Mike Minutes Mastermind 10/23/2023

And we're live. Hey everyone, welcome back to the 3M. The Mike minutes Mastermind. Mike Minutes Mastermind. Great event last week. Thank you all for coming. Let me just drop this in the Facebook group before I get started.

It was awesome to see all of you. I was super glad so many was able to make it out.

Almost 90% of Augusta showed up, so that's pretty cool.

Boom. Okay, I have some announcements and then I just opened up the thing and there's 17 questions. I will not get to all of them today. I have meetings I have to get to, so I'll get through as many as I possibly can and then we will continue. Obviously all of last week we didn't have any Mastermind, so it's understandable there's a lot of questions. I will get through as many as I can today and then I will do finish them up tomorrow. But I did have some announcements, so bear with me for just a moment. Numero Uno.

If you were not at conference, by the way, some of the stuff I talk about might not make sense. Please hold questions on things that make absolutely no sense to you because it's likely that you just missed the announcements at Wednesday conference for Augusta Nation. Those will be posted hopefully by the end of this week, if not next week. So we will make sure those are on the academy for everyone. Not just the Augusta ones, but also the public videos. But please just be patient on that. It's a lot of work for the media team to put, you know, hundreds of hours of video and audio files and merge them all together and cut them up so it looks decent. So just be patient on that. We will get those as soon as possible and then but, but when I'm talking about the coaching program, things like that, it's going to seem completely foreign to you. If you're not conference. Please hold those questions until you have watched the videos from conference so that you are on the same page. That being said, the.

The coaching program application is now available on the dashboard. I'm going to go ahead and open it up right now.

So if you are here.

On the dashboard from here, if you go to Academy forms and then coaching program application, you're going to see this Google form pop up again. If you were not at Wednesday morning with the franchise conference, please do not fill this out until you have watched everything that I talked about in the conference. Obviously there's some information here, but I talked to a lot of more specifically on the Wednesday. So please, please, please do not fill this out. If you do not have not listened to the Wednesday conference at.

Fergusonation so that will be coming again in the next week or two. Please do not fill this out until it has been. I will throw out your application if you fill this out and you are not at conference on Wednesday.

And have not watched that priority. So please just note that. But it is available. Massive caveat and I think we put it in here. Yes, we are limiting this to 10 people. Okay. There will absolutely be people that we will say no to that are fantastic operators. Fantastic. Grand would be great coaches. I think there's probably a good 25 coaches coach caliber individuals inside of Augusta Nation. We will have to say no to people, okay? So please don't be offended.

Please just don't be offended. Like we only can say yes to 10 people, which is literally like 6 or 7% of Augusta Nation. I know it's a very. It's an honor to be in the program. You'll learn a lot as a coach and it's really cool to be able to see other people's P Ls and all. We will have to say no to people and the coaches will be making these decisions and they will be doing it blind in terms of names. It'll just basically who hit the requirements and then they'll be looking at know geographic geography, revenues. We need to get a good distribution, right? So please just don't be offended. I am very concerned about that. Just know that like we are just trying to serve everyone the best and we only have spots for 10 people. So that is the case. But it is available if you want to fill us out. It'll be a couple weeks where this will be open. It will not. We will not be making any determinations of the who is in the coaching program for another few weeks. And there might be some back and forth with applicants with the coaching, the coaches and we will not be taking it lightly. So if you would like to be part of the coaching program, please fill out the form. Just I beg of you, do not be offended if we say no. It's not because it's you or it's a personal thing. It is a matter of we need a distribution of different sizes, different geographies and there's a lot of things that we're taking into account. So there'll always be an opportunity down the road and if there'll always be times two coaches get busy, they're starting more locations of their own. They're like, hey, I just don't have to a couple hours a week to do this. And if they drop out after their year that they is required to be in the program, then we would refill them those positions. So I think over the course of three or four years we'll get a very solid group of, of coaches and as we see people hitting their capacity of two hours a week, which I don't think will happen, but if that, if that's starting to happen for the vast majority of coaches, we will add more coaches. So yeah, will make this program better and better together. But just please have the understanding that like we can't accept everyone. I know there's going to be a bunch of applications and I appreciate that. There's a lot to be learned as a coach and it'll be very beneficial, I think for all parties, but we just can't have everybody otherwise we just all become coaches of each other. And so we need a, we need a core group that we can train really well on becoming, being a coach and looking at scenario based decision making frameworks and etc. So please just give us a little bit of a grace on that front as we also navigate that quick thing for everyone in the US i9s is when an employee is getting signed up. The government is now requiring two forms of identification to be submitted with the I9 form command center. If you are submitting, they will collect this from the employee in a digital format. However, the fine print of that new bill that just got signed and is coming in effect November 1st states that you must physically inspect that yourself. So what we're doing so that everything can get pushed through is we are going to have the employees submit the picture of that ID on their digital DocuSign document. But it is required that you physically inspect it and that liability is on you. We didn't want to have it where we have to hand it back to you guys. They submit half the form, then we submit it back to you guys and then you go have to check it and then take pictures yourself and then submit it back. We want everything commands super streamlined. So we will get all the documentation, we will get all their ID from them. But it is from a liability standpoint your responsibility to physically inspect their driver's license, passport, et cetera. So there's a new requirement. Obviously they're trying to crack down on people doing things under the table. And I think that it's going to only become more and more, especially the current administration, what they're doing with the IRS and some of the stuff that they're doing, tax things. They're really going to be cracking down on illegal.

Payroll and doing things under the table. Which in as much as it makes me mad, because I hate when the government gets involved in our business, as much as it makes me mad, it also is going to be a deterrent for a lot of operators in our industry that, that literally operate for years doing under the table and they get hit with massive fines. So there's actually a company we might do a turnaround with them, but they kind of stopped responding back to us because I think they, they feel like how bad it's going to be. They got hit with a, like a massive, massive fines for doing stuff under the table. And it's going to probably put them out of the business, to be perfectly honest. Unless, like there's a miracle and they really change things because they just go back, all the way back and they will charge you interest and fines and fees and they're not going to go take that the payroll taxes from the employee. They're going to come to the employer. Well, technically you could go try to find the employees and get money from them, but good luck. So, you know, i9's change coming November 1st. Command center will be adapting their forms and making sure everything's good to go if you are submitting through them for employment. But if you are not, Please note the i9 form has changed. You must get that documentation. I have no idea what they're going to do in terms of regulating this, but the way that they word this, it's pretty stiff penalties for not getting the ID and doing that form. So please make sure again, Department Homeland Security is the one that has the i9 form. Basically make sure that they're a legal, a legal employee inside the country.

That's all I got. Oh yeah, one thing more thing from Command center they let me know about. They're seeing this from several owners and that is on initial mos, you got to make sure you clock in and out on the job. You can't just go back in and add random times. As much as that is better than having no times. Command center is going back in there and they're trying, they're going to defend. When someone calls in and argues their bill, they're going to defend it based upon what times you put in there. We've seen multiple times now where we can see that the owner went in there and changed the times manually instead of just doing punch and punch out. And then the, the customer is saying that like no, there was not two people, there was only one and they weren't here for 48 minutes. They're here for 26 minutes. And we can literally see that they clocked in for one minute and then manually change the times. It gives a lot less confidence to stand up behind you. And it makes it. The makes commands are like an idiot when we're like, no, they're. They're honest and like, they did these. We clocked in, we see the times, we track our truck, et cetera. And then for like, the numbers being made up when we actually go into the audit trail is tough. So please, please, Please, on initial MO's, track your time. I would recommend getting the habit of having your guys make a note of the start and end time on initial visits for mowing. So in addition to the clock and clock out time, there's also a note that actually states the time they were there and has a timestamp of when that note it. So that gives Command center way more confidence to really back you guys up. If someone calls in to complain about their initial mo. We've had multiple times where when you look at the audit trail, it's very hard to defend that we really spent that long there. And the customer has a pretty good excuse as to why they are complaining about a very astronomical bill on their first mo. So please, please, please do that. Command center is trained to back you guys up and take what you guys are putting in there as the gospel truth. But it makes them feel less confident in their job when they then go into the audit trail and see people are moving numbers around. They're adding people to jobs and making things up. So please, just be honest about that. And even if you need to change manually because someone forgot to clock it out, make note of that. Like, we tracked the truck, we saw it was this time. We know for sure it is these times. Is it just throwing stuff up there? And then when we go in there, we can see all sorts of, like, discrepancies and we can't back you up. So just a quick note there. It's only helping several owners, but is enough for command center to let me know about that this morning. All right, let's jump into questions. Like I said, I will not get to all of them today. There's 17 when I checked this morning.

18 now. Okay, let's jump in.

Modesto. I want to start a junk removal company. It's a very simple business. Plus, we already have all the equipment to do it. Prices for trailers are below. So I need to tie this in with our Augusta Lawn Care business entity. Or is it better to start a new business Entity website and Google Page and call it Augusta Junk Removal. If starting a new entity, would Lawn Care web design be able to create the website and Google page for the junk removal? What would be the best way to tile this together? Because it goes hand in hand. We want to mimic junk rescue. Az.com okay, all right. This is gonna be a little harsh love, but I'm gonna dish it out. So I would highly recommend not doing this when you, you weren't at conference, but when you watch the 3s, the shiny service syndrome. That's exactly what this is.

Furthermore, I would block this because of. I think this is bad for this individual location. I think it's bad to have any sort of rebranding of Augusta Junk Removal. I have allowed this for a few couple different operators to use the Augusta name and change the secondary service name slightly around specific services. I would block this one because I think it's so detrimental to the business. I think adding junk removal is a great, great thing that you can do inside the winter months, etc. But I would not authorize a trademark change for this. The reason for this is because, and the reason I say that this is a 3s is because I'm just gonna hand it, I'm gonna give it to you for us the way you like. And that is like really blunt because I love you and you know I love you. So I'll give it to you blunt. You couldn't come to conference because of the fires and the business that happened last minute. You had to cancel and stay at the business. Adding more complexity. Regardless if it's a simple service is simply going to keep that treadmill and that rabbit and that hamster wheel going. You gotta take the existing business which has grown very quickly and has been very successful. But systematize it, get good people in there, change the leadership to be able to be able to run without you. And then you can start thinking about adding more services, adding more options of upsells, et cetera. Like I think this is a great upsell. I think you could definitely do this keeping inside of Augusta Lawn Care during the winter months, offer this to your existing customers, do a one click estimate, email. I think this is a great idea to upsell your existing customers. But starting new entities, new websites, new Google Pages is not what the business should be doing right now. And that, and I know that without any doubt or uncertainty because the fact that you were planning to come to conference, but because of fires in the business and, and management and leadership, you were not able to come. And last Minute had to cancel. So fix that first. Then you can add these things and be and add much more margin. This will only tie into the business more and add more complexity, more stress internally with employees, relationships, etc. So that would be like my very blunt honest truth and I have zero doubt about that.

Kyle Tarvin I've heard that the current copilot users will get locked in prices at life for at their price. If so, could we get an account now to lock in price but switch over in January? We pay around $400 per month for essay currently. Yeah. So we will likely do this till February 1st so I can get everyone from Augusta in and make sure everyone's prices are locked. So it'll be for enterprise level users. You'll lock that in. We will raise prices instead of jumping at like 50 and $100 like people have other CRMs. We will probably just do every year a little bit of an increase. But yeah, for everyone that gives them before probably February 1st, we will lock this in. So I'll make sure everyone from Augusta gets locked in.

But it'll be only for the people that get in before that date and I will make sure that that date gets pushed off if we need to as people trickle in through January that's totally fine.

But don't like think it's going to jump like a hundred dollars. So we're not doing that. It just we, we want to incrementally raise the costs as our costs go up in terms of development instead of making big jumps. And.

I, I just think everyone that joins before February like they've gone through a lot and we have more bugs than we I would like and in the future that will not be the case. And so the people that join earlier, the early adopters will get that price lock. So I'm going to hopefully get everyone from Augusta into it though. So hopefully I'll probably move that February 1st. I haven't announced that publicly. That's why because I want to have a very specific date and I'm really watching how many people we can move over from Augusta and making sure everyone gets in and then I can be like hey, this is the lock date.

Oh and by the way, if you're paying 400 for copilot you'll probably save like a hundred.

Probably 100 bucks a month. I'm assuming you don't have like Maps Pro probably you probably don't have a couple other things in service autopilot. So you'll save, you know, a little bit of money. Kyle Tarvin Talking about profit sharing over the conference, I had a question on profit sharing for employees. I know managers get profit sharing based on cash in the bank. Is it the same for field employees or do you just go off the P and L? I just go off the P and L for employees mostly because like cash accounting is what they understand, it makes the most sense to them and you want it to be as simple as possible. You do not want to be like, well, distributions this quarter, we're going to pause those because we need to invest more in the business. They're not going to make sense of it and they don't have all the information to actually make sense of it. Whereas your general managers, they know about the spring rush. They know that they need to buy more trucks and equipment. They're, they're much more aware. So I would personally, this is what we're doing and that is like profit sharing for the frontline team members is based upon cash accounting on the profit and loss statement. Distribute distributable cash is for the general managers and regional managers only. Devin. Hey Mike, do you recommend putting your money in real estate like a fourplex for tax purposes once you get to the seventh stage of wealth for a guestination? I do recommend that.

Little bit later, maybe next.

I'll talk about some of the stuff I've used over the past couple years with real estate to really make it effective. But in my opinion right now the vast majority of us are not in stage seven of wealth at Augusta Nation and we should be focusing more on businesses. But like last year for example, you know, the, the real estate thing just like saved me literally hundreds of thousands of dollars because I was able to do a cost segregation. I was able to do 1031 exchanges and like, it helped me a lot. So in stage seven of growth, you start really think in six, even six, six and seven you start to really think about diversification as well as tax liability and, and how you can use real estate is like, is pretty phenomenal. Do you need a business bank account for every location you own or just one? Thank you. Because I named mine Augusta Longer, Red Deer Ltd. But if I open 100, would I have 100 different accounts? Good problem to have. Thanks. Yeah, we do different bank account for every single one. That's so we can have reconciled bank account, reconciled QuickBooks statements for every single location. And it's easy to do like payroll and insurance out of all of them. Etc. This is something that when you start getting multiple locations, the coaches can definitely walk you through to be able to just keep track of things, it's usually easiest to have different bank accounts. Kyle Ty, do you have any tips on managing your social media consumption over the long term? I do really real really well for a few weeks on limiting my social media consumption, especially on Facebook. However, I tend to slip back down the slope of constantly wanting to check Facebook within a few months. Typically I fall back into the doom scrolling through Facebook anytime I have a free moment. It's bad. I find I'm overall happier and less dopamine filled on a daily basis by severely limiting my social media presence. Just curious if there's something you practice and tips. It's a great question. Yeah, I don't follow anybody and so if you look at any of my social media accounts I have no I don't follow anybody. It is zero and it's very intentional so that when I go on there the algorithm will throw me random stuff because it has no idea what I want to see. And so I'm usually pretty uninterested in what's going on with like Taylor Swift and Jay Z and all these other random people it thinks is like important and throws it in my face. I have no interest whatsoever. So I, I don't really follow the doom scrolling and every minute I spend on there is typically producing content. Watching your comments on the Gust of Nation Facebook group and Copilot Facebook group so it's strictly business but following people is the doom and then like getting people requesting you to follow you like it's not. I have no.

The one thing I wish I could do is be able to follow the franchisees to see what you guys are going through. I would like that as well as team members, I'd really like to know that more. But again it's a very slippery slope because now all of a sudden I have 150 locations following all you guys personally and then your spouses and then your employees I get to know and then all my team members and their spouses and all of a sudden I've followed 500 people and I'm going to fall into doom scrolling. So it's just very hard cut off. I will never follow anybody to prevent that from ever happening. That's just like the hard limit I've done but it helps me tremendously and I never fall into doom scrolling. And I also unlike YouTube for example, I don't ever go on through my home screen. I just go through my subscriptions and so it's actually pretty hard for me get see new content unless someone recommends it to Me, which is the only content I want to. I want to watch anyways. And so if they recommend it to me or the media guys like, hey, you should check this guy. I'll go check them out. If I like it, I'll subscribe. And I just go through my subscriptions list only for YouTube.

Audie from Plano Passing the baton. A message to all. I'm about 72 hours behind. Shout out to Karen. My wife Karen took a lot of great notes and I can tell she took a lot from the conference as she got into some of the details about Wednesday meeting and said that the conference was the last of landscape summit and she interpreted as Augusta has outgrown and there's a need for us to center our focus. My thoughts are I'm proud of Karen and she is the best ambassador of Plano, Texas. Shout out to my wife. Thank you Karen. I love you. Last year you inferred Jonathan Mitosnik. At some point in the interview he mentioned his passion for helping out, getting involved with creating opportunity for the youth and entrepreneurship. So did you pass the Batanna Johnson is landscape coming to Texas and how does that play into his recent announcement on his YouTube channel, the Lawn care Millionaire? Okay, so in terms of his recent announcement, I kind of have to stay mum on that a little bit. I'll have more information in the future, but I want him to be able to talk about that.

Yeah, I'll just leave it at that for now. But P S, thank you for having an open hand and a vision to see and let go of and grab a hold on what God has next. And shout out to Kevin Ferburn. He too also hold the keys to the open hand philosophy and vision. I am saying this because we are seeing the application, the nine keys to growth in the Augusta and the leadership at Augusta. I will be posting a video about some of these keys. Cool. Shout out to Karen for coming.

Kyle Tarvin. Okay, this is gonna be the last question. I gotta hop on another call. Sorry, I'll get the rest of these tomorrow. Sorry for all the questions. I've just been brain dumping everything I've been thinking about over my time at conference the last few days. Chuck talked about hiring 12 GMs and so far only 5 have worked out. It really opened my eyes on the success, failure rate of GMs and realistic, realistically what I should expect moving forward. Let's say a GM is a good, very good field worker. They just for whatever reason can't handle being a gm. Would it be a bad idea to Bump them back down to an hourly labor. From the outside it seems like you just let go of those failed GMs. Just an observation, but my perception may be wrong. Initial thoughts is that there may be some sort of power struggle between the existing employees in that old GM or the old GM not allowing the new GM to do his job. Example, telling the new GM how to do things, old GM feeling like he shouldn't have to work, work as hard, Etc. Thoughts? Yeah, all of our best performing gms have been in the field before at Augusta. That's one thing. All the ones that we most ones that failed or we have to let go started outside of Augusta and we hide them straight to GM role. That's a very big takeaway we've had. Next thing is that there's two different types of gms. A working GM and then one that can start one from scratch. Two very different personality types. The key being sales. And so we found it really, really helpful to grow a location up and then hand it off to a working GM that has been in the field in Augusta, bought into the vision and has proven themselves for at least three to six months to be super consistent. Work hard, eager beaver, etc. Those are the ones have always crushed it. We have a very low success rate of bringing people in as the GM from day one and then in terms of the second like demoting someone. We have had that happen successfully one time when the GM.

Volunteered the fact that they didn't feel like they were ready and they needed some more time in the field to get more experience and that individual will probably be very successful but doing it yourself you will probably run into a lot of problems and I probably would not recommend doing that and thinking that you're going to keep them because they will most likely leave. So. All right, I'm gonna let this one go for today. I will get back tomorrow and grab up the questions. Appreciate seeing everyone last week. I'll see you guys tomorrow and finish all the rest of these questions in the Mastermind. Take care.