Mike Minutes Mastermind 4/19/22

Good morning destination. We had started here. I didn't have any questions come in on the form. Let me just double check again. Yeah, I didn't get any questions on the form but I want to go live, see if there's any questions that any of you had.

Yesterday. Again, very important. I, I saw yesterday there's three accounts where the wiki and the dashboard have different things being said in terms of estimator availability. And so very, very important to make sure those are both the same. I know it's easy to just like oh I'll just change this real quick on the dispatch board but it needs to be changed in the wiki too.

Again just very, very important. The ones yesterday that I, I was doing specifically during training I was conflicted because one, one spot said no drive by estimates. The other one said the other one said drive by estimates only on Friday it was, it's just kind of very important that those things correlate. Otherwise you're just, you're going to, you're going to have mess ups. So just make sure those two things match estimator availability. So if you're putting on your dispatch board that's great. It's a really fast way to, for us to see it at command center. But make sure that matches your back in at the, in the wiki. And so that's very, very, very important.

Let's see here. Boom, boom, boom. Make sure there's no questions that were submitted.

Yeah, no questions were submitted from the form. So if you all have any, feel free in the comments. Go ahead and jump into those.

See here I know I had a.

Few things I wanted to go over.

Let me see if I can just pull them out. Now.

See here we have the every door direct mail. All those changes were made on the pro shop, all of our Canadian owners. That will be updated on your end next week. And so that is going to have the new every door direct mail stamp on there. It's also going to have no snow removal. But everything else has been revamped too. So just like overall design on all the postcards and flyers have been revamped. Also the back and the background video of the website is going to be updated here in the next week or so. It just takes us a long time to do across the entire board because we optimize it a certain way just to condense it. And so that will be done probably next week. And we're making sure that we don't show the US flag. So any Canadians, it's not going to show the Patches on their side or anything like that. So let's see here. While training, could you record screen for us how to change the estimator availability in wiki and in the calendar event so we can change that correctly if we need to. Great question. Let's just do that now. This is why we do the masterminds. Okay, let's hop in here. I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick on Kevin Fairburn because he was the one I specifically am thinking about right now. He does a great job, but he was the one that in training yesterday I was, I was rather embarrassed because I was doing a live chat for training and I couldn't tell the customer if I could schedule an appointment or not because I'll show you what was going on here.

Boom.

But we figured it out. I texted him and he got back to me and I was able to confirm the point with the customer. So it's all good. All right, I'm just logging into the account here. I'll show you exactly what I mean.

Here. Share my screen.

There you go. Window. Boom. Boom. Okay, I'll leave the question on here. So if anyone pops on live, they can see what we're talking about. But if you are in service autopilot, this is what you'd be doing. If you are inside Zooper, you do need to let us know because right now Wiki is not inside of Zooper. We keep it inside of Google Drive, but that's going to be changing over the next several months as we get Zooper integrated into Wiki as well. Okay, let's hop in. Service off. Oh, this is Kevin out in Memphis or in South Haven, Mississippi. So let's go ahead and look at two things. Number one, wiki. So boom, wiki. And I'm gonna go to estimator availability right here. So I've changed this. Yesterday I changed this because it I put okay after 4pm for scheduled appointments. So drive bys are okay, but do not promise a day. That's pretty much goes without saying. We never promise a day. We just say they'll drive by and you'll get an estimate in the next couple days. But he specifically doesn't want us to promise a day to give him that flexibility to be able to even push stuff all the way to the weekend, which is totally fine. And then he said for scheduled estimates, it's okay after 4pm and drive by estimates only for Fridays.

So that's that.

Okay.

Oh, I see. I should edit this. So drive by estimates. I should actually edit this on Fridays.

Do not schedule.

Fridays only do drive guys.

Basically Monday through Thursday.

Monday through Thursday.

Perfect. Cool.

So now what you would do is you'd copy this.

Go ahead and save this.

So now in his wiki it's going to say for drive estimates, it's okay. Put them on. Great. For scheduled ones, it's okay. After 4pm Monday through Thursday on Fridays only do drive bys. You can see this. The verbiage of that's important because someone could have read that and said to only put drive bys on Fridays. And I want to make sure that that's not the case. Of course. Service autopilot is not saving.

Come on, seriously? Seriously. Oh my word. Here, give me one second.

Let me refresh this and make sure that actually saved.

Come on.

All right, let's make sure that saved wiki estimated renewability.

Casey, I did not save. Cool.

I'm going to go ahead and save this right here.

That verbiage right there, that's been saved there.

But then if I go to my dispatch board.

You can see that he also put it here as a calendar event.

On every day right here. I'm going to hop in on this one.

Edit this.

Here.

So edit all occurrences of this event. You want to click that. So that way you know, goes forever.

And then I'm going to go ahead and paste right there. So change that there. And then one thing you'll notice, and this is what some people have been having issues with when they're editing these events inside their dispatch board is repeat custom. If you do, if you do, never ending. So like no end like this, it will take literally hours and hours and it'll just time out because it's literally trying to create an infinite number of events on your dispatch board. So I just do it to the end of the year.

And he does it for every single day. Okay.

Save.

Cool.

So that will take even just this one. Cause it's got to create like two 250, 300 events. It'll take probably a minute or two just to work here and put all those events on the calendar.

See, while it's doing that I answer some more questions. I am feeling better.

Yes, like 90%.

From Nick Danielsbeck. What's this mean?

Oh, got it.

CC did over the phone estimate for me and the client accepted. In the notes it says client wants to pay with check or cash every week. I'm 90% of the field. Should I just tell CC that we do not want in hand payments order or just tell them to do credit card on file. You have to realize that sometimes the customer will randomly say stuff like that. And if we don't have notes inside the wiki, they potentially might say something like the customer wants to paycheck. But that does not mean that they're they, we've committed to it. Right. And so I would just, I basically send the customer an email, be like, hey, we do not take checks. If you do not take checks and you only want to take credit cards, which is totally understandable, I would just say that. And honestly, once they accept, they get the email that says we invoice them at the end of each month. They pay with card. So it kind of walks them through that whole process. And. But again, just because it says in the notes that the client wants to do something doesn't necessarily mean that we've committed to anything. Like yesterday I put in the notes, someone accepted a job on the phone with me and I put in the notes something like the customer, man, what did I say? Something like the customer wanted to prepay or something like that, but I just told them to do it after. Like they get the email and they can just pay the invoice then or whatever it might be. I forget exactly what it was. But just because the customer says they want something doesn't necessarily mean like we've committed to it. We don't do that. But we will make notes if they've specifically said something like that. And a lot of times for a customer like this one.

If they say like, hey, can I have a, every week I just want to pay a check or cash, whatever, it's because they used to have someone who they just like slide cash under the front doormat with or a check and that's what they're used of and they just got to be retrained. And so usually the email after that phone call.

And they get the email that says, hey, you're going to get an estimate every month or a quote or an invoice every single end of each month. And you can pay with credit card. It's just retrained. So I'm going to jump back in the service autopilot. And this happened the same thing yesterday when I actually did this and that is it timed out, but then when I refreshed it did actually do it. So all estimates. Okay, after 4pm Drive by it.

So let's see here.

What in the world? Why does it do this?

So frustrating.

Okay, Save this, edit occurrences, make sure.

It'S just for the year.

Boom.

Yeah, even, even a year sometimes there's so many events it has to create that. Sometimes it can just being this infinite loop of working. So I might even have to cut that down to six months. But they did the same thing yesterday and then it finally went through.

So we'll keep trying.

My guys called and said they don't want that response with collecting checks or cash in case. Yeah, no, you definitely don't want to do that. I would never ever recommend that. The note from command center is just what the customer said.

Right.

So a lot of times what the customer says, we just want to convey to you and we really. It's a matter of keeping track of what has been said. So that way down the road when the customer says something to you.

Oh, Marcy. Blah, blah.

One second.

Here, hop back into this.

Please don't do this to me. Okay, let's try one more time. And I'll go see it for six months.

Try to refresh my page and see.

If it already happened.

It worked.

There you go.

All estimates after 4:00pm no, it didn't. Sick.

Okay, paste it in there. Wait, I think it did work.

Only for Fridays.

No, it didn't. Okay, so I think you guys get.

The point and that is.

Go away.

Thank you. All right, so I went.

Estimated availability. This is the verbiage that I want. It's okay to do. It's okay to do scheduled estimates after 4pm on Monday through Thursday on Fridays only to drive bys. Okay. And I happen to hear I'm going to have to make this a shorter event.

Obviously it doesn't want to do a year. Let's just do till.

End of October.

Just to hopefully make that little bit better.

Clarify this a little bit. Save.

Hopefully that will work. Let's go back to my questions.

Gotta get that deeper. Ready so we can get off. Essay.

Nick Cordova.

Essay and clear have been so late. I just got my emotions. Yeah, I know. I don't even want to talk about.

Clearance and essay right now. It's big pain in the butt. Mercy. Goodness, this is taking forever.

Sorry guys. I'm trying to basically just show how to edit inside. Oh my word. Okay, I'll have to do this one specifically for Kevin later. But you. I think you guys get the point. You might have to do in like windows of like four or five months just to make sure that it actually loads in service. Autopilot. But it is important if you're going to put stuff on the dispatch board and the wiki that they match because it's. It's not so much much a matter of. I'm Guessing. This is Kevin. No, Kevin, you're 100, right. Yesterday, you and I talked back and forth and clarified it. So it's perfect. It's more a matter of making sure that they don't conflict.

Right.

So, like, yesterday, because, I don't know, Kevin won't mind me saying this. Kevin's. On his dispatch board, it said, no. No scheduled estimates. And then in his wiki, it said no. Sorry, in his wiki, it said no scheduled estimates. In his. On his dispatch board said, scheduled estimates after 4pm so it was just simply a matter of like, okay, which one is true? Like, which one does he want? And I was. I had someone on a web chat that specifically wanted to meet in person because they wanted to talk about their irrigation and their lighting and the whole nine yards. So. Okay, I'll work on this one after. I apologize that service autopilot is lagging like this.

But essentially, this is probably why some of you don't change your. Your dispatch board is because it takes so long to do this. But if you're going to have notes on the dispatch board and on the wiki, just make sure that they're matching. So, again, I'm going to try to help this thing along by just doing the end of August.

It's okay.

I see, I see, I see, I see.

Okay, let's change this out. Boom. Save.

Come on. You got this. You got this. Okay.

All right. Let's go back to here. Cool.

All right. I don't have any other questions. I apologize. The fact that this has been a public humiliation in terms of service autopilot's ability to do long amounts of.

Large volume of tickets. This is why I don't like tickets. Like, so annoying. Anyways, I'm gonna remove that. So it's not this. Yeah, exactly. We're all gonna wake up at 2am so we can put notes on the dispatch board. It's just. Oh, man. Okay. I wonder if just creating all of that as a new event might make. You're probably right, andy. You're probably 100% right. So I'm not just gonna do that live, though, because I don't want to mess it up. I'll. I'll go into it right now and copy it and do a new year. You're probably right. Good point. Delete this one, then create a new one instead of trying to modify all of them together. So, anyways, that was pretty convoluted. So sorry about that. Any other questions before we hop off here?

See.

And just. Just so everyone knows, for those of you are full service at command. We are taking a chance mid month to kind of go back to clear it and making sure that you're processing your payments are processing. But like Andy was mentioning, a lot of them are lagging. But we are making sure they actually are going through and especially the last week of the month before we start doing collections calls and trying to get people who haven't paid, we are making sure that like did it act, did they actually get charged and clear. Is it, does it look paid? Stuff like that.

What is the amount you recommend for for in checking for payroll? What is the amount you recommend for in checking for payroll? Okay, let me just see who this is to see if I can't get.

Any more context because I do not understand the question. Boom. Let's see here.

Facebook says, Tim, what is, what is the amount you recommend for in checking for payroll? I do not understand your question.

Sorry Tim.

Clarify it and I can potentially help.

Like for long. Was the amount you recommend for checking for payroll? Still understand your question. Sorry. What is the amount you recommend for in checking for payroll? 20,000. Oh, how much do you. Oh, I see. Okay, you're talking about like keeping in your checking. Checking account. Got it, got it. Okay, what is you. How much do I recommend? Okay, got it. So I recommend having at least.

At least two pay periods worth of payroll in your bank account at all times. Like as a minimum. As a minimum. Now that's very conservative for some people because they're growing very, very quickly. So say for example you had a ten thousand dollar per pay period every two weeks payroll. That would mean that you need at least $20,000 in your bank account at any given time. The reason for that is because you're going to have things like quarterly taxes taken out, quarterly federal taxes taken from your account, etc like a month is minimum. Andy's saying two and it's probably much more friendly honestly. Like it really comes down to your risk tolerance level. But I would be keeping at least two pay periods. Like that's like minimum, minimum, minimum. Because you're going to have those quarterly payments come out for federal tax. You're going to have unemployment checks come out, you're going to have all that good stuff so you can be wiped out pretty quickly. So what kind of benefits do you give your managers? We do medical benefits now for everybody, not just the managers. And you gotta be careful. In some states you can't. If you, if you offer it to some, you need to offer it to all. Some states require that you can't in in a lot of states now actually offer it only to certain titles or.

What was the other thing a position.

Like they basically are trying to make it more equitable for frontline employees versus managers. So you gotta be careful. Sometimes if you offer anything to a manager, you have to then offer it to all of your frontline employees. But we have the same program for all of our local staff. I'm still working. I am still working on trying to figure out something for out of state stuff where we could all tap into something.

And the. There's a lot of challenges because all interstate and different states and all the rest of it. But I am still working on that and I do believe this summer I'll have something for everyone, at least a contact for everyone to reach out to people that are out of state to be able to use that and offer that as a benefit and then have just a good. Honestly, the thing that the reason most employees don't use health benefits is because they don't understand it.

And.

Even if they don't use it, it's a good selling proposition when it comes to hiring because a lot of people just say do you have any benefits? If you can say you have health benefits like that's just a big thing that separates you from everyone else. Even though frontline employees most of the time have state provided health insurance and don't aren't going to actually buy your health insurance anyways. Like frontline staff at the local shop. I literally believe I want to say there's like two or three people that use it. But it's a good selling proposition during hiring to say that you have health benefits. So.

Do they get any other benefits or is it more profit? Profit based benefits for office manager, operations manager, etc. Strictly profits. They don't really get any other benefits besides in terms of like health benefits.

Or anything like that.

Would it be possible to have all of command center put a client's phone number in the cell phone block instead of home phone as the default reason I ask is if I if is I have automation that send the estimate and invoice by text which is especially helpful when they don't submit an email address with online contact form. Would it be possible to have all of command center put a client's phone number in the cell phone block instead of home phone number as default?

I want to say yes, but we have to retrain everyone and then there'd just be a bunch of holes. The home phone numbers is what everyone defaults to because the first place to put a phone Number in Service Autopilot.

And I know what you're saying, like the only way in Service Autopilot to use a cell phone automation is if it is inside the cell phone block.

So what I would recommend, honestly Nick, is if you want a monthly or bi monthly basis, take all of your customers and take a. Take their Excel, all their home phone numbers and just copy and paste into their cell phone and then put it back into the system. You could do that. But if I, if I committed to getting every single phone number across everyone putting it into the cell phone, I know we'd make mistakes because. Because the cell phone is a different category and it looks different. Like it's just the next.

Logical step when they're filling out the form.

So I wish Service Autopilot would just scan the three different phone numbers and it take whichever one was there and try that for the cell phone. That would make the most logical sense. But I know it can't.

Yeah, I know.

Honestly like it kind of comes back to what I said a few weeks ago when it comes to Service Autopilot because we know we're leaving.

I'm just not in the mood to be trying to make massive changes around their system. Right. I'm much more focused on trying to first get everyone transition seamlessly over to Zooper and then we can iterate like it's a matter of like every few months we be able to improve a feature that we all agree needs to change inside Zooper. Like we'd actually be able to do that and we're in Service Autopilot. Like it doesn't work. Like for example, if this was an issue in super, we would literally ask for them to make a change and we'd probably get one within three to four months. Where if you add any phone number to any phone number cell that it would just use that one to try to send the text message to. Things like that we can do in Zooper where instead of trying to write workarounds and manual process of every phone number needs to be in the cell phone category. It's just a matter of.

Trying to create a system instead of workarounds all the time. Like our whole day is full of workarounds with Service Autopilot right now. And I'm sure some of you have talked to or heard of Kira over the past few weeks. She's one of the new reps at Command center. She's an absolute all star. And like she learned Service Autopilot per usual for the first few weeks and then literally in one day was able to get up to speed on super because, like, there's no workarounds. It's just common sense. And so I know there's feature lackability, the lack of features inside super, and that's the part we're trying to work on this year. But what's more nice is that down the road, because of our scale, we have the ability to ask super to make a change for us, and they'll do it. And it might take them three or four months, but it gets done. Instead of us making all these random workarounds that are absolutely opening us up to human error, they're opening us up to taking double entry time, like, all of that stuff. I'm just so done with workarounds. I don't even want to start thinking about workarounds and manual processes when. When I know the software can absolutely scan three boxes, look for which one is filled, and use that for the text message. I know that it's not rocket science. So anyways, that was my little rant today. Anyways, take care, everyone. Have a great rest of your day, and we'll see you tomorrow.