Mike Minutes Mastermind 12/24/2024

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the Mic minutes. Mastermind. Sorry for the glasses. These are just blue light glasses, but in the name and for the sake of my eyes, I am trying to wear them recently when you have low levels of sleep. For some reason, the blue light just really gets to my eyes over a course of time. So, yes, I am soft and I look at computer screens too long, so it seems to be helping a little bit. Anyways, let's go ahead and hop into things. First off, thank you to everyone that signed up for conference. We're gonna have a bunch of agostination based upon the way things are looking. Like we got almost everyone coming, so I'm really looking forward to it. Not everyone, but like a lot. They'll be definitely the most Augusta members we've ever had. So really looking forward to seeing everyone there. The hotel is close to being booked out completely, so if you are wanting to stay at the hotel, I would recommend doing that like literally the next couple days.

It's gonna be. It's gonna be so much fun. So really looking forward to it.

It's gonna be great. It's gonna be great. So if you haven't already and you're still thinking, you make the decision to. We do need to know if you're coming to conference because we have to have separate meals for Guest Nation on Thursday afternoon as well as Saturday night at topgolf. So if you could do me a massive favor and everyone that's working in the team planning, go to augustafranchise.com go to the conference tab and make sure you fill out the form. It's totally fine if you have like, you know, two people coming and you put both your names on one registration. Very good. If you. The confirmation should be coming back to you. If it doesn't for some reason or goes to your spam, just email mediagustalongarservices.com they can confirm that you have registered. But yes, highly recommend being there this year. This is definitely the year we are announcing the most things and within there's some immediate releases and then a couple that are happening within two weeks of conference for Gusta Nation and so you'll want to be there. I will try my very best to get the recordings of the Thursday Augusta Nation keynotes and updates, etc out as soon as possible within a week or two. But the amount of footage that we get from conferences, abhorrent and so it does take a while to unwind. But if you can be there in person, it'll be great. Really Recommend if you got a, you know, couch hop or bunk up with someone else in a room or go on an Airbnb. There's a couple other hotels that aren't too far away that you could walk to if they're, they're a little cheaper than the Hyatt, especially if it does fill up here the next couple days. So just, just please, if you're coming, put your name on the registration.

And that'd be super awesome. So again, you got two tickets, it's included for the Thursday as well as the the public event for Blue Collar Summit. So we're kind of like classifying Landscape Summit as just Augusta Nation only. Blue Collar Summit is the public event. So all of Thursday until 3pm is Augusta Nation only. It's Landscape Summit and we switch right into Blue Collar Summit. On the Friday we will have awards for August. We try to mix that up every single year just slightly and how we do it just to keep it fresh so it doesn't get stagnant. I'm really looking forward to just some of the stuff that we're, we're doing this year and I've been working a lot on it. So I look forward to being a share with you. I stink at keeping surprises. Like I'm horrible. I just like to be able to share when things are are once I've worked on something, I like finish with the project. So I'm trying to do my best to be able to give it to everyone on the Thursday and release a couple of the things right away. And a couple things will be coming out in February 1st and then a couple will be coming out throughout 2025 that we'll be working on. But I'll be making those announcements on Thursday and look forward to it. So please go to augustafranchise.com go to the conference tab, register your tickets and again is included. The two two tickets are included. Everyone gets charged the same $500 every single January. It comes out automatically on the 15th. And so yeah, please do that. Also on the 15th of January, that same invoice that you'll get in the middle of the month, that 15th, if you have been paying ACH on your fees, et cetera, we refund all of your fees on that day. So the first half of 2024, we refunded all of your ACH. The $5 little thing that comes out with copilot fees, we refunded all of that for the first half of 2024. We will do the same thing for the second half of 2024 we'll on January 15th. Ideal case scenario down the road, Copilot allows you to decide if processing fees are charged for ACH versus credit card fees. But for now, because there are people that like to have the credit card fee credit pay with credit card, especially during the off season and roll a little bit of a balance, we've allowed that to.

Be done inside Copa. However, it does require us to then charge the $5 for ACH. So we refund that though we don't want to charge if you have a bank account on file. And so we do that again. I don't like nickel and diming over credit card processing fees. But the bottom line is if we're going to keep fees without inflationary adjustments, we got to really watch our margins and every little bit counts. So that's why we do that. But you will get the refund. If you've been paying ACH on January 15th, it'll probably be like 60 bucks. If you paid twice a month, $5 each, that'll come out. That'll also be refunded on January 15th. So let's jump into some questions. Merry Christmas. Today is December 24th, so happy Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas Eve. Happy Christmas Eve. Don't know why that's different. Probably won't have a mastermind tomorrow. Based upon yesterday there was only one question. Today there's just a few. But let's go ahead and jump in.

Present share screen.

Top in. Boom. Got three questions today, nurse. One is Mr. Anonymous. Make this a little bigger. In the winter months when you are trying to get above your break even point, does it matter if you lose money on a job or are you still wanting to make sure the job is bid to allow for profit? So this is the thing. If you're trying to just cover your cost of goods sold, then I would say like, like you're just trying to break even right on the job. So like how I look at this, like when people say they break even on a job, usually they mean they make $0 including like covering their overhead, their fuel, et cetera. I'm looking at direct cost of the job, which is going to be my labor, like direct labor on the job, my materials and my subcontractors, if you have any. So most of the time for us it's just labor, direct labor, your crew members and materials. That's like a, like the farthest low. Because like you, you, you if you're going to have fixed expenses and overhead, it's not going to change regardless of whether or not you have this job, it's like the lowest price you could ever go is technically down to your cost of goods sold, your cogs, direct costs, whatever you want to call them.

Which is your labor and your materials. Would I go below that? No, typically not. That being said, if you're confident in the ability for you to upsell, I might be willing to lose $100 on cost of goods sold, even knowing that I can sell that customer $1500, $2000 within the next year and then be able to keep them for three, four years in the future. Until I know that number, though, I'm probably not going to fiddle with losing money on a job I want to. In the perfect case scenario, I'm collecting money prior to the job being done. So I'm cash flow positive. Before the transaction, before I actually have to spend money on direct labor, I am collecting the cash. So this is what I would probably say if you're, if you're in this case where you're like, hey, I'm trying to fill my schedule, what I would probably do is reduce my spend or, sorry, reduce my prices down closer to my cost of goods sold. But what I would do is I'd probably require everyone to pay up front. That way I don't put myself into a bad cash position. I don't have people that have overdues, but I'm willing to go lower on the price to win the job. That's probably what I would do, but I would not sacrifice the fact that I need to get cash collected as soon as possible. And ideally I get that cash before I give it to my crew and before I give it to Home Depot for materials. So in the perfect case, ideal case, if you're actually going to bring down prices that low where you're basically just covering cost of goods sold, I don't want to be the bank quote, unquote, and basically fund the project. I want the customer to give me the money and then I go give it to my crew, then I go buy the materials, et cetera, because that's usually what causes the cash crunch when people start to do that during the off season. So I would just put like your deposit threshold on copilot down to like $0 and 100% they have to pay. And it would just say, hey, it requires a deposit and it would be 100% of the amount. So.

And you're going to see a demo next week from Josh of what that's going to look like in the new customer portal, and it's going to look very Good. Much, much better than the pop up that's currently there. Kenlyn, now that you are advocating for a location to do 800,000 instead of a million, are you planning on altering the conditions of the seven figure club asking for a friend note? The seven figure club will stay the same because we're looking at combined revenue. So whether someone wants to go to that 1.5 million dollar marker, totally fine. Or they start two locations and they have one at 700,000, one at 600,000, one at 800,000. Combined it's more than a million they in the seven figure club. So I still think it's a good, it's a very easy round number for us to be able to benchmark. It also is a good indicator, like either a, you are having middle management, you're doing 1.52 million, you need middle management, or two, you have general managers at multiple locations. And so it's still a good figure for us to kind of shoot for whether you are using like the Augusta model of like grow to 500,000 and then optimize for profit till 800,000 is, you know, what we teach. But there are going to be people like, hey, I don't want to grow multiple locations, I just want to go 1.52 million, etc. And I just want to stay here, be more in operations. That's totally fine. So it's just a matter of like the seven figure hub was an easy way for us to be able to distinguish who's hit a certain revenue marker. And that can be combined locations or it can be one larger. Lawrenceville, I saw you did a turnaround for a power washing company that also is doing Christmas lights. Did you learn anything on the Christmas light side that you might be implementing into Augusta lights? Not specifically. That was Mr. Sudsy that you're talking about. I didn't learn anything specific, I would say, from that episode about Christmas lights. We did go and do like a shoot of them installing Christmas lights.

But I wouldn't say we learned a whole lot from that specific one. The turnarounds are helpful.

For me to see like different industries, different markets, be there in person. I'm always looking, you know, what Augusta locations are nearby and then I'm trying to look at their numbers and see, okay, when I'm there, like I'm kind of scoping things out. So it's kind of crazy. We put it all on a map the other day, like where we've been on all the Turnarounds. Because in 2025, when we go back and do turnarounds. We're probably going to hit up owners inside of Augusta Nation to do a meetup. We're probably also going to meet up with previous turnarounds in person and kind of do a recap. Just make as much use of those trips as possible.

And so we put it on a map. It's crazy. Like we've just been so many places. But it definitely helps me with like market research. There's very few markets I haven't actually just like actually had feet, boots on the ground. And there's something about it. Like you kind of get a feel for like the vibe of growth. What are people pro growth in terms of construction expansion.

And that's an important thing. Like I'm looking for population growth. And a lot of times in a market where there's population growth, there's like this vibe. There's there is of like just growth and expansion and like there's constantly construction and they're busy streets. And like as much as I hate traffic, I also love traffic because it means that the infrastructure has not caught up to the demand and of people moving into that area. And that's usually a good sign when it comes to a market that I'm trying to expand into because it is usually means that the service providers lag five to 10 years behind that demand curve. So if it's five to 10 years and even if it plateaus a little bit, I have five to years to build my brand up while there's still an excess of demand, which usually mean there's price elasticity. In a market where there is population decline, the only way to really win is to become the big boy in town. Whereas in a market that has expanding very quickly, the big guys are just that. They're capped by the tally accounts. They can hire and buy trucks, they have a capital, they have a capital expenditure capex limit and they also have a number of employees they can hire limit. And so there's so much excess demand in compared to the supply of labor. If a market grows by 15, 20, 30% and usually in those markets there are also appreciation of the home values. So people are much more price elastic as well in terms of projects. So typically I see like a house appreciation correlated with project growth. And I see.

Population expansion correlate with really, really good demand for recurring revenue. And so those are like the two things I'm looking for when I'm in these markets. I'm always looking because whether it be an owner of Augusta that's close by or down the road like, we always have, you know, people interested in certain markets. Well, I've been in most of them, and so it's very helpful sometimes just to have the boots on the ground. When I'm doing the turnarounds in these different markets, and I kind of get the feel of it, I hear from owners because I'm literally talking to the turnarounds. I see their numbers. I know what their hourly rates are. I know their close ratios are. So it's super helpful. But, yeah, I'm looking forward to 2025. We're gonna do some when we go out and do these now, I'm gonna meet up with more Augusta owners as well. Probably do some shots with you guys as well. Hopefully, we'll help in person too, a little bit. So, anyways, it's gonna be a lot of fun. Anyways, 2025 is just around the corner. I probably won't see you all tomorrow on the Mastermind because I doubt there'll be more questions. But I hope you all have a very merry Christmas. Enjoy time with your family. Hit the gym when no one else is here for the next week, because in a week, it's gonna get busy. It's gonna get busy. Everyone's gonna suddenly want to get healthy. So just keep crushing it. Love you all, and we will see you. If not tomorrow, the next day. Take care, guys.