Mike Minutes Mastermind 11/04/2022

Gusta Nation. Hope you're doing super well. Happy Friday. These are the. My worst days of being a landscaper. The reason for that is because in the Pacific Northwest is extremely miserable right now. Pouring down rain, very cold, like high 30s, tons of rain, just like a shower. And so these are the days I hate because.

That'S when the guys are out working and I'm in this nice warm studio. Well, technically my bedroom. But yeah, I don't like these days. These are horrible. And I also don't like knowing that a lot of you are also out in the crazy weather. As the next next three to four months. I consistently have to tell myself that what I am doing is important and I should not be out working outside. And some of you that have started to work on your business and grown up the company, you will have these same thoughts, especially because you sympathize and you know what it's like to work out in the crazy elements and how hard it is on your body. And then you almost feel guilty. You feel like you're not doing anything. And I feel that way very consistently to this day. Even though it's been years of working on the business when I know that all our local team is out working very hard, they're not making great P4P because it's so hard to work efficiently in this weather.

And yeah, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. But I do what we gotta do. All right, couple things.

First and foremost, thank you to everyone who contributed on this Facebook group post right here.

This is probably the next book. We just like, just take all of our. All of a sudden, these landscapers, we just become article writers and book writers. It's fantastic. I think it's the longest comment I've ever made on the Facebook group. But yeah, thank you everyone for contributing and just putting thought into some of these comments. I think the community on the Facebook group is very strong. When we all write books together, it's great. But if you haven't seen this, definitely check it out. Lots of good responses in there and yeah, just a good conversation, I think, honestly, about the industry as a whole and the feelings that we have.

From time to time, all of us as business owners, concerning what industry we are in. And so, yeah, definitely, if you have not read those comments, spend 10 or 15 minutes and read through them. Very enlightening. Enlightening. So what else we got? Education wise? Jobs report came out this morning, still in the direction of inflation. Lots of jobs being added. We're now at like 3.7% unemployment, ultra, ultra low. So these are all great things that are setting us up for a massive collapse. It's going to be great. 2023 is going to be very interesting. The only way I see 2023 not being a technical, not an actual recession, like pretty hardcore, is if the war ends, gas prices go back below 250 to $3. And.

Yeah, that's the only thing that could prevent a pretty big collapse next year because real estate's gonna have a massive collapse. I feel like the holidays is gonna be a massive downer and you're gonna see a bunch of bankruptcies next spring because people like, hey, we'll hold on for the holidays. And then there's. Those are just gonna disappoint and they'll. They'll go out of business the same way we kind of saw in like summer of 2020. A whole bunch of retailers go out of business because of that lull in a few months in because of COVID So we haven't had a lot of bankruptcies since. Since the summer of 2020 because of that. I feel like the next foray into bankruptcies is going to be these companies that were started as SPACs, special mergers and acquisitions during 2020 and 2021 when the stock market was going crazy and all these, like, startups got in with these massive valuations. I think those are guys that are gonna go bankrupt next spring. A lot of them, I should say. There's a record amount of them that were started and they're just like trash companies that lose a bunch of money. Those are all. That's all gonna dry up and it already has, but they actually go bankrupt. Okay, let's get into questions because that's what I love to do. Where are the questions? I feel like there was something else I was gonna say. I'm just. I'm rambling because I'm trying to remember what it was. I apologize. Okay, let's hop into it. Oh, I remember what it was. Maybe I'll do a special video for this one. I wanted to at some point do a video specifically about. More in depth about where I see software in our industry going. And I somewhat, based upon this Facebook post, thought I should do this because I've somewhat held close to. Held the cards close to me on where I see software actually going in the next 10 to 15 years. So, like, what we talked about last conference was, over the next five to 15 years, our main goal will be focusing on software. 15 to 20 years is when I believe robotic technology will be At a point where it'll be actually viable financially and technologically. And we want to be at the forefront by then so that when that technology comes along, we can plug into it.

But I've never really talked about where I see software going and why I've said that. So maybe one of these days I'll make a video specifically about it. But ultimately what it comes down to is the fact that no software in the service industry.

Tells the owner what they should be doing based upon the data. Why not? Like it's just numbers. Like when, when you look at a dashboard, it's not a matter of knowing your KPIs, it's a matter of these numbers tell you exactly what to do in your business. There is no question. That's why when you do max metrics, I don't even need to look at who, who the person is at the top or what the bottom part of what the coach writes. I just need to know the numbers to be able to know what the coach is going to say. Because the numbers dictate what needs to happen in the business. And so there's just no reason why software can't do this using AI. And that is take all the data points, synthesize them, look for trends, and then give recommendations of what the business owner should be doing. That's what software is built for. And as a franchise, we should be able to say, okay, these are the close ratios we expect between these thresholds of revenue. These are the percentage of recurring revenue that we expect as the company grows. Okay, this company is growing really, really fast, but their recurring revenue is. This is a red flag we should be in. We should tell the business owner to focus more on recurring work to build that base so they don't have a massive crash during the slow months. These are all date, this is all data and numbers. And software can fix these things. Like even in the Facebook group Cameron had talked about, like, hey, can we get, you know, more frequent coaching calls? I generally believe that what the coach is doing is synthesizing numbers that a software program can do and tell the owner what to do. Whether or not an owner listens is a totally different thing.

But the numbers are there and they do not lie. And the numbers, in my opinion, software has fallen so short in the past five years of actually giving owners what they need to do in their business. Like, you should be hiring somebody. This is not a hard problem to solve. Telling you what when you're going to need to hire someone is not hard based upon the budget hours projected Growth, the capacity that you have. We always talk about looking at your schedule and looking at, like, budgeted hours on the schedule. We can project that into the future. It's not easy to know when you need to hire somebody.

There's just so many things. Close ratio, how long, like we talked about yesterday, the time it takes to close. If that number starts going up and the close ratio starts to go down. Remember, time to close is how long it takes you to go from a draft estimate to a closed estimate. If that time starts getting longer and longer and longer at the same time, our close ratio is going down. There's no reason why software can't step in instead of a coach and say, oh, your close ratio is going down because you're taking a longer time to get back to the customer. You're not following up with the customer. You're not calling them the day after. These are all things that, like numbers and data tell it. And so when I think about software over the next five to 15 years, that is my goal is to create software that tells the business owner what to do. There's just no reason why it can't. And then as a franchise, we input numbers on the back end to dictate. Okay, these are the bands that we want people to be in. And if we see them outside these bands, these are the notifications we want to be sending. We want to be able to tell them which jobs are not going to be profitable. Because based upon the inputs into the estimate, this is all possible by software. All possible.

So I just need more money so we can develop this stuff, man. That's literally what it comes down to. I need more money anyways. All right, let's get off that topic and go to questions. But first, we address these questions real quick.

I have a dealership wanting service. One second. Let's get the questions that'd be more consistent with that. Okay, I have a dealership wanting service. I have sent the estimates for initial cleanup, leaf cleanups, and per visit price. Okay, we have had a phone. We had a phone over the phone meeting. They asked a bunch of questions and they sound interested, but still have. I haven't got a response. What should I do next? If it's a dealership, I just walk in like, hey, where's Joe? I was emailing Joe the other day about the landscaping. Can I talk to Joe? Bring in some hot cookies if you really want this dealership. That's the beautiful thing about business to business, B2B is you can just, like, walk in and trust me, dealerships no sales, if they're half decent. And they're going to respect you if you do that. So that's what I would do.

If you want them, assuming you want the dealership, I would walk in. If they have had questions, they've already gone back and forth to you walk in and close the deal.

So at the point of. So the. With the point of winter services being not to beat the clock, but to allow cash flow to. In the winter, should I scale back on how many budget hours I am giving? My guys recently went down to one employee myself. Currently, I've been giving my one guy 50 budget hours per week.

Yeah, you're gonna have to go down on that.

They've obviously been super efficient. Who is this? Sorry, give me a second. I'm always just so curious as to who these Facebook users are.