Mike Minutes Mastermind 10/18/2024

Hello, Augusta Nation. Welcome to another Mike Minutes Mastermind. Let's go ahead and get things kicked off.

We'll jump right into questions.

Happy Friday.

Still out of town. Just took a step away from the conference just so I could do the mastermind here. Want to make sure I stay consistent. So first one up is from Travis. I don't know if this is a question or just rambling. Any thoughts? Welcome. I recently watched your video about advice to men in their 20s. Solid advice. Thank you. I'm not sure why, but I especially enjoyed the clips of you in the gym pushing and lifting heavy things. I think it's humbling and inspiring to see a leader disciplining themselves. I know you've said that you let your results speak for themselves. I'm wondering if it helps those still in the dig build bury, dig build phase of life and business to see behind the scenes they can understand that how they are feeling is not strange or due to deficiency on their part. I think it inspires those looking up to you to see the hard work and some of the pain behind the scenes to make progress possible. Kind of like a GM hanging out the shop until all the crews are in. Not saying you don't, just an observation. I'm trying to figure out if this is accurate and if so, how to apply this to my size team. I'm looking forward to breaking that video down into segments to share with my team over the next few weeks in our stand up meetings. So.

I think when you're in the dig build phase, you know, and if you don't know what you're talking about. He's talking about the dig Build Barry. It's the last chapter of the book.

I think if I zoom out of my career, I'm still in that phase as well.

And it's a lot of eating. Humble pie. Because if you're digging, you're discovering new territory you've never been to before. And so you make a lot of mistakes. And so, you know.

I think like even, even being around this event, being around Jocko, you know, being around Alex from a sales perspective, Jocko from a leadership perspective, John Patosnik that I was with earlier this week, like you just realize like you have so much to learn. You have, you basically know nothing in comparison. And like there's so much way, so many more ways to improve. And so in the macro, I think like in terms of businesses, in terms of like me as a leader, like I still have a long way to go too. And so I feel like the exact same way you would feel. And so I would say.

One of the best ways for you to take that is like, you can tell people how hard you work. You can even show them how hard you work. But ultimately, when you make a mistake, I think is actually the most proving point of how you handle it. I'm not the best at this. I, like any human being, has pride and ego. And so.

Trying to keep that in check and then being able to deliver, you know, what was the required.

Decision in the moment, despite making a big mistake and being able to take ownership of that, I think speaks a lot to people more than anything. Even leading by example. It starts to become very difficult as you grow the business because you can't. Like, is the wrong move to actually jump in the field at a certain point in size in your business. It's like the wrong move at some point. However, sometimes when the team knows it's the wrong thing for you to jump to the field and then you do it anyways, it almost proves to a point sometimes of, like, this is the level of importance I'm placing on this new objective or this new thing that we just talked about. Like, sometimes doing that is actually a powerful point. So in the past, like, I've jumped in the field in years past when things aren't going well and sometimes a morale booster and like, to prove the team, like, I'm not removed. And secondly, sometimes it is to prove a point.

And sometimes leadership by example is good. Like, doing that is good. But eventually, as the business grows, you can't. And so usually people only look to you for leadership when there's bad things happening. And so how you handle those when you make mistakes and stuff, I think is, like, probably the most important. And.

So, yeah, I just, like, if all of us could just take the moments when we were heated. We want to say bad things.

We want to react emotionally. If we could just perform well in those moments. Probably the other 95% of your day or week as a leader is kind of net neutral to everyone's opinion of you. It's, what do you do when you make a mistake, when you're mad at somebody, when someone says something bad about you, when emotions flare up, can keep those things in check.

I think that's a huge delineator of. Of leadership, in my opinion. Johnny. I don't know who Johnny is.

Johnny. Oh. Oh, I think he's a new one. The new owners. It's coming next week. Okay. How low should I be willing to go on my hourly rate during January and February for one time? Projects. My current rate is $80 and planning on going to $90 per year next year. I'll be coming train next week and switching to Augusta January 1st. Yeah. So like we'll talk a lot about this next week, a lot at conference. But like, I don't think changing your hourly rate is going to be the objective. That would be an immediate way to increase demand and you might take, you know, a 40% close ratio to a 50% close ratio, which would be great. That increased revenue theoretically by about 15 to 20%. If you lower price and then increase your close ratio by 25%, you increase your revenue by about 15 to 20%. That's cool. But my thought is how instead of going after that, do we go after the 50% increase in your off season revenue? And that is like, do I need to cross sell and start a new vertical of services? Do I need to market to a completely different segment of my customer base? Do I need to focus on recurring revenue instead of having to go after new jobs all the time? I don't have to reduce my hourly rate. We'll talk more about it next week. Johnny Eric from Largo, FL hiring question I quickly lost two team members and have been doing waves of interviews. I find myself wanting to give people opportunities that aren't an obvious choice for the position, some lacking experiences and many who have sob stories for a lack of a better description of trying to support their families with numerous children or just in a tough life transition. I've been burned by this mentality before, thinking someone was a family man trying to do good. But of course there are good and bad actors in everything. Do you have any mindset of this to balance not being overly emotional in the hiring decision making process? Decision making versus keeping a human element and possibly giving someone that one opportunity they need to really elevate themselves in their life. So I'm an optimist. I like to help people. This has led to many problems in my career of hiring the wrong people, including some of what you've seen at Copilot earlier this year. I wouldn't say actually human element, just like giving people the benefit, not holding on to people too long. So like I try to, I try to be a nice person too. But you have to ask yourself, is cutting off the arm going to save the organism? And in our case, as leaders, we are responsible for the whole organism, the whole organization. And so if disallowing or.

Rejecting one part of the body or cutting it off and severing it from the rest of the organism is what is required for the organism as a whole to live. We have to go through the short term pain of severing that person away or rejecting them like.

A cancer. Like, we gotta push out of the system in the hiring process. And so typically, if someone has made bad decisions in the past, they will continue to make bad decisions in the future. That's just the bottom. Like, that is the brass tax, unfortunately. Cause humans don't like to change. 90% of people, okay, that's a random number. A lot of people, once they have a record of making bad decisions, will continue to make bad decisions because they don't want to change. And like, well, why don't they change? It's good. There's a lot of things that are good for people and they still don't want to change. I've, I've learned this even the past few years is like, there are things I see as very, very positive for someone, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be a positive change in their mind. And so their adoption of that change, if that is the thing that ultimately will unlock their success, I don't really concern and not concerned as to whether or not that is the right decision as much as them executing on it. And so I don't need to look right in front of them. And so in this case, like, if someone has made all these mistakes in the past and decision making is poor, whether it be having a bunch of kids with a bunch of people and now they have child support, like, just realize if someone has child support for multiple people, they literally might be having half their paycheck gone. That's very, very common. And when you, when I see child support on Frontline team members, I know right off the bat they're working for like 10 bucks an hour. Because by the time they taxes out and they take out child support, they just, they honestly can't live. Like, you can't live on $10 an hour. And so I just know eventually they're going to leave. They're gonna be doing something on the table, they're gonna be something on the weekend, they're gonna try to take customers, they're gonna be trying to hold on a second job at night and it's gonna interfere. They're gonna have a child where they have possession for like they, where they can see them for a few days. And I went off. So it just. You got to decide what you want to, what you can handle. Like, we all want to do good, and that's fantastic. But they're Ultimately, you need to serve the organism. The entire organization as a whole needs to be served first. So I just put that as a caveat. I'm guessing a big part of the answer is the context of current size and needing of the business needs of the business. A smaller team leaves less room for gambles. I know you didn't hire Corey, but being familiar with his story, he had no background in lawn care at all, but grew into becoming a solid GM pretty quickly. Is it just a numbers game? And you never know how someone will step up and grow once given the resources and opportunities. You may have spoken of this before, but what are your top qualities you are looking for in mowing team members? P.S. i just caught up on the last couple weeks of masterminds and have been fire crazy how timely some nuggets can be. I'm so appreciative that you do these for these for us. You're welcome. Yeah, I try to stay consistent, but I appreciate everyone for listening to them too. I look back at the numbers usually a couple weeks after and the vast majority of owners are watching these every day. So that's why I keep doing these. If you know, 20% of people watching these would be hard for me to get motivated do these every day. But almost like last few weeks it's been 150 to 180 views video after I go back. So I'll keep doing them.

So keep in mind, you know, when you mentioned Corey, so you know, I didn't hire Corey. However, he. We were not hiring a general manager at the time. And so that was not the criteria in which we were hiring him. We were hiring him for will he show up on time, will he be dependable and will he does he want to succeed in his current role? Like as much as you want good, better things for people, you you ultimately have to hire for the role that is at hand. And so Corey exemplified early in the training process that he would show up on time, he would do his very best and he was low drama and so. And he was trying to improve himself and so those are like some of the fundamentals. Now the improvement of yourself part is gravy on top when it comes to a frontline team member that's out in the field because.

Because ultimately probably 1 in 10, maybe I'd say more likely 1 in 20 or 30 of your frontline team members. And I mean no disregard when I say frontline. These are the people actually make us all money. They're the most important position in my opinion inside the company because they make us money and that's the oxygen of the business. But what I would say is for a frontline team member, having the desire to want to do more in life is not a criteria, it is a bonus. And I would hope that I can take that raw talent and skill and hopefully develop into something more down the road. Because they have a desire to grow. But if you're constantly asking yourself, I want people that want, like are listening to audiobooks and reading podcasts, that's your, like benchmark for getting into mowing lawns. You're probably a going to never find someone when you need them because there's literally one out of 20 or one out of 30 and two, if you do hire them, they will probably accelerate faster than your business does, especially if you're a small company. Like, they will likely need within 12 months a management position. So if you're not large enough, you can't actually absorb their talent. So just keep that in mind. I think I'd be looking at the very beginning, like, do they have a track record of staying at a place consistently? Do they show up on time, do they stay committed? And they have a team mentality like the vedish of those three things. They can work frontline team member, and then once they are in that position, do they then look for more opportunities, they want to grow, et cetera? Awesome. I hope I can grow my business fast enough for them to grow within the organization. But that is not a criteria, in my opinion, for a laborer. Some people don't want management. Some people don't want to be a leader. Some people don't want salary, Some people don't want more responsibility. And for us as type A people, that's hard for us to wrap our hand around. So some people don't want that. They want to clock in, clock out, they want weekends off, and they do not want to think about work as soon as they leave your place of business. And that's fine. So don't impose your will and your desire for others, which is you are hungry, you want to make more money, you want to get to the next level, you want to keep going. And despite that, knowing only 3 to 6% of my team is going to actually take me up on the offer of getting the next level of their career, I am going to use that 100% across the board or once they're inside of my team. Cause I don't want that percentage to slip to 1 or 2% because I simply just said, ah, they all just want a job. They don't want to go anywhere in the future. So I will still treat the entirety of them as being successful people that are driven once they're in the team. But the criteria to get on the team is different. And that is I just need you to show up. I need you to be part of this team. I need you to work hard. If you can do those things, you're in the team. Once you're in the team, I am then going to treat you all as if you want to get the next stage of your career and knowing very well that only one out of 20 might do that. But if I don't have that premonition, there's a likelihood that instead of 1 out of 20, it becomes 1 of 50 because some people don't see that inside of them. And so I would put all. Channel all that goodwill that you have that you want to help other people towards your current team and then make the benchmark to getting into the team. Simply the desire to show up on time, work hard and be there for everyone else.

And then you let chips fall where they may.

Joel from Lafayette. Why do we not have any door hangers in the smaller size of 8 by 3 size? It looks like they cost 25% less. So we could get more door hangers for the same cost. Eight by three? That's very small. Mercy.

I don't know, to be perfectly honest with you. You could ask the MU team if it's just something we can check for at Vistaprint. Just tell them, hey, we want everything smaller, but that's pretty small.

Feel free to ask the media team. Just see if they can ask Vistaprint just across the board on all of our Designs they get 8x3 if that's something you want.

Sometimes it's just a Vistaprint thing, but just ask the media team. MediaGustAlongarServices.com.

This is Dustin from Central Illinois. You mentioned a couple back months back how you frame speeches and videos, like an intro, three point and a summary. Can you go back over that framing? I can't find that mastermind. Yeah. So basically any conversation, speech, keynote, whatever, you're basically looking at your hook and then your meet and then your CTA or your call to action. So meet, Sorry, call to action. Well, sorry, I've been tired. It's been a long week. Intro or your hook and then your meet and then your CTA or call to action. So if I'm having a meeting in front of my team, my hook is going to be everyone absolutely crushed it Last week on P4P. Here's how you can make more money on your next paycheck. Meet three things get out of your when you get to work, you're out of the truck immediately. Here's so and so they they crushed it. Next thing you can do is pack a lunch. You don't have to stop at the gas station. Bobby over here. Last week I saw I started packing a lunch. To me it's $4 more per hour. Case in point number three and inside of the meat. All I'm doing is saying is my problem and then my resolution and then my.

Case study. So there's that the three parts of your hook, your meat and your call to action and then each piece of the meat. Usually two or three things depending on the size and length of your webinar or pinot or team meeting. Each of those three parts each these of each of those parts in the meet consists of the problem, the solution and the case study or testimonial. So if I'm doing that, I did it there and I was like, here's the problem. People don't show up to work and then get out. They spend 30 minutes dildelling. Here's the solution. Get here earlier and don't make coffee here. Get coffee before you get to work and so you can get out of here before everyone else is done. Case study Bobby over here has been crushed and it made $4 more an hour because he did exactly what I just said. So.

There'S that.

If you look at most of my webinars at the framework they follow.

Got some other questions came in. Thank you. Tim Connor, takeaways from the conference so far. Why have the entire leadership team go when are events useful for teams and leaders? Teams when are events useful for leaders or team members?

Yeah, so we planned this one a long time ago. Obviously all of our leadership team follows Jocko and has for a long time. And so part of it is like spending time together. We've never done this before where the leadership team actually goes off site for any period of time. So it's helpful just to get just from a personal perspective like trust, seeing people outside of work, etc. Specifically myself. I don't talk a lot of like smaller talk in and around work and like especially with my schedule now, I'm actually quite removed outside of just like I get into a meeting, it's like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And we're out. Like it's bam, bam. So getting out, spending a few days is important. Second thing in terms of takeaways in the conference apart. Just give me a couple days on that. I haven't done a debrief with the team. So give me, give me till next week on that one. Connor. And then in terms of when you take everyone versus some people, it depends on the topic. So for example, if you were doing a training event around like safety or doing a training event around.

Efficiency, I try to take my entire frontline team members like everyone. If it's about leadership, keep in mind that most people don't want to be leaders. You just look at the ratio of any company like most people don't want to be leaders, some people want to make more money and they think that leadership is the only way to do that. But most of all, statistically speaking, most people don't want to be the leader at the top of the org. They'd rather be more of a follower. And especially when I talk about the context of home services and our individual locations, you usually have like one general manager and six to 10 people underneath them. Those six to 10 people, maybe one of them wants to be a leader but the other ones they just want to punch a time clock and make some money, make good money on P4P. And so.

I would never take them to an event around leadership. And I made this mistake back in the day. I took my entire team to a two day conference around project management and it was to everyone else's owners and I brought my entire team like, I mean like finally people that had just started two weeks ago, I pulled them into it. Probably a mistake, probably should have taken like people that have been with me for two plus years that knew the systems would actually be able to have context of what we were talking about and apply it to their, to their day to day. So I would say if they can apply it to their day to day, I'm willing to invest. Also if they showed tenor, like if they stuck around, I'm willing to invest more.

So you know all the members of the current team I've known or worked for with directly for four plus years. So like I'm confident that the investment I make this week is, is well worth it and it'll help them in their career, it'll bring more to the organization as a whole and them learning will help a whole lot of other people. Like I always look at it as like ROI is like return on impact, the impact I get from that investment. So you know, if someone like Nick can learn something here and then on his coaching calls he has every day, multiple times it's able to pass that stuff along, it helps the entire org. So even though like an event like this might cost, you know, Augusta Nation $15,000, it's a matter of, okay, well that's a. That's well spent. If nick talks to 100 people a month and Lee is able to help keep people in key crisis, Liz is able to take stuff to command center and that all 150plus locations. Like it's a good return and the bigger your organization gets usually. That's why I see a lot more training happen at bigger companies. Because it's easy to make sense of the return when you have a lot more impact from the decisions that are being made from a leader. So usually when you can make more sense of spending higher ticket items or training, et cetera. So.

It becomes more and more important to people that are in those levels too. So when I hired, I don't think he mind me saying Josh. Like that was one of the things like, hey, so like can I go to this conference? Like being pro them learning I think is just net. Net positive for everyone. Because I know if Josh comes away from that event learning one or two new things about, you know, product management that could, you know, there's 30, 40 people inside the org for copilot like that could massively impact all of them. And so is it worth several thousand dollars? Yes, but be careful. Cause I do this. I took my entire team to like a business event and people that had only mowed grass have no desire to do business whatsoever. And half of them fell asleep. Like that's just the bottom line. So if they're interested, if they're willing to invest, to be engaged and then take those skills and I can see ROI for it, for the organization as a whole, then I'm all in. And so especially now that we have the number of locations that we do, the people like the leadership team, figuring certain things out has a huge ripple effect and can save huge amounts of time, not only for the franchise, but for each owner. Because if they have the unlock for you when you call, because they have a different perspective given from this event, huge amounts of return on value.

All right, everyone, have a fantastic Friday, an awesome weekend. We'll see you on Monday. Take care.