Mike Minutes Mastermind 10/31/2024

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another version of the mic minutes. Mastermind, we have costume day. Apparently, that was Mr. Banana, also known as Brian Rand, walking behind us. Let's see here.

Boom. All right, a couple quick announcements.

Later today, if not tomorrow, I will have all. All of the Facebook ads, hooks, titles, and copy. So making the ad is the same. So you can use the same done for you ads format, but the text, the titles, the thumbnail, like, what you want to actually say the words. I'm going to have several options that I've tested and then a whole bunch of other creative ideas just to kind of get your creative juices flowing. For Christmas lights.

They are not tested as much as I would usually have. The bottom line is there's just not as many people buying Christmas lights in October as in November and December. But I also know that this is the time to sell. So, like, I'm going to give what I got in terms of what I have tested, and then I'm going to give other ones where I have not tested, but they're just to get your creative juices flowing so you can get, you know, multiple different creatives and different ad formats made. So there was a whole bunch of different ones. Like, you know, if you target the women, you. You're gonna stay tired of nagging your husband about the Christmas lights. For example, I'm gonna have. There's ones that do really well. The ones that are on stats around people falling and hurting themselves and ladders and how many people die from it every year. It works. So, yeah, there'll be several different formats and then I'll give some screenshots or other ideas of ones that I have not tested. But again, just to get the creative juices flowing so you can get a lot of different variations for Christmas lights made.

All right, we're in business. Let's rock and roll.

First question. We got five today, it looks like. First question is from David Nall from California. At our location, we ran into the problem of people accepting mowing instant quotes online and expecting trimming to be part of the deal. Is there a way you can edit the website and make it very obvious on the web page that trimming is not included? Who would we read out to for that? Yes, you could put that in your fine print. So right before they click Accept, they have to see that. That text. And to do that, you just go edit your webpage. August lawn care, go to change and you can change your instant price form and go to the part where it has the. The fine print, the terms and conditions put it there. If this is really a big concern, again, I want that terms and conditions to be as small as possible. I don't, I personally don't usually want more than three things being there. So I'm usually going to talk about my first visit being a permanent, permanent rate and the fact that I'm able to change the price after the first visit. I'm going to talk about how we require weekly for certain periods of the year. For us it's March through June and I'm rolling from there. I'm not going to have a ton of terms and conditions. I don't recommend making that a big paragraph, although we allow you to put as much text in there as you want. But that's where you're going to make that change. David Landon Smith from Tallahassee, Florida.

Well, we got ourselves a big one. All right. Hey Mike, reflecting on last year and looking into the next, I feel like the number one thing I need to learn is marketing for my area. Alex from Rosie talks a lot about finding the marketing that works best for you and looking at looking all your. I think you mean putting, putting all your money into it. I believe you also made a video saying that if your marketing spend is having diminishing returns, that's probably not the best avenue of marketing. When watching his videos, it really seems that the differentiating fact between his businesses and others is able to figure this out so quickly and easily and commit to it confidently. I may be the only one in this position, but for me it may be hard to confidently go through the process in a strategic manner that actually produces results. It is probably a limitation of self doubt through the process along with fear that I'm just wasting money looking for something that's not there. Meaning a good marketing platform that yields good return for me.

Okay. I think you mean channel, not a good marketing platform. Channel. Okay. All right. I think the best thing I could have in a coach at the moment would be someone who can walk me through this process with given my current situation and money availability, helping me go through this with confidence, statistics and obvious care. Care of return for me would be such a great help in my business and growth as an entrepreneur. Do you think we have. We could have a system or training in place for us to walk this process clear with Coach, thanks for all you do and thanks in advance for your hundred dollar long drive contribution.

First off, you're not getting the $100. I can guarantee you you won't get that. And if, hey, if my guarantee falls through, I owe you $100. So in terms of this, in general.

This is why we are trying to do the lead program. The vast majority of us spend 95% of our day doing operations and running the businesses. For that reason, most of us do not have the time to actually do what is necessary in terms of beta testing, split testing, doing multiple different ad sets, not just running one ad, but running 10 variations with four different titles and.

Four different text, five different videos, four different images. We just don't have the time for that. Honestly, that's what I've seen this past year. Even though we talked about it and stuff, like, I can see how many people are doing it. It's not a lot. We don't have time for it. The thing is.

If you're going to spend all your time trying to be a great marketer, you probably won't have the time to like train your team, make sure they're doing a great job managing them. Doing team meetings, like, that's the harder part of just daily operations is the people management. So this is ultimately why I'm trying to make this where we can do this more for you in terms of learning it.

The reason this is so difficult is because every single market is so different. So what works for someone else in another market is not going to work for you. It really comes down to the ability to test. And so, you know, when I do, when I go into a market, I'm usually testing five different channels. I talk about them at training. I work from my top, from the top to the bottom, starting with door hangers. I make sure I'm on Google local services. I want to see what that cost per lead is. I'm running Google Ads, I'm running Facebook ads, and I'm even playing with something like Angie's List. And so just to see what happens, I'm testing all those marketing channels I'm seeing where are the leads coming from? And you know, so for example, if you look at the 30 day challenge, I went Facebook and Google very heavily and I was paying 140 to 150 bucks per lead. And I didn't really want to keep doing that because I was trying to do it on a smaller budget. So that's when I'm like, okay, well then we're going to do holding signs and door hangers. And I just tracked how long it took me to get a single lead and track how long how many of those are closed and was able to come up with a much better customer acquisition cost, around 50 to $70. So then I just plowed money into that. So it just really comes down to testing each of these. That is literally the, the quote unquote, like secret is like you go test, you spend money on each one and you figure out which one works. And then when it says plow all your money into it, keep in mind we have a seasonal service. So the effectiveness of plowing money into marketing is very, very seasonal. And so I know, for example, like with Alex, he stumbled on Facebook ads very, very, very early. And so basically any ad they put up, they could, they could say certain words that now are no longer allowed. And so Jim launched the previous company. They're actually switching to a software model. I shouldn't say soft switching. They are adding it because they realize like their customer acquisition cost is going through the roof with gems. It's very, very difficult. They've scaled the over the phone part to get the gym owners. That's their model. Like they're getting them. But then their ads they give, those owners have to convert at the local level. And it's getting very, very difficult. So they are switching to more of a software driven model so that instead of here's the ad, we will run it for you. And they have to do all this testing on the back, which is very, very expensive. I do it for probably maybe 10% or 15% of what they would spend every week on just testing stuff. And so it's very, very expensive. And so they are switching to more of the software model. So that way they, they can more or less be like, hey, put the, put the money in, you know, see what's working and track customer acquisition cost. Because every platform is so different, different markets, different regions. Some areas respond very well to certain offers, others don't. I've took an, I've taken an ad, for example, for my gym that was like super amazing for Anytime Fitness and they showed all the numbers on it. I ran in my market and just didn't do anything. They didn't come close to what I like. My when I just take a regular picture of one of my coaches and like, we'll put it up and be like, hey, if you want training, click on this link, book a call or whatever. Like, didn't come close. And so, but the vice versa, there's ones that I will do really good in my gym, for example, I'll share on like our Facebook group. And it doesn't work for other people. So I think it's very, very important, the bottom line is with marketing, that the cost will continue to go up, it'll constantly change. And because that people get disappointed, they get frustrated. But like someone like Alex who realizes that marketing is important, he just pivots, right? So he pivoted from paid ads to now creating free content. Recently, he's really gone into email.

And there's a couple other strategies that they're using, like, in terms of paid ads. But, like, they don't. You don't. You don't see as many of his ads, they. And then, for example, he's pivoting a software school instead of the agency model that they've done in the past. So just keep in mind, like, marketing is constantly evolving, constantly changing. And so it's more a matter of if you're going to be a student of the game, it's a matter of testing things and then tracking them. So most people will go run 3,000 door hangers, and they'll just hope and pray they get some leads. Other people will go do 3,000. They'll track which neighborhoods they did have, how long it took them, what their hourly number of door hangers they put out, how many leads came in, and then how many of them closed, and then be able to come up with a customer acquisition cost based upon a certain amount of an hourly rate of labor. And that's the person who will win because they start actually knowing that number. I'm like, okay, so that means if I now do 30,000, I can 10x this number, assuming I do it around the same period of time, because I know it's seasonal. So if I do it a month later, I can have a completely different result. Like, I happen to believe that in November, if you do instant quote door hangers for Christmas lights, which they're on the, the, the pro shop, I happen to believe you do it now, you're going to get a way better return than if you did in the middle of April, right? So timing is important when it comes to marketing as well. And knowing that is important. So that way you don't do door hangers this month, and then in three months do them again. You're like, oh, they stopped working in my market. So timing, seasonality, super important when it comes to marketing. But the difference between the great marketers and the ones that are not great are simply the ones who will track the numbers and be able to know what their customer acquisition cost is. And this is the reason why having their Facebook pixel, having your Google tracking code is actually so important to be able to actually know, what am I paying per lead? What am I paying per customer? So I can confidently spend money instead of just throwing money into the ether.

Johnny from Denver, North Carolina. Denver, North Carolina. Today I had an employee text me that he had to pull over on the way to get to his first yard because he had a cluster headache. This was two hours after leaving the shop that I received the text. Last week, during training, we had quality issues and customer complaints. So yesterday we rode in the same truck together. I felt that we worked things out and got him on track. He motioned that he wants to work with me more and not solo running mowing routes. Leaves are huge here and we have one more month until workloads slows. So the thought of hiring another employee right now stinks. I feel like that's unacceptable and just looking for some advice. So if you, if this is your only employee, I would probably keep him, I'd probably put him in your truck, and I'd probably get through the next month because you, you, you just, you just started. So, like, you don't, you probably don't have Christmas lights ready to roll. You probably haven't converted customers into winter services. So, like, get through the next month with this employee. Put them in your truck. Is it a pain in the butt? Yes.

Now, if this was one of 10 employees, I'd be letting this person go. But if this is your one employee, you can't take a 40, 45% reduction in labor right now by, you know, you and him. And so it could also be the fact that he just knows he can't work by himself because of addictions or problems that he has, et cetera, or he just sleeps or whatever. So I'd be putting them in my truck. I'd be getting through the next month. And then whatever you kind of have to put in the back burner, you do that in, in December.

Just because. I know, I know you're just starting. It's just not the time to fight this battle with one employee assuming he can do a good job. Sounds like you've worked things out in the truck. He does a good job, I assume, when, when you're with him. Lawrence. Phil, I was on a coaching call this morning talking about networking in my free time. At this point in the season, do you think it's best to do door hangers for fall cleanups or spend time at networking events in your area?

Look, I'm going to focus on direct marketing. I'm going to do door hangers because I can. I know when I'm getting customers. It's very hard to track at networking events, especially because Everyone else there is also trying to push their own business agenda. Every single networking group is very, very different. So I can't make a judgment call on your specific one, but in my experience, any chamber of commerce meetings I've gone to, city events, all that sort of thing has like very blurry return on my time. Me doing door hangers, I can determine exactly what my return on my time is and I'm going to focus on doing that 100 times. So I get enough trucks rolling around toward. From a branding perspective, I start getting customers passively, getting leads passively instead of going to these events where I cross my fingers, hope. And most of the time I have not seen them work out well because I went to this phase like probably eight years ago where I was like, oh man, I got to like go to community events and volunteer and like do all this other stuff and like be around the chamber of commerce. And I was like, okay, wait a second. So that three hours I spent that luncheon, if I would have done door hangers and I put out 80 an hour, that's 240. And if, if I get three leads and I close two of them, like that was just. That was $4,000 like you know, annual value I just got versus I have no idea what I just made in that, in that luncheon. But you know, if the luncheon is filled with a bunch of people that could do service with you and other contractors potentially that could refer to you, maybe it's valid. I just, it's just blurry. And at the beginning when you have a limited budget, we focus on direct marketing, not branding. Right.

Mr. Anonymous, would you consider in the future using franchisees to make print and video ads for services for their Augusta brand? I think we. It would be fun to burn a week during our slow time to travel and help build the empire. PS Franchisees are cheaper than celebrities. Lol.

Make print and video ads for services for the Gusta brand.

Yeah, we've traveled, we have quite a bit of pictures of other locations. Bottom line is the customer doesn't know any of us. Right? It doesn't. They don't know me. They don't know my employees. They don't know you. And so it really comes down to getting in front of them. And so thinking that a different person on the ad is going to revolutionize our marketing is unless you are paying a celebrity, then you get like some sort of notoriety because they're co signing on you. But who's in the ad doesn't usually change the difference. It just doesn't change. Like it doesn't matter if it's me or my employee. We will have the same performance because we're targeting homeowners and they have no idea who I am. They have no idea who you are. They have no idea who your customers are. They have a problem. Do we have a solution? Do we hook them in to be able to get their attention and gather information? So.

We do have down the road, especially on snow, we would like to, but because it's challenging for us to travel into places where there's snow because then everything gets delayed. We don't have a lot of very good snow photos. So everyone that does snow this year, if you all could do me a big favor and post into the Facebook group, be super helpful from an ads perspective. We just need Augusta trucks with snow plows. We need Augusta trucks pushing snow. We need Augusta trucks in the background while you're salting, etc. Because it'll be super helpful, especially as we go into doing instant pricing, instant quote forms for snow. To have that creative will be super beneficial because we just, we don't do snow here. And anytime we've always been like, hey, let's travel and go do snow is like, they're backed up, everything's delayed, we can't get in. It's an absolute headache. So that would be beneficial for sure.

Today I'll be sending out a video link to all non recurring customers for winter services. I have had a couple of customers super suspicious about how we can offer low prices as they feel they are taking advantage of us to give reasons for these lower prices. Do you feel this is necessary? Three reasons. Keep our crews in busy, consistent work. Yes, this is very good. Also using Halloween as a deal or offer. Yeah. So this could be like your trick or treat offer, right? Is this a trick or is this a treat? And then you're giving them a treat. Right. So you know, you could, you could pitch this as like.

The, the title is Trick or Treat from Augusta Longcair or Trick or treat, whatever. And then it's like, is this a trick or is this a treat? And you could literally say we've had customers literally say how in the world do you give such low prices to make this happen? And here's why we want to take, you know, keep our crews throughout the winter. It helps us a lot from a cash flow perspective. We'll keep our prices down the rest of the year by having this cash flow. And furthermore, we want to be able to have provide value to our customers so that way their property looks good all year round instead of only twice throughout the off season. I think that's a huge win and you could even, you could use that last one to say like we don't want to co sign our name of Augusta Lawn Care on people's properties that have a bunch of leaves and sticks and branches throughout the off season. We want them looking good all the time because our signature is our work. And so it's also a way to kind of like stand out from a values perspective of like we have moral values high enough that we will not allow our properties to look bad. And so this is why we are willing to have these lower prices. So yeah, like right now again, like I mentioned yesterday, the conversion on wind service has been almost double in most locations. No one's been less than, but I've seen almost double conversion some but you know, after one or two billing cycles is when we can really nail down what's the actual conversion. But I think this is a great idea, Dustin, to everyone listening to this. Actually, you know, given the fact that it is Halloween, a trick or treat would be a good way to be able to pitch this. Like hey, we have, we've started this program, a bunch of our customers have used it, but a lot of people are thinking it's a trick, here's why it's actually a treat and you list off those three reasons. So maybe share this with some other owners because that's a good idea. Just saying that is a good idea. A trick or treat offer and pitching this to your non recurring customers. This is good. I will probably tag everyone on the Facebook group to watch this because I do think this is a really good deal and a really good promo to get non recurring customers into winter services. A trick or treat offer. Alright, that's it. This is the deal.

One second. This is gonna become a thing down the road.

It's perfect timing.

Non recurring. Alright, that's everyone's marching orders for today. If you're doing winter services and it's been working well for conversion, time to go after the non recurring customers and make some sales. So that's the marching order for today. Let's do the trick or treat offer. We're going after non recurring customers. We're going to pitch, we're going to talk about the three different things.

The three different value props that we just mentioned. Trying to keep our crew busy. We want consistent work so we can keep our prices consistent throughout the rest of the year. And we want to provide value for our customers and make sure that our signature on their property says high value because we carry a lot of pride in the work and our customers property looking good. So let's do these as emails, texts, whatever you want to call it. Make the video, include the like. Make another video if you need to. This is the trick or treat offer. The reason I'm making this video, Mr. Jones, is because a lot of our customers are wondering how in the world we are getting our prices this low and saving more than 50% on what would otherwise be a couple property cleanups. So I would love to see some numbers if people send this out. Dustin, if you send this out, we'd love to see some numbers if you get some clicks. Do you get 5, 10 estimates? That'd be a huge win going into winter season if you actually sell this. I think every opportunity from now, Thanksgiving, Christmas, every holiday over the next few weeks and months is an opportunity to sell winter services. Just kind of pitch it in a specific way. So the trick or treat offer is good. It has legs. I recommend, highly recommend for everyone to test this out. Right? Love you all. Have a good one.