Mike Minutes Mastermind 11/22/2022

Everyone, hope you're doing super well. Let's go ahead and get started. Let me paste this in here, a couple quick announcements.

First and foremost, if you are hiring or wanting to hire a general manager this coming spring, please email me. The reason for that is because in the past I've made videos on my public channel asking for people that want to become general managers. The first year I did that I got like 50 applicants. Last year I got like five.

Or less. So I want to do this year is do a general announcement and ask for people that want to be GMs but give specific cities. Excuse me, that we're hiring GMs for. I know I'm hiring a bunch in North Carolina for general managers. And so I know if you are thinking about starting second location and you do need a gm, which I know most of you that are starting second locations already have your GM lined up. But if you are thinking about starting another location and you don't have a GM in mind, please email me franchisegustalongarservices.com so that way I can, when I make a public post about it, give the actual city names that we're looking for. So that way the people that actually apply, even though it might be only 5 or 10, will be pre qualified by the fact that they know they're gonna be moving. Anthony, go to that location. One second here. Perfect. Cool. That's the first thing. Next thing.

At conference Friday and Saturday there is going to be a few hours where you are able to actually do technical things, command center type things in a separate room just for Augusta Lawn Care with command center to be completely optional. You do not have to do it. You can either be at the main stage, the support track or you can go to the separate conference room where there's going to be Lonnie, Rachel and Brian and they'll be there to help you. Anything you want. Zooper related service, all part related. All of them are our most experienced team. There's snow, the experience with the Snow side, the P4P side, all of that. So there's any questions you have about Zooper servers, autopilot, anything that you're struggling with, please use those hours to your advantage. You'll have one on one support and it's not costing anything. So please just bring a laptop, have your questions ready to go and they would be happy to help during that time. So that is Friday and Saturday. It's gonna be during the same time that we have support track. So you really have three different options. Either a main stage which is gonna be pretty in depth keynotes during those times. Second would be the support track for employees, managers, etc. And you'll see the schedule here. That will come out pretty soon. And then the third option would be in a separate meeting room. One on one help from Command center and our most experienced team members are going to be there at your disposal for those few hours. So that is that those Canadian owners you're going to email from Lonnie next couple of days, as we anticipate, we have to move command center fees to US dollars. We just cannot take the hit of 25 to 30% for the exchange. We already have to pay extra processing fees because we have to use credit cards. We can't do bank transfers across international lines. She's going to email you that it's going to be four months down the road though. Four or five months down the road to give you plenty of time if you need to make other arrangements. But we are going to have to start charging those in US dollars when we operate such a thin margin at command we have to make sure that we aren't losing 25, 30% on several of the locations. So. So the monthly fees do not change. As we told you, monthly fees will always be in Canadian dollars. So you know exactly what that number is in your local funds. But you'll get an email about that from Lonnie and there's plenty of time until it actually takes an effect. But we can't be losing as much as we have been on every dollar from Command center for Canadian franchisees as we're getting more and more of them.

That's all I got for now. Again, only point of action for most of you is if you're hiring a gm, please email me. And if you are looking for someone to hire a GM next spring. Okay, perfect. Let's jump into questions.

I saw a couple popping here. Actually. Let's go through these real quick. Actually, just do the regular question. Those are priority. All right. Present this. Sorry, present. Share Screen Window Mastermind. Okay, haven't had a chance to look at these yet. Jump in.

Okay. When a client clicks on a one click estimate, does CC know which one click estimate a client has clicked on? I often send out multiple one click estimates at the same time. Example one to mowing clients and one to non mowing clients. It would be somewhat inefficient if CC CZ had to manually follow these clients to see which one click service the client was interested in. Put a different way. Can you walk us through what happens from CC's perspective, when a client gets clicks get quote on a one click custom email. Great question. So when someone clicks on that button, they're going to go into that client's profile and see what the last email was sent to them and see what service was pitched. The reason we have to do this is because like you said, sometimes you're sending one to non customers and one to existing customers. So we're going to go into that client's profile, see what was the last estimate or last email that was sent to them and what service was offered so that when we do call them, if we need to call them. Because it's like a project based job that you set up an estimate for, we already know what service they're asking for. So there should never really be a time that command center is calling and being like, hey, we saw you wanted service, what do you want? That shouldn't happen. We know it's service based upon the email that was last sent out to them. The part where this gets tricky, may have one out of a hundred times, is where they click on an email that's like a month and a half old. So it's hard to protect against that without making new links for every single service, which gets very confusing. So we just have the 1 and 99.9% of the time it's just the last email that they're going to click on. But occasionally they'll click on the email from like three months ago because they want the service now and then those ones. That's where it gets tricky and those are the ones when we do call them and we confirm it. We're hoping that they say oh no, no, I don't want leaf cleanup. I actually want mowing because I clicked on an email from four months ago. So that's the only time it happens. It's very, very rare. So we've just kept it@the1email link. But what we do is we are going back and checking what the last service was pitched inside the email. That's why it's important to have the one service pitch. If you're doing, if you're trying to sell everything in the kitchen sink on that email, then we have to call them and we have to just ask them what they want. And we can't even set you up for a drive by if they don't answer because we don't know what they want based upon what that email says. If my revenue matches my labor capacity and my asset capacity. Oh I see, okay, then I should be in Profitability mode. Correct. If that's true, then should my closing ratio be 30 to 50%? So this is, this is the thing that you're talking about, is a snapshot in time. I would say yes to this. If you're not trying to continue growing, if you're trying to continue growing, you'll have to increase your capacities. Right? And you'll also have a higher close ratio because you're continually growing. So that snapshot in time might look like that. And if you stopped growing, you would be profitable and you'd probably be more at 30 to 50% close ratio. But that snapshot is just today. But you know, in three months you wouldn't have, you're gonna have a couple more trucks and a couple more boys, then it's gonna be different. Right. If my revenue doesn't match my labor capacity and my asset capacity, and I should be in growth mode, therefore my closing ratio would be at least 70%. Just thinking about capacities and close ratios, I would say in general, the way you're thinking about is correct. I would say that just remember, like a balance sheet, a snapshot of someone's financials, it's not a profit and loss statement that shows over time, the same thing should go for the capacities. And that is if you're looking at capacities at a given moment in time, you might be at full capacity. Your revenue's right up against it. But if your plan is to grow, you'd actually want to keep your, your closing ratio high, knowing that you're going to buy another truck, hire more people, et cetera. So it's, it's, it's a snapshot and it shows good context of where you would be at if you stayed at your current size. Right. Because of last month you were 20% below your capacity. But then you've been selling, selling, selling, and now this month you're at capacity. That did not necessarily mean you're going to be profitable. You just grew 20%. Right. From month to month. And so if the next month you're going to keep growing at that pace, you're not going to be over capacity and burning, burning yourself out or overusing trucks and overusing employees. And now it's going to lead to something breaking. So just remember the capacity limits are a snapshot in time. What predicts what in the future is going to happen is what are the goals of the business? If your goal is continue growing. Just because you're at asset and labor capacity and your personal capacity has plenty of room does not necessarily mean you're going to be more profitable. Because you got to remember, if you just grew 30% over the past six months and your plan is to continue growing, you're still probably not gonna be in profitability mode. You're just gonna. You just. Just haven't raised your capacity yet. So. Hope that made sense. Great question. Very good question. But I'd say in general, if I had that snapshot, I would be. Probably be led to the same conclusion you just said, and that is if I'm trying to keep my revenue around my capacities and keep it and I'm not trying to grow. Yes, I would assume that you're in profitability mode. I would assume your close ratio should be lower so you can maximize your profitability. Because there's no reason to be selling jobs when you have no capacity. Right. So why. Why have a 70, 80 close ratio if you don't have the trucks or equipment or labors, I. E. Capacity to get the work done. Right.

Do you have any thoughts on Tesla's Optimus droid in relation to lawn care? Musk has been overly optimistic about timelines before, so I'm not sure how accurate this will be, but he's currently talking about rolling Optimus out in approximately a year or two. I wonder if instead of IE mowers, we just have AI droids that operate the mowers and other tools. Yeah, so there's a lot of different things. So a couple things, like you said, I would be very surprised if 20, 25, anytime before that, it was rolled out. Secondly, operating inside of a house, very different than operating outside because of the weather as well as the type of equipment that we're working around. Like you're in the grass and the mud and the water. It's an outdoor, so they will not build it for that at the very beginning. They'll build it for inside, because that's where the most mechanized routinized labor can be replaced in the form of manufacturing. And if you look at what Musk talks about, he said that's the first thing it'll go after is production of, like a warehouse. Like a warehouse and a manufacturing, because that is the most routinized work. It's also in a controlled environment, and it's very easy to allow technology to operate inside that environment outdoors. As soon as you integrate, like, water, you just change the entire thing. So, like, wires have to be insulated. It just goes down the list. Right. So I don't see that being the thing that takes over the industry either, because the cost of that is going to be prohibitive compared to in 10 years what the mower is going to cost. You just take the same technology, pop it on top, give it the brain to be able to operate like it's like we already have the body of a mower. We just need the brain to tell it to move correctly based upon video or lidar, et cetera. So I'm much more in the camp of that technology will come, it'll get, it'll be very expensive, they'll get cheaper as time goes on, as they mass produce them, and then that brain will go popped onto an existing mower where you do the perimeter and then you let that thing go and it does, it fills in the gaps basically. That's just my opinion, but I just don't see that being economically viable. Like great, let's say that that mower can work outside, do everything that we do as a human, but if it costs a hundred thousand dollars, we can't get them right. And so it'll take a long time for that. It's taken Tesla a good solid, you know, 10 years to create a, a car that is affordable to the average American. Once they create the Robot, it'll take 10 years to make that robot accessible and affordable to the average business. It just will. So that's why again, I really believe robots is 15 years down the road and we need to focus on software to make the current labor as efficient as possible and take the data that is being inputted and make decisions based upon that framework. That's where I'm at in the next 10 to 15 years. And then once the technology is there, that software needs to interface with the robot. But I just don't see specifically Tesla's thing being super.

A threat to us. Honestly right now. Right now, I know you say we can try to keep our debt as low as possible for our business, but what would you say is a safe debt to income ratio for a business? 5, 10, 30%. This is a great question.

It comes down to your risk tolerance, right? There's nothing wrong with having honestly, like a, like again, we're talking about debt to income, we're not talking about debt to revenue, so maybe be very clear, but debt to income, it's very easy to have a 3 or 4x of debt to income. For example, let's say you make $100,000 a year in income. To have 3, $400,000 worth of debt on assets that make you money is not unheard of. Now would I have that much risk? I personally don't like that. Much anything above of 2x. Like 2x your debt compared to income. Again, income, not revenue, I get scared about. So like for example, in business boot camp, Aaron, the guy on.

The, that we're showcasing, he has, you know, 300,000, you know, soon to be $400,000 worth of debt and his business probably makes 10, $15,000 a year in actual profit, maybe 20, 30 if he's lucky. That's very scary. That's like a 10x multiple. Right. So it just can come down to your risk tolerance. If you watch the business boot camp, you see he's very, very risk tolerant. He does not mind the stress of having a bunch of debt and just wanting to grow, grow, grow, grow. So that's your goal? Yeah, you're gonna have a higher debt to income ratio because you can move faster. So just, it's just, it's simply just risk tolerance. What is that and how, how fast do you want to move?

How does unemployment work for employees? Out to X employees or paying out to ex employees? Does the money still come out of the company bank account? No, it does not come out of the company bank account. Every state's a little bit different in terms of how their employment security department or their employee unemployment system works. In Washington state, for example, it's called ESD Employment security department.

And so the employee pays a piece of their, of their paycheck every single month into that program. You as an employer pay the piece of every single dollar you pay to the employees goes into that program. If you use the program a lot, basically the rate that they're going to take from the employee and the employer is going to go up as well. So when everyone's like, oh man, you don't want them to use their unemployment, the reason they don't is because they don't want their rate to go up the percentage that is to pay into the system. So it makes sense because if someone's always laying people off and the system is being used the most by them, they should pay more. Right. So it doesn't come out of your bank account necessarily. It's just going to be over time. Like insurance. This is really what it is. Like insurance. You use it and your premium is going to go up. And so every year you're typically going to have a rate increase or decrease based upon how many people are using the unemployment system for your business.

I have an employee who I gave a two weeks notice before being laid off last Wednesday. By the way, I haven't read this thing. I would not recommend giving two Weeks notices. If you're gonna. Oh, you're laying them off. God. Okay, my bad. I thought you were firing them. He worked here about two months. He called out for yesterday at 8pm Sunday. He called me 15 minutes before our start time today saying he would be in because of my fan of family issues. I was going to text him saying, no longer need his services, but got this text from him an hour ago after start time. Our schedule is thinning and I, like, I'd like to let him go now. Not sure how to phrase it. Okay, let's open up the picture and make sure all of you can see this. Haven't seen this one yet, so we'll find out together.

Chrome.

There you go. All right. Hey, sorry again for not coming today. There's a lot of family issues happening and it's taking a toll on my mental health. I'll be good to go tomorrow morning.

So obviously, just comes down to how much do you want to put up with this? Especially once you've given someone a time frame that they're going to be let go or fired, it's not uncommon for them to kind of check out. So I don't think that's against what I've seen in the past. One thing that I would say is.

You can't fire someone because they are sick. You can't fire someone do any of these things, and you definitely don't want to fire them just because your schedule is thing. You need to have actual. Like, if they don't show up tomorrow, for example, then I would let them go because he literally said tomorrow he will show up. Right.

So I would just use that. It'd just be a matter of, like, if he doesn't show up tomorrow, he just told you he's going to. He apologized. And let's say that there are actual issues and he's having mental health. Like, you know, give the guy a little bit of flack or a good. A little slack. But if he doesn't show up tomorrow, then just like, hey, obviously not working out. No, I let you go. Now we need to have a dependable start time and schedule.

So, you know, you could do that if you want to be more gracious. If you really do want to let him go because he's been so inconsistent the past couple days, then just let him go and just realize that you can't say it's because of any other thing besides he hasn't showed up. Right. So don't bring other personal issues or things into it. Just if he has been showing up and that's why you want to let him go make the firing. Based upon that, what is the best way to set up the Google Analytics for property and for our ads account? It's the biggest optimization increase in my account property for ad. It seems to vary based on website hosting, other factors. What is the best way to set up the Google Analytics for property for property for our ads account? I'm not sure what this is about. If you want to set your Google Analytics, basically set up your Google Analytics account and then on the dashboard for your website, which is Fromjust Augusta franchise.com click Edit your website. There's a spot to paste in your Google Analytics code and then you're good.

But I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here, Caleb. Sorry, if there's something I'm missing in what I just stated. Just submit another question for tomorrow and I'll make sure I get to it. All right, next question comes inside of here.

How do you stay motivated in general? Just going through so much personal and business issues and it's hard for me to stay positive. And in general, I'm always a positive person. Have you ever found yourself in a situation and what do you do in order to get it out of your mindset? Let me just refresh my Facebook and see who this is. Give me one second.

Okay. So.

In terms of staying motivated, like.

You've got to realize if you're going to have big dreams and goals or things that you want to do, it's going to take a very long time to get there. And you will need to be patient. And there's going to be things along the way that, that are going to stress you out. You're going to be. You're willing to want to quit, and you will feel like a failure. And coming to grips with the fact that that is how you are going to feel without, without any doubt is important so that when it happens, you're not caught unawares. You will run out of money. You will be scared about making payroll. You will be scared of being able to get jobs on the schedule. You will be afraid that someone's going to sue you. You will have times when you resent your employees because they say stuff. There will be times a customer gets mad at you. It will happen and it will happen frequently. And coming. Being okay with that is what allows you to deal with it better. Because you're emotionally unresponsive to the fact that you've already come to grips with it. That's already going to happen. So preparing Yourself mentally for those things. And it's a part of the journey is the part that allows you to get over it a little faster, doesn't take away the pain, doesn't take away the sting. But realizing that those things are going to happen and then deal with them now in your head, when you're doing good, that's the important part. Now when people ask this question, they are not doing good. This is not a moment to be like, think about the future and think it's going to happen. If you're asking this question, it means that you don't feel this way, I. E. Motivated. And so this is not the time for me, like, get reps in the gym. This is like, I'm dying in the hospital. So it's not the time, like, you should go work out and be healthy. It's like, no, I need like heart surgery. So in asking this, if you're not motivated, then it's just a matter of you got to tap into what is the goal and what is the thing you're shooting for and why. If you can't clearly define that, you will give up. Every person that gives up in business, typically one of two things has happened. Either a, A life event of some craziness and, or they have lost vision of why they started and what the dream, the goal, outcome is. And so one thing that we should all be very clear on is where does the end of the marathon stop?

And it could mean that it never stops in terms of you trying to accomplish more. But, but where does success, like, what's the definition of success for you? Is it a certain number of employees? Is it certain amount of income? Is it a certain lifestyle you're trying to achieve? Is it the fact that you just want to keep doing it? Like, what is the dream outcome? Because that's ultimately what will keep you to the down, the low lows and the times when you want to give up.

And certainly stay motivated. Like, anyone that says they're motivated all the time is lying to their teeth. So the fact of the matter is just coming to grips with the fact that you're not going to be motivated all the time is extremely motivating. When, when you want to give up, you're like, ah, I was already prepared for this, right? So when I, whenever we start something new or I know I'm taking on more risk, like the building project, for example, like, I fully expected the building product to go south, like the way it has, taking way longer than expected, costing way more than I hoped. I expected that. So although it is disappointing and annoying. And yes, you get down and demotivated by it. You don't become reactive because you've already come to grips with the fact that that is a possibility and it potentially is going to happen. Right. So the more downside you can just emotionally prepare yourself for, you won't be as reactive when it actually happens because you've already dealt with it. So.

And yeah, like, trust me, I'm not always unmotivated. I'll be the first one to say that.

But you just got to get through certain low points and think about the future. I'm hiring Bloomingdale, Florida. I have current GM database. We'll send you email. Okay, fantastic. Thank you.

Cool. All right, guys, appreciate it. Hope you have a great Tuesday and we'll see you tomorrow.