Mike Minutes Mastermind 12/05/2023

Oh, I clicked live already. All right, here we go. One second. Just gonna drop this in here.

So there you go. Save. Okay.

And we're live. I had one quick announcement. Later this week, we are opening up home service CPA to the public. That is where Brad does their taxes. If you have not already, make sure you go to the forms on the dashboard. I will quickly show you. Don't get flooded with emails.

If you would like him to do your taxes and you live in the United States of America.

Just go here and then go to.

Academy forms and then tax prep and strategy. The reason I'm saying this is because we're coming to the end of the year. It is useless on the last day of the year to think about your taxes because you can't go make purchases.

Even the last week, because a lot of people are closed for that week of Christmas or their holidays, and you can't get things delivered to you in time. And things like trucks have to be in use by the end of the year. So I am scrambling to buy more trucks as we speak.

I need them in use by the end of December. And in use can be like they're getting painted. That's fine. But you can't just, like, have it on a purchase order technically. So if you would like that, fill out that form. He does them at cost. He literally loses money on these. I'll be perfectly honest, because I know I pay CPAs to do my taxes of equivalent size, so I'd highly recommend taking advantage of that.

And booking a call with him. I know he's been doing a ton of zoom calls with a lot of the owners, so that's awesome. And figuring out what your estimated tax liability is going to be, because if you don't have an estimated, Any taxes probably come and do, like, if you only were low profit, like under 50 grand, or this is your first year and you actually put everything back in the business and just grow. There's no reason to be buying stuff right now, even if you're like, well, I have quite a bit of cash. Well, you might actually, on paper, look like you didn't make any money because you went into the hole during spring rush and then came out. So you don't need to be spending money. So in my opinion, everything I spend in December is strictly determined by what's my tax liability looking like. So. Because if it's not looking bad, I want to delay everything to January so that next year I have more things to write off. So this year for me isn't going to look like horrible because I have lost so much on copilot. So it's like, I'm not trying to spend a bunch of money right now, but I do know that we've made. We got some ERC money for the Bellingham shop, and I need to spend that on paper. And so I'm going to be making sure we buy the trucks this December for that. All right, that was the only reminder I had. Let's jump into questions.

Bam. Present. Why is my monitor not working this morning? So temperamental. All right, let's see here. Let's open this.

No. Oh. There's only two questions this morning. All right, let's go ahead and get started. First, though, there was a question, I think, that popped in here. How early is too early to start doing mowing door hangers. If you started start mowing April 1, Kyle free. I'd say like two or three weeks before you start mowing is probably the earliest I would personally do it.

Just because people don't think about it. And again, like spring rush, your demand curve is like very, very low. And all of a sudden it just like goes like. Just like this. So I wouldn't go much further before two or three weeks because the only people you're getting are the people who think ahead when you're doing the two or three weeks. If you do anything before that, even the people who think ahead are like, ah, just. We'll get to it in a couple weeks. So.

I would not go any closer than for you March 15th to maximize returns. Now, if you have nothing better to do, you should be doing it all winter long. Technically, if you have nothing of higher value in your business to be doing.

All right. Present. Share. Screen. Boom. Zoom in.

All right, Brian from Langley, bc. How do you stay so focused on your work and avoid the temptations of life? Maybe I haven't clearly defined my why enough to keep me on track. Well, you'd also. You'd also have to define what the quote unquote temptations of life are.

And so.

How do you stay so focused on your work and avoid the temptation to life?

I think we all have our vices and things that we struggle with, and it should be put beyond no one that we all have those, including myself. I think being self aware of what those things are. And in terms of focus, it's like, what are the things that are like if you just take the opposite of it. Right. So one thing I was hearing because Charlie Munger passed away last week, and one of the things that he said was Just always think about the opposite of whatever the question is. So you, you guys will sometimes see me when I get a question, especially if it's a hard one, I try to flip it in my head because it usually gives me a good answer. So for example, on this one, it's like, how do you stay focused? We'll just, what are the things keeping you from being focused? Right? That is the question that actually needs to be answered. And then being self aware as to when those things are happening and the precursors to the cause of them being in your life. And so for example, I'm just going to pull one out of thin air that I see quite often is to keep people unfocused is like they over drink, right? It's like, okay, instead of asking why I am getting unfocused, let me. Or how. Instead of asking how do I stay focused, let's, let's figure out what keeps, what causes me to become unfocused, right? Like I can, I've never been drunk. I've never drunk drink in my life. But like I would. I cannot imagine having one day of the week where like it's just shot because I'm like over hungover or like I'm under the influence still from the night prior. It's like it hasn't even crossed my mind. And I've always done that for religious reasons. However, I have no desire whatsoever because it's just a matter of like, it would just kill productivity. It would kill my ability to be able to communicate with the team well and lead well. And I don't think anyone's ever done something they're super proud of when they're, whatever the word is abbreviated, abbreviated when they're under the influence dramatically. So now if you can drink controllably and not lose focus on your goals and things and not do damage to your relationships and to other people and to your business and drink. Fantastic. That's. That's awesome. It's just a matter of that might not be the thing that keeps you, gets you unfocused for other people. Relationships get them really unfocused. Especially for young guys, it can be really, really tough because there's so many distractions and things that you could go in different paths and opportunities. And I think a lot of times the reason we get unfocused is because of the abundance of opportunities both in business and relationships. Just so many things you can do with your life. And so the younger you are typically it's actually easier to fall into the trap of being seduced into different opportunities and paths in life. This is why typically if you get a business owner that just sticks to the same thing for 10 years, they become more successful at. It's also typically why if someone gets married and has 10 years of relationship with once the same person, they usually tend to have a better relationship with that person than 10,000 people they've dated. It's just time with that commitment. And so I think if you struggle with focus, a lot of times you also struggle with commitment. And commitment, usually, from what I have seen, commitment breeds focus because you cut away all other options. And so a lot of times, especially when you're younger, there's so many options in so many different areas of life of what you can do for work, what you can do for business and like business opportunities and like relationships and like all these different, like where you can live and all this stuff is like so many paths later in life. The reason people I find that are older, like pretty people, call them set in their ways. I see it as they have lost so many different opportunities, quote unquote, that they are usually pretty.

Content with the opportunities that they have chosen and, and the outcomes that have brought that those have brought about. Obviously there's negatives things about being stuck in your ways, but it's also a matter of like, you cut out opportunities, you focus on one thing, you go all in on it, and then you don't lose focus because you only are focused on that one thing. And that's why for me, it's like the long care landscaping industry and home services is like my thing. And so I would just really ask in terms of this question, flip this and ask what is keeping you from being focused? And. And then I would attack those relentlessly and I would start setting parameters around them. I would start having other people keep me accountable to staying away from them.

I would just. That would be my preoccupation with life until it was fixed. Evansville what would it take to have outbound recorded calls? Also, why do we not have recorded calls? Okay, so you can't, you can't record an outbound call. We can only record inbound calls. It just a legal process in terms of like what we're allowed to do. And then. Oh, I see. Yeah, we can't do this like it's a legal thing having the call recorded. Helpful more than once. However, when resolving issues are calling a customer, follow up a quote, there's nothing recorded. I've had several customers contest bills, estimates, etc. Whenever I go check their core Call to commence. And it was an outbound call, and there was nothing we can do about it. So I'm just trying to figure out what. What. Something like this has been implemented. Yeah. Yes. We can only record inbound calls. This is a legal thing. It is a matter of consumer privacy. Because when they call in, it says, it's me saying, like, thanks for calling Augusta Lawn Care. This call is recorded for quality assurance, and it goes right to max. And so we can't do that for outbound calls. It is completely illegal currently. And it's actually getting worse, the restriction they're putting in.

All right, let's see if there's any more questions here. That's it for the day. Look at that. All right, well, it's December. We have three more weeks in the year. All right? I know a lot of us, it is already, like, you pass Thanksgiving and it's like, oh, well, the end of the year is here. We still have three more weeks. Three more weeks happens to be 6%, almost 7% of the entire year. So if you want to, like, clock out for the next 7% of the year, that technically, if you just look at a P and L, that could be potentially half of your profits. So if you have a 15% profit margin business and you're just going to check out for the last 7% of the year, that could potentially be half your profits. Down the tubes. I really recommend. I know everyone finished a really long year, but, hey, look, we had Thanksgiving. We've had a few weeks have been a little bit slower. This is. This is the time to make changes in the business. This is the time to.

Fix the equipment, get everything dialed in. Like, this is the time to start thinking about spring rush. It is not time to start thinking about spring rush in March when it's like, oh, like, I need to hire a bunch of people. Oh, I said I was going to grow up one year. I need to start figuring that out. No, this is the time to do it right. You have December. You got January, you got February, you got three months. And a lot of times that three months seems like a long time until it hits March 1st. You're like, oh, snap, I didn't get anything done. So I would really recommend making a list of everything you need to dominate in order to get spring rush completely handled. If you. If you're gonna be hiring a whole bunch of people have their. Their packets ready to go, the hiring packets with all their information, their onboarding documents, their credit card. Like, you can't do a credit card like, everything that you could possibly think of that they're gonna need for their trainer. The document where they go through their trainer checklist. Institute a training program. Have a training program, create, like, incentives. I know they're doing this. The Bellingham shop. They've been working on it. And it's like, how are we going to incentivize trainers? How are we going to incentivize trainees? What's that two weeks going to look like? How is it going to be signed off by the gm? These are things that all will be doing now. All right? And the last three weeks of the year, in my opinion, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, people check out. And it is. When people. Other people check out, is your time to go. Because while other people are stopped, if you can be. Instead of going 100 miles an hour all the time, if you just go 60 miles an hour, but you never stop, you'll usually beat out anyone else that stops and they're burning themselves out. They're going crazy. So you can prevent having to burn yourself out by spending the next three months preparing for the busiest time of our year. We all know this spring rush will be the craziest it's ever been, right? We all know that for a fact. Assuming that you are growing your business, it will be a fact. So start planning for it now. And it's not like, well, in January, I'll get to. Okay, well, you just lost 6 to 7% of your year. So if you want to actually look at, like, the impact of compound interest and compounding your business, and you start taking out things like 6% here, you take the first month right before spring rush. I'm going to take a break. You know, I'm all for vacations and things, but you don't need three months of sitting back and doing nothing. Have a plan, have a schedule of what things need to be completed throughout the winter. And so that when you come to spring rush, you have your door hangers. You know what routes you're going to be doing for those door hangers. You know what you're going to be spending in terms of marketing. You have a budget in place for before the winter when there's not as much revenue coming in. These are things that should all be established. And if you're coming out of leaf season and you have tons of money in the bank, you better be on a zoom call with. With your CPA or. Or Brad or somebody and figuring out what your tax liability is so you don't have a surprise bill all of a sudden. In the middle of spring rush. Okay. Last year we had a few people get massive tax li. Tax surprises in the middle of spring rush. That's a horrible time to get a bill that says all of a sudden you owe 30, 40, 50 grand. Bad timing. You're already stressed out to the max. So figure it out now. This is the time to dig in. And.

When you consistently see your competition slowing down, taking things off, laying people off, that's the time to go all in. And so you know what we're doing. Like, man, sir, Liz has hired 24 people this past month. She's gonna be hiring more people this month. She's doing a whole bunch of interviews now. We're. We are, like, doing everything we possibly can to make sure that spring rush, we just crush it.

And I just really recommend if you want to do the same thing in your business, it'll lead to great results. Like, if you've done more than one spring rush, you know how it is. It's nuts. It's crazy. You get leads pouring in through your nose and through your ears and coming out your eyeballs. Prepare and create the systems now so you can actually sustain that, actually capitalize on it for growth. With Max answering the phone 24 7, this will be the craziest spring we have. But bar none, because now there is no lag of people waiting for us to call them, contacting them back the next day. They already have been contacted with instant price quotes. You could literally have 10 dropped on you in one day that are just on the schedule, booked and ready to roll. So you got to have a make sure you have a system in place for first time MO's, because you're getting a lot more of them now. So I just be thinking about those things now because it is no shock. There's no, you know, you know, it doesn't take, like, some genius to know that spring rush can be absolutely insane. Given that we now have Max answering the phone 24:7, and instant price on the website. And by then we will also have upsells. So just be prepared. And I know everyone's transitioned to copa. This is the time to figure it out. Don't be like, I'll figure it out in March or April. This is the time to figure it out. December's still choppy. We're adding several more features. January, things are going to really, really stabilitize. I don't know if that's a word. Stabilize. There you go. In terms of, like, less bugs. It's like figure, watch, copilot university. I noticed January for almost every like across Augusta is the slowest month. Take your time and learn the system, because you don't want to be doing that in the middle of March when you're like, oh, man, I forget. How did I run that tax? Sales tax report. Like, that's not the time to do it. Do it now. So that is my educational corner for today. All right, guys, have a fantastic Tuesday. We'll see you tomorrow.