Mike Minutes Mastermind May 4, 2022

Good morning Augusta Nation. Hope you're doing all super well. A couple quick updates at the beginning here and then we'll jump into questions. I saw there are several that came in on the form. Let me jump into this first couple things though. First of all, pretty depressing morning. I woke up this morning at 5:15 our time to get the ADP report. I'm gonna make a video on this publicly so I won't spend too much time on it. But let me share this with you. This is ultra depressing. So this is the April numbers from adp, which is a private entity which I actually trust more than honestly what they come up in the government. 247000 new jobs created in the United States and everyone's going to cheer. And I have not heard the President's remarks on this, but I'm sure it's going to be cheering about this. Scroll down. 321000 went to large companies with 500 or more employees. 46,000 went to midsize companies. And then negative 120,000 jobs were created in April for businesses less than 50 employees. And this is what's also going to be cheered in goods and services. We had an increase in jobs. Everything looks hunky dory. All right, switch over to just small businesses. A NET total of negative 120,080% of those came from very small companies which are 1 to 19 employees. 96,000 lost jobs in April. This is horrible. This is the worst jobs report since March 2020 and it's atrocious.

And it just bugs me as I'll get out that this is going to be cheered today. So anyways, that was my depressing morning and now let's talk about Augusta. So to remove that, um, in light of that though, the reason I was so frustrated about it is because of the past week across the entire system. We're just having so many people leaving employees and many of the companies, our larger companies are being affected a lot. Ones with five, six employees are constantly losing two, three a week. It's just absolutely incredibly annoying. And the fact of the matter is that to the people in the public comments of my videos that say well you should just pay people more, they don't understand that a small business can't afford a 50, 60, 70% increase in wages in, in a matter of a few months. It's absolutely unsustainable. We do not have the ability like the stock market, just tap into investors pockets like Amazon lost money last quarter and no one's complaining because all they did was shift all that cash towards sucking up all the. All the talent. And yeah, bad news. I'll share a little more on that later. Anyways, let's try to get out of that funk and let's head over to. I had this update. Oh yeah. So several people, we've been talking about this for almost a year now, but we are going to be implementing this. And that is on your invoices, the monthly invoices from Command Center. We want to give a better breakdown of the minutes besides just, hey, here's your minutes for calls and here's your minutes for other. We do want to make that as broken down as possible without increasing a mass amount of admin time. Because if someone touches an account for two or three minutes, we don't want to spend an additional two minutes reporting on what was done. It just be super cost inefficient. And so what we're going to be doing is actually rolling out. We already roll it out this morning at Command Center. We're testing it out. And that is going to be where you have like a category of five or six different where those minutes are spent. So on that invoice you'll see more specifically like how much time was spent on web chat, how much was spent on estimate creation, how much was spent on P4P payroll onboarding. Um, so it's all been broken down so that, that would be really, really helpful, I think. So that way you can see if there are certain things you're wanting to take back or you're trying to cut costs on, which is completely understandable. You know, which ones are going to be the most obvious to be able to benefit and be able to cut from and which ones are costing you the most too. And be able to say like, hey, why is it that my PvP is taking so long? And then that might lead to a conversation where it's like, okay, well let's make sure your time cards are completed in the day. So they're not always asking you if people haven't punched in and out, for example. So that'll be really helpful, I think. And that will be rolled out in June 1st. So it will be end of June that you actually will see that. So it won't be on May's invoice, it'll be on June's invoice. You'll be able to see a breakdown. Further.

What'S up with service autoclass sending an invoice for zero balance and not full amount. I have to see specifically Tim feel Free to send me email with the customer name. I don't mind checking this.

It could possibly be. If you, if you're sending out your invoices in service autopilot and you have the rate at zero and then you're putting the number in a different thing. It could also be just a zero invoice. If it's like just an estimate. But it sounds like you're actually.

Trying to send them an actual invoice with an amount and not full amount. Yeah, send me over the.

It's hard to see how to get get at 10 employees, but it's very unsustainable to be at 4. I feel two guys leave and you're in rep the next month. Yes, this is 100% TR.

It's for the estimate. Kind of odd. I have to see that later. All right, cool. All right, let me jump into the actual question that were submitted. Boom. Get rid of this.

All right.

Six of them. West Meridian. Currently it's me and one employee in the field working together every day. We currently have about 30 to 35 mowing customers. We have projects scheduled for the next four to five weeks on Thursdays and Fridays. I don't have enough money for a second truck as of right now. How do I continue to grow and expand my business if I don't have the money for a second truck? So I would do, I would raise your prices. At five weeks out, you're basically starting to start losing work. If you're doing smaller jobs, the bigger the projects, the further out. Usually you can book out. So if you're doing like pools, for example, you can book yourself like six weeks, six months out.

Whereas when it comes to mulch, property cleanups, weeding, those sort of things, people are going to start, stop, start leaving and going for another service if they have to wait five, six, seven weeks. So what I would do is raise your prices. And the delta that you're raising your prices, the increase in price should cover the cost and the expense of financing a truck. Right. So if you have to spend 300, $400 per month on a new truck, that should be covered if you raise your prices literally by a few dollars per hour. Right. So if you're charging $60 per hour right now, I'd go to 65. You're charging 70, I'd go to 75. And I do that just effective immediately on all new jobs for projects, that's a really fast fix for mowing. I'd go ahead and change your rate matrix. If you're using over the phone and if you're doing in person, just increase that hourly rate that you want to charge for mowing. Again, make sure you just send that email to estimate@augusta longerservices.com they can update your entire estimate calculator. So it's across the whole board here at command. But I would, that's how I look at it, right? When you're growing as fast as you are in your specific market, I would definitely be saying, okay, can I raise my prices to simply cover the cost of that new truck? Because if I can do that, that new truck's going to bring me an additional 10, 15,000amonth in revenue and I'm going to make 2 to $3,000 in profit on that, assuming then again that my price increase covers the cost of that financing.

Kevin, is using a private number the best way to follow up on estimates or can CC do this for solo operators? Seems a little unprofessional to me Kevin, that you, what you can do is in your automation. You just make sure that the email reminder that says to do a follow up is going to solo GustAlongerServices.com instead of yourself. If you change that one thing, they can do those for you. It's simple just calling out Vlad from Winter Garden. What is your opinion on Striped Capital loans? They take out 20% of the revenue you earn to pay back loans. Are the fees lower than current interest rates? So the fees are not lower than current interest rates. Most of these programs usually are taking between 12 and 14%. So same thing with like QuickBooks, they have a similar loan program. Stripe has one, Square has one. It's basically where it's like, hey, you get this money right now and then we get, we basically siphon off a certain amount of money, usually 20% of your incoming capital until it's paid off. And so, but if you actually run the numbers, usually you're paying about 10 to 15% on that depending on your credit etc but what they're looking at is like your, your cash flow because they know your cash flow over time, they see that. So that's why they're able to just literally give you an offer and you can literally click and get money immediately. It's because they see your cash flow over time and they know how much you can afford to ingenious. This is literally how square, like why square makes so much money is because of this one thing. It's basically kind of like a payday loan though really. That's what it is. It's a higher interest rate, but you can get it today, right? So I would say for very short term loans, it's not a huge, huge bad idea. But usually there is an initiation fee that's baked into that. Usually like a 5 to 10 initiation origination fee, I should say, which is like, regardless, if you pay that off tomorrow or in a year, you're going to be paying a percent right off the bat. So just run the math on what they're saying in terms of what the payments are, because what they come at is like, hey, get $5,000 today and pay 20 of your money until $6,000 is paid off. That's great. But that's a 20 interest rate assuming you pay it off in one year. If you pay it off in six months, you just paid a 40 interest rate or 30. Whatever it is a lot. So it's not a matter of interest rate though, when it comes to these. This is all about convenience, right? You can get it tomorrow. You don't have to go submit documents to a bank. That's, that's the benefit here. But honestly, a revolving line of credit on a credit card literally might have a lower interest rate than these. If you're going to do very short term, if you're going to pay it off in like a month or two, you might just be better off literally using a credit card, to be perfectly honest.

Nick from Marysville. Every other day we have an employee calling out, am I required? Am I allowed to require doctor's note for missing a day? If they are saying that they are sick? You are allowed to require a doctor's note. Just make sure it's in your employee handbook. So it is in the standard one that we have. We don't usually ask for it, but if it's becoming a constant all the time, you're like, hey, I need evidence of this because it's becoming such a problem. You do have a legal right to ask for a doctor's note. If they're constantly calling out sick. If they do like once in a blue moon, like, we don't even ask because obviously they are. Oh, wait, there's more of this question. Okay. Or if they say they need to stay home to watch their kid sick kid, can I require a doctor note for their child? That one's a very gray area. If they're using sick leave currently in Washington state, every single state is different on this. Currently in Washington state, if they're going to use like paid time off or sick leave, you can require a doctor's note. If it's a family member that they're saying they have to take care of. But this is a very much of a gray area and that's a tough one because. Yeah, but yeah, theoretically, if they're going to use sick leave in Washington state, then yes, they do have to provide that note. Also had an employee claim to be sick all week last week, missed every day. And they sent me a screenshot of a virtual doctor's appointment. Am I allowed to require doctor note from an in person visit only? Not virtual? No, you can't do that. The virtual part you probably have to accept and it needs to be a doctor's note, not just an appointment. Because they just take the screenshot of a virtual appointment that they do free through their insurance and then just cancel the appointment after taking a screenshot. So you can require an actual doctor's note. Like I remember when I was shadowing doctor's offices, they literally just had a standard note and then when someone would come in, they just say, hey, can you sign this real quick? And then we would sign it. So it's pretty standard. But even if it's virtual, they have those ready to go. So but it should be like, hey, they came in, they missed work, they need to miss work. Whatever is that's an actual doctor's note, not just a screenshot of a virtual meeting with the doctor. I'm trusting. I am a trusting person default. But I'm also aware of when I'm being taken advantage of. And right now there are no repercussions for just calling out whenever they want. And it just adds stress to everyone. Can I also require them to work Saturday if they miss a day during the week? Sorry for the broader questions. So in your employee handbook, it actually says this about working Saturdays can be required if they miss a day. There's not a legal thing around this. You can ask someone to work as much as you want. It's just a matter of how long will they stay with you. Right. So you can require them to work Saturday if they miss a day during the week. Or you can just say, hey, look, between the spring rush Saturdays might be needed in order necessitated if we're behind, however you want to phrase that, we do have it in the handbook so that it can kind of protect you. And usually what happens if someone is consistently calling out like, and then we're behind. It's like, hey, look, we're going to need you to come in on Saturday because you know, we consistently are are behind due to the fact that we are scheduling work. And then you're not showing up. So you could theoretically do that. There's not any sort of like legal ramifications around the weekend. Honestly, that's. Weekends are a preconceived notion created by mankind. There are seven days in a quote, unquote week completely made up. There's days and so Saturday and Sunday. It's just a matter of obviously making sure you respect the overtime requirements, et cetera, et cetera. But in terms of the. This is the part that's tough right now. This is what made me so mad about this morning at the ADP report is the fact that typically what I would say to this question here is ultimately you have to take responsibility and ownership and say, look, the only thing I can do to control in this situation is.

Hire more people. Well, the problem right now is that's becoming extremely difficult. And that ADP report is only indicative of what we've talked about and the massive trial it's been to find employees. And they're just getting sucked up by large companies that can afford to take losses on their P and L. So.

This is the part though, that typically I would say, like, ultimately, if you're going to take ownership of, the problem is I'm going to go hire more people so that when they call out and I'm quote, unquote being taken advantage of, I tell them to go take a hike. That's ultimately the way to take a. Take ownership of this situation. But unfortunately, right now that's extremely hard problem to solve.

Okay, here. Out of all the new clients we did initial modes for 11% have canceled or been upset by their initial MO price. Should we. Should I reevaluate? Reevaluate my strategy. So two things. First and foremost, you have to ask yourself two things. One, if you would have gone to their house and you would have given them a price for what it actually would have taken in terms of time, would they have even accepted? So a lot of people like, oh, 11%. And I'm not picking on your neck. I'm just using example 11% of people were either canceled or have been upset in some way. Okay, so let's say that 5% of them canceled and 6% of them stay with you, but had just noted frustration. Right. Five percent of them just cancel. I guarantee you, you would have never even mowed their lawn if you would have gone to their house and given them an estimate for what you would have charged for the initial MoW. So it's not a matter of them canceling. It's a matter that you would never even have mowed their lawn if you would have told them initially it's going to cost them $400 to get their 2 foot tall cut down. So it's not a matter of losing them. You would have never had them in the first place. The main thing is being able to have their car on file. So you do get the money still for that first MO and then realizing that if that 5% never even did service with you, that that would have led to 45 minutes of your time wasted of going out to the property, looking over now it's overgrown, so you actually get out and walk it just to make sure everything's good, make sure there's nothing in the grass. All of that time now would have been a complete waste. So that 45 minutes multiplied by 5% of your estimates. So now all of a sudden becomes 10 hours of your month. That's an entire day's worth of work. That's a thousand dollars worth of time. You would have just done a cleanup. So in my mind that is the trade off. It's not that, okay, 11% were either mad or canceled. You have to realize that 89% kept going with your service. That's the first thing if you realize that out of the 11% you probably kept some of them, they were unhappy, got paid and you moved on. And you know, 5, 6, 7% of those that actually canceled would have never done service with you in the first place. And you got that job in a matter of a few minutes on the phone via over the phone versus spending 30, 40, 50 minutes per estimate and you driving out to their property, spending gas, spending time, etc. So it's strictly a numbers game. I understand that there's going to be frustrations. You're going to get one star reviews from these, you're going to get.

Complaints, you're gonna. But as long as you get that charge on that card, that is otherwise revenue you would have never seen because you would have priced it accordingly on the initial MO Anyways, if you would have gone to the property in person. So there's going to be a little bit of fallout. Again, like I mentioned in the Facebook group.

Ryan Payne ultimately pushed me over in my, my mindset of all this by them doing it for so long and just the strategy behind it. And it's just the numbers. Like it is not fun to get those reviews. It's not fun for people to get mad about their 400 bill for their first MO. But nor is it fun to spend 5 hours doing a Whole bunch of drive bys and none of them accept because they're all overgrown and you have to charge hundreds of dollars to get them down down to a good standard. And that five hours is literally going to pay for 150 estimates to be sent over the phone. Like that's just what it is. So we went over that one. Sorry.

How do we make automations automatic? Great question. So this is a service autopilot issue or not issue. It's just a matter of a setting. If you go to your automations and you go to the email specifically click on the email, there's a new little button that says approve email, uncheck that, then it'll go out automatically. It will not require approval for you every time.

Alex Rosi Weekends were created by unions and lazy people. I don't know about that.

Dustin, how are you feeling about avenues of marketing best return? We are spending money Google Facebook and print every door direct and door hangers wanting growth quicker. I have some guys that want to come work but I can seem to, can, can't seem to continually get the work coming in. We are sending one clicks as well to try to upsell existing customers on projects. So right now Google local services is still the best return. However I'm seeing a massive reduction in amount of leads they're giving because there's so many people in the program now.

So really it comes down to keep doing this blended strategy that you're doing. I don't know how long you've been doing this one specific these ones specifically Dustin, but keep doing these. And a blended strategy I'd be doing also like things like the guerrilla marketing side of things too which is going to be inclusive of things like yard signs around the neighborhoods that you're really trying to target with the every door direct mail and then trying to, trying to even knock on the doors of the people you do the door hangers on and the every door like really focusing on multiple touches from different angles, right? Like multiple multiple touches is great and that's what in the past like if you go back like eight, ten years ago Lawn Care Millionaire and other people on YouTube would talk about like sending fly, you know, four times, five times, six times in a, you know every week for weeks on end that's fine. But what's more impactful is those same touches but from different angles. Right. So they're on the door hanger then you're in the mailbox then you're knocking on their door then they see a, a yard sign as they're going outside of their neighborhood, then they see your truck in your. In their neighborhood because you're doing estimates and doing jobs like that is really powerful. Right. So instead of trying to go after it, okay, I'm gonna do this neighborhood on every door, direct mail. Then I'm gonna do this neighborhood. I just focus on those two neighborhoods and just keep going from different angles.

So. And you also are just kind of going into your spring rush, too. So it's your first spring. Also, from an SEO standpoint, it's your second one, where usually the SEO carries a lot of the weight of bringing in new leads. So that second spring rush is consistently where we're seeing people get bogged down and just. Just tons of leads coming from the site because they've ranked for an entire year. But.

If you've been doing it for four weeks, I know you're going into your spring rush. So keep me abreast in this one, Dustin, like in a week or two, but just kind of as you go into the spring rush with your mowing and then keep me abreast in terms of what's going on with your marketing strategy and using that strategy of, like, multiple touches but from different angles. I think people get so wrapped up in multiple touches that they fail to realize that literally 99% of people, before they even look at your ad in the mailbox, it's in the trash in their mind. So we'll do. We are about. We are 3, 000 houses over and over. Yeah. So just try to do it from different angles. Right. So it sounds like you are doing that every door, direct mail and door hangers. So even if you knocked on the doors again, the guys, if they're out working, and if you have one house that you're mowing, I just have them knock on the five houses, you know, next door of each house, three across the street, whatever that might be. Again, just to try to solidify that, I'd also potentially take those yard signs and ask every one of your. Your existing customers if they can. If you can put the yard sign in their yard. I saw someone do this a while back, and they were so concentrated in a couple neighborhoods, it was literally like every other house had a yard sign. And if you did not have a yard sign that said their name in their front yard, it looked like you were missing out on the party. So I think it's a good tragedy. You could literally get 200 yard signs for what, probably like, probably $800, I'd imagine, off pro shop or whatever it is. And then literally just ask every single customer, hey, for the next week can I put this in your yard? And I'd, I'd go back, I'd do it for one week, I'd take them all away and I'd keep them for next spring. And I tried to do that every spring, like hey, for one week, right as we're in the peak of spring rush, I want to put a yard sign every single customer. And you just ask them each time. You can even send an email. It's like, hey, next week we're going to put yard signs in all of our customers properties. It's just me for one week. We will put the prop, put the sign in, we also remove it. We'll make sure it's installed correctly and not going to blow away if it does. We'll make sure we clean it up one week later or two weeks maybe. Yeah, I think that'd be a tragedy. So anyways, thanks everyone. Have a great rest of your day. And yeah, try not to get the ADP report down as much as I was this morning. See you guys.