Mike Minutes Mastermind 12/27/2024 (What it Means to Be a Good Community Member)

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the Mike minutes Mastermind. Yet another last Friday of the year. So happy Friday. Let's get this thing kicked off. Little do we all know we literally still have 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 31st. We have five days left in the year. Let's not write it off. Lots to do, get ahead.

Again this week. Most will just completely write this week off.

I love it. Okay, let's jump in. We've got three questions, and then I do have some stuff I wanted to go over. It's a little different. It's about what makes a good community member. And I have 1, 2, 3, 4 things I wrote down while I was doing squats earlier this morning. All right, but first, let's go over the questions.

Present. Share screen.

And we're off. Okay.

Boom. And then let me make sure my microphone is firing and all cylinders. Cool.

First question is from Jordan Helbush from Omaha, which, by the way, is our first executive model. I think he's coming here in February for training. Hello, Mike. I have had the opportunity to listen to masterminds over the last few months as I wound down my W2 job. This has only reinforced that I made the right decision to join Augusta Nation. Thanks to you and Augusta Nation for sharing your knowledge and focus. I look forward to growing the business and hopefully contributing along the way. Now for my first official question. Drumroll. All right. My personal insurance agent has quoted me commercial liability insurance, including products, completed operations, coverage, along with the general liability. This is very costly. Add on $20,000 annually and doesn't seem to be necessary considering we are planning to offer simple services. What is your understanding of this type of coverage and its value and necessity for my business? Yeah. This is why I'm a huge fan of using brokers.

Instead of. And you might already be doing this, but like, I'm a big fan of using brokers instead of individual agents for specific companies. The reason for that is because the broker is on your team. The. The an agent for an individual company. Like, if you're just using State Farm or you're just using farmers insurance or you're just using Geico or whatever, they're actually working for the company. Like the insurance company. Like, if you just look at like the incentives, the broker, their incentive is to get you a great deal so you stay with them in long term. An agent for an individual company, their incentive is to get the highest premium so they get a better commission. So I always keep that in mind. And typically a broker is Much more inclined to explain things to you. So you come to the right decision in terms of policy versus an agent for an individual company, their incentive is to keep it as dark and obscure as possible so that you just, can you just rack up your premium. And they say things like fancy words like operations coverage. So like, if your agent is not willing to share like and.

Express, you know, explain these coverages, you know, I'd be bouncing. But again, I'm assuming that, that that's an individual. Even if this is a broker, I would say I would agree with you. I don't think you need to have completed operations coverage. Basically, this is usually going to cover faulty installations and faulty work in general. If you're doing simple services, your faulty work could potentially be like a skid mark on a lawn. Maybe you treat a lawn incorrectly with fertilizer and it burns the whole thing and you have to replace it. We've done that a couple times.

But $20,000 annually, like, I would only do that if the potential claims that you're making are 100,000 plus. Now, keep in mind, if you drive your mower into someone's vehicle, you know, like, well, what about a Mercedes in there? It's 100 grand. You're probably not going to, you know, it is not going to fall underneath projects and complete operations coverage. That's a completely different thing. This is literally projects that go wrong. And so I don't think it'd be worth that $20,000 annually. Also, keep in mind, a lot of your general liability, especially if you're getting started, is based upon your expected revenue and expected payroll. So I always go low on those. Sometimes they're like, what do you think you're doing? Revenue, like, you give them like your highest number. Like, like your dream outcome for the year. Like, we're going to go from zero to a million. Year one. I would recommend not doing that. I'd be very conservative. And then you. Every year when I renew, I'm playing catch up with my revenue and number and my amount of payroll. So, like, this year I'm like, okay, yeah, we might do. If I'm just getting started, 300,000. Okay. Okay, great. Let's say I do 400,000. Great. Next year when they renew, I'll just do 400,000. So I'm always behind on revenue and payroll. And as long as you're not hiding things from them on your renewals, when you have to submit information, then you'll be okay. Like on their audits. So. Aaron from Abbotsford. Hi, Mike, your Response to my question in regards to attempting to grow a location quickly with a larger marketing spend was to sample 2 to 3,000 homes with door hangers in the beginning of March. Ish. If we were able to acquire even one, or to your current clients, than go all in, what would be the recommendation if that didn't work? Assuming we already be maxing out the other channels like Google, Facebook, local services, street signs, et cetera. Or would it be. Or would that just be an indication that we would have to grow the territory slowly over time? Just curious what the recommendation would be for plan B. Like the recommendation for plan B is figuring out what your customer acquisition cost is for these different channels and so.

Figuring out what your cost per lead is using the Google tracking code, using the Facebook pixel, tracking your close ratio and then figuring out what is my blended Even if you want to do blended at the very beginning, blended customer acquisition cost.

Especially when you're first getting started, a blended customer acquisition cost is usually a good place to start. And that's how much if I put money into these five channels because right now I'm just testing them all.

I want to know my customer acquisition cost. So for your first spring rush, unless you're like diligently, diligently tracking every little thing, I tend to just say, hey, I want to know your blended customer acquisition cost, which is like, how many customers did you get based upon the marketing spend that came in that you spent? And especially your first year, you know that the vast majority of your leads are going to come from paid advertising because you don't have trucks rolling around, you don't have a huge amount of word of mouth. Like no one's referring you in your first spring rush. So you can usually in your first year actually have a very decent, accurate.

Estimation of your blended customer acquisition cost. Because any lead that comes in typically is coming from paid ads. Like, if you just started in the spring, no one's referring you to their friends and family after two or three or four or five weeks. So usually 80, 90% of your leads are going to come from that. Now, if you're crushing it on Google ranking, that could, you know, mess it up. And I have to put a caveat. Like as of this past summer, we're now ranking usually within the first two to three weeks on the first spot in Google for new locations. So if that's happening, yes, you might get organic leads from that. So that could kind of skew it, bring your customer acquisition cost down. But I think if you do that and stay diligent throughout the spring rush on all the channels, it'll actually become pretty obvious which ones are working the most because people will start mentioning it over and over to you. You go to an estimate. It's like they always are holding the door hanger, they're always holding the postcard or they always are mentioning the yard sign. Like you'll literally just have that intuition because again, so many of the times we attribute, attribute a lead to say Google when reality they saw your door hanger or sorry, they saw your door hanger, they saw your postcard, they saw your yard sign and then they search Augusta lawn care on Google and then click on the ad. So keep that in mind. That's why everyone so often the time, especially when the brand is mature and it's past three years, people will turn off their marketing and they get 60 to 70%, maybe even more of the leads they had before because little did they know all of what they thought was coming from Google, all of what they thought that was coming from Facebook was simply people that were searching for their service based upon seeing their trucks, their marketing material and their print marketing. And so that's why I'm afraid to always attribute 100% certainty, even with tracking codes. This is why a blended approach in my opinion, at the very beginning and, and then keeping your ears and eyes open, like where are customers coming from? What are they talking about? If you only have 10, 15, 20 customers, I would talk to each mowing customer, even if they came to the instant price form and just ask them in person, where did you hear about us? These are the type of things that like yes, you could add this to a form, but all of a sudden you start adding these more and more layers, you start adding reducing your close ratio. So like get the customer. But especially if you only have a few trickling at the very beginning, I would be talking to each of them and being like, hey, where'd you hear about us? You got them as a customer. Like they're, they're already in. So like you're not adding friction, you're now creating a relationship. Maybe that first walkthrough of an initial mo. Just ask them, you know, where they heard about you and you'll start to see a pattern within a matter of doing that 10 to 20 times. Like at the most. Like if everyone's mentioning your yard signs, why in the world are we spending gazillions of dollars on Facebook, for example? But yet when you look at the math, it might be, it might look like Facebook is driving all Your traffic. In reality, they keep seeing your yard signs and then when they saw the ad, they finally clicked on it. So, like, last. So there's a thing called in affiliate marketing called last click attribution. It's basically whoever gets the last click typically is going to be the one that gets the commission on an affiliate. So this, this is the whole big scam thing with honey. The plugin, the Google Chrome plugin for Honey is they basically changed out the link so that all the last CL came through Honey. Instead of the people that actually had the referral codes from, say, a YouTube video. This is the look it up Honey scam. There's a whole bunch of videos going on right now. But this is called, it was called last click attribution. It happens in affiliates all the time in order to track where the commissions on an affiliate program goes. That being said, the same thing I think is true when it comes to marketing is that we usually attribute the lead to the last click, when in reality the 8, 9, 10 touches that actually cause them to click, we give them, we give like no merit to it whatsoever. And this is why again, consistently when I see locations go into profit mode and turn off their marketing, they are shocked by a huge chunk more. Usually around two thirds of their leads continue to come in and usually their close ratio goes up by 30 or 40% because the leads that are coming in from those organic traffic sources are better than the person who just randomly saw you in Google for the first time or randomly click on your ad because they needed lawn care, but they never heard of Augusta. Like, that is why going into profit mode generates so much profit. Like when we did this at the Bellingham shop, for example, because after last year we had to grow a bunch. So we spent a bunch of money on marketing. When we turned $5,000 a month off of marketing, we hardly dropped in number of leads, but our close ratio went from 40% to 60% and then we raised prices by $20 an hour. And so that's what the power of profit mode is. When you cut off your marketing, assuming you've grown for those first three years, zero to 500,000 very quickly. And you've been spending money on marketing and you've been grow, grow, grow for those first 500,000. So many people are shocked that when they turn off the marketing engine that the leads are still. The vast majority of them still continue to come in. So.

Hope that answered your question number three, Anonymous. In the current truck market, when you can get a brand new truck for 35 to 45 with warranty. Would you suggest purchasing that rather than older truck, maybe 25 to 30,000 that would have 100 plus miles and no warranty. We plan on purchasing a truck this year and if it's going to be in the shop, be in the shop. I'd rather it not be out of our pocket every time.

Okay.

So.

It depends what kind of truck you're buying because you can get for 25 to $30,000 a truck that is one year old that has 10,000 to 15,000 miles, they go in Carfax or Carmax. Sorry again, that's if you're buying a 1500 regular cab, an eight foot bed work truck from say GMC or Chevy or even Fords, it's like they're there. We bought a whole bunch of them this past year. So if you're trying to get like a 2500 or a crew cab, other things like that, then yes, this starts to become more of a thing. There are certainly markets right now in the US that I am seeing actually a pretty big drop on used car prices mostly because people have, are going that bought cars. Trucks in 2020 and 2021 are now upside down and they're getting repossessed.

So I would recommend, you know, look at, look at CarMax. It's a really good way to see the, the entire car market.

There's a couple others obviously, but that's the one I've always used. It's easy to be able to see like where are the pockets in the, in the, in the country that are actually pretty soft in terms of used cars. Cars. But you know, to your point, if what you're saying here, shoot a hundred plus thousand miles and you're paying $10,000 less, then yes, I would be going and getting the new truck with the warranty, yes, I would be doing that. But I consistently see trucks that are one to two years old, have 10 to 20,000 miles and are about 10 to $15,000 less than in their initial purchase. And a lot of times come with the warranty because the warranty will go to 36,000 miles or you know, whatever was on the original vehicle. So just my two cents.

It just depends what truck you're trying to buy, honestly. And if, and I like CarMax because you could ship trucks in from around the country and maybe you spend $500 on shipping or even a thousand dollars in shipping, but by having the, the marketplace now be the entire country, you get a better feel of the market and they do like their, their inspections on the Trucks, which I kind of like too. Yes. It's not going to be as cheap as if you went to, you know, Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace for a truck. You're not going to get those kind of deals. But you do have a little bit more of a warranty guarantee using that large of a brand and tap into a larger market. If you're constrained in terms, in terms of what trucks you can, can see in your, in your market. And so especially if you're trying to standardize your truck setup over the course of time, it's nice to have like, if you go on there and put 1500 Silverado, which is, I'm, which I buy all my locations now, the newer ones, they all look the exact same. It's just nice. Once you're in profit mode and you're long term, you know, you're going to keep in the business passively. You know, you're paying 25 to $30,000 for those trucks. They're, they're essentially brand new. Like literally 10 to 12,000 maybe. I think one of them might have 17 or 8,000, 18,000 miles. But like they're going to last me 10 years, I can guarantee you that. So, yeah, it just depends on what you're trying to buy. If you're trying to buy something different in terms of that type of truck, then yeah, it could be different. Okay, we are going to move on to.

Announcements. This is more just like musings I had. I was thinking about some of this because we're creating the holding company for.

Three entities, so Co Pilot, Augusta, Lawn Care, the Franchise and the Media Group. And there'll be more about this coming up in January and February. And so.

Originally I was trying to think, what's the name of the holding company? And it doesn't really matter right now, but especially if we go public, like this will actually mean something. And so I wasn't going to do it because it kind of seemed egotistical, but I was convinced otherwise. And that was the, the name of the, the new entity. Just this is just FYI slash information. But like it's, it's, it's Mike. Mike in capital letters holds HOLD Corporation. And that will probably become the ticker symbol when we go, when we go public. So M I K E is available. That's a big reason why I chose it anyways.

And the reason I was actually convinced otherwise in terms of I wasn't gonna do it because I'm like, ah, it's kind of egotistical to name the company after myself. But what I thought is like, okay, and this is what convinced me otherwise. Someone asked me, so in 100 years, what do you hope the company looks like? And that kind of changed my frame because I said, well, I hope that the values I have now are still inside the company because I'll be done in 100 years. So I hope that.

The things that I believe in today and that I value around community and around what we're trying to do for the industry, I hope they'll still hold true. And so he said, well, if it's not all these other things that you could have said, he mentioned several, then you should probably name it after yourself if that's really what you want. So that way down the road when you're not here, people can ask, what would Mike do? And is this an adherence to what the values that Mike had? So that was kind of like an eye opening moment. I'm still warming up to the idea, but we have made the name that. But in terms of the entity, which entity structure, names don't really matter. You can name it whatever you want. I have a Wyoming, a bunch of LLCs in Wyoming called like random stuff. So like, yeah, anyways, there's some funny names. I can't say it though because then, then people can search. But you put things in Wyoming, for example, because people can't put you on lawsuits, it's a little harder to find. But you make up random names, random names on LLCs, mostly around real estate. Anyways, all that to say I was thinking about, okay, what does a good community member look like? As I've been thinking about the long term of Augusta, like the hundred year thing. And so I came up with four different things and I'm sure these could be improved. These are more or less. Just this morning me thinking about while I was working out what makes a good community member. Now this could be a community member of Augusta Nation. This could be a community member of a church. This could be a community member of a family unit. This be, could, could be a community member of any organization really. And so there's four things that came down to me. One is they give more than they take from the collective. And so ultimately in any organization there are people that give and there are people that take. And the famous saying of like, ask not what I can do for get get from my country, but what I can do for my country in so many words.

Kind of stems from this. And it's like, are you, are you giving to the collective? Are you taking away from the collective? And for some of us as capitalists, like the only thing we can actually do for like say our country if we haven't served in the military, or you don't do public service, etc. Is like taxes. So it's a matter of like, do I take more in the form of financially from the system and from the community than I'd give? And whether or not the collective spends that money appropriately is really irregardless. It's a matter of am I a community member in the fact that I generate a net positive gain to the collective?

That's the first thing. So in terms of augustination, if I peel it back to that, it's like, do we attract people inside of a guestination that are here to be able to help others that are coming behind them in addition to learning from those ahead of them? Because if we're all just learning, trying to learn from people ahead of us, then the collective is not served. It's all a dog eats dog fight, step on each other to try to get to the top. And so the collectivism served in the short term, that will work. You actually make more money doing that. In the long term, the collective will fall apart. And that's I like anarchy comes instead of a country. Once this starts to happen too much, everyone, for example, like the reason we have so much debt in the United States, everyone just wants to know what's in it for me, what program can I get, how can I get more money, I'm looking for a handout, etc. So can you pay my college tuition? Can you also pay for my medical? Can you also pay for the roads? Can you also pay for my education? Like, it just trickles on, on and on and on. And it's in part because we have lost the sense of community around can I give more than I can take? Instead it's a matter of how much can I take without giving, while giving as little as possible. And that's very dangerous. I think that leads to a community breakdown. And so when I start thinking about like with the holding company and like what Augusta looks like 100 years, it's very important to attract the type of people inside the community that abide by that. That rule number two is they offend faster than they are offended by the collective. In any organization or collective community, there's going to be times where people step on each other's toes and defend. Defending the collective instead of being offended by someone else is, I think, an important trait. So if someone does something against you inside of the collective, inside of the community. The first thing you do is defend them instead of being offended and then jumping to conclusions as to how they are against you. Because if we cannot trust that we are on the same team, how can we fight for the same cause? And so if the immediate thing inside of a battle is that the people behind you are shooting you in the back, you would never run forward. You would always retreat. And so if you want to make progress as a collective, you would have to therefore trust that the people behind you are supportive of you and defending you. Cover fire inside of a tactical operation is important because it shows that, hey, I got your back. I'm going to lay down suppressive or cover fire so you can be advance. And so I think defense instead of offense, in that terminology, is important for the collective. The third thing I put down is they guard. They do not attack the enemy. And so I think the thing that's different when it comes to business and communities, especially outside of, say, a battlefield, is defense is far more important than.

Being being on the offense. So there are going to be people that come against the community. There are people that come against your family, There'll be people that come against your church, There'll be people that come against Augusta Nation. And defense is the vast majority, the the best version of how to deal with those attacks. Even if you look at the United States, like, there's very few times we've actually attacked other countries, like, on the offense, and it turned out great. Usually we kind of look back and kind of regret some of the decisions we made, but there are very few times that we regret defending the collective. And so there's less bloodshed. And when I say this bloodshed, I mean like collateral damage. That's probably a better term. There's less collateral damage if you just focus on defending the collective instead of being on the offended, trying to attack the other people that are trying to attack the collective. So, for example, people will say stuff about your family. Do we really need to attack them on Facebook? Do we really need to say something negative about them? Do we really need to say that they're horrible people? Do we need to. If someone. Some people will attack Augusta, and they. They likely as you as owners, they will say things about you. They will say that you aren't an entrepreneur. They'll say you're just a manager for Mike. They'll say stupid stuff. And so it's easy. Sometimes the default is. Is to attack when reality defending the collective in that regard is to simply stay at guard. And guarding the collective means you wait for an attack, you don't actually go out and you, you don't create drama, you don't step out and start saying weird stuff about other people. You don't attack your competitors. You stay open to them until they attack. Now, if someone attacks the collective and actually comes and comes against, you're going to defend. But I think guarding and defense is a far better attribute of a great community member instead of someone that is causing drama or stirring up things by constantly biting out back at other people that will inevitably, inevitably attack any great organization. Like if you have a great marriage, if you have a great family, if you create a church, people undoubtedly come against it and say things and try to attack you. So they guard, they do not attack the enemy. Number four, they stay connected to the central nervous system and blood flow, nutrients and information. So in a body, the central nervous system conveys information at a rapid speed. Staying connected to that extremely important in any organization. The second thing is nutrients, so supplies.

They stay close to the blood flow. The blood flow inside the body carries nutrients, white blood cells.

Contains vitamins and minerals and calories and ATP, like, which is energy for the body, to the muscles and to the cells. And so staying away, like if you sever a body part, you can, you can mend that. But if it stays away from the body, the body and the central nervous system and the, the, the blood flow too long, like it will not be able to be repaired. Things wither up, they die. The, the, the cells begin to not carry the same way in terms of information, the same way they would for nutrients. The blood vessels, regardless of whether or not you repair them physically, if it's been weeks or months that they haven't have been, have been separated, they cannot regain their, their function again. And so this is why it's so important when it comes to, like coming to conference, having your coaching calls, being on the round tables, listening to the mic minutes, is because you are staying connected to the central nervous system and the blood flow of the organization, of the community, of the collective. And this is why, like someone who doesn't go to church, say for example, for a year, they come back and they feel like weird and awkward and strange. They haven't been connected. And if you, if you, you know, have a relationship and all of a sudden for three, four, five weeks, you're not with the person, you're not communicating with them and you've cut off communication, you've cut off the central nervous system, you cut off nutrients from flowing to and from these parts of the collective you're going to have damage there's going to be long term damage created and so when we ever I see someone inside Augustus really really struggling and I look back and I see no coaching calls for 612 months I see no contacts out to command center I see no Facebook group comments or questions or asking for help. What they've done is they have removed themselves from the central nervous system they've removed themselves from the blood flow and for that reason they will die and that's not nothing that we want. There's no glory in seeing someone be severed from like it's not a fun and exciting process of like cutting things away but that will happen if a community member does remove themselves from the nutrients and information that are carried from the organism. So anyways those are some of my thoughts from this morning. I hope you all have a fantastic day. I love you all have a great weekend and I'll see you on Monday. Take.