Mike Minutes Mastermind 11/29/2023

Do you have yours?

Oh, is this the one?

Oh, hey, everyone. What's up? Welcome to another Mike minutes Mastermind. I'm in Arizona.

Finished the AWS transfer copilot wrapped up a few things with instant quote forms.

Last night. And it hops on a plane, come here to Arizona. Let me go ahead and drop this onto the Facebook.

Group.

All right, we are in business.

If my Internet's a little choppy, I'm at a hotel. And it was choppy before when I was in the zoom call, so it probably will be choppy now. Audio version per usual is on the dashboard if you'd like to listen that instead. All right, let's see here. We got four questions. Four questions. Let's see what we got today.

Visible. Very good.

All right, first one is funny from Eric from Florida. Does the format for phone numbers matter in copilot? No, it shouldn't. I think it programmed it to the. Your third example. I know this for a fact because last night when I was testing on aws, when everything's in transition, I literally typed in my phone number myself. You trying to look for the other key? Oh, you. Okay, got it.

All right.

Next question. Lee Park. Since I'm going to talk to you about this anyways, I thought why not make it a mastermind question for everything everyone to learn from. Okay. A gentleman came by the Bellingham shop today and told me he's willing to sell his lawn care business and is retiring. Here are the details he gave me. Oh, fun, fun, fun. This is for the Bellingham shop. Okay. 25 years in business. One or two employees throughout the year. Man using clip lawn care software. 70 to 80 recurring customers in the greater Bellingham area peak close to 100 this year. Most customers have been with them for 10 plus years. Residential, commercial, simple services. Some customers have full property maintenance. Others are just mowing. No credit cards on file. All customers pay via check. One truck, two trailers, Two zero turns and all small equipment. Did not share his annual revenue. What in the world? He's $125,000.

And the 70,000 to just the client list. Not a chance. That's my. My thoughts are not a chance.

That's ludicrous.

Yes. Dumb. I wouldn't take it.

7 plus 10 plus years of business is usually great for them. Not really usually great. When it's an owner operator like that that's trying to sell, it's a good chance that 30 to 40 of those customers will stay with you.

So if we extrapolate the data, let's say 35 customers stay. That's $2,000 per customer you're paying for that client list.

And the reason I don't think you retain more than half is because none of them pays. Credit cards. All of them pay with checks. And the owner operators been doing most of their properties for 10 plus years. So I would give it a fail failure, no sale.

I would spend no more than $10,000 on that. Like $10,000 would be my peak.

I might go to 12 depending on if I really wanted the customers, I'd pay 12 grand. Maybe 15 if I really wanted to grow next year. 15 grand. Because then at 15 grand, if 30 customers stay, you're paying.

Like $400. That's still a lot.

So you'd be counting on like 40 customers at least staying to make it worth it. And like the, like the craziest scenario. I think Lee was giving me a softball question.

Yeah, good one though. It's all, you gotta love it. One, one employee, $125,000. $70,000 for the client list. That's in the best case scenario, a thousand dollars per customer. That's insanity.

You'd be lucky to make all your money back in a year. Assuming they all stay with you. Idea for gamification of P4P and copilot we are now calling achievement awards because gamification makes it seem too juvenile. Idea for gamification of people. Pink Copilot, Spotify and Apple Music release end of year reports. Oh, this is so funny. Zach mentioned this the other day. The idea, this would be a fun graphic for users. I would bet people would share the online graphic, which is free marketing with PvP. This would be straightforward with information already displayed on the dashboard. Employee accounts. Not sure if it would be prolocation or if you could include all these in the database. A few ideas. Yearly efficiency score, total budget hours included. Lawn mows treated as service. Yeah, because what you're trying to think about is like, think if they're going to share it.

Efficiency score doesn't mean a lot to other people. Budget hours doesn't mean a lot of people. But number of lawns mowed. That makes sense. And top percentage of clocked hours.

For use of PvP. Okay, yeah. Like, I think if you were trying to make it where it was like simple to be able to share it, you'd be looking at things like number of days worked on. Like.

If they were able to work like longest streak of perfect attendance, I'd be in like P for P dollars. How much bonus you earned, how much performance bonus, and I show the dollar amount for the whole year because that could be like $10,000, $8,000. That'd be cool. So I like it. Yeah, Zach mentioned this to me when we started talking about achievement awards for P4P. Copilot would be based off all the third of all the third info and some other markers, total clients added. This year you were in the top x percent of all Copilot users with X amount of. Oh, that's pretty cool. Oh, I like that. That's a good idea. The only thing is then, then we're sharing data so we gotta be careful. That's Copilot, but it's still very cool.

Yeah, that's cool. Both of these have are great ideas.

The second one would be an absolute mammoth in terms of data because right now we have pretty strict internal regulation around sharing data between companies. So we'd have to build the whole infrastructure for that because we literally don't have it. The first one. That's easy. P4P stuff. This could happen pretty easily. And what would be cool too is doing it across Augusta Nation or across the country. And I just include all the people. P for P. That'd be fun. But I think if you're using for P for P you'd want like number of lawns mode, what number of days that they clocked in, and most importantly performance dollars earned because that if that becomes 10, $15,000 on a high performer, that's pretty cool. So I like the idea.

Connor, bring it back up to me.

One second.

Suggestion.

From Connor. The suggestion is going to be performance.

Dollars earned or bonus.

Then we're going to do do number of jobs completed because that'll be cool. And then let's do.

Longest streak.

Longest on time streak.

They have to be generic enough. They can't do lawns really because people use Pewdiepie for a whole bunch of their stuff.

And if you want them to share it, it needs to be stuff that people outside of P4P can understand. So I like it. Kyle Tarver, potentially looking at a house to buy with land for rent versus renting. How would you go about seeing if the property is a good deal for you in the business? I just want to know how you would make financial sense of it. Ideally I like to find a few acres of a smaller house to where I could live in the house and run the business off the land. I like how you had your Mount Vernon locations that have the tiny house, your shop, renting out your house.

How would you go about seeing if the property is a Good deal for you in the business. Well you have a massive leg up of running the business out of it because you immediately have more value than the average homeowner. What I would be doing is looking at it from the perspective of you didn't have to shop on that on the property making sure that deal pencils in with rent. That way if something crazy happens to you, the business, you get injured, you have to move, life happens. Or worse yet the city comes along and says you are not zoned, we want you out of here. The business has grown too much. You have neighbors complaining that you can make sense of the business of the transaction without the business having to be there. That that's really what I'm looking for. If you can then add more value value add to the to the land by you being on the property with the business, fantastic. But I would just make sure that the real estate pencils in with or without the business forest. Hey Mike. For the markets that stay operating year round it would be great to have a door hanger created by the media team outline the other values we bring outside of our services that other companies don't. For example Augusta Lawn Care changing level professionals in the lawn care landscaping industry or Augusta Lawn Care looking for with these bullet points to follow communication, convenient payment options, reliability. On the reverse side it would be your all in one instant quote reason for this Markets like ours, our customers keep their landscapers year round so there's no disconnect leaving it tough to get all the good customers. But if they could, if they see other values outlined in a door hanger like the ones they may have may take leaving their current landscaper into consideration because other companies don't offer these values essentially we would put in their mind that we would alleviate the pains they more than likely currently deal with with their current landscaper. Let me know what you think if there's a possibility of something like this made. Yes, I think it's a good idea. It's always good ide. Let me.

Vast majority of our marketing dollars should be spent on direct marketing. In my opinion most of these things are branding and so we pride ourselves in the fact that we are trying to change the level of professionalism landscaping industry. It's why I'm in business.

And we as business owners all have our own why in terms of what motivates us, guess what? The customer does not care. Okay. The customer cares about themselves as as do all human beings. And so you have two seconds when they see that door hanger on the door for them to Identify as to whether or not they're going to put you in a trap. It is a higher likelihood that in that addressing their pain and addressing what they want out of life, which is a, which is.

Causing a pain for them in their life right now, is solved. So that's why typically spring rush, there's so much better return on investment when it comes to marketing is because people have greater pain. Their landscaper did not show up. The lawn is overgrown. I therefore am going to pick up this door hanger and pay attention to it because I have pain and it serves me well to go directly after that. Pain is an instant quote door hanger. If the person does not have pain, that is the lawn is not growing, it will be much more difficult to sell them.

I would be careful about trying to project our values on the customers. They don't care if Augusta changes the level professional in the industry. They just don't. What they do care though, is the fact that you answer the phone. They do care that you have a credit card file and they don't have to worry about sending you a check. So sometimes the verbiage, like communication, for example, that needs to be defined to the customer so that they can identify their pain point with that solution. And so if, if I was to make a fire around this or a door hanger or whatever, I would be saying things like we answer our phone calls 24 7, right? I'd be saying things like put a car on file and never worry about it again. I'd be saying things like, our office is open 80 hours a week. These are the type of things that actually speak to the customer. Potentially outside of the more acute pain of the lawn is tall. I need it cut. The bushes are overgrown. I need them cut.

My lawn is looking bad compared to all my neighbors. I need to go address this. So that's why spring brush is always so much better. Customer acquisition cost because customers have pain. I would recommend spending most of your marketing dollars on direct marketing.

Instead of branding. As Augusta gets larger, the brand will begin to speak for itself. And so as we cross 5, 600 locations, people that have never asked for lawn care will know who Augusta Lawn Care is simply because of you. Look at the number of trucks, the number of locations, the amount of marketing, our territories, people will just start to know who Augusta Lawn Care is. For example, most of you have never used Mr. Rooter, but we all know who Mr. Rooter is. Most of you have never used Mr. Electric, but we all knew Mr. Electric is in terms of. But they do and if I have a problem and I've never used a service, I'm going to call them.

So the point that is valid is if they already have the service being provided by someone else, the question is, how do I then get them to switch? You have to address a pain that they are currently having with their current provider, which is typically not going to revolve around the mission statement is going to revolve around the fact that they don't pick up the phone, they're not insured, they never show up on time. They showed up with, they show up with a guy smoking a joint and cut off shorts and a no T shirt. These are the pain points that they're going to have in that environment. So I'd be very careful about taking the internal company mission values and what we believe in and projecting on the customer because they don't care. They just do not care. They don't.

Everyone in hindsight looks at a brand and says this is why they were successful. And they look at their brand values. What actually created the brand though is a big business. And so when you look at Chick fil a, it's like, well, it's because of all these Christian values and like the way that they do all these things are great. No, they have a really good chicken sandwich that people are willing to die for. And then they scaled that massively to the point where they're all over the place. And so now everyone like they're successful because their brand and like that chicken on the front, that little. Just genius. No, they have a great product and they scaled it. And so therefore the brand was created. And so now they spend a bunch of money on branding. Like the chickens and the.

Cows talking to each other on their billboards and stuff like that. That's all branding. Most people are not going to be like, I see that for the first time. I think I need to go get a Chick Fil a sandwich. They don't. That is branding. Right. And it's humor. And those are things that typically happen when a business.

Is larger and in our market, the pain that is most acute and the greatest return investment will come when you do direct marketing. I'm not against brand, but brand in our industry typically comes in size. When you grow, you get more trucks in the area, etc. And then people will start to associate certain attributes with their brand. Oh, they pick up their phone all the time. Oh, they're always consistent, they always show up on time, they're always professional, they always uniform. They drive yellow trucks, they drive Yellow trucks come as a form of a brand based upon them seeing you over and over and over again.

The pain we see are lack of communication. No shows, leaving cash under mats. We hear this daily from customers. Yeah. So I would personally, you know, you can take the Photoshop version of the door hangers, for example, and you're like, hey, on the back. I'm just going to target my area and I'm going to literally say, we pick up our phones every single time, guaranteed. Like, the fact is, you could make a guarantee around answering the phone every single time because Max answers the phone 24 7.

This is actually not a bad idea. We don't pick up our phone, we'll give you your first service free. Like these. Like, this is cool.

Down the road. Once Max is able to actually have pricing, you could literally say, we will give you a quote over the phone. Or else your first quote is free. Like, you could do get creative. But if you want to do that, it's gonna be hard for us to make that vanilla for all of a destination. But I would personally, if the communication is like, everyone in your area is checking the trucks, blah, blah, blah. I would be going after, like, we guarantee you answer our phone. I'd be saying something like, you'll never leave cash under your mat. You'll never put a check in the mail. You have a card on file, auto pay. You'll never have to talk to us again. I just lean into that. And you can do that on the dashboard. You can download the door hangers and, you know, get cradle on on Photoshop. All we have is trucks and trucks around us. Yeah. All right, everyone, have a fantastic day. Evening. Oh, it's actually pretty late for most of you, so. All right, have a fantastic evening. I will see you at some point tomorrow. The next day we have a couple turnarounds, so we'll see what the schedule is looking like. I'm wiped out. Completely drained, exhausted.

But it was successful. Finally moving over to aws, which is a relief because we have so much stuff we need to get pushed out and that has been holding us back. So some cool stuff in the next couple days will be released that we had ready to go. But I've been waiting on this AWS thing on Copilot, so I am looking forward to the next four or five weeks.

I am semi anxious about all my seven locations being moved over next week into Copilot. I am confident that there are two tickets that we are pushing out probably tomorrow that are going to really help with the importing. Process from service autopilot. It's going to allow you to make multiple properties underneath one customer instead of having to do that after the fact. And it's also going to allow you to merge customers together. So those two tickets will be getting pushed in. I specifically made sure they got in this week because all my I have 12, 000 contacts in Bellingham. I got moved over and I don't want to spend a gazillion dollars at command center. So I want to streamline the process to the larger ones that are coming in. So appreciate all of you. But yeah, the next next four or five weeks are still going to be breakneck speed at Copilot. AWS will be give us a nice good backbone to be able to do that on. And I am very excited to what we can do with max instant prices on the website and Copilot, that infrastructure is going to be what in 24 months we look back at and say like that's why Augusta is now so far ahead because we have the infrastructure to be able to do that and we're going to kick some serious butt. All right guys, have a fantastic evening.