Mike Minutes Mastermind 11/18/2022

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it's Friday.

Hope you're all doing super well. Let's go ahead and jump in. I saw there's quite a few questions. One quick announcement. Service Autopilot users, two things. One, we are aware of the issues with delayed of automations. We have notified Service Autopilot several times. I was unbeknownst to me, this happened days ago. They've already notified them and create tickets and been harassing them from command center, which is a good thing.

Unfortunately we have no control over when it's going to get fixed but hopefully it does soon because some people your automation is going out in batches at night, delayed by a day, etc. So I apologize, just can't do anything about it besides be the squeaky wheel. That's what we're trying to be. Second thing, service autopilot users, your PayPal link for tips. Make sure that PayPal is linked to your PayPal. If it isn't, it's the default one that's in that the PayPal link then in there goes to Bellingham Shop. It's a pain in the neck for them to try to figure out whose customer this belongs to someplace randomly in the country. So please, if you're using the button that has leave a tip for your crew and you're using Service Autopilot, please make sure that that PayPal link is going to your PayPal.

And yes, there is not a huge conversion of tips, mostly due to the fact that it's not integrated into the invoice, which is the case in the likes of super and down the road we will always have integrated tips because you can literally pay for the software simply by having a tip feature that is integrated into the invoice. So all that to say Please check your PayPal link if you currently have it and make sure it is set up for your own.

All right, so some questions come in. The event here has been really good. Honestly, creating a relationship with Jonathan Patosnik and his son Riley has been the highlight of the trip.

One second, let me just copy this into the.

YouTube.

So yeah, been very, very good. I spent a couple hours with Jonathan Patosnik one on one last night and I'm very honored and humbled to be able to have his time to that extent. And he's excited about what we're doing and just genuinely interested as an entrepreneur. And so I, I really enjoy it. I'll be honest. Like I really struggle to find people that sounds horrible, horrible say like that I can learn from but not necessarily like that. But it's like when, when you get to a certain level and you try to look up to someone that's doing more than you, it gets very expensive or just hard to find someone is willing and eager to learn and listen and help you. And, and so Jonathan has really been like that for me and I really appreciate it. He's just been an absolute.

Ace in the hole.

For us and giving us really, really solid advice for what we're doing in the future. And even just for me personally in terms of re fortifying my belief that I should not take on private equity since he really is so unhappy of how it treated service autopilot once he, he did let them take over. So lots of things that he really helped me with and I really appreciate it and it's been the highlight of this trip. So let's jump into this. Which reminds me, I need to go meet Riley here in just a few minutes. Riley is a son and is a chip off the old block. All right, Kevin, I have an employee who in a year or two would be, would make a good working gm. However, he's thinking about getting a job at a union where he can get benefits, specifically a 401k. Would you ever give a working GM a 401k? Do you have any thoughts on how to sell him on sticking with me long term, especially when he's looking for benefits? I just don't know what I should be offering or promising to him. Thanks. So a couple things, Kevin, I know you're just growing your business right now. Couple things I would not look, I would not try to retain, retain an employee that in one to two years you think would be a gm. I wouldn't, I would just, just realize that in two years someone's life changes a lot. And even though they might be working for you now, you might do all this work to get benefits for them and they still leave you in six months. So just hold lightly onto things.

Hold loosely on the things. If you don't and you put all your eggs in that basket mentally and emotionally, if that person leaves, which is a very high life, within two years, a laborer leaves you.

You don't want to affect you negatively emotionally and just mentally. So let me. My first thing, second thing. 401ks are relatively easy to set up. Talk to a bank, talk to potentially a financial advising group in your local area. But start with a local credit union. See if you can set up a 401k. You can do a 401k match for say like A very small percentage even. But just the effort of setting up the 401k is a bit of a pain. There's also things, certain things, like you can't offer 401ks to just some of your employees. Like there's, there's definitely same thing like healthcare benefits. There's certain things that you can and cannot do. So you just got to talk to your, your Whoever's doing the 401k program for you and setting it up and making sure it's, it's not super expensive. 401ks is not super expensive. You just got to set it up. And you could do like a percentage match like some people do. Crazy, like 100% match up to say $5,000. Or some people do like, you know, 20% match unlimited, like whatever it is. So talk to them, see what would be helpful. But 401ks are not hard to set up. Very, very few laborers will use it. Same thing with healthcare benefits at the frontline level. Very few people actually use them. It's more of a talent attraction tool. People that are afraid to offer healthcare benefits. I would challenge you because I thought, okay, I'm looking at like all my employees multiplied by a number amount per month when literally 75 of them don't use it. But on the initial hiring process, it's a very good selling proposition. I'm going to be working on a couple things actually though, in terms of like life insurance, very cheap, 15, 20amonth. You can get someone a good health insurance or not health insurance, life insurance policy, and basically say like if you ever passed away, your family would be taken care of. That's a good benefit. It's cheap term life insurance for a hundred thousand dollars, $100,000. Literally looking at 10 to 20 bucks a month. Another thing you could do with benefits, gym membership. End of each quarter, go ahead and submit your receipts in and we'll do a gym membership for you. We'll reimburse you for up to $50 per month and just bring in your receipts at the end of each quarter and we'll reimburse you a good benefit. Those are simple. You don't even have to go to healthcare benefits where healthcare, you're talking about a couple hundred bucks a month at least just to give up if you're gonna pay half of it or you're gonna pay like we pay a set $250 per month. Anything above that, they can choose, but they pay for it. So just realize that benefits a lot of times at the entry level positions, you're looking at it as a attraction tool and retention tool but very few people actually use it.

But there are great statistics about people who get benefits like health insurance, that and their retention. There's good numbers behind it.

We have a crew member that is basically leading their leading their landscape crew. He's the candidate I want to use to run the Norman location after we build it up. However, I am having a problem with him going to above and beyond on projects where they should they overshoot budget hours and do more than is expected by me.

What I mean is that they have a 16 budget hour job and they get done in 22 hours or 20 hours instead of instead because they are nitpicking their own work to the point that is perfect.

I feel they're doing it too much and have sat him down and told them they are spending too much time on projects and needs to get them done within budget hours. I've also told him that he tends to do too good of a job. That customers are paying for that level of perfection. Or while I appreciate the level of effort jobs need to be done in budget hours. He's read multiple times about that. But we still continue to have issues with them doing too much. I also want to mention I've shown him how I expect the jobs to roll out. But again he still spends too much. He tends to do too much and make it too perfect. How would you go about trying to fix this? One of my hands, one on one hand this isn't an issue because he is such a great guy on time, dependable and one of my only candidates I think can run a location one day. Just not sure how to break him from the cycle. Last point. I've. I've asked if they need more time in their projects and they said yes multiple times about that. But I feel that. But I still feel that me and someone else could get it done within budget hours. Okay, so first you got a question. Are you having unrealistic expectations of people working too quickly? It doesn't sound like that's the case. You've done enough work, Kyle. I was actually talking to someone, one of your competitors, Kyle, this past weekend at lunch yesterday. They knew exactly who you were. Anyways.

The thing I would question first of all foremost is are they on P4P? I would assume everyone's on P4P but if this one person is not, that's why I would say P4P would fix this 95% of the time. Because now them spending more time on the job is going to.

Affect their Paycheck and I can't remember, Kyle, if you've transitioned to P4P or if you're still waiting for January. But that will fix this 95 of the time. If it's beyond that, you got to realize that some people are just like ocd and potentially as a gm, he might overbid things and not have a good close ratio if that's what he's thinking.

I'm having issues with our Performance Max campaign. I tried campaign early Tuesday and all the picture assets are still under review. Today's Friday. I tried the Performance Max early this spring summer and had the same even. Even one week after publishing. My login is would you.

Take a look and let me know I was doing wrong? Okay, let me see your attachments real quick.

Okay, I'm just going through these real quick.

There's nothing that's jumping out at me. Your assets do say under review. One thing that you might need to do is just call.

This is all YouTube. These all looks good. Last one. Sorry, I know I'm not showing these, but it takes me so long to switch screens in here.

Everything looks fine.

To 16. Yeah. I would literally contact Google and see what's up. This is the like the same thing that happens sometimes with Google local services and happened a lot last year and the year before when they were new. The same things happened. Performance Max. And there's just some of these campaigns. I'll see 10 locations post them and two or three of them just will not go up and the other seven within three to four days will go up. They are definitely taking three to four days to review them. That's the case. But if it's a week, like, you should definitely contact them. I don't have any reason why. I don't see any consistency in what they're coming back at. And a lot of times it's like you contact them, they're like, oh, they change this one thing and it's not consistent. So I'm trying to see. And if people have this issue and then they give you a reason as to why it wasn't going up originally, please let me know. Because I'm trying to see what the consistency is, but there's not. I'm just seeing like the most random things. Sometimes like just a rant, like someone accidentally puts a exclamation mark in, but usually that's picked up automatically.

The sizing of their pictures off or something like that. But usually it's just you contact them and then it goes up. So I don't know what to say yet on that one. I apologize, Brian. I'm trying to track and see what the. I can't replicate it. Like, ours are going up fine. So.

Yeah, I'd say about two or three out of ten right now are, like, just held up in review for a long time. You never get any, like, feedback. We are trying to figure out if we should scale bed maintenance. Right now, it makes up roughly 20% of services offered besides mowing. We have noticed that 90% of our callbacks are from bed maintenance. Yes, 100%. One day that we had is to create a day where all the bed maintenance is on the same day, even if they're mowing customers and already mowed the week on earlier day. Problem being that is we are visiting the property twice in the same week versus once. Customers really, like, when we can offer both, but we're having a hard time doing both. The employees having to focus on mowing and bed maintenance on the same day and try to simplify them so it doesn't cause as many callbacks. How does BM handle this sort of thing? Do you guys not service any. Any bed maintenance? We do a ton of bed maintenance. Here's the thing. I like what your strategy is here. This is a hundred percent what I think we should do.

At Bellingham. It's. It's not 90 of our callbacks. It's probably 30 or 40%, but it's not enough yet for us to like, make a second trip to locations. That being said, it's actually not that reducing efficiency that that makes us question it. It is the fact that customers always forget that there's two different services. And so the guys will leave and command center will think it's yellow slip. It's like, oh, like mowing. But then they'll go in there and make. Actually, Mr. Jones, like, your. Your weeding is going to be done tomorrow or it's on the schedule for today. But it can get confusing. Is like if you're doing your weeding and you're mowing the same day, but two different crews come.

Then it looks like you forgot it. But all of that to say it's confusing the customer. And even though they'll call and like two months later, they'll call again about the same thing because they just. They just think, oh, like when the guys leave, when Augusta leaves the weeds to be pulled, and they forget there's two services. If you educate your customers really well, this is the thing we just have not done at Bellingham. Educate your customers and then just tell Them. Look, weeding is a separate crew and it could potentially be on a different day, like plus or negative. One day of your mowing. Right? That makes a lot of sense to me. And what you can do is in service autoplay, go to your dispatch board, select your whole month, or select a week and then filter out by that service of bed maintenance. And you'll, you'll see how many budget hours in a week you have. And if it's say 8 or 10, that means you can have one person go out and do them all in a day. If it's like we had, I think I want to say it was like 40 budget hours a week of recurring bed maintenance. Great opportunity to really just hire someone and be like, your only job is pulling weeds. Finding someone that will want to do that for a long term is tough because most, most guys like the mowers a whole lot more than they do pulling weeds. But if you find a girl or a guy that just enjoys bed maintenance and they don't have to, they don't like, like really heavy labor, it's like, look, you're gonna have a hula ho, a rake and a bin, and you're gonna pull weeds. That is very appealing to me, especially if you put that person, get that person, get like a spray tech license or is able to spray chemicals, like, even if it's vinegar for the beds. Very good.

I like that model a lot, by the way. You just have to educate your customer and you're going to realize you're probably going to lose a few customers that don't like that. But yes, the majority of your yellow slopes are going to be bed maintenance because weeds are such a subjective thing to do. Like, ah, that's a tiny weed. There's only a couple weeds in that bed. Well, that level of subjectivity, the customer is not appreciated. Whereas with mowing, it's like the grass is mowed, the edges are done. It's like, check, check, check. Bed maintenance is like a very subjective thing. I haven't made an LLC in a while and I forget about the registered agent part. Do you list yourself as a registered agent with your home address? I was going to go through legal zoom. Does it say no? Reg? A registered agent is typically someone who is not the owner. This is like your accountant that could be a registered agent. So if you're going through legal zoom, just contact them and ask them. But like in our state, a registered agent is someone that, besides someone that is a principal or is an owner and has no equity. This is like could be a power of attorney, this could be an accountant, this could be a bookkeeper. So just check with LegalZoom and confirm that for your state. Because I know the nomenclature and the verbiage for every state is a little different. But for us, registered agent does not. You would not need to be a registered agent. You would. You'd already be an agent for the company because you're a principal or president or if you've given yourself a title inside the S Corp like treasurer or whatever, then you're automatically able to be someone who signs on behalf of the company. But that's what a registered agent is. Someone can file things that can sign to the company, has signing power.

Looking forward to Fremont here. I know Google. My business now just Google Maps ranks you much better with an address for locations running out of storage in your house. Should we put our GLS address? Would you expect a business to rank lower if it's a house or we look down on it by prospective clients, would a PO Box be a valid GLS location? PO Box will not be. I've seen a few slip in that when you use UPS stores with a unit number, Google's getting much better at weeding those out. We got in some hell down in Mount Vernon and we've just retained that one. No, we take it back. We now have a shop. So we move the address, take that back. But we were able to back in the day get in. But now they're looking for an address and they're pretty good at picking those up. Like his UPS stores. Definitely. PO box will not work 100%.

I would not worry about the house thing. It's very rare that someone like is going to try to get directions to your location. So it's very rare that they're gonna actually see where your location, your address is. It's the address that you're getting. Just. It's simply for an SEO and optimization game. It has nothing to do with where you live. So I would not worry about that. I just think that 99% of people are not going to click on it and go on your GPS because they're not trying to find you. You're just trying to make sure that you show up at the top of their search. And we're consistently seeing their emphasis on Google Maps and the fact that someone that has an actual address is kindly looked upon by the Google gods. I'm sure how to go about scheduling snow removal services. I won't know when until we have an event. Can you give some guidance, Chad? Yes. Trying to remember if you're in super service autopilot.

I forget. Sorry, Chad, I apologize. I. Yes. The short answer is yes. There's scheduling for snow service on service autopilot and there is on super inside of the Academy Zooper is very basic because they don't have a separate dispatch board. It's pretty basic service all is very detailed. I've talked to some of their people this this week about snow dispatch and they're all pretty embarrassed by it. It's just very complicated inside the result. But there is a way to do it. And Rachel at command center is kind of head of that department and she made like a six step video of like how do you snow service? It's in the academy. If you need help from command center, let them know. They'll be happy to walk you through it. Either if you're in Zooper or if you're in service autopilot. Either way. So. All right everyone, hope you are having a fantastic week. Finish it off strong. This one here for the bend maintenance. Do you think it's lowering efficient by having to go back twice that week or does it we. We charge a minimum like mowing? Yes, 100%. You have to raise your minimum price on bed maintenance. You couldn't just do like $10 per service. You'd have to increase your minimum like 25 bucks I would say for bed maintenance, which I think everyone should be doing anyways. You should treat it as if it is going to be a separate service.

That being said, yes, you're going to lose some efficiency on the two times. But you got to ask yourself if 90% of your yellow slips are coming from that. That's costing a whole lot more than a little bit loss of efficiency by having a second crew go there 100%. And your. Your satisfact customer satisfaction goes up, therefore your attrition goes down, therefore you get more customers. So it all feeds into itself, right? It's just the balance of like how much is it helping with efficiency, hurting efficiency versus helping customer service, reducing yellow slopes, et cetera. You need to track that, right? So if like you're getting 10amonth complaints right now and that goes to three a month because you have a full time person doing bed maintenance. That's a very good thing. You're probably saving yourself two or three customers a month. You're probably.

In terms of attrition and you're probably saving yourself 10, 15 hours a month in just callbacks and more calls to command center and you getting involved and the employees P4P being lower. All the rest of it. All right, people, have a great weekend. We'll see you Monday. Take care.