will have all I think it's 26 one click estimate emails inside of Copilot for everyone. I sent out a message on connecting to that department so they'll get back to me in terms of when those will all be available and then we'll make sure at the same time there is a video walking you through that process inside of the dashboard or sorry the academy for actually sending it and utilizing the opt in One click estimate email and then opt out for winter services. Let me just make a quick note.

Services.

Evan from Red Deer hey, how do you figure out ebitda? I hear it's game changing. Technically EBITDA is not does not conform to GAAP accounting generally Generally Accepted Accounting principles. And so I'm not a huge fan of using ebitda. It takes basically earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. And so technically that's not really a great way of looking at your profit unless, unless you are a company that is trying to look more profitable than you you actually are. So a lot of these companies like on the public stock market for example, they're like this is their first year achieving profit profitability and then you look into it, there's actually like negative cash in the bank. They're not Making any money, they're not actually profitable. They take out depreciation, they take out amortization, they take out taxes, they take out interest. Well, if you have a ton of debt, you take out the interest expense, you're profitable. That's not really fair. So.

My opinions of it is, yeah, it works wonders. It is magic because it doesn't really, really work for small businesses. Especially if you have a lot of financial engineering. It works fantastic to make the bottom line look better than it really is. Tim from Mount Vernon. What is the flow of communication when Max can't handle a call on.

Off hours or weekends? Does the office follow up on Monday or next day? Yeah, so there's a different communication flow when it is after hours and he essentially lets them know that we will be contacting them back. He's going to take as much information as possible, get that to the department and then we will contact them. And so that's exactly the, the flow currently.

So if they, if you call on Sunday, yeah, they'd be contacting you on Monday or the next whenever we open up next. And so like right now like they are right on every ticket as they're coming in like within seconds because there's like literally two or three tickets at a time in there.

Also on hours, if you have Max, I noticed on my it still says open 8-5AMonday, Friday. Wonder if this needs to be updated. If we have max answering calls 24 7. Our goal in having the hours and how we treat the calls is based upon.

Knowing that you are open for that time in terms of command center. Because again, remember that like the vast majority of calls still come to command center. Right. So the only real calls right now that Max can handle to completion and actually take care of the problem is incoming leads. And so.

I would still say though, like on your Google, for example, not a bad idea for everyone to put open 24 hours on your Google because the person is scrolling through five different companies, it's nine o' clock at night, none of them say open now they just might guess. Whereas if yours is the only one that says open because you know that Max can take the call and at least collect the information so they stop calling other people. I'd highly recommend that in terms of what we're going to promise to people on the phone, if they are asking about it, we will likely say 8 to 5 because we know that 8 to 5 across all locations we cover. Because and we will do either more hours in the evening for people on the east coast or More hours in the morning if you're on the West Coast. But we know where everyone's open 8 to 5 Monday through Friday. We know that beyond the shadow of a doubt. And we know that all services can be offered during that time. But in terms of like, yeah, Google, Facebook, I would put open 24 7. We did that even before having Max just for the sake of getting the voicemail. Honestly, like just get someone to call us when they're going through other locations that are, you know, others competitors that are potentially closed.

This is the one I was talking about earlier. Okay. Nick Davidson, Hudsonville. Hello. I noticed our Augusta website prominently features landscape construction, although we're mainly focused on simpler services like mowing, mulch and snow removal. The site also mentions hardscapes, which we don't offer. Is this a ninja SEO tactic? Funny thing is, I've been screaming to all my friends and colleagues that we do not do hardscapes and have no interest in it, but now my website says otherwise. I've talked to the command center about this before, but haven't heard back. Is this something that can be updated? The dashboard doesn't seem to be to make these specific change requests. Yeah. So two things. It's two different things he's talking about here. I'll show you what his pictures are. So this, for example, I've just sent this to the web team. This is basically a site preview. It's not actually pulling any information from your site as a site preview, as a graphic that we are going to change to lawn care and landscaping. Just to simplify things. We've had it for years. It has nothing to do with your actual site. It can't be changed individually. It is a URL specific thing. We'll get this changed to say, Lawn care landscaping. And I don't understand you're seeing this because you're putting the Facebook and like anywhere where you have a site preview, this will pop up. So we will get that fixed. I just made note of it this morning. The other thing is on your main page. Oh man.

Where did that go? The other thing is on your main page, though, if it's saying Lawn care and landscape construction in the title, like in front of the video, send an email to webgustalongerservices.com if you can't do it on the dashboard, which I thought we took that header out.

Check for Web Dashboard header option. I know you can change services inside of the dashboard for your website.

But what you might not be able to do is change that header. So I'LL take a look at it, see if we can add that to the dashboard. So that can be something you can change as you as you will, but otherwise, until then, send it to webgustaloncareservices.com.

All right, next question.

Number six. Tim from Mount Vernon, is next door ads worth doing? Why is there only mowing on dashboard for ads? Yeah, I would not recommend doing nextdoor mostly because they took away their option to be able to do it by the neighborhood and now you have to do it by the zip code and there's way less reporting now. We haven't seen a huge return. Like, if you're going to like get awareness, it's still a good thing. It just the targetability. The whole beautiful thing about nextdoor was the option to target individual neighborhoods that was removed and now they don't use zip codes and the reporting is like pretty lousy. That being said, if you're like, hey, I just want to spend five or ten dollars a day to get general awareness, I would still do them and then I would probably just change out your creative from, from mowing to another project base if you want, and just use one of the other done for you ads creative and then change the words. But we do just have mowing right now on there for done for you ads on the dashboard because mostly we've just seen the effectiveness and the reporting is almost so bad. I don't want to use it because I have no confidence in their reporting. And it's so now distributed like with zip codes. Like a lot of times zip codes are like this and you're like, oh, I serve this area. So now it's way less effective. I'm not opposed to it though. I think, hey, try it. See if you get some people mentioning. She will say, oh man, I always see you next door. It's definitely worth five or ten bucks a day to potentially then spend on that.

All right.

Comments?

Not super from Zooper, not sa.

Who is this? Sorry. Let me just go back to Facebook to see who this is.

Oh, oh, you must be like 10 minutes behind me in the live stream. Okay. Liz is saying earlier in the in the live stream I said Zooper or I said service autopilot instead of Zooper in terms of moving people over to Copilot. So if I said service auto part, I meant Zooper. We are moving only the Zooper people over currently, but we will get to the service autopilot people, I promise. But what I was also saying too is there'll be more ability to get I think the custom fields out of service autopilot and into.

Copilot after tomorrow. Oh, you're talking about on your website? Yeah, I think on your website you can change it, you know, if you. I, I do know that on the dashboard you can go into your log into your website or into dashboard, go to your login for your website here. I'll just show everyone present share screen. I don't have the screen open, Augusta. So when I talk about the dashboard for the website, remember that if you go here.

Bam, edit your web page. And from here, once you log in to the support, you can literally, you can change your, your hours. Right? So if you want to change it, I would do that. I would probably open up 247 on your. On this side of things. But we are conservative with Max by telling people if they ask about it that we are open during 8 to 5 because we know that we can get everything that someone ever asks about billing or whatever during those hours. But yeah, on your, if you want to change your, your hours of operation on your website, which I think is usually at the bottom, if you're on your micro page again on your individual location, then yeah, log in here, submit that, and you can, you can change your hours in that there. So.

So if I'm like landscape, business course, boom. So then from here you would be able to then change something. So for example, you do business hours, boom. Right. So I just recommend if you haven't seen this before, go through here, see what the options are and you can make things better. Well, I'll try to see is if, see if we can't add in here that header. But for now, if you want to change that header from landscape construction, just email webgustalongerservices.com taken care of.

Well, was I not sharing this? I sure hope I was sharing this. Oh, man. Okay. Just in case I wasn't. I probably wasn't. Once you click in, you would log into here and then be able to make these changes change something business hours, you know, make it right here. So.

Cool.

Look at the other image. That's the same image.

Let's see who this is.

This is Nick. That's the same image?

Yeah.

What do you mean it's the same image here? One second. Present. Yeah, I know. This is the thing you were sharing right here.

Boom. And the other one, I deleted it, I think. Did I delete all my questions? The other one was basically your front website.