Mike Minutes Mastermind 11/09/2023

Welcome. Hope you're doing great.

Let's roll. Make sure my audio is actually good.

This will be so much better.

Very good. Very good.

Okay, there we go.

Good. Right now I need to drop this into the YouTube and then to Facebook.

Updates. Let me think. Had cutting edge conference this morning was fun.

And we released the upsell feature and do copilot listen the first like 30 minutes. It'll be super helpful anyways honestly and really get you focused more on upselling instead of marketing. So just as a note, I would highly recommend watching. It is not really much of a pitch until the very end of it. It's not really much of a pitch, but just an announcement. Let me just drop this into Facebook.

All right.

Let'S get moving. Present. Share screen. Share screen.

Bam. Okay, I think we're live. Why does it not do this automatically? It's so annoying. Okay, there we go.

All right. First question comes from Kyle Freeze. Dude, Kyle Freeze has been on a tear recently with questions. I think. I think he got to his head a little bit after the winter Services Door Hanger 1. He's like, I'm gonna keep doing questions. I love it. Good stuff. I was listening to a TED talk or podcast the other day with a psychologist who claimed that people need to have a specific scheduled times during the day of unproductive time. Oh, Lord. She claimed that our world and culture is so focused on efficiency and hyper productivity that we regularly work produce ourselves out of being happy and mentally healthy. Her solution was that we need to time built in that does not have specific value to a business or other people, but rather time to relax, process and decompress. Basically just time set aside that has no value but to that person. What are your thoughts on this? Do you agree? If so, what kind of things do you schedule into your time to achieve this? I do not believe this.

I think this is.

Yeah.

Oh, man. Sometimes things like Ted, they come across as exclusive, as.

Conclusive and that this is like empirical evidence. When in reality this is probably true for some people. It is definitely not true for me. And I would. I could point to many other people that this is not true. For I would rather you eat glass and walk on fire then be unproductive and do absolutely nothing and only focus on myself for a period of time every day and then schedule that into my calendar. Some people, they would need that. They need those times. That's fine. Everyone's different. But to stand on a stage and I haven't listened to it. But to stand on a stage and say that everyone Needs that I think is very egotistical. And unfortunately that has crept into TED quite a bit. That is, I will leave it at that.

What is this week's conference all about? It's basically.

Service Autopilot or Service Edge Conference. They've now merged it with Field Edge, which is like more H Vac and stuff like that. They blocked me from coming to their conference mostly because of Copilot, which is I, I get it, honestly, but.

I didn't like that because I had already had my ticket, had all my scheduled plans and everything like that. And they're like, oh yeah, we're not letting you come. And I was like, I've never been directly firing at them. They mean a bunch of lawsuits and stuff too. But anyways. But it's not over that, it's over my content. So.

Basically I said okay, no worries, totally fine. And then I just starts Cutting Edge conference because it sounds similar. Service Edge, Cutting Edge. Woohoo.

And then I reached out to Jonathan Patosnik and just touched base with him because I'm like, hey, just FYI, I'm doing this thing, this event and I don't want you to feel bad about it and take it personally. And he's like, definitely don't feel take it. I don't take it personally. And he's no longer on the cap table. He has no equity at Service Autopilot and he does no advising with them whatsoever and has no idea what's going on there. He also told Mike Callahan that he would bet on Copilot if he had to over Service Autopilot. So that felt very nice. That was a little bit of a rub to the ego. And on that day I needed it. So yeah, I think overall just having the communication with him about that was like it was worth not having gone to conference or at their conference because I like to go there mostly because they don't do a great job of communicating with their product roadmap and I like to know what's going on. Like I think they're going to be pulling the rug on version three here pretty soon. But like I don't think they're going to tell users like very much at all. And so conference is likely when they'll tell people. So I just don't know what's going on. I know, I know several things because of Jonathan that I. That he's asked me not to share. So I kind of know what's happening down the road with them too. So yeah, that would be that. It was very much good for My confidence and maybe 5% for my ego. When Mike Callahan told me that Jonathan said that because I really respect Jonathan and that's why I sent him that message prior to notifying people on social media that I was gonna be doing the thing because he's speaking at the conference for the first hour or second maybe. But then Bryant, the Dawson guy from 10X Ventures, whatever is going there too because they're in bed with them over the H Vac stuff. They're just trying to get all the H Vac companies in 10x ventures and then package it up and take it public. So that's why Field Edge is very much H Vac driven and service edge. Yeah. So it's a just a much more of a conglomerate now, which is fine. That's just kind of how it goes. But.

There'S a video going up on Copilot tomorrow. We're redoing the site and it actually explains a little bit why I started Copilot. Like the three reasons as to like issues I saw and what we need to address and like over the how next year. We're still working towards that. So yeah, basically it is a co pilot sponsored event kind of poking fun at service autopilot while offering value because I enjoy teaching and it's a skill I'm still trying to learn but with the main channel I don't have that opportunity because we're doing the turnarounds I used to do like every day like teaching like I am basically for on these keynotes. This might be a long post. This is from Kyle Turner.

Okay. Just wanted to bring some issue. I'm seeing that we have converted Copilot. When did, when did our onboarding call? When we did our onboarding call I asked as the old call notes from super need to be converted into Copilot and was told no even though at the time that didn't make sense to me. Yeah, the call notes don't come across. We went to copilot on October 23rd. Fast forward today I'm seeing a lot of issues come up from the fact that Command can't look at our super account customers calling in asking questions about the bill and random other stuff in the past and they are unable to help them. And it caused a lot of back and forth between me and Command trying to figure out what the customer needed. So question I know Command will transfer their customer into copa. Okay, so let me stop here real quick. Say.

It is very, very, very difficult for someone to get a call and then them to be like.

Know that Your location just converted over to copilot and then know, okay, now I'm going to go like, log out of copilot, go into zooper, log in. These are all different logins. And then find this customer. Then I'm going to get information, bounce back out, go into copilot and put, you know, enter the data somewhere else. That is why, like, tearing the band aid off is usually the best way to do it.

There's ways to improve this, I am for certain. But that's kind of the explanation as to why that it has to be like a. More of a cutoff like that. Because right now, yes, in the ideal world, we would be like, okay, this person just switched from zooper. But today I'm going to copilot and I'm going to like keep both open at the same time to kind of get this customer taken care of. And sometimes we're able to pick up on that and then they will switch over and stuff like that. But it's just difficult because like, it could be. Could have been service, autopilot. And then it's like, okay, well like, where are we going to store where people came from? And it's like, how long do we go back in their account? So when you have this many locations doing this, it is difficult, but it can be improved. So let's, let's just keep digging. So question. I know command center will transfer the customer into copilot, but not the invoices or quotes from zooper. Should we have converted ourselves the invoices from. No, you don't need to convert the invoices. In my mind, we are going to finish out the month of October and send invoices through super and start fresh with invoicing through copilot in November. Maybe I'm wrong. That sounds right. You would send out the invoices from zooper because you're doing your own billing. And then starting in the past week, sounds like you're in copilot. Okay, I'm just, I'm just following. I'm trying to follow here. In saying all that, I feel that there should have been an overlap period where command could access our super at least through one billing cycle or month to make this transition easier to avoid so much back and forth and confusion. So do we need to add any old call notes in the copilot? And if so, is this something command center could do for us? We are currently putting in everyone's old quotes. I would not, but it is time consuming when you have a lot of customers. I don't think you need to do that like putting in people's old quotes. It's very rare that you need to go back and see their quote if they've declined it or accepted. Like I would bring in quotes that maybe are pending, but I don't think putting in their old quotes from like last year, like you're still going to want to reprice them anyways.

Knowing what I know, I wish we waited and started fresh with Copilot in January, February. I agree, but everyone would have wanted to do that. That's why we have to do like the waiting list and then move everyone over slowly because like otherwise we wouldn't be able to do any onboarding for any locations if we all did at the same time. So.

That'S why we did the waiting list and then like we did make Zooper move people move over sooner than I would have wanted to. But if we didn't we'd all be rushing on the last week of December. It's like all my locations are moving over in a couple weeks. I think one of them moved over already. I forget. But we're moving over early because I want to give as many of the owners of a Gust Nation like towards the end of December and early January because that is the best time to move over. It's the easiest for everyone. It's just that in order for command center to help everyone, we wouldn't be able to do that. Like we just can't just be. It'd be. We wouldn't be able to assist anyone at all. We would have onboarding calls. Like when they do the onboarding call with you, they're also like prepping a whole bunch of stuff for that call and like looking at your account and getting all your settings and like there's a big process so we wouldn't be able help you guys at all. And it would lead to more confusion next spring when things were imported correctly or things weren't transferred over because we just simply didn't have the manpower to help anybody. So that's kind of why I know it's not ideal. I agree 100%. It's not going to be great for my locations to move over in a couple of weeks and still have one more month of service. But like otherwise everyone would be on their own and kind of like having to figure out everything on our own because we wouldn't have time to do like onboarding calls for 150 locations and then move, help move over customers, etc. I know we are learning this together and if. And if this helps anyone that is having the same issue, that would win my book. Yeah, I agree. Thank you for. Thank you for how you phrase this. I appreciate it and it's very constructive. I'm sure Liz will read this and hear this and probably have a response in terms of things that we could potentially do better even with service autopilot. I. I don't know this for a fact, but they might be. I know actually this part, they're allowing the transition for service autopilot into all the way through January. So if people are moving on in December and January, we will be able to access both. It's just difficult for me to confidently say that someone's gonna answer the phone and be like, okay, there's a copilot person where I put all my information, but I'm going to a different CRM to get all the. This customer's information. Cause the customer on there and doesn't know it's in a different spot. So we will treat them like, oh, hey, I got. Yeah, I got your contact information. Looks like you're set up for mowing. Great. Let's. Let's rock and roll. And I think this is where I should be. I don't even know as someone answered the phone that there's another CRM with a whole bunch of information about them. And so I can't with full confidence say that we're going to hit that nail that every single time anyways. But I do know that with service autopilot, we are doing more of a merge so Liz can make a video on Facebook and give a little more clarity to this. I am very aware that this makes everyone anxious. I'm anxious about this. Switching serums is the worst thing ever and this is why we're doing it now and is because I don't want us to ever have to go through this again. And as long as we have control of it, we will know what's going on and be able to control the future of it. In the perfect world, honestly, we would probably move end of next year because I would feel like at that point, not only have we caught up with other.

CRMs, but we are the best. And I'd be like, we should all move in. But also in a year, we're all going to be much bigger. It's going to be more painful to switch over. And the current direction where these other CRMs are going in the next year is going to become very evident.

And so that's kind of why we're moving now. It's just we got to pull the band aid off. And I know it's not fun. I don't enjoy it. I know no one else enjoys it, and I know there's anxiety around switching. I 100% get it. And there's going to be times like this that customer calls in, and even in three months, they're referencing, like, an invoice from, like, six, eight months ago that's in collections, and, like, we're going to be lost. It's going to happen. It stinks. It's going to happen less than you fear, though. But the first month, especially when you're in the middle of season, like a lot of some of you did in October.

Is painful, and I am sorry about that a lot. So.

I. Trust me, I have thought about this a lot. I have considered a lot of different ways of doing this. And it comes down to the fact that we know where Copilot's going. We at least have control of it. And it will have more issues, especially in the next couple months before January.

While we're still going so quickly. But we need to tear this band aid off now because otherwise, in a year, two years, three years, we're either A, going to be paying out through our nose for softwares that we don't really like, fully utilize and have no control over, or B, we're going to be converting to something like Copilot in three years, and we're all going to be much, much larger with multiple locations. And so I am going through the same pain of retraining general managers, retraining team members, everyone at command center. Trust me, this is like, just the cost of retraining everyone is. Is very, very significant. And whether it be my. My locations or command center. So I don't take it lightly. We've. We have thought this one through, and it's just a matter more a matter of, like, we have to pull the band aid off now. It'll only get worse as time goes on. So I appreciate the feedback though, Kyle, and I know Liz does watch these, and she will potentially make a video about the transition. I know service off hut we're giving more leniency to because the amount of issues that we were having at Zooper, just being a login and just being like, actually operate inside the software. And so that's why we made more of a hacker cutoff. But Liz can speak more to that. From what I have heard, they are doing a transition more all the way to the end of January. So if someone switches in December, like all my Locations we would be able to go in there a little bit easier. So.

What did you learn from the from GMs this year? Is it easier to hand an existing business to GM or have them start one from scratch? It's always easier to hand it off an existing one because they don't need the skill of selling. But it's also a very different person that enjoys the process of managing more than selling. Some people like the hunt and getting one started and then what we think is going to be really successful and what we've seen this past year is one person starts. Usually the person who starts and enjoys and is really good at doesn't like managing the same location for the next five or 10 years. So they'll hand it off to someone and that person usually really good manager, more steady type, likes following systems and has new structure doesn't really like to start one from scratch. So that's kind of the model we've been using. Is there a way to have two estimate follow up process one for requested estimates and one for database estimates that are not requested but are recommended for the property?

Got it. Reason for this would be the verbiage and email and callback would be vastly different. Just didn't know if there was a way to customize an automation to a specific estimate through a tag or something else. Yeah, you could.

Okay, let me see who's sending this real quick.

Is there is Dustin? Okay.

Let me think. Give me 10 seconds.

Tagging is the only way I can think of right now and it's really lousy because it's still a manual process.

As I'm thinking like literally like from what we talked about this morning cutting edge conference with upsell program. I I'm pretty confident we could down the road figure out a way how to like automatically how you'd have to associate that with estimate. It's still a matter of tagging. Tagging is going to be your most reliable. I'll. I can confidently say that right now what I was thinking in my head is like if the upsell thing with copilot could we then associate with an estimate? Yes, but you'd still have to manually associate it because you wouldn't want that process to be automatic because you might create an estimate for someone and it's like oh it's from the upsell and it could be wrong. So.

But you could like what I'm thinking in my head is like if you create the estimate from the upsell it'll do it automatically but then it's another place where you could create an estimate which I don't like. So it's a good thought though. It is definitely a good thought. And it might just be a matter of like honestly the upsells are more a matter of like do you want this service? And if they say yes, then you're going to send them an estimate and it's going to be more of a the same workflow anyways. So I don't think you would need a separate work sequence for that in my opinion. Unless you were sending the actual quote in the email or text upsell. Then. Then I see your point dramatically.

Which I will think on that.

High command center collections report A couple of clients said we never did work and report says something like disputed by debtor. What do would we do after this? At what dollar amount does it hurt their credit to have a collections their credit. Anything from a collections company on your credit is bad. So if they dispute it, typically that means that the collections company is going to ask for proof that they weren't there. So then you're gonna have to prove that you were there. So I would contact the collections agency, not command center because we aren't doing that part. Now once Tanoft Collections Empire, whoever you're using, I'm guessing it's Empire you would need a conduct and directly like hey, I saw this. This one says disputed a debtor. Here's all the information. And typically they'll send you this in the mail. So you'll probably get this in the mail in a while and they'll be asking for information.

If it's less than like a couple hundred bucks. Honestly, by the time you take out the time of yours, the fees associated with them collecting it anyways it just starts to become where it's like someone has an outbound and inbounds on sa. Can't that just be inputted on their account so we don't lose end of it? Yes, you could do that. That would definitely be something I would do. I would at least make a customer note on these ones. But typically if someone has like an outstanding balance that's very significant. You're going to be able to, you know, it's not going to be too many people and you could bring them in. This is why they're like having a credit card requirement on file is so important. I would say I would probably, if I was personally doing this, I'd probably put make a customer note. But then I would also you could make an invoice and like mirror that one. If it's like outstanding like Significantly like overdue. But again, I would probably keep your service autopilot account open at the minimum. I think it's like 79 bucks a month for a few months to be able to collect that payment. Because what you don't want is you're sending an invoice from a new system copilot and then you have this other outstanding invoice from service autopilot. You don't want that. So I would just keep this one open and this is what I would do for everybody. January 1st is a really good time to be like, if you do not have everything sent to us, we're sending you collections and people will pay like a dramatic. Because January 1st just makes a lot of sense to people. Then what you do is for the people who are still overdue, especially the ones that you want to collect on that are like larger, etc. I would save all their invoices. I'd make file like on your computer, like all their invoice, etc. So that way you don't really need the stuff in service autopilot. Like I've sent everything in collections. It's all on them now, 100%. The only reason I'll ever need to go in this account again is to mark it as paid if I get a check from the collections agency or from the customer or whatever. So I would just do that personally. And then for like someone's just like you said an invoice two weeks ago and now you're switching to copilot. I would just keep your account open for a couple months so that when you get those checks you can go in there and mark them as paid. And if they're paying with credit card again, you've already sent them the invoice. So they have the just line up with everything in service autopilot. I wouldn't bring like your invoices over unless. Why would you want to do that?

I would not recommend doing that. I wouldn't recommend bringing outstanding invoices over. I would make notes in their account maybe in copilot so. So that it's a way your people answer the phone, are aware of it without having to go check service autopilot. But I would just. Hey, you've sent the invoice. You have an automation sequence. It's still going to be fired off to send them to collections if they don't pay by the end of it and just let that whole process play out. That's what I would do. Would the estimate document be able to determine the automations Triggered. Yes, it would. But that's still a manual process of choosing which estimate document you're going to choose based upon it being an upsell and a recommendation versus a requested estimate. So that that process, that part right there is still a manual thing. It can be done. Yes. But I think the only way for this to be a successful thing down the road would be like it knows if it was an upsell versus if it was a request, an estimate. And I think in copilot down the road we could figure out something like that. Because what you're going to see in, you know, in a few weeks from the upsell feature that we didn't talk about this morning is the ability to review and like accept or reject before that upsell is sent to the customer. So that way, like employee doesn't accidentally send a mult install recommendation to someone who already has bought one and it's on the schedule for next week. Like you could just see them real quickly, like automation review and just accept them. But what you could also potentially do as I'm just thinking out loud from what Dustin said, is that could potentially be linked to an estimate somehow automatically or like have a create estimate button from there.

But that gets another step involved there. So I think what's. Honestly what I feel is like a big. What I will push, I believe I'll start pushing really hard next spring to everyone, to all of you, is proving that the small medium large works well on the website. That will work really well with upsells too, in my opinion. And down the road we would create the templates for all of us. So that way when instead of just sending in an upsell email or a text message and be like, hey, we know we're at your property. We finished mowing. We noticed you need bush trimming. Would you like to get down the service? Would you like to get a quote for that? That's great. What takes another step out of the process is we noticed there was bush trimming. Here's the prices boom. And then what you would do is create different templates for your crew, like small, medium and large. And then they would just be. Again, you'd have to. You could review it though, right? So you can have a review process. But now the pricing goes out to them. It's like, would you like to accept. Right.

When will some locations see the small, medium large estimate form beyond their sites? A lot of them, we're almost done. I think this week we will finish everybody. If you filled out the form on the dashboard, you will. You Will see it likely within a week.

But I think almost everyone's done. Vlad, I don't know if I don't know if you have or have not or if you're just asking, like out of curiosity, if you have submitted and you have not not got it, I would go ahead and submit the form again. Because I think either yesterday or they we finished everybody, we might have everyone. If not, it's gonna be this week. So maybe give it to the end of this week if you fill out the form and don't see it. Otherwise, maybe submit the form again. But we will have everyone's in there. And if you're just asking because you just want to go see it, feel free to.

Feel free to. I filled it out day one. Conference. Got it. Then you'll give us this week to the end of this week. I think we're wrapping everything up. Once that's done, give me a couple more weeks. And then we have the upsells that we're going to start working inside of that. So once they accept like the mowing price, it'll be like, oh, by the way, would you like these other services? And so what we're working on right now is how that workflow so there's not two forms that come to Command Center. So when someone accepts, it holds the trigger. Don't worry about this technique. It holds the trigger and waits for the upsell feature to kick in. And then if someone does upsell, then it attaches it all to Command center in one. So that's what we're working on right now. But that'll be a few more weeks down the road, hopefully by the end of the year. So in terms of if you do not have it yet, I will check in with the web team in Tori and see what's going on. But I'm 99 sure we're finishing up this week. So give us the end this weekend, Vlad. I will notify everyone otherwise if that changes. So thank you all. Have a fantastic Thursday and we'll see you tomorrow. Take care.