Mike Minutes Mastermind 10/14/2024

Destination. Hope you are doing well. Your text messages will probably count later. I usually wait for them to go out but I have to hop on right away. I am out of town. I'm gonna be working mostly here, but also meeting with Jonathan Patosnik. So that's the main reason I'm here. Let me know if it sounds decent. I got this microphone. Hopefully it helps with audio when I'm on the road because I don't like it when it's not good for everyone. So feel free to let me know if it is good or bad or indifferent. Quick update on the website.

Everyone. Oh, I forgot to put this in here. Let me put this in Facebook. I put a notice on Saturday. I think it was.

All of the forms.

On your estimate. Request forms now have. If they put in landscaping or other, there's now an optional text field that will pop up and allow them to put any more details in there. So there's still the ability for them to submit it without the details because you don't want to lose the lead over someone not wanting to type. However, if they.

If they want to add more details about their project, they can add them in there. So I'm making a couple little tweaks to it this week. Still making sure that the retention rate or the conversion rate stays high. The expansive forms have been huge for us. It really took us a long time last year to figure out how to do them correctly without slowing the sites down. But you'll notice like on all the forms now, when you fill out stuff, it like unlocks chunks of the form. So especially the instant price forms, it really helps us keep the site fast. There's stuff down the road we're going to be adding in terms of instant pricing around snow and winter services and adding credit cards on file, et cetera. And like all that will be expansive and it just keeps the site super fast but really, really improves conversion because when people see a massive form, like for example if you did the instant pricing form really long altogether with all your details and accepting the quote, like all big one big form, the conversion sinks like drops off a cliff. And so instead of us as we've added more to the forms, instead of our conversion going down, it's actually gone up about 5% because the fact that when they get there they just see three or four forms fields and like oh no easy, no problem, bam. And then the next thing is very relevant to them. It's like which service do you want? Oh, this one. Oh, I get my price roa. Okay, so you Gotta keep baiting them to keep converting. And so I look at like micro conversions. It's like, how do I convert them to just give me my name, give them for them to just give me their name and then get them their address and then get them the price and then get their credit card information and then get them to accept the estimate. And so if you do that in a very sequential micro way, I think you can get higher conversion versus being like, here's this massive form. It has all the options and services and pricing and an estimate proposal and acceptance, et cetera. So that's kind of the strategy behind that. And it's worked really, really well.

So anyways, all of that to say if you click on landscaping property or other, now have a field that expands down and is an optional field to add in notes about the job. And I do have a couple more tweaks on it this week still. We're rolling out. So shout out to the web team. They've been working on this for a long time. It takes like 50 times longer on these expansive forms than just a regular form. It's not like we can just change one thing and it's like, oh, just add a field. It takes way more time in terms of the sequence. Like make sure things are sequential. So shout out to them. They are the unsung heroes on those. So. All right, let's jump in. I haven't had a chance to open these up. One second. Mike. Man's Mastermind.

Present. First one of six today.

Got a mini, mini Monday marathon.

First one is from Mr. Anonymous. Heard the C suite podcast where you mentioned podcasts and TV interviews that you normally say no to. Wouldn't maximizing exposure with things like that be really good for selling franchises and getting to a thousand locations? It seems that you're really, you're hesitant to really, really sell franchises. We want you to sell. We want 1,000 locations. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you. So a few things.

First, the wider you go with your audience, the less adherence you have to your core values. And so if I start. So we've tested this. So we have ran some ads in the past, for example, for Augusta. And so the further I go from the people who watch my videos organically and organically or inside the community, organically inside the Facebook group, organically participate in pay for performance, etc. The further we go out, the further we get away from people that like, believe in what we believe in. And that is like the long term success of this industry. The long term ability to be able to change the level of professionalism.

And people that want to share their numbers, they want to do open book management and they want to have their business license. Like you'd be shocked, you'd be shocked at how like the amount of landscaping companies that still are not licensed and insured. It's insane. And.

And so.

Yeah, so that's the first thing. The second thing is you're 100% right in that the more locations we can get, the more I can afford to do. There's a lot of things I would like to do and even the thing that we're doing next year with the leads, like being able to have a lead lead source and not have a management fee and it's just per lead that is going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I cannot afford to do that with only the current number of locations. I just can't. And so you're 100% right. I can unlock a lot more things to the community. And my hope is that, you know, we don't ever have to raise like once you're at twelve hundred dollars a month, even when you renew, you're still at twelve hundred. We don't have any intention of increasing that. I have to not say that like that it's locked in legally because if we have rampant inflation at 10% for five years in a row, like we'd have to, we would have, we would be forced to do it because we just couldn't afford it. But I would like to be able to keep that down and just keep adding things to the community. So for example, like next year I had it when we crossed 150 locations, we'd do something for people doing over seven figures and you know, across their locations. And so that's next June. There's a lot of stuff I have down the road I want to add in, I want to add support in for general managers from corporate so that owners even have less.

Responsibility in terms of having to tell bad news or share the numbers or be blunt with general managers. Tough. And so it's also a way for you to basically not need the regional manager position if you have 4, 5, 6 locations to be able to have still someone that corporate that answer that the GMs answer to, for example, so that's down the road too. Like that would be another initiative. There's a lot of stuff I want to do. Like I have a lot of plans I kind of have when I think we can afford them. So like there's another couple things at 300 and then 500 that I really want to do. And so it just comes down to cost now. So you're right. So let me just premise. But you're right. The bottom line is when I talk to an audience, I'm trying to make sure that everyone that hears the message, it's true for. And so if I say everyone should join Augusta Lawn Care, I need to know that everyone hearing that message it's true for. There's a current. There's currently some gaps in that and these are initiatives we're trying to fix. So for example, there are people that cannot sell. They literally freak out when they have to knock on a door. And so regardless of how many.

Even if I give them leads, they will not be able to sell the jobs. And so instant price forms is in a way to bulletproof entry like the growth mode from 0 to 500,000, it's to bulletproof it. Because if I can get a lead and never have to put a person in front of them, I can bulletproof someone getting a location of 500,000 very quickly, then it's a matter of, well, then they still need the leads. Like they need the leads and then they need the conversion. So let's assume they stink at conversion. Let's give them instant quotes. Okay, so like you don't have to do sales. Then the next thing is I still gotta get leads. I got someone interested in the service to be able to actually get to the instant quote so that we can convert them. And we spend a lot of time and energy on like the conversion side. But then the problem has been come like Even the past 12 months, I've looked at like the location I've closed. They fail at getting leads. Typically, typically their lead source, almost all of them are under 30, 30 to 40 leads per month. And so, okay, how can we bulletproof lead generation? And so that's like next year's goal is like, okay, when someone signs up, can we reasonably say, if you have this budget, we will give you this number of leads and you'll get this number of customers. Can we do that? Because I know I can convert on instant quotes. And if I can make that bulletproof and then make bulletproof the lead gen side of things, I can accurately tell you that if you spend X amount, you'll get X amount of customers. And that's the unlock that everyone wants. And so like the lead service that we want to build next year is a big component of this. So that's like the entry level. I feel like there's still a gap there. I still Feel like I can't stand in front of people and say everyone should join Augusta because there's 20% of the population that cannot sell. They can't and they can't go get leads. Regardless of the done for you ads. They will not be able to run Facebook ads. They will not set up their pixel correctly. And even to this day, even inside of Gustonation, the vast majority of people don't set up lead tracking as described inside done for you ads. And so again, those are two very important parts. You have your lead gen and your conversion. We focus tons of time on conversion because something I can control and I've always avoided the lead gen side. But the reason I'm mostly venturing into it is because I know I can get a location from 0 to 500,000. If it's your second, third, fourth, if I can just say, hey you, you need X a budget. If you spend that, you will get to 30, 40,000amonth in revenue. I want to be able to say that. And I need it for entry level people that are just getting started, same thing.

It's not up to their skill set, it's not up to their ambition, it's not up to their budget. It's like this is a system. You literally just do this. That's the first part. The second component that I feel like we still have a gap on that we're really working hard on is for the million like 800 plus operator. And so that is the person that's scaling very large. And there are certain aspects that when you add lots of services and you have multiple people involved, we start to drop the ball at command center. And this has been something we've talked about for 12 months. And in 2024's initiative for command center was.

To beat the spring rush to crush the spring rush. And they did that. Not a single chrome call was missed. We, we never got behind where we were days behind on estimates like that was not happening. There was not. That was the first spring rush this past one where we were not missing calls. Estimates were always sent the same day. Like there wasn't any backlog. Emails were actually being going through. We didn't have where we could only get to your email like maybe once a day. Things were getting done correctly. That was great. 2025's initiatives and going forward it's like 20 2025's initiatives like become a world class call center. When people call in, they're like this is a different organization because of the training around how people answer the phone and Then it's like, how can we support larger locations where they don't need an office staff? And that has been something we've never really encountered until in the past few years, as now. In the past 12 months, we have doubled the amount of locations that are above 800,000 in revenue. And so that's put pressure on the system. And then we have to make sure that that is resolved. And so when I stand up in front of people and say, hey, everyone should join Augusta, and I'm getting close to it, I generally believe there's a few things I can plug. And I'll be able to confidently say that when that happens, trust me, I will let you all know and I'll ask for help to get to a thousand. Cause it's not about getting to 1000. The thousand.

Is a proxy for how many locations I think we will need in order to have the impact required to change the level of professionalism in the industry. And I believe at certain levels, between that and I have about four, I will be able to afford offering certain things that will just make this more obvious. And what stinks is I know that offering those will add more value and therefore attract more franchisees, but we just can't afford it. Like, I don't have millions of dollars to tap into from venture capital. Like, okay, we're offer this entire program and roll it out and hire the best executives in marketing to be able to roll this program. I don't have that money, so we got to do it a little bit more slowly. And so I'm getting close to where a couple holes need to be plugged, where I could confidently say this, and I appreciate the sentiment. And when we get there, I will let all of you know. And, yeah, I'll make sure that it's a win win for everyone. That's the objective here. All right, Ricardo from Alexandria, what are some of the things you had to sacrifice in order to achieve the goals and success you reap today, as well as what you expect to sacrifice going forward to reach future goals? Does sacrifices change over time due to the scope of the goal? How do you judge what is worth sacrificing? Oh, wow.

Like, the most obvious one for me is, like, you know, there it really goes. Back to the video I made a couple weeks ago here. I'm gonna hide comments because I get distracted. Sorry, guys. It's just. I'll come back to the comments. Give me a second.

Video I made a couple weeks ago about, like, what I would tell people in their 20s, young guys in their 20s that are trying to make money.

You know, in terms of sacrifice, like, no one wants to be alone. And especially like my family, my, my religion is very much like, you get married early and that's just the way it is. And so when you're kind of told all throughout your early 20s, there's a lot of pressure, like, hey, you should get a relationship, you should slow down in business, like that sort of thing. That's difficult. But more importantly, it's just like not having that person that publicly you can say is like my person.

In a culture and an environment and family that is, that is rewarded and encouraged. And don't worry, no one's pressuring me or anything like that. So that can be difficult. And I was very cognizant of the fact that I could not hold down. I would not be a good husband to anybody for the first, you know, my 20s. Like, I just, I just wouldn't be. And so I, I believe that will change. I believe, like I said in that video, my 30s, I will probably start a family. And so I will. I would not be what I am today if I did not make that sacrifice. And I would not attract the type of woman I will if I did not make those sacrifices and build the businesses. And the businesses worked on me. They humbled me a lot.

Like you all. Everyone here started to get to know me five years ago. We franchised right now. I was 20, I would have been 24, 25. Like 20 year old me was a little bit more arrogant because I was told all throughout, like, I wouldn't say arrogant, like I wasn't arrogant. I would just say I was more confident in my own, my opinion, which is like not good. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have been able to lead like I do today using those skillsets. Like the business had to work on me. And in the business working on me, I became a better person. That would be a better partner, that would be a better spouse, a better, like more emotionally intelligent, more adaptable, more sensitive to people's emotions because like, I just wasn't that way at the beginning. And so in terms of sacrifices, like, it really comes down to what are you willing to sacrifice. Like, if you're willing to work 16 to 18 hours per day, seven days a week, you will sacrifice everything but the business. Everything you won't be able to work out. Like there was a period of times I didn't work out.

First, one, two, three years in business, I didn't have a gym membership, didn't go to Anytime fitness. Except that first year, I guess I was doing part time personal training. But like, that's all I did everything. Like that's all I did. I slept and I worked. That's it. And so I will never go back to that, by the way. I will never go back to that level of sacrifice. I'll be honest, it's too painful. But it was what was required for what we've done now. But like.

There'S nothing inside of me that wants to work. And I'm not being hyperbolic here, 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Like if it was, if I was not working or I was not going to church, that's, that's all I was doing. And if I wasn't at the office, I was at home doing all the processing and invoicing it late at night. And there was times I needed money, so I'd wait till 12:01 and then process all the payments. Like.

That'S, that's everything. I don't recommend that for most people, but also if you're, if you're audacious enough to say you want X, Y and Z, or you look up to people and you're like, I want what they got. You got to rewind the tape and see what they sacrificed. And the vast majority of people you look up to, they did that for a period of time that is that no one really, they don't want to go. Like no one will go back to that. That's why I call it Dig, Build, bury. Like, you bury it and you never ever want to think about it again. It's painful. And most people will quit in that stage. But also once you get out of it, you don't really want to think about it. Like, if you hear me talk about those times, like, you'll hear me usually tear up because like it was very, very painful at that period of time.

So anyways, all right, how do you judge what is worth sacrifice? It's literally just like, what do you want more?

And so if you have no money and you're begging on the streets, you're paying for getting more money is extremely high, and it's probably higher than if you have a three bedroom house paid off, a couple cars in the driveway that are paid off, and you're going to vacation every quarter, you probably have a higher pain for money. Now that is only true if the benchmark for how much money you want to have is, let's just call it a million dollars. Now if you make this pain tolerance, if you increase your pain Tolerance. If you increase the amount of pain that you're experiencing by increasing the size and scope of the goals that you have and you make that a billion dollars, you'll still have a lot of pain even when you have a million dollars. And so it simply comes down to are you in more pain going from being at nothing to a million versus at a million versus a billion? In my opinion, yes. I do believe that like getting out of bad financial situation there should be in my. Like for me there is so much pain involved with like financial pain. Like it is over indexed. Like immediately everything else shuts down and I just go towards that and I'm willing to sacrifice whatever that is vast for me. And I think for a lot of people I've talked to is because of the way they're raised, they usually had some sort of financial upbringing that was tough or they saw strife or.

Tension around money and that just you kind of bend you in a way. It's just like I will never see that again. And I'm willing to invoke personal pain.

Every sort of pain possible in order to, to avoid that pain. It's like, what pain do you want? It's like, do you want the pain of working out and going to the gym and lifting heavy weights? And like this morning I don't want to wake up at 2am My time to go run on a treadmill. That's not like what my body wants to do, but like that's a pain I am willing to endure. To not have a body that is 60 pounds overweight and I get 80 achy and when I'm 60 years old I can't pick up my grandkids. Like I am willing to experience this pain of getting on the treadmill at the expense of not having to experience the pain of being six years old, not being able to walk, having all my knees blown out, being unhealthy on medication, I don't want that. I don't want that pain. And so I'm willing to do whatever it takes to avoid that pain. So it's really what pain do you want? And I think the same thing is true with money. It's like, which pain do you want? Do you want to be poor and never be able to like give people to people that you really see in need? Like everything happens down in Florida. Do you have the means to be able to give those people? Do you want to? And you can't. Like that's painful. You see things in your family or medical emergencies or people you love or employees you don't have the means to give anything to them that's painful. Do you want that pain or do you want the pain of.

Not? Like, because if you're going to solve that pain and you're going to sacrifice time, energy and money towards fixing that problem and becoming economically viable for your family and your community, you're going to probably also have to give up other things. And there's going to be pain around less social time, less time to be able to work on yourselves in terms of physically less time for social engagements and social obligations. There's just going to be less. There's going to be sacrifice in that area. But it's like, do you want to sacrifice that or do you want to sacrifice your goals, dreams, and the ability to be able to give to others? Everyone always talks about their goals and dreams. It's also a matter of, like, you can give. Like you have potential to give more. And I personally believe it's like, if some, like, again, I'm religious. If you're not, that's fine. If God gives you a talent, you got to use it. And so if you're going to use it halfway, shame on you. Not because you need to make a bunch of money and get a private yacht or get a private jet, but because God gave you a talent in order to be able to see the benefits and the return on that investment. So if you think about God as an investor, as a businessman giving you a talent and then be like, let's see what they got. He's looking for roi. And so if I am going to be a good steward of what God has given me in terms of talent and resources and privilege and ability and health, I want to get a great return on investment for my investor. And that's just how I look at it.

Okay, wow. Michael's fired up today.

All right, Mr. Anonymous, in anticipation of, in anticipation of Black Friday, do you recommend trying to give extreme discounts or incentives to entice people to sign up for services? An example, be sign up for mowing starting spring of 2025 and receive mowing for $29, knowing that after a couple of visits, the price would be increased. I know a lot of people get crazy and throw money around on Black Friday and figured some insane deal would get people calling or filling out web forms so we can not only grow our database, but fill, but help fill routes from locations struggling to do it. Do so in extreme growth mode. Okay, so my problem here is this. If you're trying to sell mowing during the end of November, their pain is extremely low, which means the price will have to be exorbitantly low for them to think about mowing because they don't have any pain. And so I like the idea of being like, hey, if you prepay for all of 2025, you're gonna save like 300 bucks if you buy it all on Black Friday. I like that. However, I'm giving my margin away if it's my existing customers and then for new customers that I'm giving away that money, they don't have any pain. So like, yes, everyone wants to save $300, but they have no pain to buy. And so I find that very difficult. I'm not opposed to this. I would really, really. This is actually a big reason why I went with Christmas lights to go all in on, because this is a perfect opportunity to go all in on selling Black Friday deals around Christmas lights. And so I would really encourage like a big push in October for Christmas, existing and past customers. November, you're actually starting to get like marketing to new customers. And then at the end of November, that is the day after, like when everyone's at the heat, the peak of the market, you do Black Friday sales and you fill up your December schedule for installs. But you want to get as much of that demand pulled forward as possible. And I'd be like advertising heavily discounts in October. November, I'd be getting all my existing customers like installed. November, I'd be going after like the, the vast majority of people that start thinking about Christmas lights. And then at the end of that demand, right after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, I'd be doing some very steep.

Deals. Now the deals could be more than just like money off. I would probably go deep on something like they get their third year free or they get.

Them and their neighbor do it, they get 50% off. Like buy one, get one free. Stuff like that gets really interesting to me. There's a hundred dollar off gift card that is a part of the door hanger that they can tear off on the pro shop. That'd be cool, you could use that. But I really think that the offer's got to be something special, something around like buy one, get one free like with their neighbors. I try to double my lifetime value of that interaction by doing like a buy one, get one. Then you get two people right next to each other. So good route density in terms of install and take down. It's easier. They, they get them, you get that, you activate them doing referrals, I. E. Their neighbor, things like that. Kind of, kind of cool.

Mr. Anonymous, how do we get the team to optimize our site for snow removal? There's a banner you can add so go to the dashboard and then you can put a banner right at the top. Has Max shoveling snow right at the top. I sent a couple email a couple weeks ago of the team asking about optimizing SEO for snow removal because we don't exist when search for snow removal. Is that something that is listed under the edit website page and I'm not seeing it or is that something that could be added later?

So we're going to get to instant price forms for snow. I think this thing's making me yell. I think I feel like I have a microphone. Mercy.

Yeah, we're gonna get like next year I have focus on instant pricing for snow which is another winter track as well as selling winter services which is another winter service track. And so that will be the main focus next year and so give me a little bit of time on this one if you could. We will really start thinking, I'm really trying to be deliberate over next 3, 3 winters to take these winter tracks and just nail them. And so we've done a little bit around winter services. I know like sales training, different tracks etc but really my focus is is Christmas lights. And so next year though I'm gonna take these other tracks and go deeper on them. So give me a little bit of time on that and it'll be much more where like there's just a lot more built out for that season. That track of, of off season. Wow. We are in the roll for off for Mr. Anonymous today. Have you just bringing people on in commission paying roles for door hangers. Our area has a huge amount of layoffs from the big manufacturers in town. I'm looking to capitalize on the situation. Would it make sense to bring three to four people on as canvassers and have them go door to door Door hangers. I was thinking paying $50 per new customer gain from whoever put the door hanger out. A spring example would be someone signs up for mowing and after the second service the commission would be paid to ever put their initials on the door hanger. Yeah. So the initials part is difficult mostly because they might go to your website, fill out the estimate, the instant pricing form and sign up from there. They might call from the form and also there what I would probably do if I was doing this. If you're going to do this really really well and you're actually going to get multiple people and you Want it to be perfectly fair. And you don't want them to ever have, like, a thing where they say, hey, I ran into one of my customers the other day and they said they signed up for service and you didn't give me my 50 bucks. And for all you know, it was just someone who called in. So I'd be careful about this, especially if you're going after. Just if you're doing. If you're doing commission only, which I'm a big fan of, if you're doing commission only, especially people that just got laid off. I would make sure this is bulletproof by doing something like, hey, we're going to give you this area. I actually think this is really interesting. If you say, I'm going to give you door hangers, I'm going to give you postcards, I'm going to give you flyers, I'm going to give you yard signs, and I'm going to give you these neighborhoods. And here's the four things that you can do. You can do door hangers, instant prices. You can knock on people's doors. You can put in door.

Yard signs in and around the neighborhood, and you can also hold a sign next to the road in that area, whatever. Give them the tools and resources, like a package, like, here's all the stuff I need. Here's a sign that you can hold on the side of the road. Here's 25 signs for yard signs. Here's 2,000 door hangers. Here's, you know, 500 flyers and 200 postcards. For example, here are the neighborhoods. If you get any customers, any customers that come from this area over the course of the next month, you get a commission. I like that. I think that most people, though, they're not gonna be entrepreneurial enough to kind of like, okay, so I'm gonna put the door hangers on this one. Then I'm gonna do knocking on these ones the day after, and I'm gonna do yard signs on these four stop signs. But if you kind of make it, what's their territory? It's like, hey, you get these 3,000 houses, that's your area. And then they get a farm it. I think that gets really, really interesting. But even if you don't do that, I do believe keeping track of which neighborhoods you're sending them to, and then just make it based on the address. Yes, there might be a lead that comes in from that address that wasn't attributed directly to the door hangers. But. But I think it's the most fair if you're Doing commission only.

Copilot feedback. Unable to edit email templates in the app before sending on iPhone you just turn, just turn your screen horizontal and you should be able to edit it. It's just that be free. The editor that we use it looks really really bad on vertical because they only have like a left verif like a thing on the left. So if you turn your screen sideways you should be able to edit it. Unable to scroll without making estimate or pop up window disappear. Using Microsoft Edge on laptop. It's annoying and the only workaround that kind of works is zooming the screen out to eliminate the need to scroll. Unable scroll without making email or estimate pop up window disappear.

Send this into atc. You'd be like, hey, this isn't necessarily a bug, but it kind of is a bug they might just put as a bug. I'm not following exactly what you're talking about, to be perfectly honest. But.

Yeah, submit that just to atc. And even if you could screen record what you're showing, it might be Microsoft Edge thing. I'm guessing the pop up is like kind of going too far out and if you made a little smaller then you could see around it. I'm guessing that's what you're talking about. But feel free to submit it. Everything else seems to work great. I love the forecasting tool and the metrics. Keep up the great work. There's some cool stuff we I was looking at the other day. Yeah, I'm looking for it. We want to. Yeah, KPI cockpits me way better down the road. Okay, last one. Will you tell me more about the support for managers to. So we don't need a regional manager. How will that work? When you think that will be a thing? I don't want to promise anything because it really does hinge most on us being able to afford it. And so as we get more locations, I believe I kind of know when we'll be able to afford this sort of thing. And it's not a matter of when you won't need a regional manager because there always be like it's kind of like command center. It's like, look, it's not going to be a hundred percent what you're going to get, but can I make it 95%? And so in order to get it's always best to have a regional manager that you have that could actually go in person to your location, stand in for your GMs, etc. That's always going to be the best. But I do see as locations get to two or three. It's tough to have a regional manager over that because the metrics don't really make sense yet. And usually that's the owner. And so I'm thinking like the same way. I really believe There's a gap between 800,000 in revenue annually at a location and 1.5 in terms of the kind of gap of revenue, of profitability wilderness. I also believe that when we start doing multiple locations, there'll be a weird wilderness between one and like four.

And I believe it has to do with the fact that the regional manager position being fully overhead costs too much on those. Those businesses. So I think that'll be a really helpful thing to get people to be able to. It'll encourage them to take a location, make it really profitable, and move on to another location knowing that. That GM has a little bit more support. So again, that's way down the road in terms of timing. I don't want to give any sort of promises. I think we can afford around 250 locations because we would need to have internal systems and I'd have to hire people, etc. Okay.

Boom, boom. What do we got? We got some questions.

Well, there's a lot of people live today.

Is this the first one? No, this is the first. First one. I believe. I want to take a pause in 2025 and stay in the 500 to 800,000 and optimize. Is that a good time to replace old trucks, some 22 years old and 200,000, or is it time to stack cash? You can kind of do these both.

Yeah, if you're. Man, I. I'm gonna talk about this at Commerce, but I generally believe that you're 500,000. I just optimize your profit. I just. I just see all the math pointing to get to 5 to 600,000 and then just raise prices. Don't ever buy a truck and hire more employees and don't hire any more employees and just raise prices until you're at 750 to 800,000 and all the extra revenue goes straight in your pocket. Your question, though, is like, do you buy the trucks? I think it's just a balance, right? I think still in profit mode, you can buy new trucks. Not as a matter of, like, I need more capacity. Like, you getting a newer truck does not increase capacity. It reduces management.

Involvement, and that ultimately will reduce your capacity in the long run. But in the short term, you measure capacity based on a number of trucks. So you're not increasing your capacity. You're still in profit. Mode. But what you're doing when you're. If you have one location, for example, I like this year, like what you're doing and getting that profit, getting the nicer truck so that when you hand it off to a manager, it's easier to manage. Less trucks that are nicer, just easier to manage. And I've seen this at the Bellingham shop when I had trucks there that were.

15 years old, you know, they're managing around them. It's like, well, that one doesn't really pull weight very well. Or this one, like, sometimes struggles. So, like, we're gonna avoid it. Like, I don't want that for a general manager. I want to be like, you know, all the trucks work the same and they're copy and paste. And so the same way I think about locations, I think about individual trucks and. And like cruise, I want every truck to be the same. I want them all to be the same. They can pull the same weight, they do the same jobs. And that's how I can copy and paste it.

And it's easier to find a general manager when there's less trucks. So less.

Maintenance, less oil changes, less things to worry about in terms of there's less tires that could pop, there's just less to manage. And then when they're newer, they just can depend on them. So I genuinely believe you have five trucks, when in reality you get away with four if they were just newer. I've seen. I've seen even the Bellingham shop, I think you get away with 3 to 4 less trucks or even 5 less trucks if they are all the same and brand new. And so that's what they're going to be switching over to over this winter. We've already kind of half the fleet. I'm going to get rid of all the other ones and do the other ones because, like, I generally believe a location that has, let's just call it 12 trucks can have six or seven trucks if they're all new and they work all the time. And you're like, well, it's going to cost extra. Yeah, but like the dependability of that, being able to hand that to a general manager without them having to know mechanics, without them having to juggle things like that. Level of management is so much greater once you add that complexity into the business and variability. Also looking at getting a bigger project and replacing with treatments. We're really wanting to do only recurring services that cross sell. Well mowing treatments, winter service, etc. Good or bad, this is a great. No, like you can do all of this at the same time. And so, you know, at 500, 800,000 in the perfect world, I just spend one year and just optimize my pricing. Right. Don't change anything else. It really sounds to me Connor, like this is probably more like a year and a half and that is okay. First year I'm going to really focus on pricing. I'm going to stack cash and I'm going to stop to be in the business. Going into that next spring rush, I'm probably going to make sure I get new trucks. I'm going to cut out old, cut out complex services and really just focus on recurring meaning I'll probably next year $700 to 750 be very profitable. Then use that money, get the trucks cut out the services that I don't want. Knowing that I've my lead flow alone is going to keep me at capacity with the other services.

Running ads for winter services. I think about totals or offers as talked about in done for you ads. Is it safe to say that we are offering snow for free since they are paying bi weekly for clearance? It's all how you want to package this. You could present snow is free or you could present all of your snow service included in this price or like get all of these other things. It's like which one do you want free you could say is for. So again I believe this has to do with, with people that pay year round and there's no snow. They don't like it. So what am I going to do? I'm going to advertise if there's not snow around. Tired of paying for snow services and not, not, not getting any service. Get all these other things included for this price which is the same as what you're paying now. You get all this other stuff for free and that's gonna be like the trimming the bushes, edging the gutter, inspections, et cetera. And then if there's tons of snow and just dumps, people are like freaking out about the cost of their, their snow service. Then I'm gonna pitch them again and I'm gonna pitch like hey by the way, you can do winter services and you get your snow for free.

Also very appealing.

You could run yeah Dustin, you could run ads both ways literally depending on the weather. So if it dumps snow I'd go one way. And people were like freaking out about the fact someone just charged them $200 to snow plow their driveway. And then when there's no snow and and everyone's I do this Literally the first week of the month when everyone's paying invoice for last month and no snow showed up, I'd be hitting. I'd be hitting ads for.

Tired of paying for snow and not. And not ever seeing snow. Get all this other stuff included.

All right, this is Connor from Evansville. I wanted to do replacement trucks debt free. Currently at four trucks. I think two to three would be need to be replaced. The trucks aren't much worth much. Their salvage value may pay for wraps. Yeah. So I would probably do one, make sure you have plenty of cash, then do the other one at the end of next year once you have plenty of cash. And then going the following spring, I'd do the simplification of the services. So next year is like optimize for profit is going to be price increase, reduce marketing spend, maybe replace one truck. At the end of the year, I'm going to replace another truck. I'm going to cut out complex services. And that puts you into 2026, where with a model that could actually be handed off to a general manager, that is good equipment, a crew under eight, profitable services, simple services like that's what I'm going after.

All right, 40 minutes. Hope that was good for everybody. I feel like this made me kind of yell because my voice is like strained mercy. All right, love you all. Hope you have a fantastic week and we'll talk to you tomorrow.