Mike Minutes Mastermind 10/31/22

Happy Monday, everybody. It's rock and roll. Quick thing before you roll into some questions. We are two months left in the year. Let's go now. These last two months of the year can literally double your profits on an annual basis. Determining November and December's payout is typically the determining factor of whether you do a a decent year versus a great year because you are usually getting. You're collecting on payments from the past few months that might be open do you're collecting on the last months of mowing, etc. So please, please, please, if you are still wanting to grow, keep throttling your fall cleanups. If you're not booked out, you're calling people the day after and you're selling the job. You're working through any sort of.

Price negotiations, you're working through any sort of scheduling issues you're going through. Like Chuck had mentioned on the Facebook group the other day, some people just don't know that they don't have to pay the job before and they can wait till the 1st of the month or whatever it is.

So please, please, please, if you're trying to go do that, if you're trying to be profitable and trying to really extrapolate profit over the next couple months, you're to be really thinking about two things. One.

Ensuring that you are upselling like crazy to your existing customers. And two is you need to start thinking about taxes. If you've been really profitable this year so it doesn't come bite you in the butt. If you haven't been doing estimated payments, you should be hopping on a call with Brad, going over what your tax liabilities are looking like. He has a spreadsheet. I don't know if you share with everyone yet, but he will eventually in terms of what he does on that call with you and kind of breaking down what your expected tax liability is going to be and then looking at the options in terms of taking section 179s or doing amortization or other things, so highly recommend you do that. If you've been, you know, really, really profitable this year, that's a very important thing. Over the next couple months, if you have not been profitable, that's fine. Most your first year, even two years, you're growing very quickly. Everything's going back in the business. Taxes is not really something you really need to be thinking a ton about because you already know it's. Most of it's gonna be wiped out in terms of a loss. But in that case, I would be really, really strategically thinking about how do I scale up and get ready for next spring rush where I can flip the profit switch, raise prices, get to capacity. So you know you can grow throughout the winter. If you have enough hustle, you absolutely can. I've seen this happen time and time again. Everyone somehow just like, uses the winter as a crutch. Like, oh, I can't grow. Like, why not? Like you said, you can't. Yes, there's less customers, but everyone's marketing less. Less people are hiring. There's less work to be had. But you take it all. If you take the cumulative amount of work in your market, and let's say during the, the, the summer months, it is $3 million a month worth of, of revenue total for lawn care landscaping. Yes, that might shrink down to a million, but you don't need the whole million dollars to be successful during the winter months. Okay? So it's just a matter of who's gonna be the most aggressively going after that. And if you think in terms of your, your total market share and your total market and then market cap of your territory and you think, oh, I just need 5% of that, and maybe I only got 1% of it during the summer, but now I need 5%, so how am I gonna do that? I'm just gonna make sure that I'm in front of everybody. I'm gonna follow up more. I am going to do yard signs, whatever it is, I'm gonna get out in front of people. Now, I've seen people grow without winter services, without snow in markets that really, the only way to do service during the winter is property cleanups and leaf cleanups, and they will grow month over month over month throughout the winter. There's nothing holding you back besides the ambition to do so. Yes, it's harder to grow during the winter. Absolutely. I'm not negating that. But the ideology of, oh, it's winter, going to make less money, oh, it's winter, I'm not going to be able to grow, oh, it's winter. I can't have a high close ratio because there's no.

There'S no incentive for the customer to book tomorrow because there's, there's no growth. All of those are excuses. And if you actually want enough, you can overcome those. Those are all headwinds that will happen. And yes, total revenue trends to go tends to go down. Yes, I know the numbers don't lie, but ultimately, if you just had. Let's just, let's just step back for a second and realize, okay, if someone had a. Let's just call it a $2 million business during the winter, they're probably still doing 80 to 90,000amonth in revenue. Okay, Just freeze frame that for a second. And they're trying to be scrappy, going after projects, Cleave cleanups, fall cleanups, property cleanups, whatever, okay? Then you look at your business and you've been doing, say, 40 or $50,000 a month during the busy season, and your expectation is like, well, I'm going to go to 10 or 15,000 during the winter. Okay? Just keep in mind for a second that someone else is doing 80 to 90. Okay? And the reason they they are is because they have brand awareness and they have a whole bunch of customers in their database. The only way to get that much work because the work is there, the work is there. They obviously did it. It's how do you get in front of those people during that time is you have to be ultra aggressive. And it's going to be knocking on doors, door hangers, yard signs, advertising. It's going to be doing everything that everyone else is not doing during that time because that is their quote, unquote, slow season when they're going to go take a vacation. So if you really wanted to get ahead, you absolutely can. And every dollar you spend during the winter is less effective because people do not need our services 100%. You're gonna spend like three to four times as much on customer acquisition costs during the winter compared to the spring. However, that customer acquisition cost, if done correctly in a concentrated area, becomes branding that come spring. They know your brand because they've seen you four or five times for Christmas lights, winter services, fall cleanups, leaf cleanups, bush trimming. They've seen that all winter long. Maybe they use you one time, and now in spring, you have the brand to really take off. And so again, that only happens if you're in a centralized, localized area. You're not trying to boil the ocean with your marketing. It's extremely ineffective. And you're going to spend all of your marketing dollars. But I just want to preface that because. Just because as a collective, I talk about declining revenues during the winter. I talk about trying to conserve, trying to break even, trying to get ready for next spring rush. Don't let that be the reason, because most people do that, that you can't grow during the winter. Okay? And I felt to say this because I was looking back at my numbers from my second year in business, and we grew during the winter. And I remember that was the first year we were in Blaine. I got the shop space And I was like, I can't afford rent if we don't continue to get at least 25 to 30,000amonth. And at the time, I was only doing about 30,000amonth in the summer. And so, like, we have to keep growing. We have to keep at least that much revenue just to pay the bills. And we made it happen. Yes, it got really scrappy. I started doing pressure washing for free in this one neighborhood that I really wanted to grow in. And the deal was, you let me do pressure washing for free, I give you an estimate for, like, five other things. So it'd be like, hey, I want to do. Here's. Here's your estimate. Free pressure washing, and here's mulch install, leaf cleanup, bush trimming, gutter cleanout, and I do a whole bunch of stuff for them. And one out of three would let me do all the other things. Okay. So, yes, I did some free pressure washing, and it cost me money, and I probably wasted quite a bit of money. But it was the alternative to just basically spending 150 to $200 on customer acquisition costs, spending that on advertising. Right. So I knew I could rent a piece of equipment or I could buy a piece of equipment and knock out a pressure washing of someone's driveway in, like, 30 minutes. And if I did that, like, four times, I could usually get one customer that would spend a couple thousand dollars on mulch, leaf cleanups, bush trim, et cetera. How bad you want it is the determining factor whether or not you grow and whether or not you're profitable during the winter months. And that can only be determined by you. So, all right, let's jump into the questions. I didn't have a chance to look at these yet.

Let's see here. Mastermind there.

Right.

Is it possible to add a conversion tracking tag from Google to our website? Yes, it is. If you go to the edit your webpage tab on the dashboard and log in, there is a place to add your tag code from Google Analytics, and you can pop it in there for your conversion tag. So you can pop it in there, and then you can track whatever you want. If there's specific things you need, let us know. But most of it's right in that form. You've put in the track the code, and then you can track your conversions. And that's helpful if you're running ads you want to track, conversions versus clicks versus leads, et cetera. So is there a way we can figure out in advance where our next location will be? I figured we could use the method to figure out our first 10 locations. After my first 10, I'm thinking that our executive model perfected, so we could just do ten at a time. Yeah, there's a good chance I'm working through some of the things now, but there's a good chance we probably move the executive number count down to six, mostly because 10 requires 800,000, really 700 to 800,000. I'm trying to get more in that 500, 400, 500,000 range. And so we might move it down to six. That being said, if you want to figure out your next locations, it's really a matter of.

You know, look at the radiuses around you, the territories around you, and you can kind of determine those. Leona, coaching call could help you with this as well. What we are working on right now is mapping the entire. Around all of our territories. So there's, there's actual known territory names and territories. And it's not a matter of like, they just show up. It's a matter of like, these are the available territories and someone has to choose and select. So in that case, then you would have the.

Ability to see the ones around you and know which ones you want to buy or which ones would be the ones that you're going to have in the future. So we're working on that. We're going to use inside of Google Maps and have it all zoned out in territories and then eventually on the website, have a list of available territories down the road.

But it takes a little time.

Any tips on creating a Google Maps performance ad that has excellent ad strength? It's asking for more variation in the headlines and I've tried a couple things without success. Not sure how critical this is. Apparently my ad strength is currently good. Yeah, exactly. So remember, Google is wanting you to spend as much money as possible. They are going to want you to.

Widen the amount of keywords and create more variation because that gives them more opportunity to show your ad. Right. So they would, they would rather you put home improvement than landscaping, because home improvement will show up 10 times more than landscaping. However, do you want to be shown in front of home improvement people? Would you rather just your keywords be landscaping? Right. So I would not be concerned about this. I have found that they are pushing people when they're excellent and they're. A lot of their suggestions are just creating a wider and wider net of keywords that they can show your ad from. So it's not say that they're trying to be bad, they're just trying to show your ad to the most people and that's what they're using is like your ad could be shown to 30% more people if you did X like yes, but do I really want my ad to be shown underneath contractors? Do people really type in the word contractors when they're looking for lawn care guys or for landscaping? That's the question. Right. So just be careful. Some of their suggestions are good, especially when around links or things like that, like adding more. But don't think that showing your ad to more people is going to make it perform better. It might get your cost per click will come down. It will, but the quality of that click will be lower because they're not searching for the keywords that you're trying to pitch. So don't, don't take. I'm not saying their suggestions are bad. Just take it with a grain of salt. They're trying to get your ad to.

Be promoted to the widest audience of people because that's their financial interest.

Hey Mike, I totally understand scaling back command centers of the winter and think it's a smart move. Just wanted to see what you thought we should do in regards to Christmas lights. I'm planning on investing a spring like marketing budget into Christmas lights. I really think there be some days where I get as many as 50 to 100 leads in a day. Not all these leads are going to come in over the phone, of course, but some will. Given that there are at least 12 franchises are doing Christmas lights this year and the next four weeks are the busiest as far as leads coming in, especially days following Thanksgiving, I feel like there'd be a nice bump in calls at command. What do you think about being a little more staffed than usual on Saturdays just over the next four weekends, especially the last couple weekends in November to deal with the Christmas light demand? Yeah, like I said in the video, we track this all the time. Like if there was five or 10 calls missed in a day any given day, we would have more people on, on staff. So we track this like a hawk. So like actually let me do this live.

Hopefully I don't regret doing this live.

Yeah, let's see here. So if you can see this in the break room. The days just got started here, but you got the number of total calls you got. The average handle time is about 2 minutes and 13 seconds. It refreshes every 10 seconds here on this board. And then here you can see the average speed of answer is three seconds. And there's been no missed calls. So this refreshes every 10 seconds and I get a report at 12 o' clock midnight every single night.

For command center. And we are live changing the amount of staff. Like, if there was enough, there was enough demand. It'd be like, literally, okay, tomorrow we're changing, let's adjust hours, let's bring more people back in, let's double up hours on Saturdays, etc. So we're always tracking that. That report comes to me at the end of Saturday.

And so we are always tracking that. And we anticipate exactly what you said, Dylan. In terms of that bump in demand, it corresponds very well. Because that bump in Christmas light demand corresponds with a big drop in demand after everyone has done their mowing season. So it's a really good drop. And because people have just started winter services and there's a lull there from a lot of other locations. So the 12 that are doing Christmas lights will be able to handle the call volume, no problem. So, you know, when there's. When there's, you know, 800, 900 calls coming in, if we're missing, you know, five or 10, we will put more people on. We're shooting for 99 or better answer time, answer pickup. And you can see like there's zero this work from today already. That's where the goal is. Like, if I see two on there, I get a little agitated. So we're always monitoring that. Great question, though.

I think that was all the questions. Oh, really? Michael, you deleted the page.

Mastermind, pull back up, make sure that was the last one.

That's it.

Cool. All right, guys, have a great Monday and we'll see you guys tomorrow. Oh, wait, there's a comment.

Oh, okay, cool. All right, we'll see you tomorrow.