Mike Minutes Mastermind 11/20/2024

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Hello everyone. Welcome to the Mike minutes. Mastermind. Let's get this thing kicked off.

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Okay, let's get started.

As a reminder, if you have not already, do make sure that you book your hotel rooms for conference.

I think it's like they give us like 70 or $80 off, but there's only so many rooms they give us. So do recommend that you if you're planning to stay at the hotel that you book asap. That's for again for conference. If you want to book your tickets or book your hotel room, just go to blue collarsummit.com There is a venue tab there and you can book your tickets from there. And if you do, you will get that discount locked in. But we only have I think 90 rooms this year, so you will want to get on that as soon as possible.

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All right, let's get this thing kicked off. First one up is from Matt from Salem, Oregon. Is the email address maxgustalongerservices.com part of the attempt at dealing with the spam filters or just the normal address for copilot email texts? I had a customer try to reply to that email address to it. It was undeliverable. Yeah, there's no such thing as maxgastalongerservices.com.

Yeah, there is no maxgustalongersurgs.com so there was no message that they got from maxustalongassuras.com they might have thought that because they talked to Max they could email maxgustalongersearchers.com and get a response, but there is no messages coming from that email. Nick from Nepen. Hey Mike, thanks for answering my question last week about hiring a gm to give you a quick recap. I wanted to hire a GM because I am feeling stagnant. You suggest raising prices, optimizing current location for 800k and starting on starter role at new location.

I have multiple follow up questions but in order to not hog all the time, I'll spread them out over a few days. One, you mentioned this A lot in your videos, and I know it's a common thought, so hopefully this will help others in Augusta Nation too. I want to put to rest my constant inner dialogue telling me to change industries, there's not enough money in lawn care, etc. There are a couple of thoughts that are consistently in my head. Can you debunk them for me? This takes up more of my mental headspace and I like to admit. Okay, here we go. Number one, Hormozi had a. Had has a video where he says, if you are choosing a business to start, look at people 10 years down the road and ask yourself, do you want their life? In short, whether it's owners, I know in real life or Facebook groups or YouTubers, et cetera, the answer is no. Okay, here's, here's the reason why. Because the people in those Facebook groups and the YouTubers, et cetera, that are living the life you want are not in those places.

That's why. So again, in any industry, there is going to be the 1 to 2% at the top of the industry that everyone aspires to be like. So for example, if, like, well, I want multiple locations, I want to be able to live on this passively. I want a 20 plus part margin business, et cetera. The people that have that are not in Facebook groups and they're not making videos, the reason they're not making videos is because they have nothing else to sell. And so there is no monetary benefit for them to create content or create a team around creating content. And so some of the best content I've actually seen from people, they have less than 100 views. And the reason for that is because they do not have the infrastructure to actually build around them. And the reason they don't is because they have nothing to sell. And because they're good business people, they don't create a bunch of content for the sake of doing nothing. So Jonathan Patosnik started to create content. He has something, a project he wants to work on, and he knows having that attention will be worth it. So he's investing time. Like that's all he's doing is creating content. But he didn't for three or four years. Why? He had nothing to be able to sell or monetize or there was no reason to. And so if you want to aspire to have a business that runs without you, has multiple locations, etc, where you just don't, you can passively live off of it, you can invest in real estate, etc.

You do not. You're not going to be on Facebook groups. You're not trying to figure out what the best mower is. You've already figured that out. So the people in all these groups are the people that are the other 97, 98% of people trying to aspire to be the top 2%. And that is across every industry. If you look at.

Like digital media marketing agencies, for example, small, small business marketing agencies, for example, there are bazillions of them and they all are spying to be the top 1 to 2%. And if you go into forums, if you go into who's making YouTube videos, it's the 98% that are trying to get there. The top 1 or 2% that either a are crushing it and they're not making content and they're not in Facebook groups asking people for help. Or two, they do monetize it and they actually create content and they create a whole brand around creating the content and they monetize that because they're business people. They're not going to do it for nothing. So 2. I often come back to the sunk cost fallacy. When I was 16, I started cutting grass because I didn't want to go work a regular job and I just never quit. So here we are. Now I constantly tell myself that I never consciously chose this. If I had a zero experience in lawn care and I was looking to start a business now, I highly doubt I would start a lawn care company. To me this reinforces the sunk cost fallacy because the only reason I'm going down the path is because of what I've already put in. Okay, so I see where you're coming from. This I would say if you had to put yourself up against someone else starting another business that didn't have, let's just call it eight, nine years of experience.

I think you've been in gusta for four years, so you know, now you're doing, I think it's like $900,000 this year. I believe that if you would go back in time to your 16 year old self and say you're running a million dollar business, you would actually be thrilled out of your mind to be able to do that over the next several years.

And so what this actually is, is more of a.

It becomes very common. And so building a $900,000 business in any other industry is very difficult. Less than 10% of people in just about every industry will actually get that. So whether it be software, whether it be any sort of service business, whether it be any sort of product business, building a million dollar business is Extremely difficult. It's a top few percentile that will get there.

I think it's 9% of businesses across the board will get above a million dollars in revenue. So my theory on this is if you look at the next 10 years, okay, let's assume it's sunk cost fallacy. If, let's, let's assume that if you starting from where you're at now, which is a million dollars in revenue versus the next 10 years of what you can build continuing down this path or starting back at zero and redoing something else, the next 10 years will look very different than the Next, the last 10 years. And so you're judging your the next 10 years based upon the last 10 years when, if you continue on this current path, it looks very different. The lifestyle, the money, et cetera, of someone that has multiple locations, has general managers. You're training general managers, you're, you're training leadership into them. You're looking more, much more at the financials. You're not out in the field. Looks very different than your first 10 years. But the reason that people will Never achieve the 1 or 2% that everyone's trying to go for is because they hop off the current.

Trajectory that they're on. And so if you look at your trajectory, something like this, people always just, okay, I got switched to different industry, I'll switch to something else. And the next 10 years don't even look like the last 10 years. The last 10 years has been mostly years you in the field and then you finding the last year or two, finding someone that you can trust in terms of general manager. The next 10 years look very different in terms of the business that you're in because now the business will become leadership. It'll become, how do you create leaders? It'll become a capital intensive game. In like, how fast do you want to scale in terms of being able to take a model, perfect it, and then copy and paste it, find investors, or raise it slower, go slower yourself in terms of using your own funds.

So that will really depend on your skill set the next 10 years. And that is a game that every business gets to eventually. If you start talk, go to any industry, going from zero to a million is extremely difficult. That's why most people won't get there. But then once you get past it, it's a different business. And so mowing grass, painting houses, putting roofs on, selling software, selling books, making videos, all looks the same at a certain point because you ultimately don'. You're not in the game of doing the Thing, you're in the game of building the infrastructure to do the thing and getting the capital to fund the infrastructure. And so I really do challenge this thought.

I get everyone, everyone puts a label of the sunk cost fallacy on this. But if you talk to Alex, he says that if you would have stayed in the gym industry, he'd probably be have more wealth today than anything. He'd probably be doing about the same thing if you would have stayed with gym launch, kept doing it, kept growing it, kept scaling it up. And so starting back at zero led to a year of him feeling very, very lost.

And so in terms of what do you want out of life? Like, he could have just kept building gym launch. He could have started acquisition.com start creating the content.

This idea that you need to reset and restart.

The likelihood. If I was, if I was a betting person, I would put much higher degree of confidence in your ability to execute the next 10 years on an industry you've already proven to be in the top five to 10% in versus starting fresh from, from zero. And again you go right back to the split spot where you, for jumping into Facebook groups, you're trying to learn, you're trying to watch YouTube videos. Now you've passed that stage and the next stage is a completely different business. It doesn't look the same like this is what like the seven figure club was starting. Because like when you start getting to that point and you have multiple locations, it has nothing to do with mowing grass, nothing. And so people you'll see in the comments, they'll say this stuff about me all the time. Like, you know, I have soft hands or I've never seen a day out in the field or I'm not out in the field, I've lost touch, whatever. It's like, yes, I have. Like I am out of that stage and I keep. You could try to stay in touch with your frontline team members, stay in touch with your general manager. Just try to keep a pulse and everything. It's a big reason why the mic minutes, masterminds are important for me. But ultimately, like I am playing a different game and I would expect anyone that gets past that seven figure mark to start playing a different game if they want to keep growing. Because continue to do what you've done in the past will not lead to anything more in terms of success, size of business, revenue, impact, the amount of people that you can touch, et cetera. So if you want to continue growing, it's going to be a different business. It's going to Be look completely differently. Your day will look different, your schedule looks different, your priorities will look differently. And I believe the person that actually says, okay, the last 10 years I'm actually ahead of where I would have thought I was 10 years ago. Like when you're first getting started, you have a million dollar business. Okay, what does that look like from now versus another 10 years? Because I don't want is you jump to a different industry and you build a million dollar business in five years because you've done it before, you'll go a little bit faster. But what if those five years would have been spent doing what you're currently doing and taking all the level of skill that you already have in this industry.

And if you feel bored or if you feel like you're.

You know, you're tired of this industry, realize that the next 10 years will look completely differently. If you think about it from a strategic standpoint and you finding leaders instead of going out and doing the work. And so I see this a lot and this is why so many people just fizzle out. It's why the industry has so much turn. Because they've got people who do really, really bad. They leave, they blame the industry. The people who do really, really good get shiny objects and leave too. It's like that's why you see massive churn in these home service industries. Like no one realizes that once you built the built the big business, it starts to look the same. Once you get past 2, 3, 4, 5 million, you're finding leaders, you're investing in them and you're finding capital. And it's a matter of resource allocation instead of doing the work.

To give it more context. The reason these thoughts are going through my mind so much as I feel like I'm at a critical point where I'm either going to commit a significant chunk of my life to lawn care and open more locations. I don't think this is anything with lawn care. I really don't. I'll keep reading or optimize this location, have a GM run it and pursue something else. I understand, I'm young. However, the notion of investing based on your industry knowledge is only going to reinforce itself with time. So in my eyes, if I decide I don't want to be in lawn care my whole life, the opportunity cost of not building this experience in a new industry is not worth the next five plus years of opening other locations only to find myself deeper in the whole experience. Being in lawn care. Okay, this is valid. Like if you're like, hey, like I'm just not passionate about. I want to do something else. And it's more of a lifestyle choice. That's fine. I'm strictly speaking from money perspective. Like, I believe you focusing on this industry will make you more money. If you're focusing, like, hey, I'm. I just don't want to do it, great, then you've built a business over the past five, 10 years. You have built it to a certain point where you can optimize it for profit, Put a general manager in place, put $150,000 in distributions, and then you go do something else that you're more passionate about. That's awesome. That's cool. That's actually part of like the.

The model is like, you grow to that 5 to $800,000 business, you optimize it for profit, you get it over the there over the course of the next three years, and then you can go do something else. And one of those other things you could do is start more locations. But if you don't want to, that's fine. But I'm looking at the perspective. Where will you make the most money at the highest degree level of confidence. So if you want to get rich, for sure, that's the model I'd go. If you want to say, hey, like, I enjoy these other things and aspects of life, whether it be industry or passions or whatever, great. Take one location, optimize it like you have. You've already built it to 900,000. You could do this next spring, like in three months. You could have a business that is super profitable. You've optimized it. You've cut out the services that are difficult to manage. You put a general manager in place and you go do something else. So I'm in favor of that. But if you're talking about making more money, I would strongly appeal to the first part of what I talked about in terms of the last 10 years. Not looking like nothing like the next 10 years in terms of you're being bored. And secondly, from a money perspective, you have conquered the hill of the ignorance gap that so many people in this industry have. And so you're literally like in the top 5 to 10% of the industry. I would put much more weight and confidence in your success doing what you've done in the past over and over. And you said that's boring because copy and paste your. Your job changes. You simply are finding leaders and you are finding capital. And the scale at which you do that will determine how fast you grow the business.

So, Mr. Anonymous, tons of businesses are of automations for things like looks like you left some stuff in your cart. Can we figure out a way to capture customer info when they felt Instant price form but don't convert. Maybe instead of it being the same page, it's a button click to view instant price and that button click captures the data. You know a lot more about this than me, but there has to be a way.

Yeah, so we've tested conversion a little bit on this, but like.

People feel it's bait and switch. I don't know. As soon as we leave that page, we just, we see a huge drop off. I don't want, I want it to be as on the same page as much as possible.

Also realize that a lot of people fill out the form just to see what happens. Kind of like people click on your one click estimate email to see what happens. And so what you might end up getting is a whole bunch of leads inside your system that people just playing around which doesn't really cost you anything. So that's not a big deal. So we did a little bit of testing this. I have some more I'm going to do next year. You'll see. I'm going to be talking about stuff at conference literally in this exact same vein of thought.

I actually think it's more a matter of like whoever asked for an estimate following up with them and saying, hey, these are the things that you didn't, you declined or you didn't accept in the estimate. That's more of a, you know, abandoned cart situation.

But.

The challenge, yeah, there's a few things with this one. So there's like several things because they never can. They never gave us permission to take their information when they just filled the form. They click view it. Surprise. So if we start marketing them, technically it's a little bit out of compliance. So there's a little gray area there as well because they're clicking view instant price. So if we take that information and start messaging them, technically they haven't agreed to anything, they haven't accepted anything, they haven't become a customer. So there's a little bit of a gray there and I just got to make sure like from a compliance perspective, we're all in the green. So this is something that's on my mind though, 100% in terms of how that's laid out.

There's, there's some stuff coming at this conference, by the way, so I'm trying to be a little coy. Coach Connor, when we joined Augusta, I had the idea of moving our mowing season Forward from April to March. It helped us a ton in terms of training, not doing initial mows on existing clients, etc. Most importantly, an extra month of healthy revenue. With that being said, I also have also watched over time that I think we might be able to move our mowing season back from ending on October 31, ending on November 15, halfway to November. I'm wondering how we do this because I honestly think about 50% already asked for us to mow or two times in November anyways and the other 40% probably don't care. They just don't. They just want to know when we stop. And the other 10% they probably cancel or pause. Midnight October I want to make sure we take care of of people that are already asking. It's low hanging fruit. However, I do not want to wildly affect bunch of services and have a lower amount of people staying on for when services. Long story short, how do I determine on making a switch like.

Sorry.

I would say addressing winter services earlier on in the season will allow you to do this.

Especially now we're way more high touch because if you're only getting 10% of people to put pause, I'm thrilled with that because my goal is to get as many people on winter services and if they say I don't want it, I will assume we're going to keep mowing to November 15th. Now on October 15th for example, the grass is growing, they're super thrilled that you're coming, etc. Just being telling them hey, this is the date that we're going to be ending mowing. We're going to start winter services after November 15th. If you'd like us to continue after November 15th, let's go. If you would not like us to continue after November 15th with winter services, let us know and we'll stop. So you kind of predetermine that date for them so they don't have to think about it. They don't want to think about it either. And then.

There'S no question mark for them, there's no question mark for you and there's no and ideally really get them on winter services because it's MO as needed. Right. So I think the earlier you do the the winter service thing, I think the better. Now back in the day I'd usually say like do it like a week or two before your mowing season because you want to kind of like make sure people don't cancel then. But now with the much more exploit explanatory, much more manual process we're using with customers we're having such a high, high close rate on winter services. I would do it very early. So they're already, they're not even thinking about pausing. They're not even thinking about canceling their services because you're coming every week or every two weeks and they need you. There's. So the thought of canceling isn't in their mind. And then you go ahead and say, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna end mowing November 15th. If you opt out, that's when we'll end mowing. Then. Okay, it's done. I've already. They'll be finished with mowing. Great. Like for you, you might be, Connor, beginning of October, starting to bring this up. So customers aren't thinking about pausing, they're not thinking about canceling. And if 10% do, you don't care. But then what you allow is everyone who is not on window services, you've locked in the date of ending at fifth at the 15th of November, and they're like, great, it's off my checklist. Don't have any worry about pausing the service for this year. They'll just mow to the end and we're good to go. So.

Oh, this is the same question. Next, Interim Sprint will be able to capture card information. Oh, it's not card information when a client accepts an instant quote online. More on that to come at conference. You can't take all of my thunder. At least I can't share the thunder. So lots of stuff coming at conference that I'll be sharing with everyone on the Thursday for a guestination. Cool folks. That's all I got. Love you all. I will see you tomorrow.