Mike Andes (Mike Minutes Mastermind, 12/28/2022) gives logistical updates about an upcoming conference (dinner at 6pm the first night, registration before breakfast Thursday, Thursday sessions especially important and will include live emails/forms tied to the One Click Estimate automation) and urges attendees who can’t attend to watch the recordings. He answers audience questions on buying used trucks—preferring newer vehicles by age over low-mileage older ones, running Carfax on every vehicle, favoring private-party or reputable new-car dealers over small used-car lots—and on insurance/accounting: start new-location policies early (agents will prorate start dates), and delay transactions until Jan 1 for cleaner 2022 tax/accounting when possible.
Chapters
Good morning destination. Hope you're all doing super well. Let's go ahead and get started.
Very excited for conference next week. So a week from the day we get started, 6pm is dinner and then the next morning you'll be able to register. So the registration booth set up on Thursday morning just for all of us right before breakfast. Breakfast will be for us and lunch just for the best of lawn care. So looking forward to it.
Mid morning on Thursday I'm going to share stuff I haven't really ever talked about. I don't usually talk about like the kind of ten year plan. So I talked a little bit about Lee last night and I get very excited. So I'm really looking forward to sharing with everybody. Just notes that I've had for a long, long time and want to kind of share with everyone. So it's been a lot of fun.
I say something else about that I totally forget. Cool, jump into the questions.
Oh yeah, I know. I was going to say.
If you aren't going to be able to make it there, we will have the recordings up as soon as possible, especially for the Thursday because there's going to be some emails, at least one that goes out that you need to fill out that will be live in the presentation. So if you get an email during conference and you're not here, don't worry about it. Just wait until you see the recordings because in the recordings you'll see the explanation of those documents and the things that you need to fill out in the forms. So some really cool stuff that we're trying to automate with the One Click Estimate emails and give you a schedule. It's going to be great. And they've developed in the One click estimate department a really cool form for you to fill out that helps all of that process go very seamlessly. So that will be getting sent out. If you're not coming to conference, wait for the recordings so you can understand what exactly you need to do with that document. And just in general, just really recommend as soon as we get that out if you're not able to make it that you are able to watch those because there's a lot of updates, especially on Thursday. Obviously the rest of the conference is fun, entertaining, hopefully educational. But Thursday is extremely important for everyone on this call to listen to. So also for all the newbies, all the new owners, please feel free to leave questions. I've been seeing a few people even emailing me or they emailed other people and those people are asking me questions like look, just ask me directly on the mastermind, don't feel shy and don't feel like it's a dumb question. If it's dumb, I'll let you know. So that's just feel free to do that especially if someone asks you a question too and you're not really 100% sure, just tell them please put in the mastermind is why we do these. All right, let's jump in.
Eric Been shopping around to buy my second truck for going into next spring. Had a solid looking vehicle I was going to drive. Going to drive two hours tomorrow to go look at and likely buy. But then I ran a Carfax report. The last reported mileage was 270,000 miles from a 2018 service listing was 130k and confirmed with pictures from seller who has two owners after that. After researching I learned how common easy is to roll back mileage is on vehicles. Is this something the local shop has come across? Yeah, this happens.
I'm a big fan of thinking about the age of the vehicle instead of the mileage. I understand that's not how most of them are valued but I would rather personally have a truck that has 150,000 miles but 3 years old than a truck that is 12 years old and has 100,000 miles.
Like just because the things that typically go out like for us is not like engine and transmission. We're not like driving these things into the ground. We're not taking them off roading or anything crazy. We don't pull really heavy stuff. So it is like the circuit breakers. It's the electrical stuff like an electrical panel on some of these trucks cost more than replacing the engine if something goes out on like a one of our diesel trucks. I remember the F450. You had the 450. Yeah, 450. We had to replace some electrical stuff. It cost like four grand. It was ridiculous. Now needless to say an engine on a diesel is going to cost you more than four grand but it's crazy. Same thing with the one out in in Connecticut. We had to change out something with their electrical thing on their larger truck. Same thing like $4,000. It's ridiculous. I would prefer a little bit newer over a lot of over having a older vehicle with less miles. And I would I personally don't like buying from used car dealers. So I'm either going to buy private or I'm going to buy from an actual dealer like that has new cars and is going to have a reputation they really are trying to protect. But that being said, I never buy from dealers. Basically. Basically always private party.
Because then it becomes down to how much can I trust this person? Because they're not, they're not pros at selling. The problem with a, a car use car dealership is they do such. They do so many sales transactions they can become so numb, you can't read them in terms of if they're telling the truth or not because there's the use of telling lies. And so I've never had a good experience with private or sorry with.
Small used car dealerships. And that just reminded me that I need to put this into the Facebook group. The link for YouTube. Sorry guys, a second. So that's just my personal thing. But yeah, like I would definitely run CarFax reports on every vehicle. You know, if you're paying 40, $50 extra to be able to ensure that you're not getting scammed or something like that, definitely worth it. And if, if a buyer or if a seller provides a carfax, I usually double check it anyways because there's this thing called Photoshop that can make make Carfax reports look really good. So yeah, that's just me. I do private party or that's really the only way we've ever bought trucks, honestly. So.
I just don't like the thought of someone else having a middleman that takes money out. And guess what all these dealers do is buy from auctions. And those, those are the vehicles that typically came from. Something was broken, something was crashed, something is was fixed, it was left on the side of the road, it was abandoned, it was a repossessed title. So like that's where it's just like I don't know.
What can we talk about in public or on Facebook or wherever about leaving service Alpine switching to Zooper.
Wait till next week at conference. You're gonna have a whole lot more clarity of exactly timelines. What's happening with all of this? Why I'm gonna be giving a lot of detail. So just wait till next. After next week.
After that will not be a secret.
Logan, I'm getting insurance policy set up for a new location. Would it make sense for us to have coverage start one point? Oh, January 1st, despite us not having work until February. March. Columbus policy runs the whole year, which is nice for audit and accounting purposes, but it wouldn't nest. Wouldn't particularly necessarily Grand Island. Should we start policies January 1st or wait should we wait until February to start coverage? We take a truck off the Columbus policy and add it to a separate one. And general liability is only about $1,000 for the year. Seems like it might be easier to start the new policy. Yeah, just if it's only $1,000 for the year for general liability, I just start it right away. Just to get it off your plate so you're not dealing with it closer to spring rush. But in terms like auto insurance, for example.
Most insurance companies, you just tell them the start date and they'll, they'll prorate everything. There's like, hey, I want to get, get insurance set up now. But I don't start business till X date and then they're fine. Right. So I'm doing the same thing with all my locations in North Carolina. We're trying to keep everything, we're trying to do everything besides transact money till January 1st. Because that way I can just not have to worry about tax returns or any sort of accounting in 2022. Because even like the owner's, owner's investment, I don't, I'm waiting like January 1st and I'll put the money in. In the perfect world, I would have put money in last week and we would have bought all the trucks. What is it, like 10 of them? I don't know, 10, 8, 9, 10 trucks this week. And I would have a great tax write off for 2022. The problem with that is then I'd need to account for all of those tax returns of those different.
Locations. So I don't enjoy that.
So, yeah, I would just say in terms of like things like insurance, tell your, whoever is doing your policy, your insurance agent, like, hey, we're starting on this specific date. Same thing when you're doing like the Secretary of State or your business license, you can start the business like far out into the future and they won't even actually send you your Form 941s for payroll tax and stuff until that date. So. So.
But if it's like a month or two, just do it now. Just get it out of the way so that way you're not distracted during or closer to spring rush. So cool. I know there hasn't been a lot of announcements or education happening the last couple of weeks. The reason for that is because I got to say something for conference, like, what am I supposed to talk about? I talk to you guys every single day. So. But no, I'm really looking forward to it. We got four of our owners going to also be speaking about specific topics. And yeah, we're looking forward to Saturday. We'll have awards and we add another award section this year. And so I'm really looking forward to that, and it's going to be a great, great time. So have a great Wednesday, everyone, and we'll see you tomorrow.
