Mike Minutes Mastermind 10/31/2023

And we're live. Hope everyone's doing good. Let's go get started. I have a musing to go over, but it's not super priority announcement. So I'll leave that to the end.

This week, I'll be a little bit of hit and miss with Masterminds. I got in.

Let's see. Here we go. I got in last night for out of town. Um, I'll be leaving again tomorrow for the rest of the week. So if the Masterminds are a little bit health or skelter with scheduling, that's why I'll get to them as much as I possibly can. This week, it'll just be a little bit more hit and miss. So usually I'm trying to do like one week a month of travel and so, you know, in and out of airports all the time is a little more tough for the Masterminds just to make sure it's quiet enough. So I will do my best though, on my layovers and things like that to still get the Masterminds in. Let's go ahead. Started on the questions and then like I said at the end, I. If I have some time, I will have some musings I've been thinking about. Okay, first one, Eric from Largo, how the why Bravo mowers been working out pretty good. We are going to switch over to them at the Bellingham shop. I've used them a few times, so I can only speak for that on that. On that example. What I like about them is they're not as heavy. They're simple to maneuver and they're cheap.

There. There are better mowers, but. And like more quality. But they're so heavy that it's like a lot of wear and tear on the guys. And then they're more expensive. So.

The thing is they're. They're going from a 21 inch to a 25 inch is not a huge difference. Like, it's a marginal difference in. In size of deck. So it's not like going from 21 to a 30 inch where you're gaining like 40 plus deck width.

So.

If there was a really good 21, I would be inclined to probably use that one too. So for example, it's like, well, maybe you just get the skag or X mark a commercial 21 inch push more instead of going to the Y. Bravo. Again, it all comes down to your dealer. If your dealer is good at fixing things and they're close by, I'd be using whatever they can service. I know. Kevin.

Wow. Kevin. Wow. I'm just blanking out completely one second here. I'm gonna get his last name because that's just rude. Kevin Cohen. There it is. Kevin Cohen his dealer. They stopped servicing his dealer, his brand. So he's after buy all new mowers. That stinks. But that's really who you want to align with is like who your dealer is and then what what brands they can service. Kyle Tarvin Moore, Oklahoma but yeah trans your question we are going to get all of those why Bravos for all the Bellingham shop How have have how have you been able how have you come came up with the compensation package or base pays for your management team for all your different businesses? I'm sure all the businesses track different metrics. So just curious how you come to a conclusion on how to compensate and how much to pay these people versus what the business being in revenue. Just looking at comparable job postings or similar positions, looking for your framework on how you do it. Everyone's kind of in motivated by different things. So as someone gets closer to management, typically I'm going to customize their package more on what they want. So some people want a higher base pay which I'm willing to give, but then they want less profit sharing. So typically I'm willing to do that. But I do take notes in my men my brain of who's doing that and who aligns closer to being more entrepreneurial. You don't want a whole bunch of entrepreneurs at the top of your organization. So if you are going to have a balanced leadership team, typically some people are going to want more base pay and less profit sharing. Totally fine. Just, you know, if the company, if the company's going to pay them higher profit base pay than other people, when there's a big payout down the road, they'll just have less. Right. But that's the decision they made. They wanted more security, which is totally fine. I'm not opposed to that. But you can't have your cake and eat it too if you want to have more money on the upfront. When the business is burning cash, when they're really profitable, the person that was able to hold their breath longer is going to be rewarded. That's just kind of how I operate. It's not necessarily the right way, but since that's the way how I kind of think about it, like personally, you know, if I can hold my breath for 10 years.

And not spend money and not take any money that's in the business, then I expect a pretty good payout. If a leader is willing to do the same thing for the business, then they're going to get more profit sharing and higher payout down the road. And some people like the payout, some people like the increased base pay, and that's totally fine. As they become more leaders, I'm willing to be flexible to what they kind of need and want and.

Just be, yeah, like whatever is needed. Ultimately though, like you're, you're working with a finite resource. And ultimately if you're taking money out of the business, whether it be for your lifestyle or the lifestyle of your leadership team or managers, it requires capital. And that capital is the fuel by which you can grow the business. So if you're going to pay out more money to in bonuses and comp plans, you're going to grow the business slower. Which means typically this is a turnaround I did the other day is there was no profit in the business, but they were growing really fast. And so he had all his comp plans on profit sharing and his team was unhappy. But they also wanted more responsibilities. They wanted to be able to grow in the business, have more employees. It's like, hey, look, you can't do both. You can't grow massively quick, super fast and have a whole bunch of profit sharing. So which one do you want? And so having that conversation is important with leadership team. It's like, hey, if we're going to grow and really fast and we all want to like improve our skill sets and have more responsibility, in three or four or five years, we're not going to have a lot of profit sharing and there's not going to be a lot of money to be sloshing around for bonuses. If you're willing to accept that, then we will continue growing. Or are we going to slow down growth, make it more profitable and give you all give more people more money? That is a decision that you as an entrepreneur have to make and you will gain or lose people over that. And that's just. They have, they can choose wherever they want to work.

Eric from Largo, Florida. I have a property that we were servicing through a property management company that's fallen off the planet with an overdue Invoice for September services $225. I finally reached out, reached our last contact on the phone and found out he was terminated from the company. I have not been able to reach anyone else in the company. By chance, I also had the homeowner's contact info as they originally directed directly request an estimate. So I reached out to them and let them know we can get service Started back up once their invoice is paid. Apparently they fired the company of couple a week ago due to lack of communication, but said they paid them for previous months and 30 more days. Required 30 day notice to cancel. The owner is trying to recoup their money and said he has issue with paying twice for services. Clearly bad property management company Google Reviews confirm. So I feel for the owners a bit. Would you offer to continue servicing the property despite the overdue balance? Part of me wants to keep the property and help the owners, but I don't want to have the rug pulled on me twice. So I'm hesitant to start up services again. If, if you're like I see what you're saying. So if it was over just $225, I would not pursue any sort of action like your your time is your time and energy and brain space is worth more than $225. What? But if the question is, well, they're going to keep paying me for future invoices. That's a decision like how confident are you in that is the decision making framework you're going to use? I would probably require them to pay me up front for upcoming months if they wanted me to continue service.

In that example.

So be like, hey, I'm happy to continue services, but because of how it's been happened in the past, I need payment up front. And then if you get paid on the other stuff, make sure you pay me kind of thing. Ken or Fenton, Michigan. You would answer my question in the updates on Thursday. Before reading my question on Thursday, a lot of the people outside of Augusta were asking if you were ever going to open up Command center to people outside of the franchise. I told them no. But if Command center can get a little bit of help from remote operators, isn't it possible to streamline the systems then a few years premium subscribers to Copilot can get their phone answered. I was thinking that might be an upsell for people that subscribe to Copilot. They can get their phones answered and the contact put into the system at least your thoughts on that? No, like I'm so against this. Like I cannot overemphasize just how difficult scaling Command center is. It is far more difficult than software. It's far more difficult than a longer business is the hardest thing I've ever built and so I will never do it. And if I did I would charge twice as much per minute. That's the only way to do it.

Whether you have like going remote does not reduced costs, it diversifies your.

Your talent pool so that you can have a better stream of applicants as well as hire skilled applicants and get people that are willing to work on the weekends that you can do. But it's not cheaper because you now have to have managers which cost significantly more to then be checking on their work far more often because they don't aren't just sitting in the office like three feet from you. It takes way more systems, way more one on ones, way more operating procedures levels like of, of management, oversight, etc. So for example, call boss, which was at the conference. They have 60 companies that they do work for and they've been in business far longer than Augusta longer has been and they have 60 companies. So I am very happy just servicing Augusta longer. We do not operate it. We. It has lost a lot of money and has caused many gray hairs and it has if we operate it because it's helpful for the, for the owners of Augusta Nation. And outside of that I do not have any part in scaling it up. It's not scalable. It's a hard business. It changes a lot. I really hope that honestly by getting into Copilot, the biggest reason for me doing that is it will make that job easier. And that is everyone on one software instead of three which will reduce mistakes, reduce errors and overall just allow us to make a Guston Nation more profitable and efficient.

I have no desire whatsoever to scale that up and offer it to people outside of destination.

Whatsoever. Even if you were to double the price to be able to make it profitable and charge two $250aminute.

It's just, it's not. It's not scalable because every single business has a different way of doing business. So the only way we can even remotely run it the way we do is because we require certain systems at Augusta and if you don't use them, we just can't offer you services. Not because we don't want to, simply because it just gets extremely difficult to run and have any level of customer service or like quality standards at all. And so going from 3 to 1 CRMs will really help. All the layers and systems that Liz has been building at Command center has been helpful. Getting people from across the country and across the world to be able to work to help with better hours and better management is helpful, but it is the least scalable form of a company.

And that's why we're leaning so much. And I'm happy to spend the money myself on trying to get AI more involved because I do know in three to five years the only way that we make it efficient and we get ahead of the game is using that as like, the hub is our unique advantage in five years because it's so hard to build. No one else can build it. I'm very confident. Anyone else trying to do what we've done in the past four years with the command center, we'll quit 100%.

So it's a good moat, and it's something that as we grow it and build it, it becomes our. It becomes our unique, unique ability that we don't. No one else can replicate. And I'm not about to rent that out to anyone else. So you have my word I will never try to scale it outside of Augusta Nation. My goodness.

So, yeah, that one's a harsh. No, like, really harsh. But thank you, Ken. I appreciate the support. Ken from Penn Michigan, I'm running into a bit of a moral dilemma. I have pride in the choice that I've made with going with Augusta, and anytime I post anything with pictures of me in my uniform or my truck, I'm getting some hate for it. Most of the time, I get people in. My direct messages ask me to. For more details, and I'm happy to help. There's only a few very select people that really come out and complain about Augusta. So my question is, do you not want us saying good things Augusta, just out of nowhere? Do you not want us to post about how solo operators should look into the franchise? Sometimes it's hard to fly the flag and tell people how great it is and how they should join.

I can't. I can tell you what you should or should not do.

I appreciate support of what we're trying to do, and I. I appreciate where your heart is at 100%.

I would probably say for me personally, how I look at Augusta is this. You don't. You guys don't hear me talk about Augusta hardly at all. Like, if you weren't in Augusta Nation, you'd hardly hear me talk about it. The reason for that is because.

If we build something so awesome, people will figure it out. Like, it's incredible to me that, like, I don't hardly talk about Augusta at all on the videos now. Like, the past year, if you go through all of my videos, hardly ever hear about it. The only thing that says Augusta is literally this on my shirt. And somehow there are hundreds of people that still try to apply to become a part of Augusta Nation every single year. And I think that's a good approach because I don't come across desperate. I'm not like Trying to sell anyone on anything I want, what's best for their business. I make it very clear I'm trying to do this for the industry. And I think that by joining Augusta, that is accelerated, and I think that it helps a lot of people's businesses. And if I was getting into lawn care or I had a longer business, I would join Augusta Nation. I'm very confident in saying that I made the franchise disclosure documents in a way that I would sign the documents. And that was the framework by which I created all of our legal paperwork. So there's no renewal fee. So after 10 years, every other franchise will charge you again to be inside the franchise. And what that means is, say you have a 10, 5 or $10,000 renewal fee after 10 years. What that means is your license that you might buy at 20,000 actually goes down in value to 5,000 over 10 years. Whereas with Wes, when I say there's no renewal fee, it means that your franchise license retains a value and goes up in value in time. So, like, I would buy that personally because over the past four years, that license has gone from $5,000 to $22,000. That's a good thing. I would sign that. I would sign a document that says if. If I need to leave this franchise, I can take my customers. I would lose all support, all marketing. I have to remove, strip out the marketing and the branding, obviously. Like, I could keep my customers so I could provide for my family. I would sign that document. That's what Augusta has. And no one else has these things. Like, I don't talk about this a lot, but no other franchise has those couples.

Clauses. None whatsoever. And that's why franchises have a bad rap. And so you have to realize that the good will get thrown out with the bad. And so when people think about franchises, the vast majority of them are predatory. They are. And this is why, like, originally is why I don't recommend most people do franchising is because there's such a stigma around it.

And unfortunately, really great brands, the people that got rich, are usually the first half of the franchises. The people that get, like the 40,000th subway don't get a great deal because there's so much brand equity they get. They can give such a bad deal to the franchise operator, and they still buy it, and they can literally put Subway next door to them, and you can't do anything about it because the brand has become so big and so powerful. So that's why I do believe, like, the first 500 locations at Augusta will have the Mass the biggest opportunity because they have the best markets, best support, they'll know everybody. The thousandth person that joins will absolutely have a lot more brand power. And they'll go from 0 to 500,000 very quickly because everyone will know who August is, and they'll be able get more leads. What they won't get is the years of seeing people that started from the very beginning and the growth, and they won't have gotten the masterminds the past those years of seeing me in a much more.

Relatable size. So those are valuable parts. And, you know, if someone's joining at a thousand locations, it's gonna be tough to find a location like a territory. It's gonna be very difficult. And so they will have to settle for, you know, 20, 30 miles away from where they'd ideally like to be. So it's not as good a deal for them. And so.

When it comes to talking about Augusta.

I think building an awesome business of your own and then talking about that is probably the best thing to do if people want to throw out, you know, toss franchises or think that franchises are less than just like, I use the term very loosely, like, kick them in the teeth by your actions and like, what you build.

So the same thing as the copilot, like, I have all sorts of material. I have a document. I have a folder in my Google Drive. It's usually why I'm very careful when I share my Google Drive is I have this document, and there I keep all legal documents that are, like, damning against other people. I just keep them in there. I don't talk about them. People, you know, try to do it, like, done all sorts of weird stuff with me legally in my videos and stuff like that. I don't talk about it. I just throw it in that legal document. So I have it in file just in case.

And, you know, just keep. Just keep building an awesome business, you know. So it's similar to the thing we talked about conference and that person asked about religion. Like, just build an awesome business. And if you're a really awesome person, you build an awesome business. People will come and be like, hey, like, what's this person all about? And they'll figure it out. So. All right, we have some more questions.

Sounds like they are used to paying upfront, so it would be an issue for you to require that as well. Just a thought. You know, I agree based on that question. I agree that they're going to probably have an issue with paying up front, but I would probably require that to keep My investment, like make sure my money was actually going to come in and then this event, $225 a month. I'd be willing to lose them if they're not paying consistently and if they have, it sounds like they have a reputation. So. Also keep in mind all property management companies have really bad reviews online. The reason for that is because when was the last time you're like, man, my landlord is so awesome. I'm going to leave a review online about them. Very rarely does that happen. The same way that most people don't leave positive reviews about their lawn care guy unless they're asked.

So just keep in mind, property managers are notorious for having really bad online reviews.

All right, I have time for amusing my musing. Okay, so this musing has no legs to it whatsoever. There's just a music. So I'll do there education. You'll probably see me use this at Copilot in the next little bit. I'm going to test it there and I might test it P4P. I might test a couple other places. Then I got a come up with something for Augusta. And what it is is it kind of just goes back to that. The thought process of like making offer so good that people feel stupid saying no. So we're going to be playing with an offer at Copilot that is very much like that. And I know no one else, none of our competitors will ever try to make this guarantee. And.

The challenging part with lawn care and making an offer that's so good, like you can't just say money back guarantee because everyone uses that. Everybody. If you want to make an offer, it's like, who in the world right mind would say no to that? And I have some ideas. And.

I was talking with Terrell the other day when we were traveling and I was saying he was talking about like, how do you come up with ideas? I say, well, a good way to think about it is just to break your frame by thinking about unrealistic possibilities. So for example, if I have to do this 10 times faster, what would I have to do? If I had to make this 10 times better, what would I have to do? So for example, we were talking about the videos. Like if we had to make the videos 10 times faster and make 10 of them in one week or two weeks, what would we have to do? Well, we'd have to hire five times as many people. We'd have to have a private jet to be able to fly around. We just started going through the list. If money was not a constraint, what Would you have to do to 10x the output? Then it's like, okay, well if we had to make videos 10 times better, what we have to, okay, well, we'd have to go get someone from the outside Hollywood that has done massive production. We'd have to mic up every single person on set. We'd have to have a light person. We have to have four cameras instead of one. Like we started just adding all the layers and that's usually a good engine to get ideas. So if you're asking yourself, like, how do I grow my business? Okay, I want to grow from 500,000 to 700,000. Great. If you had to go from 500,000 to 5 million, what would you do? Because I promise you, if you actually use that frame and you start taking actions towards that, you will probably pass 700,000.

Now this is the thing. Money is finite. You don't have all the money in the world, so you're not going to be able to usually do those things. Like I don't have the money to go hire a production studio and have five people travel with me on these turnarounds to do the cameras. Like, it's already expensive as it is, let alone if we did that. So money is always a constraint. That's why, like a conference, we always talk about, like, when you hit a constraint, you go back to making more money because money will ultimately solve those problems, typically so that you can scale and the 40 framework moves faster. However, it's a good frame in your business to think about. If you had to, if you were going to, if you were, you're going to charge 10 times as much for a lawn, like $300 per cut. What would you charge? What would you do? That's a good frame to use. Because what you'll start doing is like, okay, well, instead of cutting with a 52 inch mower, we're gonna do everything with push mowers. And we're literally going to use scissors on the edges and we're gonna have like a shovel and do like the whole thing and then we're going to wash the driveway every single time with solution. We are going to pound out the mat, we're going to get the cob every single time we tump. All of a sudden it's like, well, I could take three or four of those things for basically nothing and have a huge amount of value added, my customer. And maybe I don't charge 300 per cut, but I can charge my, raise my price by five bucks for doing very few of these. Things that don't take a lot of time. So these are the. These are The. The ways that kind of come up with ideas. And this is how, like, the offer thing came up. I was running, and I was like, if. If someone was worried about using Copilot, what would I tell them? Like, I would guarantee them that they will raise their profits or their revenues by 10 in a year, and if they didn't, I just give them their money back.

Like, well, if you actually think that your software is going to increase someone's revenue by 10 and guarantee that if they don't, they'll give them all their money back for 12 months, that seems pretty appealing. No one else is going to do that. So then it's like, well, then how do you guard it, right? How do you have, you know, bad actors that. Not. Well, you got to show me your tax returns. Cool. Then how do you make it the wording in such a way that it doesn't seem stupid? Because it's. It seems like you're just trying to make an impossible way to validate or redeem the offer, Right? Like, showing your tax returns is not fun. So these are the type of things that I've been thinking about. I think it's a good way to come up with ideas. If you had to, you're like, man, I gotta hire two or three more people. I can't find anyone. Okay, let's just step back for a second. What if you had to hire 20 people? What would you do? Liz is doing right now, like, okay, if you gotta hire 20 or 30 people, what do you do? You'd probably think, oh, man, I gotta do, like, I should do a billboard. I should, like, have a career fair. I should go to colleges and try to get an entire group of people. So you start changing your whole framework, and that's sometimes a very good shift to make business grow faster, make it more profitable, increase your prices.

And I think that, for example, answering your phone 247 is a value prop that if I had to think about, and this is where it originally came from, it's like, okay, if I had to charge someone 10 times as much for that cut, like 400 instead of $40 per cut, I would want to know that when the customers called 24 7, they'd have the answer being the phone call would be answered. I would want that.

And then you start working down your weight, and that's how you create a moat around. You know, that's how I'm thinking about Gusta Nation is like, how do I create the moat around this thing with technology. And what are all the wish list items? I can have 400 value on a $40 cut and no one else can compete with it. Um.

All right, everyone. I must go to my next meeting. Have a fantastic Tuesday.

Next few days. Masterminds will be kind of all throughout the day, but leave your questions per usual and I'll get to them as soon as I possibly can. Love you all. Take care.