Mike Minutes Mastermind 10/02/2023

Hey, everyone, Happy Monday. Let's go ahead and get started.

Just drop this link into Facebook real quick.

It is Marathon Monday, true to its name. I think we have like 10 questions in on the.

Forum this morning.

So let's jump in.

All right, first one.

Is there an update on when the smaller leaf cleanup yard signs might be in the pro shop looking to order them ASAP as the season is upon us? Yes. I talked to the media team about this last week. They have already submitted to vistaprint. Unfortunately, adding sizes and designs, we have to run through vistaprint, which is the creator of the Photoshop. So we have done. So we haven't heard anything back. They'll just randomly do it at some point, I'm sure.

No, I'm already. I'll do it right now. All right, cool. Yeah. So hopefully soon, the smaller versions of some of those, some of them have it, some of them don't. So we had sent them an email saying, okay, can you get all of them to have that, please?

Hopefully soon. Devin from Red Deer, do you use a second phone for personal use or all business? I do not have a second phone. I think a lot of times there's less efficiency in having two, and the efficiencies gained are lost in having to carry two things around with you all the time.

I think the big advantage of having two is having different cell phone providers. So you could have like an AT&T and a Verizon, for example. So in some areas where there might be pockets of bad service, you could have a cell phone. That makes sense to me.

Especially when you're doing something like content creation. So a lot of YouTubers will do that. Then they're doing it not for the sake of having two phones. They're having for the sake of always having Internet, regardless of where you're traveling. But I don't think it's super necessary in my opinion, because you can also get dual SIM cards and like two phone numbers on one device. So if you're like, well, I want a personal number to call out from, you can get dual SIM cards.

Kyle Tarvin Moore, Oklahoma can you explain more on how the starter role works with them getting the residual payouts after handing it off to an mgm, Would they get those residual payments forever, basically until they leave the company? Or is it only for the first distributable cash quarter of the ngm? There is on the academy a secondary video to the GM compensation. The second one is the one that directly talks about this is the starter role. It is residual until they as Long as they stay with the company, they would get that piece. And the reason for that is because they have to get it over the first threshold, which is 20,000amonth in revenue. And so we now have a location that has done that, that I own.

They got up to 20, 30,000amonth in revenue, that was 32,000amonth or whatever, handed handing it off to another GM and they have gone on to do a different location. And so that's a pretty much. Usually a sales type of person really wants to do that. Someone likes the action and they don't like the operations as much. So what happens is they get a piece of the residual profit sharing and then that piece is what otherwise would have been going to someone who would start from scratch. So I think we start at 35%. If you get past 20,000 though in monthly revenue and then the new GM coming in would only get 25% I believe. And I forget the exact numbers, but I think it's 25%. Well that extra 10% difference between 25 and 35 go to the starter. So there's residual benefit to them starting locations and getting them past 20, 30,000 monthly revenue. So you can see the whole video though, it's on the academy.

There's a two parter. One is more in depth on the GM compensation about distributable cash and the second one is just about the starter role. So if you have someone who's a gm, they're like, well, I just, I'm a go getter, I just do sales more than anything. Then they could literally build up to where over the course of several years they start, see five locations and therefore the equivalent of 50% of profit sharing. And they're not doing anything.

But it is their job to get that GM up and trained and operating that location. And guess what? If they're not profitable, they don't make anything. So it is in their best interest still to make sure that the GM that they set up in an application is set up for success. Because otherwise there's no profits, they're not getting anything. So it's a, it's a good balance to make sure that they want to grow quickly, get them and hand them off, but to make sure that their success successful because otherwise their residual profit sharing does nothing for them.

Kyle Tarvin, Oklahoma Second PART Question I'm wanting to start a sprinkler installation company using subcontractors only.

We have some customers ask us and they are always pretty good money makers with minimal involvement. For myself, I'm working on getting the name together and other items before launching. I've been looking into your home service web design service to get our website set up and SEO going before for an expiry one. If we were to start this fall, how quick would we rank on the top of Google for our website? I know you don't specifically know specifically without looking at the competition on our area but just curious your thoughts. 2. I originally was just going to run these sprinkler installs to the Augusta brand, but I don't want to muddy up the P L and profit sharing for IGM by running other income through the business. I think I may have to be the one to oversee the estimates or completion as it's above and beyond basic support services. Is a smart move or am I overthinking it?

Personally I don't think it's a good decision.

You have two locations. You need to strengthen both of them, especially the second one. There was massive cash crunch this earlier this spring. By expanding your services like this, you're going to distribute a lot of more financial pressure and your attention because like you just said, you're the one overseeing estimates and work completion. You have two other locations.

I would personally write run this. If you really are set on doing this, just run it through Augusta. And if your GMs can't manage the jobs.

I don't know if you should be doing it. Like if they can't oversee the the general contractor and like part of their job description is like here's how you manage the project and you don't have to do the work but here's how you kind of make sure things are working.

You know, I would question whether adding that service is a wise decision because the whole reason you need second locations and have general managers is to be able to delineate if you're going to go like start this other thing on the side, which is another possibility. Like you do this sprinkler thing by yourself essentially overseeing it and you have your two Augusta Lawn Care locations running side by side. These two locations better be run very well with good GMs and profitable because now all of your attention is going outside of those. So if you look at the stages of wealth like you're trying to skip to number seven without nailing number five and that is like multiple locations being ran well that are profitable and so I would focus on that and then you know, have have 2024 be a really profitable leader with two locations. Then think about doing all this other stuff. But I would personally Just run it through Augusta from a break. Like you're overthinking the whole like profit sharing and all. The customer doesn't care, they just need their thing fixed. The Augusta brand already has 6 months, 12 months of goodwill with these customers versus going outside the brand. You don't have to pay for a new website, just use Augusta, add it as a service page.

You already are ranking. Well, it's just now you're going to like take pictures and videos on your social media of of sprinklers. You have a huge database of customers at Augusta and if you actually just sent them an email saying you offered sprinklers, they would immediately have brand trust to be able to come over instead of pitching a whole new brand altogether. So I would personally keep it together. I would not overthink the whole P L, gml, GM profit sharing. I would make sure that it could be handled by the gm. I would then systematize if you needed to, around how to manage the projects. And then I would run it through Augusta and it would make it part of the GM's processes and roles. Even if that was the first year, you handled most of it. And then you slowly made sure you systematize that process because you might realize after a year that it's more headache than it is worth. Your 10 or 20% cut on a subcontractor job if you have to be involved on every single part of the project. Not saying it's going to happen, I'm saying it. It is going to be a topic for decision.

This is from Mike Athens from Tennessee. Would it be a good idea during the winter to expand my project area? I'm focusing on leaf cleanups this fall and winter. Also, if a customer calls in for a leaf or fall cleanup, will CC automatically know that fall that should fall under the product area? Yes. So you have your mowing service area and then you have all your projects. So a leaf cleanup or a fall cleanup that's going to fall underneath the project side of things and they have two different maps for that. In terms of expanding your project area, I wouldn't be opposed to that. Especially if you're like, hey, I just need work to stay busy. Yeah, sure. Expand your project area for that time, that'd be totally fine. Just remember it's only updated once a month. So they just updated it today for October. So if you submit to Command center to adjust your service area, it would be effective in November. Just keep that in mind. Don't think like November 3rd, you can submit and it's going to be effective. It would be December then. So it's once a month because we have to redownload the Google Earth app on every single computer and so we can't do it like multiple times a month. We have to do it one time and we literally have to submit to everyone so everyone's on the same page and using the same apps.

Devin from Red Deer hey my guys, do you recommend taking a simple 60 hour landscape design course certificate online in the slow season just to say I have a design landscape design certificate. My mom brings it up sometimes. I think education in general is always a good thing in my personal opinion. If you're doing it just so you can see say that you have it, it probably it could mean that you're not coming across confident enough or that you even have the skills. So you don't hear me talking about my business school a lot. It's like if I went to business school it should be evident by what I am talking about and my level of skill in that area. So by taking this course I would do it more for the sake that you're going to get education that will allow you to be more educated in these, in the industry and in these topics that when you talk to a customer they're like, oh wow, he knows what he's talking about. It wouldn't be a matter of like, oh, I have this certificate. They're like, who cares? I just need to know, like, can you fix this? Do you know what you're talking about, etc. So educating yourself is always a good ROI. Kyle Turner Madison, Alabama Our mowing season ends probably the next couple weeks. Do we send the opt out email now or after leaf season? Last year we tried to get everyone on board to go bi weekly for leaf mulching until the end of December or so when all the leaves finally were down. So I didn't know if it would be better to now or after the leaf season. If you're trying to keep everything on leaf mulching and you're doing that whole bi weekly like same price as mowing, I would do it now because you're going to capture more people before they stop mowing and you're going to be like, lock them into a bunch of services using the leash season as your guys, which then carries over into January from February when they would otherwise have been opted out. So I think if you send it now, say hey, in a couple weeks the leaves are going to start falling. We transition from mowing into winter services and in winter services it includes leaves as the number one item on this list. And here we go. Like this is the same email. We always talk about modifying that. In your case, I would probably make leafs the top again. We are assuming that you are going to clean up leaves and mulch them for the same price as usual. I would make sure mulch is in that description and even maybe a parenthetical of like explaining like these are not hauling away. This is not a leaf cleanup. This is mulching the leaves that are on the lawn. So however you want to word that is fine. But I would do it now. Especially if you have a lease season like yours where it's very regimented, try to get them hooked in. So that way during January, February, they'll stay on winter services because they were in it for October, November, December for the sake of leaves.

Kyle Turner Madison, Alabama Having a really tough time with the crew mowing these yards that don't need to be cut, but we sent an email out to all customers letting them know we are going to a bi weekly cut if they want to. If not, we would keep them weekly. Maybe 20% said yes, they wanted to go to bi weekly, the rest of them staying weekly. The guys are constantly complaining that we we you're mowing yards that don't need to be cut. I've tried to explain it to the best I can of why we're doing it, but it's constantly complaining daily. Would you put a cutoff date in the mowing season? I feel like it would. If we didn't say something to some of these customers, we would still be mowing their grass in December possibly. Yeah. So that's why in that email that you send for the winter services, you'd have your cutoff date then, right? So what you could say is like, hey, we're going to stop mowing your lawn. Our mowing season ends November 1st. We typically go ahead and just continue with winter services including these items. If you would like to opt out of winter surfaces and leaves, feel free just go and click this link and we'll be at your at your house next spring to start mowing. That would be my recommendation. In terms of your guys complaining. You really got to get them focused on P4P. Like they are going to make way more money if they, if they are mowing lawns and quote unquote, don't need it. Also keep them focused on the fact that people don't actually, they don't actually a lot of them that are doing this don't want the grass cut they want them to be seen every single week. So there's a reason why these customers are still wanting this even though you've offered bi weekly that is they want to know that like the driveway is blown off. They do care less about the lawn. They just want the driveway blown off. They just want the edges looking clean. They just want a yellow truck in front of their property every week so their neighbors know that they take care of the property. These are the type of things that as to what you'll have to educate these guys about why the customer buys because in their mind they think they mow grass for people and that's why they get paid. When in reality we're selling the insurance of having a vacant property being serviced. We're having. We're selling the feeling that someone gets when they come back to their house and the lawn is striped edged and the lawn is the driveway is blown off, not necessarily is cut but all those other things and and just the consistency of seeing something every single week happen on their property. So but yeah in terms of cutoff I would just wrench in that in that same email and so that way there is a hard cut off date. You can schedule inside your software exactly when it ends and then have the start the season start for winter services at the same time.

Dustin from Bloomington through our second year running snow removal through SA we are starting to get some new snow customers and I'm not sure if I should as and I'm not sure if I.

If I should add them to our existing master route or keep them separate and then find out who will stay at a on our existing master route. Is this something CC will do? And I can't remember the timing of contacting snow removal customers from last year. Should we do this thing? I would do this soon. If you have people on like a accepted they're on the sky like on your master route. If you want command center to do this for you they can but this is a special project so you listen to email help gustaloggerservices.com and they can do this for you. If you like want them to take your existing master route and like make sure all those customers still want snow and like get it all set up they can do it but you will have is a separate option, a separate project so you can email help it Augusta if you want your little help help you with that. Otherwise yeah, you always want to make sure that everyone from last year still wants snow and then update your master route so when the snow flies it's a Easy, easy dispatch. And there is a snow department at command center so they can help you with this if you have if you've opted into that.

Dustin from Bloomington should send our opt out for winter services to mowing customers and a one click in the same month we finished mowing the last week of October. I would say so I would if I would personally if I was ending the last week of October or the I was ending mowing at the end of October, I would probably send that email out here within the next week for opting out of winter services. So that way you then have a couple weeks to set up all your winter services the rest of the winter.

And I would still send a one click estimate email out because you're only sending that opt out winter services to mowing customers. The one click is going to the other 95% of people in your database that are not in mowing, but they're in your database. You might have a 2,000 people in your database and only have 200 mowing customers. So the 200 mowing customers are gonna get the opt out. The other, you know, 90%, whatever it was, 1800 are going to get probably a leaf cleanup, fall cleanup, aeration, etc. One click estimate.

Iota.

Oh sorry. Iota NFA in Columbia. Clients from last year that opt out of which service has a tag on their account already, how will we know if they opt out this year? Should we remove the tag before sending out the winter service email? Great point. If someone opted out last year, I would personally recommend to just not to just assume that they're going to opt out this year mostly because they in their mind have said I told you not to do it. And it's like last year I would recommend just if they have specifically like in the past told you I do not want winter services, I would personally just schedule them to start mowing next next spring.

I see the point as to why maybe someone's changed their mind since last year, but that tag is only added if they literally have opted out in the past. It's a very high likelihood that they want to opt out now. And if you put them on because they might not see the email, et cetera, et cetera, it's going to be harder to convince them that that was an accident or like that they just missed the email because they in their mind said I don't want, I told you I didn't want this. So personally, if I was sending out my emails for my opt out, I would do only the people that currently have mowing active. And I would only, and I would potentially weed out anyone that has a tag that says they've opted out in the past. That's why we made it with that. That tag doesn't get removed. So you can always see it. I would personally recommend that because those are typically the people who do complain after a month or two of being invoiced for winter services because like I told you I didn't want it. And like, yeah, that was last year. But in their mind they didn't think that. So what you might want to do though is set. I know there's some people that play with the idea of and I think it's a genius idea and that is, hey, I'm going to send my opt out email to all my mowing customers, but the other 90 of my database, I'm going to send a one click estimate email for winter services. I think it's a genius idea. I think everyone should do it. And that is like there's people that would, they want the winter services and they might, they might mow their own grass but like it gets cold, they don't want to be outside during the winter. But you can get them on winter services and not have them on mowing. And guess what's going to happen next spring? You're going to try to sell them on mowing, right? So I think everyone should really send out an opt out email to their mowing customers. I would probably take away anyone that has a ticket, a tag that says they've opted out in the past and then I would send an email to everybody else. Plus the people who have opt out in the past, I would send them a one click estimate email pitching.

Winter services. Because remember, if you're pitching these people, you're probably have to go do an estimate for them, right? And remember, services based on the mowing price, that's how you're going to go to these, these quote, do these quotes, right? So I do think that's a great option. I think you just got to keep, you got to keep in your mind like okay, am I saying this to everybody? Am I sending this to just my mowing customers? Am I sending this to all my database minus my mowing customers? And then you have this fragment of people that are mowing customers but have opted out of winter services in the past to keep those things all organized. And if you need help from a coach for a command center, reach out. But.

I have seen a couple times where people miss time. Their first.

Winter services email and they're like oh, it doesn't work in my market and then they do it correctly the second year and they just crush it.

So yeah, keep that in mind.

Josh Short from Yorktown, Indiana here. I am a solo operator and have hired my first employee. Is there a more thorough description of payroll than the 10 minute video on the dashboard? For those of us that have never done it, can't wait to bring my wife to conference in a couple weeks. Thank you.

Okay, one second. 10 minute video on the dashboard.

I'm assuming you're meaning like walking through how to run payroll. We don't have like an instructional on that because that's QuickBooks job and they have to keep updating it based upon your state, based upon their changes. We're not going to do that from command center. We train everyone here on it and now we have several people that are QuickBooks Pro certified and a couple people this winter I think are going to go get a county degree command center. But.

We'Re not going to educate everyone in their individual state how to run payroll. QuickBooks does a great job of this. That's their job and that's why you pay them gobs of money for their software. And it's worth it is because they stay on top of all that. So get on a call with QuickBooks is probably the best option if you're trying to like figure out your first payroll. I'd recommend that the one that we showed, I think that you're referencing inside of the dashboard is really just to show the process of how we were doing it. But honestly if that video is even eight months old, it's likely changed just because like the states, the way that the software works with Cookbooks etc is always changing.

Full disclosure. I emailed Onboarding Augusta Longer Services with a question regarding payroll and they forwarded a nice list of all forms needed. Min filled out minus forms directly due to my state command center is amazing.

Yeah, so they have a really good handle on every single state they go through there keeping notes on workers comp stuff, insurance stuff. They have like pretty great systems there and there's some very high level like we said they QuickBooks Pro certified. I think Liz got it too just so she can stay on top of things. And so yeah, you're being taken care of well and if they can help with stuff like this, they will let you know. But I would definitely recommend going directly to Cookbooks if you're running payroll yourself because they're going to have your state information, the most up to date stuff. I would probably recommend that.

All right. I answer all the questions you got for today. I hope everyone has a fantastic Monday. See you tomorrow. Take care.