Mike Minutes Mastermind 4/28/2022

Hello, Guess the nation. Good morning. Welcome. Let's go ahead and jump in. See here and have any crazy announcements besides the fact that next week we will be having that new video for the background of the website. So that will be up we're working on next week. Also getting those kind of creative print designs up on the pro shop for everyone which will include one a.

Pay for airplane and a second one a crossword puzzle door hanger that will basically replace your services. So you know how you usually have like a list of services on the back of your, you know, door hanger but what's going to be is descriptions of the services. They have to come up with the word and then they gotta do word search. So again just trying to get more creative with that and make it something memorable for the customers. Those will all be available next week in the pro shop and then the current video that's in the background of your homepage will be moved to your landscaping page. There's already a video in the background of the mowing one but the new one that I shared on Facebook that will be the background video of the homepage next week. So that will be up. We are still working on that dashboard that's going to allow you to make changes to your website like adding a banner about snow or adding like you're not taking estimates currently. So. So we're working on creating a dashboard. It just, it's pretty difficult for us to integrate it. So we're working on that though to where you can make changes to your site just by filling out a quick form you can add in your tag manager for things like Facebook or Google. Working on that I'll also be sharing probably next week with a kind of an in detailed month to month focus of things that we are improving and over the next month or next year, I guess eight months end of this year to the end this year, one of those things is going to be at some point creating a franchise advisory council. It's something that I've learned has been really helpful at Anytime Fitness where basically we all vote as owners on who is in the council. And it's basically a way for me to get direct access and communication with people that are in touch with everyone else. So I'll have more information on that next week. That will be coming out later this year but it'll be a great way I feel like just to keep communication flowing, keep ideas flowing. And I understand that some people would rather share their ideas with another owner and talking about through that within than like on this sort of chat or with myself even directly. And I understand that it's not, not a bad thing. So it's worked well with any kind of fitness. It's how they try to enact changes. And it's honestly the only way that I got support during the past couple years as a franchisee there because their corporate basically shut down and I still haven't. I still have an advisor or someone contacted me. So the advisory council has been super helpful and I want to make that set up with Augusta so that way everyone can be heard as well as the owners that want to be most involved with enacting changes and giving feedback can be closest to myself. And having a somewhat smaller network of those voted in members that would be representative of the entire group and make changes, be a little bit more proactive about what changes are coming. So that's all coming up. I think it's a good balance of power and a good balance of ideas and feedback. So that will be coming up later this year. But I'll have more information next. Next week week about like kind of a monthly focus that I have for the remainder of this year. So just we're all on the same page. All right, let me go ahead and share these pic or this screen here. Share.

Video file. Nope. Share screen. There you go. Sorry, I did not put the YouTube link in the description. Give me one second because I know some people cannot. It's better on YouTube. Just give me one second here. Let me post the YouTube link in the description. Get the shareholder link.

Let me pop this in here real quick. Boom. Okay. Oh, it only shows on YouTube. Are you serious? Okay, let me just hop into Facebook. Sorry, my apologies for one second. I just know that some people cannot view this on Facebook very well. And it's easier to listen on YouTube. Give me one second. Let me put this. Come on.

Gustav Nation. It was really cool. Really quick one. I'm posting this in here. We had someone join the local shop as an employee that had been watching the videos for two years and wants to eventually own their own business and gonna be a great, great employee. But yeah, definitely a 3F program. We have another owner that's gonna come that just that joint is going to join the solo operator later. But he's going to come and work with us again for a little bit of time. He's he move away. He's going to come back, work for us like six weeks. It's going to be great for the culture. So I'm really looking forward to that. Okay, question. Logan Albert, Columbus North Nebraska, we have about 100 budget hours of mowing every week. Okay. And the capacity to do 160 budget hours. We fill the 60 budget hours with projects, fertilizer, et cetera. My question is, do you think it's best to get all the mowing done Monday through Thursday and save all of Friday for projects or spread the 100 budget hours out between five days and fit projects in each day? I would go with something more of a, like every single market is different because how, how your, how your territories is spread out is going to have a big effect in terms of scheduling which days you do. Certain things I do, I do like having the ability to put something early in the week that's a project. Because if it's a big project and I put it on a Friday, it literally means I'm going to get started. Then all the guys go on a weekend and so they come back Monday and they don't even hardly remember stuff about the job. Or you have to leave the job site like messy throughout the weekend or like stuff half there. I would rather start larger projects at the beginning of the week so that they're done inside of that week. Same thing with P4P. Like if you're starting a larger product on a Friday, it's the last day of a paycheck. They don't make that performance dollars until the job is done. So I like, I like starting larger jobs early in the week.

But you know what I would say is probably going to be the most flexible is something like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, doing your mowing and then Tuesday, Thursday, having projects on. And then if it's a larger product trying to put it on a Tuesday and letting it roll throughout the rest of the week, that might be something you want to look at. One thing to keep in mind too, and I'm sure Logan does this, and that is knowing that hey, we have 160 budget hours. But if we're four weeks booked out right now, we have to realize that we're going to be getting five, six, seven new lawns every single week, which is going to decrease that 60 hours down to 55, 54, 53, 52. And that's why a lot of times people will be four weeks booked out. They get to the four week marker and now they have way too much work. And it's because you're adding mows while already being fully booked. So the way to prevent that is just bake into your budget hours over the next several weeks. The fact that you're mowing is going to go from 100 to 105 to 110 to 112 to 115. And so that way in four weeks you don't get to the place where all of a sudden you have 175 budget hours on the schedule. I know Logan knows this, but it's just a good reminder for everyone, especially for a lot of those that have turned off their estimates. And it just kind of overwhelmed right now. That's a big reason why you kind of, you're so busy. It's fine for the first few weeks, but then what happens is the amount of recurring modes that slowly trickle in, catch up with you and all of a sudden you look at your schedule. I looked at someone's schedule last night that they had like 60 budget hours per employee on the schedule and that includes the owner. If you don't include it being like 75 budget hours per person. And yeah, you're going to overwork the guys. It's going to be very, very difficult to keep them motivated. If one of them isn't there for one day, you're just, you're working all weekend. So it's, it's pretty fragile scheduling in that regard. And it's great that the work is coming in, but you've got to schedule for the fact that over the next several weeks you're going to have that recurring mowing trickling in and that mowing 100 hours is going to slowly be bumped up. So. But yeah, in terms of, you know, some people like them, even if they say, hey, we're going to work four tens and then Friday is kind of like overflow day or when we do projects, it works for some people. I like to spread out mowing a little more and spread out projects. So that way I'm a little more flexible with if a job is way behind on a Tuesday and like, man, we gotta get this thing done by Friday, I'll just move more people to it. And that's why it's so important. On your welcome and thank you email to have plus or negative one day for mowing is that way you can move things around and be able to allocate more but labor towards those projects if they're running behind.

Next question.

Bloomington. When we schedule a first time mo, what do we put in our budget hours and rate? Fill in afterward? Yes, fill it in afterward. And whether you leave it in blank. I would leave it in blank because then really that's going to catch the attention of your crew and they're going to immediately look at the Notes. And the notes are going to say, make sure you track your time and make sure that you clock in all the rest of it. So having that zero there, I think kind of gets the attention of the crew, Especially if they're on P4P. They're looking at budget hours on every single job. Have that zero there, catch their attention and like, oh, sick. We got to make sure we clock in on this job. But doing it afterwards, I would just do it afterwards 100%. That way you have that accurate amount of time and accurate. What you're going to actually charge them. If you're looking for. Let me show this, let me show this, let me show this. How do I stop? Boom. Okay, let me share this screen with you guys real quick. This is where if you have questions about scheduling a a first time mo, this is the video to watch right here. Schedule over the phone sold estimate. So you're going to get an estimate says accepted. You're like, oh, there's an over the phone estimate. I was never there. It says over the phone. That's when you're going to use that way of setting up the first time mo. And if you forget this happened last night, with who was I talking to? Modesto Forest. He had forgot to set up the one time mo and he just had set up the recurring schedule. It's fine because in the estimate we have the notes that say the customers. We charge a dollar and whatever cents per minute. So you still have that. The card was on file. Everything was great. If you just forget the one time o, don't make a big deal of it. Go into uninvoiced. See that draft invoice, make that edit, charge the card. And if it's like 28th or whatever, you might just want to wait till the first of the month. If you invoice at the end of the month. But that'd be up to you. But don't stress out if you forget the one time o thing because you're going to hear about it. And if your crew sees that all of a sudden this job is overgrown, they're going to let you know they're going to put notes in there. Hopefully they're clocking in. But don't stress out about. You can go into that. That first time. I'll go into uninvoiced, edit the invoice to adjust the correct rate and then put a note in that. That invoice that says how long you were at the job.

All right, questions in this 200 to $500,000 range should I look at breaking even, or is there possibility of truly turning a profit more than just a couple hundred thousand dollars? Okay, so I'm assuming when you're saying turning a profit at that mark in between that stage, you absolutely can.

This is why I'm careful in the videos to say, like, people make this work, because if you stay in this area long enough, usually you can make it work. And that is usually going to be finding really, really good employees that stay with you for a few years. And typically you can do that when you have two, three employees. You could be running a 300, 350, $400,000 business with some really solid employees you've kept for a long time. You pay them really good. They're all on P4P. You can make that happen. It's a matter of if you're trying to scale beyond that, like at 200, 2,000 to $500,000 range, you're not going to be out of the business. You're still going to be doing estimates. So if you want to stay in that range, that's fine. You can absolutely spend a few years there and get the right crew, get the right team, and probably make it profitable. But it's not like you're going to be able to have it come to the point where employee and unemploy is doing estimates. You can go away for a few weeks on vacation and jobs still get sold. That's probably going to be unlikely at that stage of growth. So if that is the goal and you don't have the capital to scale past that, that's why I say spend a few years at 200, $250,000 marker, because you can make good profit there. And if you go a little bit higher than that, that's fine. Just know that you're probably not going to see a whole lot more profit than that 200 to 250,000 level, because you're going to have to increase your overhead. You get more employees, you're getting more phone calls coming in. It's going to be harder to keep that core group of just a few really solid grade A people, and you're going to have more yellow subs, et cetera. So that's typically why I say there's no. I don't say it's unprofitable between 200, 500,000. There's just no more profit typically for a business between 250 to 500,000 versus just being at 250. Right. So it's not to say you shouldn't be there. It's a matter of there's no more extra. There's no extra benefit in my mind typically seen between 250 to 500. So just a matter of if you're in that middle stage, just realize that like hey, I'm doing this for certain reasons. I'm going to grow through it slowly. Just realize, don't be discouraged by the fact that you made just as much money last year at 250 as you did this year at 450. You'll make the same amount of profit typically. So that hope that makes sense. Dropped a customer last week and got an email from him basically saying he found someone cheaper and calling me out. Specifically he recommended he find a different customer company such as personal groundskeeper to better for his needs and sounds like he found someone both cheaper and better fit for him. Better for him. My first thought is just not respond since that is probably what he wants is an argument. I also want to be professional about it. Would you respond? Obviously there's probably history with this client so I don't know the full scope. I would say responding is always good in a professional manner. And just saying we are so happy that you were able to find someone that met your needs. Especially because it sounds like yeah, you recommended he find someone else. So he went and did what you asked. Right. And I, I genuinely believe that that's the most professional thing to do and one out of 15 or 20 customers that we are not going to be the right fit for them. They need a personal gardener. They need someone that is the same person every single week and comes and you know, looks at every single plant and pulls every single weed and knows like their property like the back of their hands, the same person every time they slide some cash underneath the front mat. And there's going to be people that want that there's is. And so the fact that you recommended them, I don't feel like you should feel bad at all. You do what's right. You just do what's right for the customer, not what's right for you. And so I would just say fantastic. So happy were able to find someone that met your needs because you recommended to do that. So I think that's good.

Oh, okay. He ended it. Yeah. So in that regard I would just, I would probably just drop a one liner saying we're glad you that you found someone to meet your needs or could meet your needs better than us. Something like that. Because you again you told him to do that. So his only frustration that is actually right is the fact that he had to spend extra time to go find a different provider. It's not that you are in any way bad because you told him that he should go find someone else. So, anyways, Cool. All right, that's all I got for today. Thanks so much, everyone. Have a great rest of your Thursday and finish the week strong.