Mike Minutes Mastermind 10/04/2023

Hey everyone. I hope you're doing well. Let's go and get started. Pretty excited update today. I'm going to do it after the questions. It looks like there's a couple that came in. So I'll answer the questions and then I want to do a bit of a presentation. I think it's going to be really, really cool.

So let's go ahead and jump in. If you. I'll probably make a post on this on the Facebook group to make sure everyone watches this Mastermind, because it is something I do want everyone to see and. And got some pretty important updates. So let's go ahead and jump in. Just throw this in the Facebook group.

All right.

Okay. Start these two questions and then I will. I want to do a bit of a demo. I think it's going to be very, very cool.

First question is from Dustin Champagne. What is the best way to upload estimate videos for clients? I've been uploading them to YouTube and then copying that link into a line item on the estimate form. The issue I am running to is when I'm in the field, the videos often will upload and I'll just submit video and I'll just submit notes for an estimate and to get it rather than waiting for it to upload. Any other platforms or options you know of making this better is greatly appreciated. Yeah, the thing about YouTube is if you're on mobile, you gotta wait until it's fully uploaded usually to get the link. If you're on desktop, you can get the YouTube link, put it in your estimate notes and just know that within the next five or ten minutes the link will actually be live with the video. So just FYI, you could do this on desktop like a Chromebook, get the link from your YouTube video and do it that way so that you can finish the notes and just know that the video will be eventually up within five or 10 minutes. In copilot, we are allowing the attachment of videos to the estimate email and a file size. I think it's up to 15 megabytes. So that will be super helpful to have that file. That command center can just take and throw it in with the video. With the.

With the estimate email. I'm just trying to think for a second.

Here. One second.

I'm just making sure from mobile estimate. I'm pretty sure we can estimate video attach to.

Either. So I know we can attach the emails right now.

But I think it's either. I think it's coming up soon, like later this year to be able to attach it to visits and to meetings. In which case that's what I would recommend doing is the estimators like shoot the video, compress it, attach it to the meeting and then command center has the file, it's attached to the customer's profile, it's there forever, etc. Same thing with.

Estimate videos in general. The goal down the road is that we can attach those to jobs. We don't have that yet, but something I'm hoping early next year we can get implemented so that we don't have to do YouTube stuff and we have internal compression so you don't have to compress in another app and then attach. So that's the goal. This is from Anonymous if you were wanting to pay off debt, would you recommend paying off your revolving credit such as a line of credit, credit card etc and then working on monthly fixed payments? Or would you prefer the traditional debt snowball across the board as the best option? Would we have about 25k in credit card debt and 30k in trucks and mowers? Not overwhelming amount but would like to take the business debt free if we could. Thoughts were eliminating revolving credit cards so that way we have capital when you need it and not abusing it. I agree with this. Do your revolving credit first which is the credit card debt because then that you reserve that shield. Because what happens if someone's like oh I'm going to pay down the other debt first, the fixed debt. The problem is if you get low in cash in the winter or next spring rush, you can't go like you use more debt on that loan, it's fixed. So I would recommend paying down your revolving and then as you chip away at the truck one if you accidentally overextend yourself and don't have enough cash, you can use the revolving line of credit to still stay in business. So just be careful with that when you're paying off debt, especially this time of year. I know everyone's like hey I got cash. Like let's time to go spend, you know, pay things down. That's awesome. I love it. Especially October, November, December. It's usually when people feel the most cash rich in our industry and it's because you're collecting on everything that you've done this year and the workload is going down, mowing is not taking as long, etc. Just be careful of getting over ambitious with paying off debt because you do have the winter ahead of you. So I'd rather you pay off revolving. That's also going to be higher interest and then keep that revolving Line as a way of a cushion during the winter.

Whoops. There you go. Okay, time.

For demo.

Okay.

So.

All right, so what I'm about to show you is live on one of my locations and we're just refining it today. It'll probably be live on all of my locations early next week and then it will be an optional thing that you can opt into, hopefully by the end of next week. Something I've ran by the Franchise Advisory Council and we refined it so far. If you do sign up for the.

Wait list end of next week to be able to get this added to your website.

It will be on a first come, first serve basis. And, and it's okay to wait a while or not do it at all. Like you don't have to do it. I'm about to show you. If you want to wait a little bit longer, see the data, allow other owners to get a feel of it. I know a lot of the Franchise Advisor Council said, hey, like we want to be part of that first group. That's great, that's fine. Next week, end of next week we should have the form that you can fill out if you want to add it to your site. We will create a waiting list because it takes us quite a while to integrate on each individual site because we're customizing these so much. So let me go ahead and show you what I'm talking about. I know I've hinted at this a few times. Please don't go to this site today and like fill this out. A bunch of stuff. This is the south park location that I own.

Don't fill it out yet because we are literally just tweaking a little bit more. Today.

Looks exactly normal like usual. So the person would come along, enter in their information. As soon as they do that though, it asks what services do you need? I want mowing. This is the part that's new. It is then going to ask them small. This is going to be medium or large or my property is different. And this is what's cool. All of these pictures are going to be customizable by you inside the dashboard. Not all small lawns look the same. Great point. Brought up by the Franchise Advisor Council. So you'll have three or four different options at every single size of what picture you want shown. For each corner corresponding size of lawn. You got small, medium and large. The large and the my property different one will simply continue per usual. So for example, I'm a large property. It'll look exactly like it typically would for a regular form submission. Exactly the Same if they do my properties different. Same exact thing. But if they do small or medium, there's going to be an actual price given to them right here. And what's really cool is this price will be customizable for each and every location as well as your offer. Your terms of offer right here. So for example, this location has price subject to adjustment after first services. If the lawn is overgrown, the first service will cost $1.50 per man per minute. And that weekly service is required during these months. They click accept and then literally they you they click submit here. This would go to command center. Command center would set up the estimate using this prices, mark it as complete as accepted and this would fall right into our exist system. What's really cool is we don't have to change our systems at all at command center for this. The only thing that's going to change is now it saves them having to measure the property, contact the customer, send the estimate to the customer and get it accepted down the road. Once we're all in copilot, we will work on making it where in this form they would actually go ahead and put their card information and that would also be attached inside of this form. I think we can do that by early next spring. I'm really hoping to beat next spring and getting that done. So literally in this form, without leaving this URL, you have got all their information, you've got a mowing estimate sent, it's been accepted and they have the card information on file. The card information on file, like I said, is going to be next year early. Once we have the copilot, everyone's in copilot, we can do that sort of thing. And this form will come to you exactly the same and it'll come to commands that are exactly the same as it typically would. There will be no change of process or system.

In terms of how we set these up, how we create the estimate, how we accept it, etc. Now, what's really cool is first off, these terms are completely adjustable. You can change these words however you want the prices adjustable. Again, depending on small, medium and large, you can have these. It'll all be in a form on the back end of the dashboard. If someone declines it, this is the thing. We will manually review your quote and send it to you via email. So even if they decline the quote, we will then get the form and we will treat it like we would any other estimate. And except now we will measure the property and make sure it's accurate. The whole goal in doing this and you're like, well, why would you ever want to just round like this? Because when you have 10, 15, 20 mowing customers, I understand the inclination to want to make sure that everything is down to the dollar. Like it's not. It's 47, it's not 45, Mike. You know, based upon my price matrix, it should be 47. I would just really focus on getting as many going customers in the door as possible. And then after three to four months of them, of you consistently showing up and being present and doing a great job, they're very. Everyone here in the past couple years has seen just how much you can raise prices and not lose customers once you've done a good job and performed well on their property. I think we all underestimate that we're all scared of raising prices. However, when we do it, we realize that a few percentage of people actually leave. And so I am much more in the camp of getting these ranges small, medium and large. And looking at from that lens and again everything large, you're going to still do a regular estimate like usual. It would still just come to command center. They'd measure the property. If it's so big and it's outside of your price matrices, you're going to do a drive by same exact thing. But what this allows you to do is realize that by grouping things together and making the seamless process for customers to be able to check out, there's going to be times where you're like, oh man, I got 45 weekly when I would have probably done that usually for $39, that property. And so when you start rounding, yes, there's a little bit of margin of error, but you can correct that a few months later via price increases if needs be. And you're also going to get customers that accept a higher price than you would have actually bid on the property, but they're willing to pay that extra difference because you make this so seamless and there's no one else that you could. They can literally confirm service and in the future put their card on file and get things accepted literally in this process as it currently stands, the next thing would be as any process, sending the thank you and welcome email that tells them the date of service. And if there is a project, which there's not going to be project accepted here, the thank you welcome email would obviously address that scheduling as well. But my hope again in the long term future, hopefully end of 2024, is that they put their card information on file, they click submit and they'd also be given a date of service. So the part that we still have to manually do until we're all in copilot is obviously get their card information via an automation. As soon as it command centers creates the estimate marks as accepted, they are getting an email automatically asking for card information. The next part that is again still right now manual is you do have to send them a thank you and welcome email telling them what their date of service will be. I do believe that within the next year we can automate both of those steps and that when they click submit here, they are given a date of service, car is on file, prices are accepted. And what's really cool is all of this is completely.

Adjustable. So all the terms here, all the pricing, the pictures shown in small, medium and large, all completely customizable. And this will be an opt in. You do not have to do this. There will never be pressure to do it. And if you want to sit back and wait until next spring and see the data of what other people, how they're using it and how it's working for them, fantastic. That's why we're doing it this way. So I'm super excited about it. There will be little bumps and hurdles along the road, so feel free to sit back. I know all my locations are going to be doing it and even if you wait a couple months and then join later on, that's totally fine. So more information will come on that next week and I'll be able to show you the form that you would fill out to be able to get on the waiting list. That form is going to include what prices you're going to have, each of the.

Different sizes, the pricing at each single size, as well as those terms and conditions that are completely customizable. And I truly believe we get in the weeds as business owners in this industry, in the weeds of like down to like the very dollar in pricing, when in reality the vast majority of our leads that we would otherwise be capitalizing on never even submit an estimate request form because they're tired of doing it five times for other providers. And they would love to be able to leave that estimate request form with service booked, with prices confirmed and down the road card on file and a date of service confirmed as well. So I'm really looking forward to it. Like I said, there will be bumps along the way. So that's why we're making this completely optional. It will always be optional. If you do not want to do it on your site, totally fine. You might not want to do it. Especially if you're just getting started. 10, 15, 20, 30 lawns. Every single one counts. I get it. And you don't want to be doing a 45 lawn when you really want to be charging 50. I understand that. That's why we're making this optional. It's completely customizable and it'll be completely based upon the waiting list as to when you get into the. When this gets added to your site. I know technically it looks pretty simple. Having forms with pictures like that in a. In a website and not bogging it down in terms of speed is extremely complicated. It has taken us months to figure this out.

We will not be offering this at long care web design or home service web design because it's extremely intensive.

And making the site light enough when having all of these pictures being shown in a form that is adjustable like that. So I'm really looking forward to it. I do believe the power of it will become increasing evident as we connect with Copilot and can take out the steps of adding on card information as well as scheduling down the road. And I also believe that the integration of Max using AI down the road will incorporate this so that he can sell on the phone again in 2024.

So it's just kind of like the start of that. And I truly believe that we. I'll talk about this at Goliat Conference. We are always tracking close ratio. How many people, you know, how many estimates sent versus estimates that were accepted. And we are missing out on everyone who never even asked for an estimate because they didn't fill out the entire estimate request form. They called you and it went to voicemail and they just hung up. All of these things that we don't even track. No one tracks these sort of metrics. And I think one of the things we don't track is how many people come to your site, fill out incomplete estimate request form and bounce. Or they realize that, oh, I'm just submitting this as a contact form. Or they submit it, there's wrong information, we can't get a hold of them. And now we have like a.

Prospect that has a wrong phone number, a wrong email address and we can't really do anything about it now. It's like get them to completion, get them sold. And at the very worst, we're showing up their property.

With a card on file by then. So if you have questions, definitely put them in the Mastermind form. Again, this is something that I'm rolling out. My one location next week will be all my locations and then it will be a waiting list and an optional thing that you can add to your site. I think this is going to be really, really awesome for us all in next spring when mowing is a big deal. I don't think this will move the needle for a lot of us as we're kind of leaving mowing season already, but very excited about being able to drive people directly to your website and sell them on your website. Instead of having all these extra steps of submit a form, measure a property, create an estimate, send the estimate. Estimate being accepted right now, all those get taken back into one step, which is fill out the form. So pretty excited about it. I really do believe it takes a little bit more maturity to step back though. And then when you start thinking about hundreds of mowing jobs and thinking in terms of groupings of pricing, instead of being so laser like, focused on price matrices, if you take 200 of your jobs and you just rounded them all, I bet they'd all be within a couple dollars of these ranges of small, medium and large. So we were building as much flexibility as possible so you have the most control and you'll be able to do that all from the dashboard to make those adjustments to the form. So again, it'll be completely optional. And next week we will open up that waiting list probably towards the end of the week. And at conference on Wednesday together I can share more. And I think it'll become more clear once we have Copilot Max and this capability on our website to be able to sell to people. And the objective is, the objective is you show up to a property with a credit card on file, they've already been told date of service and you've never done anything because they just fill out a form and we can get there. So we're moving that direction and we'll make sure that at each step it is a optional process and that if you want to take your time moving into it, that is totally okay. So thank you. The Franchise Advisory Council for them, sort of refining this idea, giving feedback, and I'm sure there'll be plenty of more additions over the next few weeks. So thank you, everyone. Have a fantastic Wednesday. I'll see you tomorrow. Take care.