Mike Minutes Mastermind 10/04/2024

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to another Mike Minutes Mastermind. Let's get this party started. Happy Friday. Couple quick things. I'll switch this over to announcements real quick because yesterday's mastermind, if you didn't watch it, it was really good. We had some really good questions. Highly recommended. Now one of the questions was about.

The.

The different ways to sell winter services. The individual Garrett yesterday that was doing that was sending out, I think it is track number two, which is essentially sending out individualized emails to customers and not going to their house, which is number one in person, but below that is sending them a video.

Individualized for their property. Now he was sending out the link on Loom, not getting a lot of response Yesterday in the Mastermind, we talked about sending it out via imessage, using Loom for downloading it and then sending it out through imessage that way. And he's had a much better response rate. So I wanted to share this post.

Inside of the Facebook group. I actually pinned it to the top here so you can see it said imessage is crushing. So what he's doing is instead of sending a link in loom and he was doing a nice thumbnail and the whole nine yards instead of doing that, he's downloading the video from loom and then sending it from through imessage. And then you can see here is like the customer right off the rip is back and forth, etc. So you know they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But I went out yesterday, got my sales people some iPhones. Let's go. Oh wait, you can't see me. Sorry, one second. Yeah, see we got iPhones. You get an iPhone, I get an iPhone, we all get an iPhone. So we're out here handing iPhones because you know when something's working, we go for it. By the way, if you have Verizon, you get secondary phone lines added inclusive of the phone, as long as you sign a two year agreement for between 40 and 50, depending on how many you have. So I have enough lines on. You have. You can have up to 10 before you have to have a business account, by the way. Let's go. So we got ourselves some iPhone 14s. Look at these gems. $40 a month. Let's go. Like that's definitely worth a lead. That's definitely worth one more closed job. It's definitely worth increasing your close ratio on winter services. So went out and got some of these bad boys. Note in the the comments.

Carrot dropped a gem. And this is what Is is. He said here is. He's on. He's on a Mac, marking up with an iPad via Photos app and Loom. Then download the Loom app on his iPhone, go into the Loom app and download directly from the app on my iPhone. Make sure it's less than 4 minutes and 15 seconds in order to send vi message. This is a gem. This is why I'm showing it here, folks. You're going to have to be under the 4 minutes, 15 seconds in order for it to be the size enough to. You can send it via imessage. And this is a great hack he has here, so you don't have to do. I talked about yesterday, which is the airdrop in that it is download the app, the mobile app on Loom for your phone and then download it from there. Instead of what I was saying yesterday, which is download on the desktop and then airdrop it. Great idea. Have the Loom app on the phone and download it from there directly into your camera Roll. Fantastic. All right, now. There we go. Did I send the wrong. One sec. Give me one second. Give me one second.

Cool. All right, we're good. Okay.

So that's all we have for announcement today. Very good job on Garrett's part yesterday. Lot has people like, they'll try on something like that and then it's like, oh, it doesn't work. It's like, wait, we're so close. So good job, Garrett, for pivoting there, adjusting the approach.

And crushing it. All right, we're moving on, folks. There's five questions it looks like today. See here. First one is from Isaac. Isaac, let's go from Rockport. Hey, Mike, I hope you are well. I've been watching your training videos on winter services and I had a couple of questions which. We want to implement winter services this year on all locations, but the way you go about winter services is knowing you have an off season and you don't mow. Here in Texas, we mow year round. And the way we want to implement this is with the customers that want to go monthly in the winter. We offer monthly mowing. December, January and February. How would you go about that? Would you just contact all your customers and offer the winter services? I like this idea, but at the same time, I don't want all our customers to use winter services because mowing is the easier option and most of our customers remains bi weekly in the winter. Also, for customers that cancel their services for the winter, is it better to offer the service before they cancel, like sending a mass email or text message before winter comes or try to sell them the services when they call to cancel. Okay, great. So first off, another winter track is just mowing. Now, in your case, if you're like, hey, I don't want to take a hit on mowing.

You know, this is the thing. If the majority of your customers stay bi weekly and some of them go to monthly, you might only be having a 15 to 30% decrease in revenue in mowing. And in that case, you might just stick with the just mowing track and keep selling more mowing services. That might be an option. So let me just state that first. Like, if in my market I knew I could keep mowing even monthly for and only like, let's just call it 30% of my customers went to monthly and everyone else just say bi weekly, I would just stay with it, honestly. So in your case, I would probably say you're trying to reduce the drop off of the people who go to monthly. I would probably just pitch it to them directly. I'd probably use step.

Track one or two of winter services, which is A, I'm going to go in person to their house, or B, I'm going to send them a personalized video like Garrett's doing. Or if people call in, you could sell that to them when they're trying to cancel. I would probably also say, if I was you, I would look back last year and see what customers traditionally go monthly or cancel. And I'd just pitch them first. Like, I'd get ahead of the curve. Now I'd be like, hey, you know, last year you went monthly. We want, we have this new service. It's going to save you X, Y and Z. I'd be using the template. Your savings that you can offer them now are so much higher when you do the price comparison because they already were getting charged for the mowing already, like monthly. So like, you can just add that in to like how much they're going to be saving when they do which services. So I would do two things if I was you, Isaac. One, I would have a system in place that when someone tries to cancel or tries to, I should say, pause services or go monthly, there's a strategy on how to sell them into winter services. Two, I would, I would see who last year and you probably can have a list in your head of the 10 or 20, 30 people that do it right off the rip that cancel for winter or go to monthly. I would get ahead of the curve and I'd immediately be pitching them with either, like going in person Calling them a person or sending a personalized video like Garrett's doing through imessage. That would be my approach to get ahead of it and probably reduce the amount of calls because what you're doing there, you're actually saving admin time because if they call in then you gotta go through the whole process versus just get ahead of it. Have a system in place, knock out those 30, 40, 50 customers that do that every single year and get ahead of them and try to get them sold into winter services. And you're going to have to have that conversation with them anyways because they're going to call in anyways to cancel or pause or switch to a different recurrence.

Kyle Tarvin I'm thinking about swapping all our recurring expenses and Christmas light marketing dollars inventory over on a credit card for the winter instead of paying for everything as it comes in via debits. My thought process is that it will allow us to protect our cash going into winter and we can pay off the card as we have money coming in or I feel comfortable with the amount of cash in the bank. Worst case scenario is we have to pay a few thousand dollars in a credit card over the winter to ensure we have cash in the bank come next come springtime. Would this be stupid at 20 interest rate? Would we just continue to pay cash for everything as expenses come up? I don't want to get into a cash crunch come springtime because we decided to not use debt over the winter. Would there be a better way to do this? So here's the thing. Oh we're going to keep reading. We have about 50k in the bank and we are doing around 200 to 250,000 revenue per year at one of my locations. This location will need lots of cash which we did not have enough of this spring or debt come springtime to market heavily and grow where we need to be. Okay, so.

Yeah, usually 20% interest rate is usually not a good idea anytime. So. So like that would be the first thing. Next thing, don't allow a few thousand dollars in a credit card at 20% interest rate. Let's just call it $500 in interest. Even if you have to carry that for six months, don't let that prevent you from going all in on the Christmas lights which will then next year solve this problem once and for all. Because like this is a one time expense or this is an expense that you will be able to get the rewards of for the next four to five years is buying the lights. I will also say you can get these lights to within a matter of a few days. I don't think you need to go into much of a cash trough in order to sell the lights. Then go make the order. I would be collecting the money. Like collect the money and then next week we'll put it on on your house. I'd be trying to go that route if possible. If this is a big problem in terms of cash crunch for you, that would be my recommendation. I do believe you can still go into next spring with 50k in the bank if you use that approach. And that is like we are going to sell the job. We are where we. It'll cover all the cost of the lights in our installation. We will then schedule them for, for installation the week after, the week after that and then I will order the lights as soon as I have the cash. You basically get cash up front. I really do believe this is one of the why I reason I like Christmas lights as a track so much and I went this wet direction is because with something like snow, for example, if you're doing per push you are going to bill after Christmas lights is one of those things you can sell, get the money and then go buy the lights. And then, then, then it's a matter of like, okay, now how do I get them in second year and third year and fourth year when I can. My margins are 70, 80% because now the lights have already been purchased and I've stored them. So.

Yeah, I don't think.

Oh, I see you got marketing dollars for Christmas. Like got it, got it, got it, got it. Okay, so it's the marketing dollars you're kind of concerned about. I wouldn't be trying. If you run out of cash come spring, let's just, let's assume that happens. Like I think that's a big jump. I think we can make that not happen. But let's assume we, we have a cash crunch come come spring. You can always use the credit card. It's a revolving line of credit. You don't have to use it now and start racking up interest because you might run out of the $50,000. Like if that's the thought, like run out of the $50,000, then use the credit card. Otherwise you just, it's more of just like mental, you know, you're padding in your, in your head. So that would be my recommendation is wait on the card until you need it and do everything possible to not need it. So for example, instead of spending 10,000 on marketing for Christmas lights and then, you know, getting the, you know, then having to buy the lights, et cetera. I would be like, okay, can I spend 3,000 by using a strategy, something more along the lines of like going to Facebook groups, doing door hangers, doing one click estimates, texting all of my customers individually about the offerings I have. The same strategy we're talking about with loom could also be used for Christmas lights. I love how Garrett, I love how Brian Connor in their looms are mentioning the Christmas lights in the loom. Like if you use these strategies they cost you zero. They just cost you like an iPhone for 40 bucks a month. So in time and time and so I would be really pushing you in that direction because I think the assumption right now is that you're going to spend gobs of money on marketing and if that's going to put you in a bad spot for next spring, don't do it. Just realize you're going to have to spend in other areas and that is usually your time and energy in more one on one hand to hand combat. But if you have 2,000 people in your database and between winter services and Christmas lights, I think you can make this like you can keep your revenues high. I really do believe that it's just going to be more hand to hand combat then just spending a bunch of marketing. It's gonna be one click estimate meals, it's gonna be text messages, it's gonna be loom videos, it's gonna be going in person and talking to customers. That would be the strategy. I'd be really, really encouraging.

Dustin, as tech continues to develop, you have said in the past that it's deflationary. I'm interested in your thoughts on Teslas and other future electric vehicles. Do you think tests think that a Tesla would have average vehicle, average vehicle depreciation or would these vehicles depreciate faster due to the software becoming outdated?

So.

I think these are two actually different questions, but let me attack both of them. So.

I don't think that they depreciate faster because the software doesn't become outdated. They can do over the air updates.

And they do all the time with Teslas. Like you literally park your vehicle in your driveway or in your garage the next morning and wait, you know it's connected to wi Fi and it's like oh, we, we update X, Y and Z And so like there's been multiple times where they roll something out. It doesn't look good. They don't, people don't like it. They're like okay, great, we'll just change it and they make a software update. So like the computer, I. E. The car gets updated all the time. Whether it be like the, all the cameras are there, all of the hardware is there and so they just make updates all the time and make it better. Like oh you wanted this feature. Okay, cool, we'll do this. That's what's cool about having software as a service in terms of a car. So I think it's a different thing than like the, you know, Tesla's or you know, soft technology being deflationary in general. Like the cost of things do come down because of technology the same way like a Model X S, et cetera. Like even if you look the first Teslas were 100 plus thousand and now they're, you can get a model three for 30 grand, 40 grand and so. And they're better than they were 15 years ago, 10 years ago. So.

Yeah, hope that makes sense. I think Tesla specifically, whether or not they're going to up or down value, I don't really know. I think all cars will eventually go to over the air updates and being much more software driven and you connect it to WI Fi and they would download software updates that way. But yeah, Tesla's definitely ahead of the curve of this. There's not too many other vehicles that you connect to WI Fi and they can update things like the dash cams, they can update self driving, they can update you know, software on the screen etc so. Ken Lynn. All right, we got ourselves a long one. Here we go. Based on a question from yesterday about my idea for changing in billing practices, I wanted to give some context to some of the situations I'm dealing with currently and in the past. Maybe I have stinkin thinkin' and need a reality check or maybe this type of thing is normal and I just need reassurance. Let me know which I've let me know which. I've had customers in the past get upset with me for things like the grass didn't grow and I mowed anyways so I'm being dishonest and stealing their money. Two you didn't know or trim underneath the trees where there is no grass growing and I'm paying for full service so I want you to go over it anyways. 2 opposite end of the spectrum. But yet no matter what I did, someone was going to be upset with me and call me dishonest and unethical. Okay, so let me just stop here. Sorry, that type of thing stings. Okay, so let me stop here. This is the thing. Are you being dishonest? Or are you being unethical? If the answer to that is no, it doesn't matter what they say. Like, if it's. If this is eating you alive, like, are you trying to rob people? Are you trying to be, like, unethical and, like, steal from people? If you don't feel that way, then, like, go get another customer. If you do a good job, there'll be other customers that are willing to pay you a set price for the service to be completed instead of you being there for a certain amount of time or for you doing things that are not necessary because it's on the estimate. Let's keep reading. This season, I've had someone want their money back and threaten to take me to court over $220. And someone else ghosted me for over a month. And then finally telling me that I didn't mow one day last month. And I still charge so she will still take an advantage of. Copilot keeps record of all the times I was there and performed the service. I tried kindly and nicely to explain all these things to them, to no avail. I was hoping that the change in the way that I bill may alleviate some of these issues. Am I right? No, you're not. Like, I'm. I know I'm being blunt, but, like, this is Two customers. Do not make a change in your business over two customers. Go get two new. Two new customers. That will not be this way. That. That is the solve here. Like, there are so many times I've seen, myself included, change business models because of a couple customers, and it's the wrong move.

Go get new customers. And you're like, well, then what should we focus on getting more customers? Like, go fix that. And then when you have one off weird folks that are just going to have a bad day or fly off the handle or say weird stuff that doesn't matter. It's like, look, this is what we agreed to. If you don't want to do it, that's fine. And this is the other thing they threatened you to take. Take you. Take you to court. Like, fine, then take me to court. But, like, you don't have to be my customer. This isn't. This is a free country. You can go get another provider. And you don't have to say it, like, in a negative or harsh way. It's like, look, it doesn't look like it was working out for us. Feel free to use one of our competitors. I'm happy to mow your lawn until that happens, but this is how it's going to Work. And you don't have to say it negatively. It's like, just say it calmly. There's nothing to get agitated about. But ultimately the problem is not changing the business model, changing your billing practices, getting more customers to replace the ones that are being like, like this. Do I need to change the way I'm thinking? Do I need a slap in the back of the head? Or am I just taking this personal and I should just think of it as the cost of doing business? I've lost sleep over customers thinking about me. Like, hey, I know what it's like to feel this way, and I know I'm seeming somewhat.

Crass or like a hardened to this, but I am very much the same way. Like, I will see a bad comment, I will see something. And if there's a kernel of truth to it, that's when it stings. So the reason it stings is because you are. You don't think you're, you know, you're not unethical and dishonest. However, when they pitch it as well, I'm paying the same amount and you didn't have to do this service, like, well, that could be kind of unethical. Is that unethical? You start really questioning yourself. And so there's a kernel of truth to it. Like, it's 1% true. And so when people call me a scam artist or whatever, it's like, well, there's like 1% true. Because, like, there are other people that do scammy things that sell courses and have franchises. And there are a lot of bad actors in that world. And there are people that also have long care business that like, take care, take advantage of their customers and take care advantage of old people. And they do bill people for services they did not do. So like, there's always that little curl. It's like, oh, well, maybe like. And then you ultimately have to go back to like, did you try your best? Are you doing. Are you doing your absolute best for these customers, or are you actually trying to swindle them?

And so, but yes, I am in the same camp. I lose sleep over this stuff all the time too. But ultimately it's like, I am doing the absolute best, and that is all I can give. And anything beyond that will probably prevent me from sleeping, which then deteriorate the service that I give to these customers. So.

Mr. Anonymous, I have a vehicle in my personal name that the crew uses to perform services. Would I be opening myself to potential issues or lawsuits if I keep the truck in my personal name while the Crew use it for business use. It is commercially insured. It's just my personal name is on the title.

That's really interesting. I'm very surprised that they would insure this under your personal name and it's commercially like I would run that by your insurance agent because I don't think that they know what's going on. That's very strange. It's very strange. They allow you to commercially insure a vehicle that is licensed and owned by a personal.

Just you major state is different but like I have never heard of that. So I would also not recommend this because what could happen if it's kind of a gray area even is you could do get in an accident and guess what, your your insurance like oh hey, this isn't insured in the company that we're insuring.

This isn't licensed in the name of the company that we are insuring which is the business it's in this other person. And they're like oh no, we're the same thing. You just pierced the corporate veil. So you're piercing the corporate veil of what you're doing here. So I would not recommend this. I would get it licensed. You can gift it over to yourself and not pay taxes. I would gift it into the business's name and then you're probably good. But please, please talk to an insurance agent. Make sure this is all kosher because the last thing you want is this is fine and dandy until one day it's not and there's an accident and I just lost my screen. So what in the world is going on? Okay, I'll fix that later. That was all the questions that came in there.

You got it, Ken, my man. Alright everyone. So the moral of today's story is you can teach an old dog new tricks. Go get yourself some iPhone, pump the Apple stock so you can send imessage out to people, close more deals. I really do believe the same strategy that we're talking a ton about right now with winter services could also be applied for Christmas lights. If you're like winter service doesn't work in my market. Great. If you're doing Christmas lights, what we're talking about with doing looms for every customer, I'd be doing that for every one of my mowing customers. I'd be doing a more generalized for one for every single one of my.

Database, like oh, that's going to take me like a week to figure out. Yeah, or you spend 10 or $15,000 in marketing. Right. So you know, sometimes you got to figure it out. All right everyone, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, an awesome weekend and we will see you on Monday. Oh cool. Wait one second. Update coming to P4P. I think today it's really cool you're going to be able to see on the leaderboard yellow slepts for every person. It'll be good. All right guys, take care.