Mike Minutes Mastermind 4/5/22

Good morning Augusta Nation. Hope you're all doing super well. Quick update that is in case you got a bounce real quick up front. And that is had a suggestion from Chuck in the Facebook group that was really good and we're working on it. And that is the invoicing for command center to be sent out a couple days prior to actually charging accounts. So that'll start next month where you'll get the invoice and then you'll just know in a couple days then your account will be charged. This is important, I feel like, especially for the companies that are growing really quickly and cash flow is something you are watching closely to be able to not have that surprise. So we'll try to prepare the invoices in the first couple business days of the month and then a couple days after you get that invoice, then you know your account will be charged that way if you need to move money around. And we always have tried to charge a few days after the first. Just that way you can at least get your processing from the end of the month billing at least in your account. But that is something we are going to start next month. Let me go ahead and jump into these questions. There's a couple good ones. I read through them this morning. Let me just pull these out.

Boom. Share.

Okay.

All right.

To answer your question, are there plans down the road to add phone staff on Saturdays for solo operators? Guessing it is based on staffing, growing number of solo operators. It's actually mostly based upon the fact that we have to split right now the Zooper team and the service Autopilot team. As we as we talked about at conference, having two softwares is extremely weird and difficult just in terms of splitting up the team. Growing the size of command center has allowed us to have more and more hours. And next year as soon as everyone everyone's on Zooper, then everyone, then those full office hours will be available for everyone including solo operators. So don't think that you will not have Saturday hours down the road. It's just a matter of the Zooper team. As soon as we split up teams, it removes. It just makes it so much more.

Harder to get coverage. So currently right now solid operators only have Monday through Friday. You have 60 hours of phone coverage 12 hours a day times five. But that will increase to Saturdays and then once we have everyone on Zooper it'll increase even more. So hope that makes sense. All right, next question.

Over the phone. I love and appreciate the CC staff is working to sell these, sell and close these estimates over the phone in these cases, would it be possible that they do do also make specific mention of the first time mo minute rate in that conversation as well. Had a couple that accepted over the phone and never really read the rest estimate text until after they received the first invoice. Thank you. Yeah, we actually talked about this is a great point because we do read this to them. The thing is once they they've heard the number for weekly and bi weekend like yes, I want that great. They they kind of yes us because they just want to get the rest of the phone call done like close the deal, get their card on file and move along. So we actually are going to talk about it at the meeting today at command center about really like making sure we go over this with them. Like hey, if your lawn is overgrown, if the edges need trim back, we've got to get the up to standard. It's going to be a per minute for that first visit. So we're going to slow them down a little bit on this part from because usually once you give them that weekly by weekly price like yep, let's go for it. They really want that conversation done. And command center if we match their pace, it's like okay, great, let's get your card on file. Let's get you on like it can be too fast. We're going to slow them down and make sure we not only read that but make sure they understand it. So we are going to do that. I appreciate this because even though we send them the estimate and we have that theoretically sent to them, they don't open up the estimate a lot of times because in their mind already accepted and they're good to go. They're just waiting for the next step which is to know the schedule. So a lot of people won't even open up that estimate and actually view that verbiage. So even though we do say it, we do say that per minute apart now we're going to slow the customer down and make sure we say it a couple times and understand they understand exactly what that means. So sizes even more with the team. What are some good weekly team meeting topics? I've done the P and L, but that's only once a month. Yeah. So this is very difficult. Even weekly topics to come up with that are new is difficult.

There's several things that I would recommend. One, what are you working on in the business? Right. Understanding. Explain to them about things that you're struggling with, things that the business is struggling with, what you're trying to improve systems. You're still working on, explain things like over the phone, why that you do that, taking one line item on that P and L and actually explaining certain parts of it. For example, insurance. Let's explain insurance today. That's one part of it that's business that can get very dry and boring for them very quickly. So what I've tried to do on the weekly topics is come up with something hopefully beforehand because otherwise I show up, I'm like, oh, sick, what are we talking about today? And that is a little more pertained to them. So things like interest rates, mortgages, debt, building a credit score, debit cards.

More basic finance things. And hopefully especially once you get more team members, they start to contribute more. So we have a really good team at the local shop this year that is really good communicating because they all kind of have got to know each other outside of work too. So what's really cool is like you open up the discussion, you'll get people talking. So we'll talk about cryptocurrency. We talked about the war in Ukraine, like how that's affecting the economy. Talk about gas prices, like fortunately they give input. What's difficult is when your employees don't talk, then you really have to have like schedule, like you know what's going on and know a topic. So that can be a little more difficult for sure. But definitely just the more you do that and open it up to discussion, try to get them to talk, the better. And then they'll hopefully start to bring questions in as well. As they become more involved in the business and more comfortable asking you questions, you got to realize that more. Most guys have never asked their boss a question about the numbers of the business, let alone what they think about mortgage interest rates or if they should buy a house or if they should get a car loan. Right now. Those are all things that in a meeting like that, those super valuable. We talked about. One of our team was buying a truck recently. So we talked all about interest rates, talked about buying a car, ways to get it down. He brought forward an actual offer that he was putting on a car. Same thing with houses when they're buying houses. So those are. That's pretty fulfilling and helpful for them too. Can you put a lien that is sold but new people have not moved in? If a house has been closed, in other words, it has gone to the title company and been signed, you usually cannot put a lien on the house for that owner that's going to affect them. What you could do is go ahead and process a Lien against the existing owners, and that potentially could get them to kick things into high gear and contact the previous owners. That is definitely possible.

So I would try that one. I think your next question, Nick, is about this. To have a client that is refusing to pay us for services, and she is selling her house and is about to leave. She says she is refusing to pay because weeds aren't pulled. I have videos of property. It's immaculate. I know she's about to flee and not pay. Any ideas before we require. This is before we required card on file. Yeah. So.

I don't know if you were working with us, Nick, at the time when we had the same issue at Bellingham Shop. Someone was refusing to pay. We knew they were trying to sell their house. We knew they were trying to flee. And same. Same exact thing here. And I just went to the house and confronted them. And I had the guys videoing it. I basically said, like, I'm either calling the sheriff or I am. You're gonna pay me right now with a card. And I literally processed it over the phone with command center. I got the card and paid the invoice.

And you can put a lien against their property. And that would lock up the sale if they have not done a title transfer yet. So you just. The very last thing of a sale. So as long as you get it in a couple days before that, you could potentially block the sale. Because what will happen is the title has to be free and clear for most banks to take on the mortgage. And so a title company basically makes sure that a title is free and clear. And that's part of the sales process and kind of the last part of it. And so if you can get that in prior. If you can get that.

Lean in prior to that, that would block the sale. So that's what I would recommend. Give me one second here. Let's not send a text message.

One second here.

Okay, cool.

All right.

Couldn't a person take their own calls on the weekend? In theory, yes. We don't really allow back and forth communication between command because I go where calls go back and forth. Because we've had a lot of issues with not inappropriate office notes. And so if someone calls in on the weekend, you're out in the field and no office notes are made, and then all of a sudden they're calling Monday. We have no record of that call. We have a lot of issues with that. So we're really trying to stick to the fact that either you take your calls or we take our. Take the calls. Otherwise we've had quite a few issues with just office notes not being made or someone leaves a voicemail on your phone, we have no record of it and the client's freaking out at us. So we've had a lot of issues with that. Oh wait, let me just take this away. Give me a second here. Boom. What are your thoughts on per minute cleanup? Promoting shrubs and we need for commercial places that have been vacated during the pandemic but are now opening back up. It'll be billed out separately outside the monthly contract amount. We've already given them recurring service prices for all services. I just did this on two commercial places and they seem to like that idea. I'm like honestly at the end of the day permanent pricing is a great thing for initial services of any sort, whether it be mowing, weeding, property claims, etc. Two things. One, fortunately the commercial property they're a little bit less worried about the price usually because you're dealing with the property manager. But most residential are going to be on the clock timing you and that's, that's usually the biggest hurdle. The OTP is the fact the person get freaking out about that price.

But if you really explained it to a customer about permanent pricing, a property clip potentially might work. Especially if it's very vague, you don't know what you're getting into. It's dilapidated. You could dig into something that all of a sudden 10 times more work potentially might work. Might, might be beneficial. It's just about communicating that the customer to understand. For Moe's you might be looking at a few hundred dollar mo. If it's overgrown for a cleanup though, we're talking about thousands and thousands of dollars. So that's where it starts to become like you're taking a risk and I'd definitely, probably require like prepayment or something like that commercial usually you can rely on them you getting paid a little more. But definitely recommend everyone checking their invoices. The other day we, we looked at a location they'd called in and said hey look really low on cash. When did they count? There was over $40,000 worth of invoices that had not been sent. There's only a couple big ones. One was like eight, one was like 30 something and we were able to collect on those. So that was great. But like that pain of short term cash flow crunch. Just make sure you're sending out the invoice. Make sure you go to incomplete and service auto. I know there's a lot of tabs on invoices. And service autopilot. I know it's not super clear, but just make sure those are going out. Those $40,000 of just invoices that weren't sent out. I've used the terminology of pressing charges for theft of services. That got me paid right away. Yeah, if you can get them in person, that's the best thing. Have one of your crew with a video camera so they know they're being recorded and say, hey, you've not paid. We understand exactly what's trying to. What's happening here. You're trying to move. This needs to be paid immediately or else I'm going to call the sheriff for theft or I'm going to be putting a lien against this property. Today I'm going to go down to the title company and put a lien on the property. So just literally Google in your local area contractor lien and then your city name and there'll be a step process of how to do that. I would definitely recommend calling that in or going directly into, whether it be city hall or the code department, code enforcement to be able to get that done. So that way it's actually processed on that day and not a, you know, oh, yeah, send us an email with a form. And three weeks later, you know, they're still trying to process the thing. So that'd be my recommendation. So lots of people not getting paid. That's not good. I still remember walking this person's house. I said, bro, I got cameras. I know you're doing. And they had like people painting and they had been pressure washing. A bunch of contractors were like fixing this house up and he was trying to sell it and he knew he was going to bounce. And I said, I know exactly what you're doing. I know your house is pending. I know it's closing a few days. I will block that transaction and I will call the cops immediately if you don't pay us. Sure enough, somehow he all of a sudden got a credit card even though he was a tenant. Oh, he was just the tenant. I said, well, who's. So I looked up on the. You can look on the county assessor's office say, well, who's this? This is you and your wife's name. And so immediately when he saw, like, I saw their real name because they were faking their names and they're saying that they are the tenants trying to get around like, oh, no, we don't. We aren't being charged the owner's property. Joke thoughts on real estate. When to start? I would definitely say It's a matter of when the business is producing profits that you literally.

Are either keeping in the business just like is sitting there as savings and get taxed at 20, 30%. That's when you really want to start paying real estate. And so don't worry about it until then. Grow the business, invest in the business. That might be three to five years of just putting everything back in. But when you send stop the investment, when you stop the capital expenditure, that's when now the profit's there. Right? And that's why a lot of people like man, there's a cash flow, cash flow, cash. But if you're growing, all that cash is being sucked up by the business. But you grow to a certain point, you're like, okay, great, 800,000, 900,000 in business, in revenue. I got a general manager. I'm going to start focusing on real estate because I have $150,000 in profits that I'm going to get taxed by 40 grand. Well, that's the time to go focus on real estate. Oh yeah, let's go. I was on that property when you were filming. You had the hand shears in your hand. Hey, just in case, gotta have that self defense. How do you operate your offerings and tithings based on pay? So I have a salary from all the businesses that because they're s corps that I take and then that's what I pay tithes on.

And then offerings are very one off and large.

Just curious. Yeah, I don't know who this was. I'll have to look on the Facebook group here, ask this question. But yeah, for me personally that's just what I do. I pay based my ties based upon.

My salaries. And then when I, when there's certain works I'm trying to support, I'll just step in with offerings. So. All right everyone, great question today. That's fun. Take care.