Mike Minutes Mastermind 10/21/2024

Welcome my way to a Monday Mike Minutes Mastermind.

Get this thing kicked off.

We got a light now in the house. So this should be bad for a better lighting for everyone compared to last week.

All right, let's see here.

All right.

First question is coming from Mr. Anonymous. How do you go about determining if you make changes to your SOPs on how you do certain things in the business? Is there a cost benefit analysis you go through or just rule things out as things comes up, keeping in mind that every time you create an sop, it will create drag on.

Hiring and it'll create a drag on onboarding, and it'll create a drag on training in terms of the amount of time it takes for someone to actually absorb those SOPs. So the reason I say that is because I think most time when people start thinking about SOPs, actually they go overboard and they'll start creating SOPs for things that actually should just be on the job training because they are in flux.

So.

Like, if I just created a video and said, hey, watch these videos and you join Augusta, the problem with that is they would need to be updated every quarter or every couple months because just a few months ago we didn't have the sales system for which services, a few months ago we didn't have the fourth stage of growth or the fourth stage of a profitable business model at Augusta. So the reason we have training every couple of months is because those things change. And so either A, you're going to have to increase the amount of training you're doing or you're going to have to have to make part of your onboarding process that you train people and SOP instead of having it documented. So most time, a lot of us want to, as managers want to document everything. But just keep in mind it will create drag on the onboarding process. And if it's something you're going to be changing frequently, you actually create more work for yourself and more confusion for new employees simply because it's an SOP that changes frequently. So the number one thing I'm asking myself is, is this in flux? Is it changing frequently? If it is, I'm going to make it less of an SOP and more of just a training process that needs to be trained whenever someone new comes on.

Because things, if things are not in flux, though, for example, if you use the same mowers and you always have, you could probably create SOPs around like the maintenance of those mowers. But if you're going to create SOPs around.

Let me think for a second.

Your Winter service sales process, you might want to not cement that and create SOPs for it. When this is your first season doing sales for winter services and actually sharing the price comparison, I would probably be more in test mode and then I would probably, over the course of time, I know I'm going to change it every year slightly. So why would I make an SOP for it? I'm going to make it part of my training because there's going to be new people in a year and there's going to be new processes in a year. So if it's something that's going to be changing a lot, I usually don't create a lot of documentation around it. I'm also less managerial driven. You know, something like commands that they have all sorts of documentation sops on stuff. And then they do have to spend a significant amount of time updating those very, very ongoing to make sure the step they did.

Andrew from Bentonville, how would I switch an employee from hourly commission? I have an employee I need to lay off, but he wants to stay. I think he could do well. DOOR knocking what you could do is you could. You could do it like this. So for example, if they're like, yeah, I don't want to go on straight commission, which I would, I try to do that first. But let's assume that they're like, I don't know about that, then what I would say is this. Look, in order to be able to keep paying you the same hourly wage, you need to be making at least X amount of sales per week. If you don't make that maximum sales, you're going to get laid off. Then you still get them commission on top of it. Right? So for example, if you're like, well, $50. If I'm willing to give them $50 per lead that they get.

And that means that you get one every two hours in order to hit like their $22 per hour base, for example, plus taxes. So all you could then say is, okay, well, I need then 20 leads per week, right? And they're going to keep their 40 hours. Or let's say you're going to say 30 hours a week, you do it. I need 50, a minimum of 15 leads. If you don't get 15 leads, I'm going up to hours or lay you off. So you could do that. And it just depends on like your incentive structure. But like, I usually like someone to want to go for it big, not just like, oh, I just got past 15 and I'm good for the week. I can just like, you know, kind of like, you know, if I get 15 the first few days and I can just chill out for the rest of the week, I'd rather someone is hungry and I'm wanting to get more, but it's definitely a way to be able to present it to them in terms of like, you know, your costs are and just being like, hey, I'm gonna give you a minimum, like your base pay is going to be $22 an hour still. But if you don't hit X amount of leads per week, then I'm gonna have to lay you off. So you can have as a floor and create the floor by allowing them to stay on base pay and then having the commission on top of that. But then obviously there's no ceiling because they can make a lot more sales if they, if they're really good.

But I would, I would try to go the commissioner only, but if someone's really like, you know, balking at it, I would probably just institute a floor of base pay based upon how many sales they get. Oh, I apologize. My mic is not going on.

And we're back folks. Sorry about that.

All right, number three, Kevin from South Haven, Mississippi. Best place to get a heloc. Typically it's with wherever your current bank, wherever your current mortgage is at. It's in terms of simplicity because you don't have to resubmit a whole bunch of stuff. And so for example, if you have a loan with.

I don't know, rocket mortgage, which they're going to sell it off to. Okay, let's go with.

There's just so many banks. Mercy. Let's just say you're with US bank, you have a your mortgage with US Bank. I would probably start with going into US bank and be like, hey, I want to get a heloc. Because then what they can do is they can they stay the primary and secondary mortgagee in terms of.

The person that's on the note. It's not to say you can't go get a HELOC from some another third party, but from an ease of underwriting, valuation, etc, if you go with your current one, like your credit, current credit union, usually the easiest. So if you've been in your house for more than three or four years, you probably have significant amount of equity. I would go to your bank, like, hey, you know, my house is worth 700,000, I owe 400,000 on it. Usually they're going to give you between, depending on the bank, between 70 and 90% of the value of the house. If they're more conservative, they're going to be more in that 70 to 80% range. Usually when times are really, really good, people will flex that all the way up to 95 or 90% of the home value. But that's rare. That's very rare, especially right now. So, you know, if you have $700,000 value house, $400,000 equity, you might get a $150,000 HELOC pretty easily. And then what's nice about the HELOC is it's revolving so you can pay it off, use it, pay it off, use it, and then it's a variable interest rate. So right now, interest rates aren't going to be great. You're looking at probably 9% for a HELOC.

Approximately, but it'll probably go down a couple percentage points over the next year or so as interest rates come back down. Is there an invoice template for Christmas lights? I don't believe there is. I don't think there's anything different between invoice templates on Copilot. So you probably just want to change it in your estimate description or like your items, services, I guess you could say. Or in your terms, like the general one invoice template that you have.

Garrett from Glendale. All right. We got a big one. A couple days ago. I had an employee tell me that one of our team members told them they did cocaine a few weeks back. Whoa. This is like third party information. Okay. Obviously we need to let the team go. I would not assume that. I am curious the best way to go about this. This teamer has been with me for about 14 months and one of our hardest working team members, he struggled the last four months. Okay. With attendance and being professional. I put him on a PIP and it improved. Okay. Marijuana is also legal in Colorado. I do not drug test for it as long as it doesn't interfere with work. Okay, so let me be clear. Someone told you that someone else told them that they took cocaine a few weeks back. In the past, they were struggling with attendance of being professional, but sounds like they're improved since then. Okay. Is it best to let him go and not say anything? Should I let him? Should I tell him I need to take a drug test and fire based on that? I want what is best for him and I would like to separate as amicably as possible. The other factor is that he has about 80 friends or family guru views for us in the past six months. So I see a potential that we could retaliate. He could retaliate and tell his friends and family to change those reviews to 1 stars. I'm open to severance packages as recommended by Dave Ramsey and don't want to leave him out high and dry as he has been a good team member and buses. But for us the last 14 months, I want to let him go in a way that would honor God and not be humiliating toward him. I also don't want the employee that told me to get flack back from the employee that needs to let it go. Okay, so, alright, so now you're going to get my personal bias. If someone's performance has been solid and it sounds like he lagged, but then he came back.

I am not going to judge anyone based on what someone else says ever. And so now this, this will slow you down in firing a little bit, which is never a good thing. However, I would rather err on the side of slowing down and garnering trust with my team than firing on the whim or based upon third party data. And so there are people that have been very close to me that I have had to let go. But the, the way that it was brought up to me was third party. And immediately the third party information, I just tell them, you have to go to the person and you have to talk about it and you have to, you have to validate this. And I'm not going to step in and do it based upon hearsay. So obviously if someone doesn't then address the person directly or it doesn't come up, I'm going to be watching because I'm a human being and I had information given to me. I'm going to be watching, I'm going to look for things, but I am not going to jump in based upon third party data. Make a judgment call. Also, this person's worked for you for 14 months and been busting their butt and gotten you 80 reviews from their friends and family. So maybe, maybe four months ago they went through some, some rough stuff and maybe like, like let's, let's just think about all like the, the ways this could be a positive thing or I should say, let's not jump to conclusions here. All right. Based upon what another team member said about them. Now what you could do, you could do a drug test. You could.

That being said, you've, you stated that once you put him on a pip, he's been, he's been better. And so if someone had cocaine a few weeks back and let's just say, let's just say they had a really bad weekend and they took a little bit of Cocaine. Horrible. Yes, it's bad. Are they still doing it? Don't know. You could take a drug test and pretty much figure out whether or not it was a few weeks ago. If they're a regular user, if they use it yesterday, et cetera. You could do a drug test. I would not do a targeted drug test. I would probably make this a company policy.

And so you're going to lose trust with people if you start making decisions that business based on hearsay and like this is literally hearsay because it's not like so and so overheard or saw someone doing cocaine. They told them and then they're telling you like you're, you're down the chain. And so if someone's performance affected, then you have more latitude. But it sounds to me like he corrected his behavior. And he might like for example, a few weeks ago could have actually been four months ago. Right. And so the, the what he could have potentially even corrected what he. The trouble he was going through once you gave him a pip. And now he's, he's more clean. And so I would, I would always defer to being too guarding of your team. Mostly. I understand fire fast. I understand that. But you have no cause to do that right now because his performance hasn't decreased. You have not seen him. It has not affected his job performance at all. And I am not going to take action based on hearsay. And so keep in mind, the reason I'm doing this is not because this team member as much as everyone else, let's assume that he, he's in the wrong, right? And you want to fire him, and you end up firing him. I am still going to. To act in accordance with the values that the current team is watching, because if they see me go fire someone based upon hearsay, they will be on, on thin ice all the time. And so either A, you're gonna investigate it, which you may or may not want to do that, or B, you're gonna wait for his performance to change. That would in. Would indicate that you need to take corrective action. But it sounds like to me like you did this four months ago and he changed his behavior. And so I would just be careful with this.

And this again, this is. I understand fire fast, but you don't have any cause to. His job performance hasn't changed. Like it hasn't decreased. It's actually improved over the, over the past few months. And so people go through rough stuff and if we're gonna fire them based upon what happened weeks or months ago, you're not Gonna have a team, like people go through stuff and you got, you're gonna have to be forgiving. And like there are people too with me to this day that have said really bad stuff. And you know, there were probably reasons they could have been fired. But I realized, oh, like they're just going through something and they'll get through this. And they did. And so.

I would just try to mix a little empathy with it as well as looking at the facts instead of just what other people are saying. Third party information is really, really bad.

Optics. If you're gonna start making hiring and firing decisions based upon what so and so told so and so.

I would. You could probably bring this up in a one on one honestly, in an indirect way. So for example, don't say, do you take drugs? Just like, hey, four months ago gave you a pip, you've really, really improved. Tell me what you've done since then. Right? So this is why one on ones are so important. You can address stuff like this. Don't do it in a direct way, do it in an indirect way. So you're not going to ask, do you take drugs? You're not going to say, have you stopped taking marijuana in the past four months? You're not going to ask if you've taken cocaine. You're not going to do that. What you're going to do is, hey, four months ago this is what you were doing. You were late all these days. I gave you a performance improvement plan. Here it is. Since then, this is the improvement I've seen. Tell me what's changed. What have you changed in your personal life? Are you still struggling with any of those things? Those are indirect ways of potentially him saying, like, yeah, I'm still struggling with it. A few weeks ago I did have a bit of a lapse, I'll be honest. But like I'm still committed to the company, I still want to make improvements and I'm doing X, Y and Z to improve. And then you might be able to step in and actually go give, help him in some way, shape or form. So please just, I recommend default. If someone's been busting their butt doing stuff at the company you default to, I will first step back and say, maybe it's a personal life issue, maybe it's something they're going through, maybe it's a time of month, maybe it's something that's happening in their relationship. Like these are things that happen. You know, we're a bag of chemicals walking around and sometimes those bag of chemicals get out of balance. Give each other a little grace. And I'm not going after you on this one. Garrett. I know you have your best intentions at heart. 100%. All right, guys. Love you all, and we will see you tomorrow.