Mike Minutes Mastermind 10/13/2023

And we're live.

The last Mike minutes Mastermind before conference. Let's go.

Let's see here.

Boom.

Very excited for next week.

Go ahead and get started. I got some questions. I don't think I have anything on my list. Gotta save all the fun and exciting things for next week. Let's see here. That's good.

Oh, it works. Let's go. Okay, cool. First question is from Abraham. The plan would be move to Vermont and set up Augusta there. Live there three to five years and either sell it or have a GM run it. We have a guaranteed $35,000 a year contract to mow and plow as soon as we move there. Also, six months no rent and employment for my wife. With snow plowing being a must in the area and the closest town having a population of 15,000 is my idea possible. Thank you, Mike. Yeah. So just for background, Abraham was one of our very first franchisees at Augusta Lancair at Believe number three. So huge shout out to Abraham. The problem is, back in the day, our first 10 locations, we allowed them to get larger territories and we thought we were being nice to them when in actuality we were throwing them under the bus. And so he took El Paso. Well, El Paso has. I don't want to misquote it. Let's see how many people live in El Paso. El Paso, Texas. Population is 700,000. Not massive. Wait, that's here. Yeah, 700,000 people.

But far bigger than what we shoot for, which is a hundred thousand people or less. And so the problem with having 700,000 people in your market, especially there, where you have probably hundreds, if not thousands of landscaping companies, it's very hard to rank. And so not only is it hard to rank if you're not massive, where you have a whole bunch of traffic coming to your site, it's even harder. So let me see here. El Paso, Texas lawn care.

We do show up second on Google listing.

And we show up, we still show up on the first page of Google.

Actually.

Outside of Sun City Lawn Care, we're still. We're first on Google. However.

It. The more challenging thing that that market is the fact that there's really not much grass. It is like artificial turf and rocks. So when he. The challenge he has had is he really has to sell recurring weeding and like cleanup surfaces. And it's not as intuitive to most people because they don't think they need a recurring weeding service or recurring zero escaping maintenance. So anyways, that's a little bit of background for everyone because Abraham's already talked to me about this. So he's planning to move to Vermont. It's a tiny Little City and 15,000 people, in my opinion is a better market than 700,000. Because I guarantee you you'll get to the top of Google very quickly on in a small market and.

The competition is less, you can usually charge a higher price.

And you're going to have a way less influence of illegal immigrant, illegal labor there, which in El Paso is a big deal. And so not to say it can't be done, it just takes longer typically to build the brand awareness to be able to charge the higher price. So even like Ryan Payne's at like, there's a lot of very cheap laborers running around and they're willing to do things under the table etc. And so once you build up a brand, you can absolutely. There's a market for it. It's just more challenging the first few years. So what I would say, Abraham, in response to your question here specifically is I wouldn't really try to figure out your clothes, your sale slash, how you're gonna figure it out in three to five years. Just focus on building a good business. And I think when the business starts hitting that 4 or 500,000 marker, we start then thinking about, okay, do we need to optimize this for profitability at 4 to 500,000 and then hand it off to a GM or B, you might get be there for three or five years, three to four years and realize that you actually want to stay there. So I would just focus on building a good business, A good business that has good margins. In three years, you have options, you can raise prices, optimize your profitability, hand it off to a GM and you can continue to scale it like so I would just focus on building the business, don't worry about the exit as much. And that'd just be my two cents in terms of thinking too far ahead. In my opinion. Just build a good business, then it kind of opens up all the options. Okay, where's my cursor? See, this is why I don't use multi screens. Where did it go?

Oh, I think there's a third screen that's helpful. Okay, there we go. Now we're good.

Next question. Loading response. What in the world? Oh, there you go. Okay, Devin from Red Deer. Hey Mike, would you take a big 20 old, 20 house, old folks, kind of gated, community close type thing? The manager sent me huge list of rules that includes like everything from mowing, trimming, fertilizer, weed spray, picking up garbage, churning Mulch and snow removal, very strict as well. I know we're growing fast, but I don't want to take on a big deal and push away residential work. But for the right price, I think it would be a good deal. We're at 70 recurring at the moment and this would put us at 90 easily and lots of extra stuff. What's your thoughts? Thanks. The next question, I think is from Devin too. Ah, very good. We got a picture.

So this looks like this is what you're talking about.

To me. This doesn't look like a massive, like too hard to do. Like, these are. There's not a ton of green space on these. So I don't think it's gonna be difficult. Like you said, you're going from like 70 to 90 because these are kind of like residential houses. They're just a little bit bigger. They're duplexes, it looks like.

So in terms of like, manpower and like changing your business model, I don't think that's an issue. It just, you know, you're going to have a whole bunch of residentials combined. In this case, if you look at it like, okay, is this one client going to be 10 to 15 times more difficult than one customer? Probably, but you're also having 15 customers or 20 customers or whatever. So it might, I would say this one's worth it, kind of fits still in your business model.

But yeah, like a lot of times HOA do have a way different, like, scope of work, a lot more requirements and, and just something to be careful of. I wouldn't say against it unless it's changing the type of equipment you need, the type of labors you need, and like, totally against your business model, I would just charge your same prices. And at the Bellingham shop, we typically tic Tac on 10% more for HOAS just because we know there's going to be a lot more calls, complaints from tenants, because sometimes tenants feel like they are your boss and then you have 10 bosses. And it actually is not just the equivalent of 10 residential customers. It compounds because now they're all arguing with each other and you're like the in between person. So I would just charge accordingly. And then just don't spend a ton of time creating an RFP or a, you know, an estimate.

Because just hold it loosely. Like, don't put all your eggs in the basket of. I must get this. Brian from Langley. Lately I've been switching my door hanger strategy from filling out the mulch and cleanup spots custom for each property to just writing Call in the spot in order to speed up how many I can put out. Do you think that this is the best strategy, or should I try to find an average number of the neighborhood for cleanups and just hope it evens out or go back to filling them out at the property for each door hanger? Also, FYI, I'm getting estimate requests. Okay, let's just break this down first. So.

I personally. Because every market's different. Personally, I think putting the price in there is important because otherwise it's like, well, why. Why would I have it there if you're just gonna say call?

What I would do is put the. Have two different door hangers in your hand. One small properties, and then the second pack larger properties. And then, you know, okay, my mowing price and my. My mulch price are typically corresponding to the size of the property. And I would just use that. That way you do have a price and does average out. Like you mentioned, typically when you're doing door hangers, your. Your goal is growth and getting jobs on the schedule. So if that is the goal, it's okay to be a little bit off in terms of an extra yard or two of mulch or you're a little, like, it's totally fine. So I would say to put the number on there, but then have like a small and a large. You could even use small, medium, large, if you really want to.

And you can do as much as you want. Like, you could technically have. Okay, I have mowing price. That is two different mowing prices. And then I have, like, two variations of properties, property size for, like, cleanups and mulch. It's just up to you.

But I would only use your example. Like, if you were, like, hiring a kid to, like, just put a whole bunch of door hangers out and he didn't want to depend on them to be able to judge the property size, etc. Then I potentially would do something like a call on those two items. Also, FYI, I'm getting an estimate every. An estimate request every 350 door hangers. That's. That's not horrible. That's. That's decent. Like, if you're able to do 100 an hour, that's like, every four hours you're getting. Estimate request. Okay, everyone who wants to join Augusta from Jim's. Someone who wants to join Augusta from Jim's contacted me to ask how Augusta is, and when I told him I did 18 estimates in September, he was shocked and said he had gotten 80. He had gotten 80 for the entire year last Year. Oh, interesting. By the way, if they actually want to Jim's Join gyms, if they want to join and they're from Jim's Mowing and they're in the Pacific Northwest, there is a location in Coquitlam that is for sale and it's very well priced. So if I was in Canada, I'd be buying the location. There's just too much red tape for me as a franchise or to own in internationally right now. But it's, it's a good, it's a very good deal.

And so I would potentially put them in that direction. But yeah, in terms of gyms mowing, they have a very, very different setup. I know Brian, you were in Augusta last year, but last summer I went and actually did all of their training in Australia. So their whole model is just different, right. They get, they get a monthly fee kind of like we do, between 600 and 1500 dollars per month typically. And then they get charged per lead. And so their command center just takes leads and then if there's anything outside of leads, they just make a ticket for the franchisee. So they don't do any sort of like taking credit card information. They don't do anything besides take leads and make tickets for anything else for the franchisee. That's why they don't grow very much though is because if you're going to be paying for them, it's like between $12 and $100 per lead that they pay corporate. So everything funnels through Jim's Mowing Corporate. They get all their leads going through there and then they distribute those to the franchisees and they charge the franchisee per lead. So they really restrict like you can't have your own phone number. You cannot get any leads outside of someone must go through the site or call them.

And I think that is, it's definitely a viable strategy for smaller operations. It just falls apart for larger operations. And that's why 95% of them are solo operators. Because as soon as you start needing scale, like I did the math last year and it would be, it was like 15 to $16,000 a month that the Bellingham shop would have been paying for the leads that we were getting. So it starts to fall apart for larger operations.

So and, and, and, and, and the fact that your numbers are routed to like corporate where like as your business grows and you stop trying to get more leads, it's just most of your calls are customer service and it's kind of a weird experience to always like no matter if you're Trying to pay a bill, you're trying to complain, anything. It's like, okay, great, let me. I'll notify them. Like they can't take payment, they can't accept estimates. They can't do anything like that. They don't even have access to the CRM is. Is totally separate. So yeah, just different business model works great though, because it's not high entry and that's why there's a lot of them. It's because it's like you can easily get started. It's a it. It's for someone who doesn't want to work a job but doesn't want to have employees. It's like kind of like the sweet spot for them. So. Yeah. All right, more questions came in. What made you originally pick yellow? Did you already have a favorite yellow shirt? No, I did not have a favorite yellow shirt. I'm not really a huge fan of yellow that I wear it every single day because part of the. It's part of the brand, baby.

Did I. Why did I pick yellow originally was really just stand out in terms of the trucks.

And it's still a lawn care ish color. Like brown, green and yellow is the colors that we associate with outdoors. So it wasn't too much of a leap to go to like, because if you went something crazy, like probably the most best way to stand out is like pink. But then you're starting to like guys won't want to wear out in the field. People have issues with that color, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, pink, purple, they get politicized sometimes, like for most random reasons. So just try to stay, stay neutral. Something that could scale even if it wasn't necessarily the best. Because I would actually probably go pink just to stand out because that's the whole objective. Hey Mike, I was just wondering if I wanted to do a price.

Increase. I think you want in my increase here. I want to do a price increase commercial type customers and HOAs. Do you think there's anything wrong with a blanket 10% increase effective immediately or should I do a dollar amount or should I give them a 30 day warning? I kind of just want to rip the band aid, up it off and do this effectively immediately. What's your thoughts? One second. Let me check Facebook to see who this is. Andy Burleson. And it's. I'm guessing these are the big ones in your marker there, Andy. If you're out of a contract, I would do it be like, hey, effective next month, I personally, just for the sake of me sleeping well, I Like to give people a heads up, a few weeks at least.

I'm not a huge fan of like, hey, by the way, next week's invoice is going to be more. If you want to do that and if you've been in business with them for three, four or five years and I think some of these you might have, Andy, it gives you more license to do that, especially if you're outside of a contract. If I'm in a contract, I'm going to give them a little more time, probably like 30 days at least.

But if I am outside of a contract, kind of going month to month, I would do it quickly. Especially if you're at capacity and you're struggling to find employees, right? So if you're like just struggling to get anyone to work for you and you're hitting capacity, raise the price immediately. As long as you are at peace with them leaving tomorrow, right? If you're at the point where you hit capacity and you're at peace with the person leaving, you have all the leverage. So raise your prices immediately. But typically if that's not the case, like if you have the capacity, things are going okay. I typically like to give a little bit of a heads up. Even for residential, I like to give at least a couple weeks. So I can honestly say if someone's really bad, like, hey, we gave you two weeks heads up, you could have gone and found someone else in that time. So.

All right everyone, guess what? The next time we see each other will be at Landscape Summit 2023. Can't wait for it. Monday, Tuesday, fun. It's gonna be great, Lots of people. Woohoo. But Wednesday is gonna be great because that's just us. So really looking forward to sharing a few things that I haven't shared with all of you on Wednesday.

And it's gonna be a great time. So definitely come early on Monday if you want a good seat because it's a much larger event center, much better seating. This time it's going to be classroom style so you'll have a table and a chair and it'll all be facing one direction. It won't be circulars. So much better seating for kind of everyone in the house. But if you want a good seat, come early because we start at 7:45. I start talking at 8 on Monday morning. Be there early if you want a good speed. Good seats. First come, first serve. I think registrations open at 5:30am Grab a coffee, grab some food, get the registration, claim your seat. It's gonna be awesome. So really Looking forward to it. I got some hidden surprises throughout, and it's gonna be an absolute blast. So I can't wait for it. And Wednesday at the church is gonna be strange, weird. We've never done anything inside of a church, a cathedral, whatever.

But I think it'll be memorable just because it's so different, right? So different than, like, a regular conference center or hotel is like, we're going to be at this church place. So I'm looking forward to it. I'm more excited for this conference than I ever have before, in part because I have put a lot of effort into what I'll be talking about, and I hope it is helpful, and I hope that you all make good connections with other owners, but more importantly, inside of Augusta Nation. So, as I've said before, all the value of join Augusta is the connection that you can make in the next next week. And so please, please, please take advantage of that. Anyone in yellow you know you can talk to, and there's no sort of competition or.

People thinking that you're trying to steal from them or anything like that. So take advantage of it. That is the reason why Augusta Nation exists and the benefits we have. And the next year is going to be a pretty crazy ride in terms of a lot of pieces coming together in terms of P4P CO pilot Max on the AI side. And so it's going to be a really, really cool time for Augusta, I think, over the next 12 months. So I look forward to seeing you all. It's going to be awesome. We'll see you in Louisville. Take care, everyone. Bye.