Mike Minutes Mastermind 12/13/2023
Mike Andes leads a Mastermind livestream (Mike Minutes Mastermind — 12/13/2023) discussing an urgent turnaround for a landscaping/tree company (severe theft, heavy short-term debt, few liquid assets) and answering audience questions about operations, software (Copilot/Command Center, price matrices, permissions, QuickBooks sync), compensation (distributable cash vs profit sharing, GM percentages), and coaching style. Key practical guidance: move short-term crew bonuses timing to avoid quarter skew, prefer keeping revenue reporting inside the CRM rather than syncing to QuickBooks, delay widespread use of price matrices until mobile features mature (targeted late summer), and prefer profit-sharing over permanent revenue-based bonuses (possible one-time revenue targets OK). The session closes as Mike heads to an on-site turnaround visit.
Questions this video answers
Over $500,000.
Approximately 15–20 employees at peak season; about 10 in the off-season.
Previously 25% of profit sharing for GMs starting a new location; now 35% for new locations (when using distributable cash).
The 25th ("before the next billing date, which is the 25th").
He suggested "late summer" (with mobile video/email attachment readiness targeted around the following summer for full functionality).
Chapters
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Augusta Nation. Welcome to another mastermind. Don't worry, I'm not in hostage.
I'm sitting in the car in the parking lot waiting for our turnaround. I'm gonna blame Zach on this one because he put an earlier start time. Like, dude, six o' clock is an early start time. Anyways, we're in business.
Does that help? A little bit. But I wanted to do the mastermind yesterday. We didn't get to it. There's 14 questions it looks like. So let's just go ahead and get started.
This turnaround is a bit crazy. Out here in Tennessee is where we're at today. It's a really fast trip. We gotta get back to the airport.
But I'm just adding this in. Copy this, save.
This one's gonna be a really, really tough one as there is paste.
Just a ton of debt, not a lot of assets to liquidate. A bunch of short term loans that have daily payments like payday loans. This is not the roofing company. You're going to see another, another company from a couple, you'll see another company about roofing. This is a landscaping tree company and they're pretty big. 15 to 20 employees during peak season. Right now they have 10 during the off season. So we'll see what we can do. But it does not look good based upon the balance sheet I have and then the two minute video they submitted. So that's all I kind of go into the show with. So over $500,000 was stolen from them this year from an employee. This was like their first year. They were going to kind of go into profit mode and they thought it was going to be kind of really good. And yeah, they had to sell their house and try to make it work. So that's what we're doing. We're the turnaround. But I'm going to go ahead and present.
And let's rock and roll. All right, Joel from Lafayette today, you mentioned, yesterday you mentioned there's a folder in the academy for regional manager docs. How would you get to those folders from the dashboard? I thought it might be from templates and download links, but I don't see anything related to a regional manager or the old GM documents folder.
Chuck or Lee, if you want to take a look at this and know now we've switched to the Google Drive docs. So the only way it would not be there if Zach just didn't connect it when we moved over to Google Drive. So feel free, Zach or sorry, Lee and Chuck, if you Want to take a look at that and then just email mediagustalongaservice.com if he did forget to put the folder in there. But that's where it should be.
Kyle Tarvin from Oklahoma. When paying GMs a portion of distributable cash, do you take into account the fuel crew's profit sharing too before you pay the gm since they both are both on a quarterly basis. When both fuel crew and GM profit sharing come at the same time, making the number skewed? No, because that's why we move the fuel crews quarterly bonuses off usually by a month and offset it to match the season. And then we have the fiscal quarters like based on the calendar for the general managers and then in turn. So yeah, distributable cash is like literally how much money is taken out of the bank account. And so I am willing to give significantly more percentage and distributable cash compared to profit sharing due to the fact.
That it takes into account all the things that you're mentioning right now. It takes into account buying stuff. It takes into account all a lot of things. And that's why like before we did distributor cash, I only, I was only willing to give 25% of profit sharing to my general managers that start a new location. It's less if it's an existing location, but now they're making 35% if they start a new location. And the reason for that is it's much more delayed gratification when you just rule cash. It is also like a lot of people won't do it because they're like well down the road. That means you are splitting. Like by the time I pay my regional bonus, the general manager, I'm literally giving 50 of distributable cash to team members plus what's out in the field. So you technically could lose like you could only be making 40% as the owner. Again, we are assuming I never do anything that number comes down. Like if you're the regional manager, you'd be getting their cut. If you were doing in the actual in daily operation stuff, they wouldn't be getting 35%. So 35%, like that percentage chunk that I give is me never being there. Me not having to be involved in the daily decisions or buying decisions, etc. Or hiring. If I was, those numbers would come down. But that's distributable cash is literally how much money is taken out of the business.
Forest. Is command center going to be using price matrix? Not right now. We are using the for copilot, the basis of price matrix will eventually eliminate the need for command center touch estimates. The goal is that on your phone you'll be able to send out the estimates with maybe 20% more time spent compared to what you currently do with copying and pasting your template and making some adjustments that you'll be actually send the estimate. And so there wouldn't be needing any touch from command center. But in order to do that we have to do several things. Number one, the price matrices has to be baked into mobile much better. Secondly, the ability to add a video from mobile to an email is also something So a little bit of work more there to do. Don't worry. I would not worry about price matrices in job and job costing in COPA yet to my knowledge, maybe only one or two owners have ever even set up price matrices or job costing. We will get it set up for you, we will make sure it's done right and then we will push it out to everyone if you want to enable it on your account. So but I would wait till on that one until like I think we'll probably be having that like ready like late summer when I'm like okay, we don't need to have commands in our touch your estimates anymore. And here's how you can do it. It'll save everyone money, save everyone time and get the estimates to the customer faster. All big wins. Why is it so hot? All right, my door for a second. What are the standard items that command center will be using? They set up Tracy account, move all jobs but it's very inaccurate. Tons of recurring jobs and job notes are missing. They probably aren't finished for us. Feel free to reach out to them.
And talk about with them. You go help@augustalongerservices.com this has not been my experience moving my locations over. We only missed a couple jobs.
But reach out to them and they'll. They'll walk you through it. Or privileges do you recommend giving to your field workers and copilot? I noticed even if the employee profile has no access to anything, they can edit property address and location. They can edit, they can add items and services, create jobs and edit visit notes if they click on the customer name next to property I create a landscaping project straight from a customer profile for 500. Not like most employees would be doing this on a day to day basis but I think accidents can happen. We have a couple permission things we're adding in there. There is too much permissions being given the employees. If you're trying to really lock Them down and not the them not to see customer information. So we are adding like one for example. The big one right now is like we don't want them to be able to move events. You should be able to disable that. So there are a few things we're adding to this and.
If they. Yeah, this part too. I'm going to screenshot this. We'll just add this. This part. I wasn't aware of the editing the thing here. One second. Give me one second.
Pending hold.
Let me just send this from Mastermind with.
FYI bam schedule for later because I don't want to be emailing people or DMing them at 3 o' clock today at.
There we go. 6:30 is late enough. All right.
Yes, I agree. We agree. We are making a couple changes on the dispatch board and I just sent that over to them as well. How are crew members going to manage two visits different services at a property and copilot. Do they have to clock in out each visit or their way to link the visits together? Yeah, we. Right now you can click into two events and click the start button. At least that's how it was when I was in North Carolina because I did a few times but it's not dividing the time up. So we have a few things we're going to address here in spring and have options in your settings because some people like it one way, other people like it to split the time. It's all what you're used of and your workflow. So we're going to have some settings around this because either way we will make people unhappy. So we're trying to make it where you can choose this in your settings as to how multi clock ins work. Well, we have a lot of Mr. Anonymous today when when using Copa as an employee start work, complete work, et cetera is all on the top of the page. I noticed the crew member has to scroll quite a ways to see the visit notes. Is there a way we can possibly bring the visit notes up or move the start skip complete button Bottom work this will way important work notes are not overlooked. Yes, this was mentioned before and basically moving the notes to the top of the.
Visit.
One second.
See when I'm three hours ahead I have to schedule everything out because I don't like messaging people before 6:30am all right, noted.
Forest, what is the game plan with items and services? I see multiple different line items and different names for same service. What are the standard recurring services that command center will be trained to know? I would like to get my copilot set up properly so that everyone is on the same page, whether my office staff or command center. Yeah, of course I'd recommend talking with command center. They're probably in the middle of moving all your stuff over items and services right now. You can basically start typing in any field and start creating items service which a lot of people like. And I'll make some enemies when I disable that feature. But we need to make it where it says drop down so that we what what you're talking about doesn't happen. That is like they'll be mowing with a capital M and then mowing small case M. There's too many services that end up popping up. So we will make that a drop down and it'll prevent that from happening. Command center is using the same ones as before.
In terms of your items and services. Like how that's working. But down the road items and services will be tied into price matrices so that you can create estimates from your mobile device, send it to the customer. But before that's actually useful enough, all the features enabled for that's actually it looks good from a design perspective. The pricing is all correct, the formatting is correct and you can attach a video from a mobile device is probably next summer. Mr. Anonymous is oh I think this is forced because he sent me a bunch of these. Is there a way to eliminate this from the employees view? Yeah, this is what I was talking about. We have it on the on the board and that is like the stuff on the top. So an iPad by the way is very different from a phone on Copilot. How we treat it, we treat the iPad much more with a lot more options. Whereas the mobile device like on the dispatch board you don't see as much on the top and it's all broken way down. So if you have an iPad there's a lot more functionality than the mobile device. And I shouldn't say functionality is like as much as from a design perspective it's easier easier to like get around if you're trying to do major things. Whereas a mobile device is like clocking in a job, seeing the job notes and yes, you can do all those things but it's not as prominent on the design forest on Copilot. The employee schedule tab employees are able to move events to different days. Yes, this is the one I just talked about. There's a button that says move events and we're going to take that off if you have the edit button off in their permissions.
Logan from Grand Island, Nebraska I'm sure. You've answered this before so I apologize but I have to ask again. From what I understand, grand island is ready to cancel our SA account. However, I need to make sure I can cover the basis for collections and clients payment. Should we put in any invoice that has not been paid into co pilot so CC can collect from there? Would CC do this or do we need to. I like to cancel my account before the next billing date, which is the 25th. I would really try next two weeks before you cancel the collect on all these. But then if you're actually going to cancel and not just keep the base subscription open, then I would recommend moving the invoices over or just.
Send them all to collections. So if I was you, if you like you want to cancel down to zero on your essay account, I would recommend being very strong with customers this week and then if they don't by the 25th, send them to collections. You'll have everything on digital file and you won't have to actually bring them into copilot because now it's sent off to collections and the only money that would come in is now from them. So you could do that. I still recommend if you can keep the base subscription open so you can at least just keep that, all the invoices in there, all that stuff just for peace of mind. It's like, I think it's like 100 bucks or 79 or whatever. I'd recommend doing that. It's from Matt Bedelia.
Plan to hit growth Mode hard in 2024 or consider implementing a revenue based bonus structure. Would you ever consider doing that? Why or why not? I'm thinking the frontline employees have more control and a direct connection to revenue than they do profits. So I would disagree with this because they don't control revenue, they control their efficiency and they might make up say 100, $250,000 worth of their revenue. But they do, they don't like market like do marketing. They don't do they. They can't increase capacity in terms of trucks or employ.
Ways. So I actually don't believe that frontline team members have a lot of impact on revenue because you could regain the system against them technically. But from a profitability perspective they have a lot more control of that. Individually. Do I think that team members contribute to revenue? Absolutely. But. But if I am a part of a million dollar business like in your case Matt, and I'm one employee of 12 or 13, I'm not going to feel super inclined that me running across the parking lot today is going to bring me more money. That's what P4P does. The profit sharing creates the camaraderie of like everyone's yellow slip affects everyone else and like there's much more we're in it together with profit sharing. I don't believe they have a whole lot to do with revenue and incentivizing that could be detrimental. But let's keep reading. They don't control how much we spend on indirect costs and I think it would be at least would be at least as motivated and incentivized as they are with profit sharing. Work fast and efficiently with less breaks so we get more jobs done. Work longer days, come in on Saturdays, build relationships and loyalty with customers, look for upsells, etc. I realize profit sharing can inspire the same or similar behavior but feels just a little less connected to the frontline actors when compared to revenue. I realize one downside might be our that we aren't profitable then have to give out bonuses. But if our goal is growth maybe that's okay and with P4P should be efficient and profitable assuming our pricing is right. I, I'm okay with doing this. I think it's like a one time thing like hey guys, our goal is to hit, let's just call it 150,000amonth in revenue. If we hit that we're doing X or like an outing or like a cash bonus for everyone. That would probably move the needle. I just get very cautious when people are like we're creating a new bonus structure around revenue. I very rarely see that work out in the long run because you might switch from growth to profitability mode. But if you still have a growth now you're going to take away someone's but bonus. And I just know that long term a business exists for profitability so it's a sustainable bonus model versus based on revenue where you're going to switch from rev from being growth to profit at some point and you're going to want to take away that bonus. So I just be careful about offering a sticky bonus. But you could do like a one like an annual thing like hey this is our goal. If we hit the target of monthly revenue and then annual revenue. Here are the things that everyone gets that would be interesting and just make it like a one time year bonus thing. That'd be cool.
From Matt as well In Delta I see that CoPilot syncs with QuickBooks but saw somewhere that you don't recommend we do that. Is that true? Do you not see this as very important? We used to Enjoy the job or QBO Sync that our reports and cookbooks were all accurate and full of useful info this past year with Essay not thinking cookbooks maybe just a Canada thing has been a bit of a pain to produce valuable reports without accurate sales, revenue and payment synced. We've basically been doing a manual entry in QuickBooks with total revenue for the month without any customer or service detail. I still recommend not syncing with QuickBooks like as of right now everyone that's using the cookbook sync inside Coppa is happy. QuickBooks will make a change then we have to make a change. That difference of two or three weeks is enough to make you mad. Jobber doesn't bring all the information over and it's more of a one way sync.
Actually they might switch the two I don't know. All I know is that if you have experienced this sync you might be fine. I see most of the time the issue being when people have not used the sync before they have some serious issues. And that's why I recommend just keeping the revenue reports inside of your CRM. Like I recommend this for every CRM honestly. And I've even had it when people from Jobber have the sync and then they they're freaking out. It's like look, I just don't recommend it ever. Like.
I just haven't seen it offer enough value in terms of the reporting because because you can get a lot of those same reports inside your CRM in terms like where did the revenue come from?
Taro Ek I've been getting some emails testing the new instant quote system on our website. Appears to be live now and it is awesome. My question is this will be something that we surely will want to drive traffic to in spring it would seem like with our ads. And another question is I have is the pricing should it be on the lower side, middle or high? Maybe it just depends on what capacity or growth we are at. Exactly right. I have one location that is literally charging twice as much for their pri for their pricing matrix and in on the on the large properties I think it's more than double because they're they're in profit mode, the other one's in growth mode. So they're like on the lower side. But absolutely. When it comes to traffic in the spring your ads should all revolve around get a price instantly, get a price within two minutes, get your job set up and scheduled within five minutes like because that's your our unique selling proposition. You know, click click this link and get an instant quote stuff like that will be huge because you're trying to get that person that is like literally just needing to get someone there. They just want a card on file. They want to move on.
Marcus from Redmond A psychological question.
You have a ton of experience in consulting with business owners of all types. I just watched the recent turnaround video. Incredible. And was trying to study how you suggest changes in the business. I wonder about John Taffer bar rescue guy. His approach seems to be highlight the problems, make very quick changes, stress test them. He is very unapologetic and forceful in his coaching and doesn't allow the owner much time to think. Which for a business owner under a lot of stress might may prefer to be told exactly what to do and how to do it. But also some owners may be in denial and shut down emotionally when John delivers the truth in a harsh way. When the business owner is giving advice from you, of course it's completely on them to take action. I know there's a lot of differences between John Taffer showing yours, but how. But could you share your thoughts on the cycle psychological approach to coaching? Do you change your tone or delivery of the advice depending on their person? 100 I imagine if you could go back in time, consult your younger self there would be no sugar coating.
This is not always the case. You have to also remember when I go into these turnarounds we're there for a few hours like Marcus Lemon is the prophet Johnson. John Taffer bar rescue. They spend more time as they have more context, they meet more people. They also have a whole lot more background. I'm walking this one that we're about to drive to today and I have a two minute video and I have their balance sheet and their profit and loss statement. The book that I'm doing about the turnaround show will talk about like how I come to what I should say, like how I arrive at like what topic I'm going to try to cover with them.
In terms of the psychological part. Like I am definitely like feeling out how their approach is. So you're going to hear a video come out called Mr. Sudsy. That's the name of the business and.
That you're gonna see. That guy has ADD and like super high. Like, like lots of energy and I match him. So there's a couple times where I get like really really.
Worked up. It's because that's like his energy. If someone's slower I'm gonna match their energy because otherwise I'm not so concerned about the video as much as I'm like Changing their behavior. And. And if I come across, like, super abrasive, it'll look good on camera, but they won't actually change stuff because, like, that's not their communication mechanism. So I'm trying to feel that out. Some people are more emotional, so I'll match that. Some people are higher stress. So you'll see me get on, like, the edge of my seat and be, like, much more direct with them. There's people like Louise that I feel are too casual. So sometimes I'll prod them a little bit more and say things that are a little more, like, hurtful or, like, proddings. Like, you know, you. You would have heard me say, like, I really pushed them. Like, why does it exist? Like, no. And I cut them off. It's very rare I cut someone off unless I'm trying to prod them. So.
You know, those are some of the things I do, I guess. But, like, I'm hoping that the turnaround book can kind of explain a lot more of that. More from the business perspective, but from a psychological perspective. I think it's important from a. From a coaching perspective to match someone's energy so they actually, like, I just want to see them improve. I don't want to just make a great video. And so when I'm on site, I'm mostly thinking about the owner. That's why, like, the media team, their job is to think about the video. Because I just want to see them change. And, like, I'm looking. What I'm looking forward to is the video in a year or two, seeing what they did. That's the part I'm literally, like, completely focused on. So.
Yes, I had something else I wanted to say, but I don't have enough time for it, so I. And I don't want to rush it. So I am going to delete all these responses first so I don't mess those up. And then tomorrow or the next day, whenever I get to my next one, I do have something I wanted to say. I will save that until that time so I can take more time on it. Thank you all. Have a fantastic day and we're going to go do this turnaround. Let's go. Thanks, guys.
