Mike Minutes Mastermind 11/14/2024 (How to Get More Stuff Done!)

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the Mike minutes. Mastermind. Let's get this baby started. I'm starting a little earlier than usual, so the text might come out a little bit. Well, there it came in. All right, never mind. Way up faster now. Okay.

Let'S see here. I have a couple questions. Looks like in the hopper. So I'll go through those. And then I wanted to go over some.

Training on my Remarkable. Some thoughts. I was thinking thoughts in the words of Keith Kalfus.

Okay, that should work. I should be able to put this here and pull this up right like so.

Ah, there it is. Ah, beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous. And then I can make it bigger. Ah, we out here hustling. Okay, cool.

All right, we'll come back to that. Let's do the questions first and then we'll jump in.

All right. Questions. Share screen. A different screen now. Share. Why don't they allow multiple. It's so frustrating. Okay, first one up. Rock and roll. We got Mr. Anonymous. Hey, Mike. Based on question asked yesterday. See attached. What are the rules of the GM command center? Etc. Please elaborate in detail of daily job duties for each. Okay. All right, let's click on this bad boy. What do we got here? So this is yesterday's question from Nick. It was a great question, by the way. Looks like this is coming from Augusta Longcart, Tracy. So you kind of let yourself out of the bag on this one, Mr. Anonymous. But I got you. I got you. Okay, so this is my POV on this. It's also a matter of, like, where we're at now versus where we want to get out. Right. So the eventual goal, in my opinion, for this. Let me go back to your question. There it is. Someone like that asked a question yesterday at 900,000 trying to scale it back to 800,000. I believe that above 800,000, you're going to probably have an office person. Like, it makes a lot of sense financially. And you, you are going to be frustrated with Command center because.

The margin of error compounds when you just have that much scale. I believe we can change that. Liz is on the mission to make this thing much better. We have been improving every single year. I'm confident that this location in the future Command center can handle all admin. This is how I think about it. I want in the perfect world for a location like this to be handled in this regard. Oh, we should be. Let's jump in. Let's check this out. We're going to break it in with a little workshop here. Boom, boom, ao all right, let's see. All right, what's happening here? Okay, cool. All right, so this is how I like to think about it. When I think about like what we're trying to build with 800,000, can I write a 800,000k revenue?

200K profit. That is the goal that I want locations to be able to get to after being three years in profit mode.

That's what we're shooting for in order to do this model. This is what I think needs to happen. We have three functions of any business. You guys have heard me talk about this in.

What's it called.

The Turnarounds, the videos, etc. Right? We got sales. Think of that as like before their customer. Then I got ops. I got to get the work done. I got to deliver on the promises made by the salespeople. And then I got admin. I got to collect an invoice. I've got to pay payroll. I've got to do all these crazy other things to make sure that business operates. Cool. Three functions of every business. Sales, Operation, Operations, Admin. Before, during, and after. Okay.

So how I like to think about it. When we think about what we're trying to build, especially for the next 24 months, our focus and trying to achieve this for every location. This is how I think about it. I want sales to be AI software. Okay.

We'Re not there yet, but that's, that's the goal. Operations.

Let's come back to operations. Admin. I want this to be command center.

That is everything with email, text messages, estimate request forms, chats, estimates, invoices, scheduling. Everything is handled by admin. There's some admin that will eventually, I think be handled by software, by the way, but as a function of just this example Command center. And the reason I say that is because I think software down the road will help with scheduling a lot more anyways. Operations. This is a GM's role. Again, we are assuming that we are have optimized the location. We've grown it very quickly to 500,000. We've optimized over the course of three years by raising prices, not hiring more staff, not buying more trucks and equipment, getting it to 700 to 800,000. I don't want to go over 800,000. I start seeing that as the tipping point.

And this is how I'd be looking at it. This part hands off completely.

This part command center can handle that. And the GM can make sure that everything's going smoothly. But like they don't have to handle phone calls, estimates, emails, etc. I want my GM focus 100% of their time on operations. It's the hardest part to systematize. So I want them focused on it all the time because it's very hard to systematize humans and so I want them to focus 100% of the time attention on that. It also allows them to not need the ability or the skill to sell or the ability to be able to do admin, both of which are very different tasks from what an operationally driven GM is very capable of. It reduces the threshold of skill required, making the business less susceptible to someone leaving, making it much more anti fragile to an environment where an employee leaves or has trade secrets or is the only one that can do certain jobs, et cetera. Now this is made possible by simplification of services and staying in profit mode. So simplification of services because command center is going to drop the ball if you're doing a whole bunch of different bunch of different services. We're trying to improve, but we will consistently be less able to serve someone that has a whole bunch of services, has a whole bunch of different types of things that keep adding in frequency of services, do they change up, et cetera.

Same thing with sales. Very difficult if you have, whether it be AI or the software with instant pricing that we're working on to be able to systematize that to the point where AI and software can do it. If you're doing all sorts of stuff like paper patios, very difficult to do instant pricing, you're going to need an all star salesperson or more likely yourself as the owner to always be there.

So in order for this to work, you have to simplify services in order for this to happen. But I would say the reason I talked about that yesterday with that specific owner was how do I hand this off to a gm? I'm going to have to cut out some services. So go from 900,000 to 700,000, cut out all the most complex services that I always have to check in on and I'm going to raise prices, get around 750,000 by raising prices, reduce my close ratio. I'm not going to keep growing, I'm not going to hire more people, not going to get more trucks. But now my general manager, because of simplified services, can actually do ops well and not put the business in a precarious position by being the only one that knows how to do certain things. And I also don't require them to know how to do sales or anything to do with admin right now if Your location currently is doing over 800,000. You're probably going to need this built out yourself. You're probably gonna have to go get an office person. And so we are building command center, improving a lot of the aspects and we've really focused on like after someone hits 500,000, what are the pain points they're hitting? And the feedback given to Liz is mostly coming from those owners and we see that as our area of improvement. But I see this as the model. So to answer your question, since I got a little off a tangent, sorry.

Boom, boom. Now I gotta go back to.

Where's the other form?

Sorry, give me a second. There's like literally 100 different things I have to scroll through. Okay, we're just gonna roll with this. So I hope that was helpful. I think I answered that question.

Basically anything with admin I want. Why won't my general manager focus on operations, hiring, firing training, hiring, firing training, doing team meetings, doing ride alongs, doing quality assurance, like with the crew all the time. I don't want them focused where they're so focused on doing the sales even that they're doing estimates all day long and they don't have time to actually work with the crew. That's why we want instant price informs. That's why we want over the phone estimates. That's why I want to simplify services so those things can be done so my general manager can spend time with the team because it's the hardest part to operationalize. So if you're, if you or your GM is out spending time doing sales all day long, yeah, we're growing. But guess what's also failing usually in that business? The team. They're not trained. Lots of yellow slips. They're not efficient on P4P because there's no person in ops that's constantly with them.

Kai from Parisio, Indiana, my employees last days, today I'm tackling winter services solo. He's a great employee and asked about unemployment for the winter. Can you give a brief folks explanation how this works? So yeah, if someone's been with you for more than three months and they go on unemployment, the reason it's three months is they go based upon quarterly. It's going to impact your unemployment, you know, cost usually depending on your state how this all works. You check your labor, you can literally call and ask them.

And so he can go on unemployment. That's. I would let that happen. I used to be very much like how do I keep people from going unemployment? The cost of keeping them on when they are extremely ineffective or unprofitable is far greater. Usually if someone has budget constraints, they'll go get another job and then you can give them a guaranteed start return date. But if they're just like, hey, I just want to, you know, take it easy, I'm. I'm okay with like 60, 70% of my paycheck or whatever they are they're offering. Depending on how much they've worked with you in the past, that's usually what that's determined based upon. I'm fine with it as long as they're coming back. I guess that's. That's the main thing.

Do you have a short product review? I like to get one for Black Friday. Happy Thursday. Okay, so this is my opinion on the remarkable. I would probably get an iPad now, to be perfectly honest, but I'm in it. I use it. Let's go. But there's so many more functions than iPad has for the same price. It's just tough. The only reason you get a remarkable if you want to do it, if you like old fashioned, you like writing on paper and you like the feeling of the paper, then you get a remarkable. But in terms of functionality, there is so much more you can do with an iPad. They have. The Apple Pro pencil is so much better than it used to be, even when I first started using these four or five years ago. So I would probably just buy an iPad, to be perfectly honest with you. Okay, let's jump into some training.

See how this goes. Okay. Boom. Okay. Whoa, wait. What up? What? What? Okay, there we go. Okay, so I need to switch this over. We are in the education portion of the segment. Okay. So.

Alex has talked a lot about last year or two and he's always talked a lot about manager mode.

And maker mode.

Okay. And he talks a lot about how like, especially for a founder, being in maker mode as much as possible. Good thing having a manager, staying in manager time. Their blocks are much smaller. They have more meetings. This would be similar like your estimator, for example, or your office admin, if you have one, or your regional manager manager mode. Like there's a lot of meetings. They're not really. They don't need larger blocks of creative time. Their job is manager. Now I like to add another one. And I've said this to a few owners that have talked about this with me in the past because they're jumping into maker mode. I say in my opinion, and I don't, I hate to add to what Alex says because it's, it's always Awesome. I think there's a worker mode, and if we draw parallels to the stuff we've already talked about inside of a destination, this is 0 to 200,000.

Also known as what we call the laborer that gets the role of the owner. Manager mode, 200,000 to 800,000, which was exactly what we call it, manager. That's what the role of the owner should. Should be, based on what we've talked about inside Augusta, and then I believe 800,000 plus. And then we call this the architect. So I'm just drawing some parallels between different verbiage between what Alex talks about and then what I talk about. Again, I added this part in here. The reason I added in there, because you spending four hours thinking about strategy in your business at $100,000 in annual revenue will not move the needle. You being a great laborer and focus on to be more efficient out in the field, working harder, getting the right tools and supplies and equipment and boots, and is great use of your time.

Now, the reason I make this distinction is because I'm about to talk about something that probably mostly focuses on people that are doing like 500,000 plus. So I make this massive caveat to say that what I'm about to talk about probably doesn't apply to you if you're doing under $500,000 in combined revenue across locations. Okay. And that's fine. It's good to have it on the horizon and know it's coming down the pipe. This is something that down the road, we'll talk a lot more inside the seven figures, your club, which is, again, if your location is combined to above a million dollars, you'll be in that. But today, we're sharing with everyone. Okay. This is a thought process that I had today. Okay. Whether or not it's right or not, to be debatable, I think stop step one to Get More Stuff done. So this, if we have to name this, this is the Mike Andy's Get More Stuff Done framework. Beautiful. I love it. Wow. How do we do this? Okay. Frame. You're crushing it. Okay, cool. So the Mike Andes Get More Stuff Done gmsd. Very good. We'll do a little trademark there. The Mike Andes Get More Stuff Done framework is as follows. Organize. Okay. The whole goal here is to be able to grow the business, hand things off, delegate it to general managers, regional managers, be able to eventually, in 10, 15 years, be able to hand this thing off and let it run without you. How do we get there? Because there's constantly fires to fight, things to get Done. I think that first off it is we must organize. Now, if we run a tight ship and we organized everything and we have our calendar organized, we have time blocks, we know when we're checking our emails, we know when we're supposed to be doing estimates, we know when we're supposed to be spending time investing in the team or your managers, et cetera. Great. The next thing is, because I have organized, I am able to prioritize things that come up in my day. Now, in case anyone ever says I don't have time, just wait until someone and their family gets in an accident. All of a sudden we have a priority. So it is not a matter of I do not have enough time. Time is never the constraint. The prioritization of time is what is the constraint. The prioritization of the task that we have to do is a constraint. And so in the perfect world, we get so organized that we are able to then prioritize things that are important in the business. For example, let's just say I'm starting a second location and I need to find a general manager for my first location. It is extremely high priority that I find a good general manager. It's probably going to be the deciding factor. It will be. The deciding factor of the success of your next location is whether or not you find a great general manager for your first location or a starter, more GM sales driven person for your second location. The success of that secondary location will hinge on that general manager finding the right person, training up and investing into them over the next six to 12 months.

Now, if I am still doing sales at my first location, if I have tons of emails coming in throughout the day, if I'm still trying to manage my own admin, if I'm managing my own inbox, if I am trying to send out estimates and I'm trying to send out invoices and do all of these other things, it is likely that I will fail to organize myself enough to be able to prioritize training and investing into my general manager or even finding and recruiting them. So what happens is we usually will rush. Number two. We will rush. The most important thing, the most important objective gets rushed because we fail to organize our day. And I'm making this video in part because Alex made a genius, fantastic video about prioritization yesterday. And my first thought was, before I think about priorities, should I organize my day? Because if I can organize my day, I will be able to produce more time. And I do believe that things will expand as far as we let them. So if you have four hours and you're like, I got three estimates, cool. It will take you the full four hours. I also believe you could get six estimates done and you'd get them in the same four hours. And so things expand in terms of the time and the constraints that we give them. So if I can organize things so those three estimates are already booked from 10, 10 30, 11, 11 30, great. I get done an hour and a half, and now I have two and a half hours to then focus on my priority, because that's the thing that's actually going to move the needle for me in the future. And if I'm in maker mode, that is the architect of my business. The number one thing I want to be focused on is my priorities. But in order to focus on my priorities, I have to organize things. So whether that be.

Go back here, whether that be schedule, whether that be making sure someone else is in your inbox, your email inbox, whether that is things I've talked about recently about, like, getting someone else to clean your house. Again, I'm talking to someone to make your, like, down here in architect mode. Okay? Someone else to clean the house, Someone else to do a lot of these other tasks so that you can organize your day to the point where you are able to prioritize. Okay, now, what happens if you do not do this?

Well, if we fail to organize, we will not have the time to prioritize. This will then lead down the road to a lot of really bad stuff for the business. Usually this is general managers leaving. This is unprofitable locations. This is you spread so thin that you get sick. This is burnout, et cetera, if this fails to happen. So if this fails to happen, if you do not organize, the priorities will usually fall through the cracks. Now, what happens if we crush it? We do organize things, and I can't get to my priorities. This has been broken. I cannot get to my priorities because even though I'm organized, I'm dialed in. Everything is efficient, but I cannot get to my priorities. Here's the thing that I like to think about, systematize.

That is, dial this bad boy in and everything that you're doing to the furthest extent and then delegate.

Boom, boom. So this is to get more stuff done, framework, organize. And then by organizing, I get more time to prioritize. And if I fail to make this leap, if I fail to actually get my priorities done, if my priorities are falling through the cracks, then I need to systematize everything I'm doing and delegate. So for example, this would be, oh, I need to systematize my estimate process. I need to systematize the services that I'm doing. They're too complex. It's keeping me from keeping things organized and prioritizing. So what am I going to do? I'm going to simplify services. This is why I always recommend going into profit mode for a couple years and then start, or at least one year and then start in a second location. Because when you go into profit mode, what you're actually doing is you're systematizing. You're cutting out projects, you're cutting out big stuff that is causing you to always be there. You're systematizing so that you can delegate.

Alright, so this is the Mike Andy's Get More stuff Done framework. We organize and then we prioritize. If we, if we have organized everything to its max, capacity and priorities are not getting completed. I'm going to systemize what I am currently doing and then delegate it to somebody else. All right, that is the framework for today. All right, that's all we got. It comes out a little raw because you guys get it first.

So. All right, let me know if it was helpful. That's just my musings. So whether or not it's helpful or not, I would love to know in the comments. Love you all. Hope you have a fantastic Thursday. We'll see you tomorrow.