Mike Minutes Mastermind 11/08/2024

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to another Mike minutes mastermind. Happy Friday. Let's get this thing kicked off. You swap these out.

Boom. Okay.

Got eight questions for the day. Quick reminder announcement.

Inside the Facebook group. You seeing this as well as I sent an email a couple days ago and that is the WhatsApp groups that are now on QR codes. There is a. If you go on to. I'll just show it to you. Give me one second.

If you go onto the, the dashboard.

And sorry for those of you again the text messages a little bit throughout this.

I had to get started away. I have a hard cut off for this meeting. Okay.

So once you are here.

Heading up into our resources, you're gonna see WhatsApp group chats and then let me share this tab instead. Here are the group chats. All right, first off, thank you to there's a few groups that already existed and Nick basically asked if you could come into the group and change it to this name. So we don't need to be admins on every group, but we did want to make it where when someone scans this QR code it says whatever the name is on this, this group chat title. Some people are getting confused on it. So thank you to those I know Jason Murphy had the Christmas lights already set up like 50, 60 people. A couple others that already had some of these set up. The main reason we wanted to do this is the biggest feedback we got from owners when they leave training is, you know, hey, it's great, great to meet the 5, 10, 15 other people in my group. But I, I'm in a snow area. I want to talk to people with snow. And unfortunately unless they get in the Facebook group and really start interacting with people and dming and calling people, it's a little more difficult. So until they come to conference. So it's always been when after someone comes to their first conference, they get really in ingrained in August nation because they get to meet other people and they get into other groups. So we want to kind of just try to operationalize that. So please don't feel bad if you want to start your own different group with like just four or five people or like your state, for example, et cetera. But what we'll probably do here is down the road they'll probably be about 15 or 20 groups and then you'll only join one or you know, two or three. What we wanted to rank them based upon is the size of your business, so revenue. Also the, your, your winter track because that's so important. For Q4 collapse and then also some around services. So for example, like Fall leaf cleanups, General managers hub, that's a new one. So we will eventually kind of segment this a little bit more. Obviously, if you are a multi unit operator, you don't need to be inside the smaller ones. If you're a smaller one, you don't need to be in other ones. You're not going to be doing all the Christmas tracks. So you don't need to be in all of these chats. I would actually recommend not to be on all the chats because if you're in all of them, you're just going to get overwhelmed. I would choose a. What's the top three or four chats? They're going to serve me well. I can learn from other people. That would be the ones I would personally join. And we will.

We will organize this more and more as time goes on. It's just one of the biggest feedback we got from new owners and so we've been acting on that. Shout out to Nick for getting this all set up and then refining that over the past few days. Again, general managers feel free to join that general manager chat. Nick will be in that one as the administration and that way if a general manager gets released or anything like that, they can make sure that that person's moved on again. That one we're being sensitive on and making sure that, you know, the owners are served well in that. I think that there's a lot of things that Nick is doing over the next several months to really ensure the general managers are more and more supported. And they showed me stats yesterday of how many locations are ran by general managers and how many we expect in 2025. I'll be sharing some of that at conference. It's a lot of. So we're going to be really thinking about how can we support the general managers more the same that we support the owners. All right, I do need to move on. Sorry for being feeling a little bit rushed here. I just have to. I have a hard stop for this meeting which is not normal when I hop onto these for the masterminds. Okay, first one, let's get started.

Come from Mike in Athens, Tennessee. Like the WhatsApp chats and it created. I think it would be a great idea if we could get a coach in the group that is above the group that we are in. For example, the 100 200k should have someone that is at least 200 to 500k. I was a solo group one time. There's a lot of information being put out that was not necessarily correct. If a coach was in there, some kind of help guide us, it would great. Yeah. So Nick will be in all the groups just to kind of monitor make sure like incorrect information is not being passed along. I will say this though.

Mike. I would leave groups as you kind of get past them. Right. I kind of look as like the Facebook group. The Mike Minutes Mastermind is a great way to be able to get like that next step, that next level, your coaches talking to them. But then I really see the groups as more like, hey, this is the tactical issue I'm having. And at zero to a hundred thousand, you're in the field, you're actually going over the, hey, this little tool worked well for me. Or these shoes worked really well for me. And then larger owner operators that have three, four locations, there's not going to be concern with what type of boots to wear. But for someone at 0 to 100 that's like a huge deal because every day you're using, using them for 10 hours. So I would do is like leave groups once you've, you've kind of superseded them. Because look at, look at the WhatsApp group is more like tactical individual little things like I'm on a couple of them like the, the Christmas lights one and yesterday I think it was Ryan shared like this bulb, this specific bulb for the, the bomb onto people's. For the lights. Super helpful. Here's it, here's the link for. Is like 10 bucks or whatever. Like very tactical things that if you, if you post on the Facebook group, it might be like only some, it's only relevant to some people. So that's the goal of the WhatsApp groups. It's, it does not supersede like you know, Mike Man's masterminds or the Facebook group or the coaching. Those things are in place to be able to get to that next level, reach ahead, get kind of like step back from the business a little bit more and get some strategy. But we want to make sure that there's a place where you are talking to peers about things that are all relevant to each of you. So. But yeah, Nick will be in each of the groups to monitor that sort of thing too, Mike, because, you know, we don't want someone saying, hey, do this on Facebook. And it's like, look, that's against terms of service. You're going to get banned. We've seen this, this a couple times and so it'll be helpful.

Coach Connor, we, we have, we have on all of our mowing estimates that we do year round work. Do we do mowing year round? Mowing during the mowing season and mowing and winter services after mowing season, would you still give a refund to people on that? Yeah, like this one's tough. Like, so I'm assuming, coach, coach Connor, you're trying to think about.

You know, should we really give refunds to these people if we have put it on the estimate, we video, sent them a video, we contact them directly, etc. Especially now with the more involved winter services onboarding experience. Like, do I really need to give them a refund? I would probably still default to, to giving someone a refund on winter services. By having the much more involved onboarding process, you're probably going to weed people out a lot more and reduce that percentage. So I'd probably still do it just to retain the mowing customer. But if you're like, hey, this person's unreasonable, I'm guessing they're unreasonable everything in terms of like their service, every bill, every invoice, everything you charge. So I would probably just, you know, potentially in your case just say, okay, we're going to let them go.

But.

Just be careful with saying like, because it says it in the terms of and conditions. We're going to hold you to it because that is going to become a one star review of someone being like, hey, make sure you read every single word in the fine print of this company. They're going to try to pull one over you and they charge me this money without telling me. Of course they're going to say falses, falsehoods. But like, just note that that might happen if you don't give the refund. So.

Personally I would still give the refund, put them on for mowing next spring and just, just roll with it and then do a really good job of like you have, just contacting every single person, making sure they understand what winter services is. Casey, I would like to attend a new franchise training December through March. If you have some dates, let me know so I can plan for this. Thanks. Yeah, if you reach out to Lee, he has all the new franchise training dates and then if you are starting a new location and want to come or if you want to, you know, just come again. I know some people have done that after like three or four years. Okay, I just want to come again, get refreshed, that's fine. Lee will go over that, he'll give you the dates. Those specific dates, like February, March are going to be completely packed. So please reach out to to to Lee on this. We will probably record the February March one by the way and put it on the dashboard and the academy I should say so just know that they'll probably be recorded if you can't make it in person From a cost perspective. Coach Connor, are one click estimates really that good of a form marking or even valid? We have about 2,000 people in our database and when we send out one clicks we may get a dozen response and then almost all we never hear back from when we send an estimate and I feel it's about a 10% close on one clicks. Also almost every customer wants that they didn't click on anything. Wants to see that it wanted to see what it would do. Never Got the email, etc. Do filters auto click on the link. So yeah, some, some filters do auto click on the link. Others like you said they click on the link to see what happens. Not knowing that on the back end we're actually running it off of it.

We sent out one click for Christmas lighting, got about 70 clicks almost nowhere. Except about five people emailed and saying they would never asked. And people we follow up with have no idea what I'm talking about. I am just trying to see what the legitimacy of email marketing for us really is. I feel like at least on text blast we can send those out and prompt them to respond. Yes. And they have to respond a lot of rambling things now you're 100% right. We're seeing it ramp up. I haven't like made a full like pulled the trump card like let's change everything yet.

So but eventually the verbiage of our one click estimates will probably change because.

The whole link tracking and link clicks, everything we talked about yesterday is extremely frustrating. So I'm not, I haven't like pulled out and like we're changing everything. I've been monitoring it this whole year. But we're getting there in terms of like we should probably be treating our emails much more like text messages right now in terms of like cut out the text or cut out pictures. Don't put on links, text only make it conversational. That's likely the best move. So again, as much as I see the writing on the wall, I'm not pivoting the entire system yet away from it. We will get there and when we do it'll be a well thought out thing that we pivot into. But yes, I think probably 70 to 80% of us, we've seen this across the board and I would just treat your emails like text messages and that is like make it conversational. Take out any sort of links, take out your pictures, make sure it's like hey, if you would like this, just respond but make it in a way where the customer literally thinks you wrote this email to them. I would not put like email signature. I would put like, you know, thanks so much. Have a great day Connor. And that's it. The same way that texts are made very conversational like that, I would make your emails like that. So again, just forgive me for not pivoting everything right away. Like I'm watching it, I'm tracking all of it and when we, when we pivot away from one clicks, we will change the name, etc. But for now I'm just still monitoring. But if you're sending out your one clicks I would recommend that as a broad statement.

Forest. Hey Mike, so I'm reading. I'm needing to grow the Tracy location as quickly as possible. I've been in business for two years and it only has two full time employees. Tracy only does simple services. I hired a GM from Modesto and we're cutting all project in February. And simplifying services, I'll be completely removed from Adesto daily ops. I'm going to going to Tracy to take over the GM role in order to get the location to four to five employees as quickly as possible. Basically double with the business. See, he is taking all calls again for both locations. With that being said, it's going to take mass amounts of marketing to make this happen quickly. Only doing simple services, mowing and property cleanups. What is the best way to track door hanger metrics? To see the actual metrics, cost per lead, customer acquisition cost. What is the best way to track Google leads? Since CC is taking calls, what is the best way. Okay, so let's just stop here. So what is the best way to track door hanger metrics is honestly say hey, all of these neighborhoods are the ones I'm going to do. There are going to be 2,000 of them. I'm going to send, I'm going to do all of them. I'm going to see a week later how many leads came in. And you could literally just see which leads come their addresses and see which ones are inside those neighborhoods. Okay, I put out 2000. That cost me X in printing, it cost me X in labor, cost me X in commissions once I pay. And, and here's how many leads I got. Okay, how many of those leads closed? I'd probably look it up the week later. How many of them actually converted then I'd be able to come up with my customer acquisition cost. In terms of Google leads.

You can still hear your messages in Google Leads. Like your Google.

Local services, you can still hear the recordings and track all of those. So that's totally fine. And then if you're running Google Ads, it'll still show as a conversion if your if your goal of the Google Ad is a call. So if you do that sort of ad, it'll still track that as well. Was the best way to track Facebook leads since CC is taking all the calls. Again, I'm not, I'm never, I'm never going to depend on the customer for telling me the right information. They will say they saw my trucks but in reality they clicked on a Facebook ad. So this is why having the Facebook pixel is so important. So go on to the done for you ads there it'll show you how to set up a Facebook ad in there it'll show you how to give us the pixel code so we can put it on your website. And that's why when someone clicks to submit an estimate it goes to a different page, goes to a thank you page because on that thank you page is where your pixel is at and it will trigger back to Facebook saying hey, someone showed up to this page. That is an estimate request form was submitted. So that would be how I track all three of those.

Anonymous. That's a new way to spell anonymous. Let's go.

Hey Mike. It's been a super busy year and the only breakup had was going to lunch with your brother when he comes to visit his his in laws.

To be honest, I haven't watched a Mastermind since February of this year. I thought about just picking up where I left off in February but I'm pretty sure I'll spend the next two months watching videos. With that being said, I don't know if that's the best use of time. I feel like I've fallen out of touch with Augusta kids community and any news and updates you have talked about over this year. I've accomplished all my goals for this year. I'm making some big changes in the business so I can be more in touch with the Augusta community from here on out. So my question is, is there any way you can quickly summarize everything I've missed in the in the three M's Thank a ton. So I have sent emails out. You seem to probably pick up that cadence a little more. The franchise advisory council brought that feedback and we had seen that in Q1's surveys. And so if you don't watch the masterminds, just make sure you read the emails that you I send to you because like what I try to do is I try to summarize like changes or updates in like five or six points, usually twice a month. It's about that used to be a monthly thing and now I'm doing like it more often. But I don't have a cadence. What I do is I keep track of every single new update and then when it hits five things I make an email. So yeah, so you really shouldn't have to.

To go back to February. I think Liz is also working on doing the same thing that I do for emails, the updates. Doing it from Command center's perspective because what we found is people will leave an apartment, for example, a couple years go by and there's been a bunch of improvements and changes that they just don't know about it. And so Liz is going to be update. Okay, this month. These are the five things we changed. These are the things we updated each department. These are the improvements that were made. Here's some of the metrics. And so she'll probably be doing a email also from command center periodically every month or two just to show what's being done is there as well. Especially if you, if you're starting like do a second location. Like hey, this one I want command center to handle. It'd be nice if you actually see, hey, these are all the updates and improvements because there's a lot that's being done. But if you don't, you know, in the department, you just don't even know about it. So forest, in regards to raising prices when you're at capacity. Marcus, San Antonio, October 25 mastermind, would you can. What would you consider asset capacity? Seven trucks, seven employees rolling solo. Seven trucks, seven. 17 employees doubled up. When should you raise prices at solo or doubled up? So fully asset capacity is going to be when the truck is full. So I would do 14 employees and seven trucks. That would be at max. Now there's some, some companies that their default Crew size is three or four, in which case they're. They have 21 employees to seven trucks. So you're going to do it based upon the number of employees that you have in each crew.

Jameson from Ohio. Hey Mike, I'm trying to write my budget sheets for the next 12 months that we got at training. I'm going to the spring with a $90,000 personal loan and I am wondering if you could give me a broad breakdown of how I should utilize this loan. I currently have the essentials for a one man crew. I have a truck and an open trailer and a ride on mower and we do simple services like mowing, mulching and cleanups. How much do you think I should spend on marketing center? I'm trying to get to 300 to 500k next year. We are going to do 75k this year. Okay, so if you run the math backwards on this, you need at least 200,000 to $400,000 in new revenue. If you're going to have two, if you target something hundred dollars per customer in the year, we then got to say, okay, well if we need, let's just call it 300,000.

New revenue that you're going to try to add space. You could do 375 next year. Divide that by 1500 means you got to sell 200 people. So then it's like, okay, how do I sell 200 people? Well, I probably need like 400 leads. Assume I have a close ratio of 50%. So if I need 400 leads and let's assume I'm not great at marketing because I'm inefficient. I'm just getting started and I'm testing a bunch of stuff. Let's say I have like a cost per lead of like 150 bucks. Well, now it's telling me I spent 60 grand. So it's like, well, I don't have 60 grand because I need 50 of the $90,000 to be spent on trucks, equipment, etc. Well then we got to get this number down. Whether that be working on getting referrals, whether that be doing door hangers yourself, doing some of it yourself so you don't have to go out and hire or do ads and spend $150 cost per lead. Anything at $100 cost per lead or lower, I'm usually like backing up the truck and just buying all the leads. The reason is because I'm confident I can keep a customer. I'm confident that I can make that customer worth several thousand dollars. Once you've done that, then you're more inclined to be able to spend.

More money on the.

On, on the customer acquisition cost. Knowing that you have a, on average, you keep people around for two, three years on average, they get, they spend five, six, $7,000 with you. Spending $100 is great. So basically anytime I can get a lead for under 100 bucks, I'm backing up the truck, I'm buying it. You only can do that if you're confident in your customer acquisition, if you're confident in your retention and the lifetime value of the customer fed. And should the prayer group be on the dashboard? Not for now. Let's keep that one off there. Again, we want to send this around Augusta people. Join Augusta for, for the business side and for the monetary side. If you want to join the group. The prayer group. Awesome. Let's go. You'll probably see me in there at some point in time, but we want to make sure that it is around the current systems inside of Augusta Lawn Care and that everyone is served well. So. All right. Love you all. Have a fantastic Friday, great weekend, and we'll see you on Monday. Take care.