Mike Minutes Mastermind 10/11/2023

Welcome to Wednesday. Hope everyone's doing great. Let's get started. There's only one question in the chamber, it looks like, but I did have some musings, so let me knock out the questions and then I'll go through a couple of my musings because I haven't had any musings for a lot of while on the Mastermind. Also, one of my musings is not really amusing, is I. The past month I've been looking at how many people watch the Masterminds. Very good. I would say 90% of Augusta Nation watches the Daily Masterminds and that has helped us tremendously in terms of communication, everyone being on the same page.

And just like overall. So thank you. I know sometimes it's a lot. You got a lot of stuff on your plate and sometimes they're 10, 15, 20 minutes long. But I think it's the best way for us to stay in communication. So. Also another musings. Lawn care millionaire Jonathan Patosnik posted on his YouTube channel the other day. Let's go. Said he's going to be making some interviews. It sounds like so very excited about that. Obviously he was a big inspiration for me 10, 10 years ago when I started Augusta, and so hopefully he can keep contributing to the community and very excited about that. All right, questions? There was one.

But before I do that, I need to paste this into to Facebook. Sorry.

Sorry. I'm trying to go quickly because I'm trying to get this done before I need to do my podcast with Lee. All right.

There it is. Okay, cool. We got one question. Let's get it done.

Why can't I scroll? Kyle Tarvin Moore, Oklahoma I may have asked this a while back, but can't find the video in my notes.

When a customer pauses or cancels mowing service before you send out your winter service opt out email, would you automatically enroll them back in mowing next year or only start mowing in the spring for the people that either opted out for winter service or you kept on all year? Great question. We still send customers a notice that we're going to be starting, but we're not asking them to start, we're telling them. So if they cancel or if they do winter services, it doesn't matter. We are scheduling everyone that ended the season for us March 1st and then a week before. We're saying, hey, we're going to be starting your mowing season next, next week. And if we're doing price increases, that's when we tell them your prices for this upcoming season will Be X and Y. So.

This kind of ties into my musings. But.

Yeah, anyways, I've always done it to where if you don't end the mowing season with us, we would take that as they no longer want mowing service with us for the next season. Yeah, I wouldn't assume that because some people just want to try to save a little bit of money. They're tight at the end of the year and they end mowing season, say, six weeks earlier than everyone else. And maybe that's okay in your market. And they would get away with it. And so I would rather consider them someone that needs service next spring. I would not just go mow their grass. You're going to get complaints because. And people can move. So you're showing up to people's houses that like, six months ago you were there and now they don't even live there and they have no idea what you're doing. So I wouldn't do that. But we still will send an email to customers. One week, no more than two weeks. I have seen people send them out three or four weeks in advance. And you'll get a ton of emails back saying, don't mow my grass. You want to send that email one week max, a week and a half before you start mowing, saying, like, ideally, next week we will be at your property to mow. Start the mowing season. And here's your prices for the upcoming season. Only that last part. If you are raising prices.

And then if someone has moved, if they don't want service because they canceled early and they intended to actually cancel, they'll let you know. And yes, there might be one or two customers, maybe three that you have to refund one mo. Because they're like, I didn't really want that. I didn't get that email. Great, refund them. Just don't make it where they have to. Like, yes, I want you to show up to my property next week. Don't make it that way. We're showing up. Let us know if you have any questions. So. All right, musings. Let's see here. I have a couple things on my notes.

First, gotta change the tab because we never go that direction. So let's do it. First one I got. Okay, so Merry Maid's experience. The Merry Maid's experience was mediocre. Ten days ago, I submitted an estimate request form. Now, it said it was going to give me a price. I went through five different pages of entering the square footage of my property, the bedrooms, the frequency of service.

If there was a laundry room, there's a whole bunch of pages. I had to go, do I have pets? Like the whole nine yards. You'd think after filling all the information they'd give you a price, but no. They simply said, we will contact you to set up an estimate in person with our estimator. What in the world?

My. My house is less than 600 square feet. I think it's 540. It's not going to take very long. It would make a lot of sense to do what we do on initial mows, which is here's your price based upon your square footage and the fact that we know all this other information. Like you don't have a pet, you don't have any carpet. It's just all vinyl plank.

They know they're gonna hit their minimum. Like minimum price. I'm super small. They can clean the whole thing from top to bottom, scrub the place in less than an hour. And they told me that in person too. So why would you not just tell me that? Sell the job online and give me a dollar per minute per man on the 1st or whatever it is for the first visit anyways. So. Waited 3 days, was able to meet the person. I didn't even care about the price. I said this before on mass run. I did not care about the price. It could have been any number between 1, $1 and $500 and I would have accepted it. In fact, I actually gave my credit card to the lady.

Before she gave me the prices. And she's like, don't you want to know the price? I was like, oh yeah, yeah, that'd be good.

Not super impressed with how they did the estimate, to be honest. They took my credit card information on a 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper, just wrote it all down. It's like, could you type it into something? Could. Could we have a little more security?

So here's the thing. This is what. Where it got my head going. So let me finish the story. Three days, Got the estimate. It took six days for them to. After I confirmed in person, like I gave them my credit card, said yes to the price. Please get me on the schedule. I'm gonna put my key in the house for you to have whatever. It took them six days to confirm the date of service with me. That's really bad. You know how I always say, like, the job is not confirmed until the date of service is confirmed? That is so true. Because. Because I almost canceled them just because I was annoyed that wait took six days to get Confirmation of the date of service. So in all, nine, almost 10 days before I got went from submitting what I thought was an instant quote to actually getting the quote and getting the job on the schedule.

I like their, their texting interface. That was good. Nice and simple. I like that. But.

The fact of the matter is, I think a lot of people in my shoes, if I really needed a housekeeper, like, I don't really need it. I was kind of wanting to go through this process, but I really needed one, I would have bailed and got someone else because it took me 10 days. Like, if I'm someone who moved to town and I need a housekeeper, I'm dirty or I have kids or whatever, a pet. Like.

I would have bailed 110%.

And so it just really emphasized to me, like, the importance of two things. One, confirming the job and getting them the date of service as soon as possible. But secondly is that instant quote. It attracts people like me. Like, I am a really good customer. Like, I will give them a key, I'll put a card on file. They will never hear from me. I will leave a tip every Thursday when they come clean my house or every two weeks, like they will. They won't ever get a complaint from me. Like, I'm a good customer for them. I promise. And I do believe the type of customer that values their time, you'd rather have them because.

They're going to be less inclined to jump when you increase prices. They're less price sensitive because time is something that's finite and therefore the value of it is higher. Right. Something like that. Like quality, as much as we want to have good quality, is super subjective. So you can be in this infinite pursuit of trying to improve quality when if you just made things faster for the customer to. That has a lot of value. And so.

The reason I went with Mary Maids and the reason I didn't care about the price at all and I would have accepted whatever was on their, on their instant quote. The reason I would have accepted anything is because I know they're a national brand. And the reason I would take a national brand and be willing to pay whatever is because I'm confident they're not going to steal from me like that. A big thing when you have a jan someone coming clean your house is like, okay, I got cameras, I got computers. I very frequently have checks that have tens of thousands of dollars on them sitting on my desk. That could be a problem if you have some joblo be like, oh, I think I could take this because, yes, If I have a lot of money on a check and they just say, hey, I will not give you this check until you give me some money, other money or something stupid like, you know, that'd be a big problem for me. So that makes me super price insensitive and willing to pay whatever just to get the thing taken off my plate and off my to do list. And so I really do believe two things. One, instant quotes for mowing. Super important. That's why we have, we're working all my locations have it, we're testing it. Hopefully next couple days I'll be able to start getting in the test group in.

Because it attracts the person that is the least price sensitive.

And I do believe because of that, even if you do need to raise price on someone because they did the form wrong or whatever, they'll be okay with it because someone like me, I just want the job done and I want to know when it's happening as soon as possible. And I want to put my card on file and never talk to you again for something recurring like mowing. And so.

Yeah, I, I just keep. Now that I'm starting to become in the demographic of like young professional that just values time, wants things taken care of, I actually think it's, it's, it's a. We should focus on our individual marketing in our individual markets. We should focus on it more because everyone else in your market is going after, hey, we are the small town home family company that is going to know you by name, et cetera, et cetera. And everyone wants to have that. And I understand there's value to that, but I don't care. I just want the job done and I want to have confidence in a national brand that they're not going to steal from me, they're not going to make damage cases for me and that I have a high. I just know that they're going to be held to a certain standard. The same way I want to go into anytime Fitness. I can go to any 4,000 of the locations and have a pretty understand good understanding of what the standard of that gym is going to be without being like, oh, I hope it's like lit or well, I hope it's open. I hope they have good equipment, I hope they have it looks okay. I hope they want drinking fountain. Like I don't have to worry about any of that because I just know the standard across the entire system is a certain standard. And so I really do believe as Augusta gets known more, I mean especially when she crossed like 1200250 locations. And people start to recognize Augusta wherever they go just because they see it so often.

It becomes the differentiator between us and all of our competition. And that people like me join a national brand knowing that, hey, I am paying a premium. I know I'm paying a premium. Get this. Mary maid costs 150 bucks for one person for one hour. That's their minimum price to come and clean my house. It's insane.

And yet we come up with like, trucks, equipment, mowers, trailers, and we don't. We don't charge 150 an hour. Now, would that dollar amount come down if they were cleaning for four or five hours? Yes, it would probably come down to more like 70, 80, 90 an hour. I'm just saying I'm paying 150 bucks for an hour's worth of cleaning, and they're going to be able to do everything in every two weeks. It's a lot of money, but I would take that in a heartbeat. I would have paid up to probably 200, $300 just if I could have clicked the button and not have to meet the person and leave work to go visit for the estimate. I'm super price insensitive because I value my time and I'm willing to go with a national brand that I know is being held to a certain standard, because you can't have that many locations without having some sort of standard. And that's the type of buyer I think we all, as we grow Augusta, need to lean more into the type of person that just like I need, I just need to have confidence it's going to take care of, and I'm going to join a national brand because I know they're not the cheapest. I'm not joining Merrymades because they're the cheapest. I know for a fact I get someone for less than half that cost. And I know that because I have someone clean my Airbnb and they do like a whole bunch of more work and they're charging me 75 or 80 bucks. So I know I'm probably paying double, but I don't care because I have more confidence that that national brand is being held to certain standards. And so, for example, that person that's cheap, I'm, you know, I saw the other day there's a massive issue with the Airbnb because, hey, I don't know, someone probably forgot to clean. I don't know. I'm just saying I now am willing to pay double, double that in order to just have the confidence that someone's going to show up, they're going to be vetted, they're not going to be a criminal, they're not going to steal from me. And there are people that are willing to do that. And sometimes it's hard to step into that role. And Honestly, for me, 10, 7, 8, 9, 10 years ago, I couldn't do that. I had a really hard time understanding why people are willing to pay so much for a property cleanup or a multi job or a project or a mowing job even. I. I'm like, man, I could just do this in 10 minutes. They're paying me 50 bucks. Like, what in the world? But when you actually become one of the customers, you realize that, like, I don't care about the price. I just want them to show up and get their job done. I want to be as little of my time involved as possible. I want a card on file. And when I ask for a job to be done, I want to be able to accept immediately and know exactly day it's going to be serviced.

So for now, this is a really emphasis on.

Once a job is accepted, get back to them as quickly as possible with the date of service. I know I've preached this a lot to everyone here. Like time to close after the sale has been has been consummated. Like once they click accept, the job is not done. You have to send the thank you and welcome email that says the date of service in order for that to really be completed. So right now that's a manual process. I believe that next year we'll be able to inside Copilot automate this. And I was like, okay, we know which days based upon the address you're going to be serviced for mowing. When they accept, here's your day of service, we'll be able to do that. But for now it's like, hey, we got to send the thank you and welcome email asap. So that was the first musing. Second musing.

I don't want to come across as complaining on this one. I am just simply sharing my thoughts. So this is not a complaint. This is a musing slash something I've been thinking about.

So like yesterday for example, mailchimp went down for about four or five hours and mailchimp, their backend is called Mandrel and it's an open, it's an API that we use. We pay them to basically run all of our emails through. Mailchimp is a really, really good service for email. We use them at Copilot to send all their Emails out. Obviously we're not going to build our own email servers and all the rest of it. It's incredibly complicated, so they're really good. However, yesterday went down for like four or five hours. It affected the ability to save sequence automations and send emails. They it would say sent, but it wouldn't actually go through, it would just backlog.

So we of course think it's our problem. So like we're chasing our tail. Like we're sending devs on it. We're like, what in the world's going on? Emails aren't going there, can't save automations. Sure enough, it's it. When we finally figured out, oh, it's servers, that mailchimp. Here's the thing, users don't know that. And so they go into Facebook and we have a pretty open policy. People can post whatever they want on the Copilot Facebook group. So there's a few complaints. Totally fine and understandable because they don't know what's happening. And we didn't actually at the beginning so we were like, what in the world? We were trying to figure out what's happening. But that's not the musing. I was just giving backstory. The music I had the other day is we have this weird thing where unlike our lawn care business, like lawn care business, if you have a couple yellow slips this week, guess what, you deal with them one on one, you solve the problem. And it's very rare they go online and just like tell everyone about it. What's weird about Copilot? I'm just being honest and like something I was thinking about is like, we have all of our customers in one spot and if any of them have an issue, they'll post about it. And so what it does, it makes everything seem very negative. And this is why, like service Autopilot's Facebook group, for example, they don't allow any negative comments, they just delete them. I see why they did that. I'm against it and that's why we don't take the comments away. But I was just thinking about like, what if all of our all your customers for your lawn care business had a Facebook group and all of them were in there with you. Can you imagine like anytime, like grass was not blown off, um, any Zello stuff would be extrapolated massively and then everyone jumps on the back. Yeah, they didn't blow off my driveway the other day there, you know, so and so like that certain employee that edges the grass, he doesn't do a good job and Then, like, people pile on. Can you think about having that for a longer business? That was my musing. It's like, imagine what we have to what we have with cus with customers at copilot, which is good and fine. That's part of the game. But imagine having their long care business. But like, every yellow slip customers all in one group, you had 3, 4, 500 customers in one group that literally they would just post their yellow slip. They'd just be like, they broke my window. Oh, man, that would be such a headache. And. And it would just make like, your two or three yellow slips a week turn into, like, what seems like massive issues because everyone would pile in on it. So thinking about that helped me a little bit too, because, like, there are. They're always all there. There's always going to be mistakes. But yellow slips, bugs, we have a copilot. And the challenging part that I have been dealing with this whole year and trying to come to grips with is like, we have a very public perspective of how bugs are treated at copilot, and that causes a lot more pressure on me versus, like, hey, if there's a yellow, I know one customer's unhappy because I broke their window, but I can deal with them, fix their problem, and it's okay. Not the entire group thinks that we break windows. Like, all my customers now know that I made a mistake. So it's. It's. It's different. It's unique. I'm still learning how to deal with it, but it helped me put some better perspective on it. Become like, why does it affect me so much when there are two really mad customers and they're on the Facebook group? The reason is, is because now it creates this environment where you have three or four posts that are negative, and now the entire customer base sees them. And I was like, okay, if I did that in lawn care, it'd almost be insane to do that. Like, it'd be insane to all have all your customers in one spot where they post any issue they have with their business and then you have to respond. So I'm still working on it. I'm still trying to improve and be better and not let it affect me to the point of being super anxious and stuff like that. So anyways, that was my musing for the day. I hope you all have a fantastic Wednesday. Two more masterminds until conference. Let's go. We'll see you guys next week. Take care.