*Special Episode* - Hosted by Office Staff from Augusta Lawn Care

Hey everyone, it's Mike with landscape businesscourse.com Today we have something very special. I'm going to be sharing a webinar that my office staff actually hosted and it was actually a three hour webinar and that webinar was recorded for the franchisees of Augusta Lawn Care going forward for people that are for their office training. But it was also for the Pro plus group. So the Pro plus group is about 14 companies that we, we have. You can check out Proplus on the website but you're also gonna have the chance to hear from Liz and Lonnie who will be hosting today or hosted the webinar. They are going to be at the conference in January. So if you have office staff, if you have project managers, if you have people that are maybe not the owner but even under you bring them along to the conference, you're gonna hear Liz, you're gonna hear from Lonnie at the conference and they're gonna be able to get a lot of things of information as well as learning and getting you all on the same page at the conference. So if you haven't Already, go to landscapebusinesscourse.com I have even have the link right here landscapebusinesscourse.com conference and you can sign up. Today it's $299 per person. It's a three day event and that is going to include all the sessions. All the sessions as well as breakfast and lunch I get for you on Friday and Saturday. It's all provided right there at the hotel. It's really good stuff. So check it out. Today go to landscapebusinesscourse.com conference. All the money that I am getting from this year's conference is going directly into Zero Turn. So that is going to allow me to travel and go out to other companies and shoot more videos so you all can learn and try to make a little bit better production value. So Zero Turn season two is gonna be about seven or eight landscaping companies that I'm going to over the next several months. Next year, after this conference that we're having in January, I hope to get some money to be able to make it a little bit better production value, have a couple cameras on hand, things like. And so that's where that's going as well as into developing another book for landscapers specifically on marketing. So the money isn't going in my pocket. I'm trying to build all the money is going to building more resources for the community of landscapers. So check it out. Today go to landscapebusinesscourse.com conference. Now, today's show, like I said, I'm only gonna show the first 15 minutes of a three hour webinar. So you're just gonna basically get to know who Liz and Lonnie are, what they kind of do in the office, and sort of their roles and responsibilities. And the reason I showing this also is because a lot of you have asked questions about what do office staff do, how do you allocate, who does what, and things like that. So hopefully today this will give you an idea of what an office person can take off your plate. If you don't have anyone in the office, and if you have multiple people in the office who does what and how do you divide the roles and responsibilities? So I'm just gonna show the first 15 minutes. They'll introduce themselves, they'll infer the fact that it's in the evening because it was an evening webinar. Again, it was like three hours long. And they shared everything that they do, this 12 step process that we use in Augusta for the customer experience, just everything that they do which will be used down the road for the franchisees for Augusta. So a lot of it was really specific to Augusta. So I just wanted to really get you to know Liz and Lonnie, my office manager and office assistant. And they will be at the conference and I hope you can come meet them in person, ask questions and bring your office staff to learn from them. So without any further delay, I'm going to roll right into it, just like 15, 20 minutes. They're just going to introduce themselves, talk about some of the things that they do at Augusta, and then if you're a franchisee down the road, you'll hear the entire thing. So let's go ahead and roll it.

So we're ready to roll. Here we go. Welcome to our webinar this evening. Here's my friend Lonnie, my sidekick, and we're just going to get started. We have a lot to cover. So first of all, it was great to meet you all at the conference last January and we hope you're going to come again this year so we can have you meet our staff and be a blessing to you again. We have not done this before and so we're just going to be relaxed like we were at the conference. And I'm just going to talk to you as if we're just in the living room together. We have a lot to share about our office and what we do on a day to day basis and where we are today with Augusta. So our focus today is to share our current growth from Augusta in regards to office staff and how we're rolling at Augusta right now. We don't know everything. We try lots and we fail lots. But what we've implemented has turned out to be a pretty good seamless process with some good efficiency for our team and for our customers as well. So five years from now, we hope to cringe at what we're sharing with you tonight at our inefficiencies, because we plan to grow a lot more from here on out. So at the end of the webinar, we'll have some videos that show a few things that we're going to tell you about tonight and our process.

So, as I said, this is Lonnie.

Hi.

And she's with me every day, all day long now and has been a huge support. So we're going to talk a little bit more with her later. But first of all, I'll just start at the beginning. Some of you know me. So I started at Augusta three and a half years ago, and as time has gone on, I can't handle all the workload that I had. So I had retail customers that were coming in to buy product that we have on site. I was also communicating with the guys throughout the day while they were out on their routes. So we had mowing, landscaping, we started the artificial turf as well, some irrigation and a lot of cleanups. And we just had a lot going on. So we would have customers call as new clients. We had regular customers calling for maintenance things, as well as complaints, and so much to deal with. And so at a certain point where we realized we really needed a lot more help is one of our employees, our project manager was in the military, and he reenlisted and he left. And Max, who had done deliveries for me all the time for the last couple years, had gotten his degree as an electrician, and he left right around the same time our other project manager, Lee, went back to Chicago to finish his degree for six months. And this all happened within a few months. And then in August, a couple years ago, Ben was at the fair with Mike, running the booth for the whole week for our artificial turf. So here I was without any project managers, and I had team out on the different job sites. And one of the jobs, I was trying to manage the job from the office. So the client was calling and saying for their work order change, 10 yards off the driveway, they wanted this much mulch, and there was roots coming up, and what were they going to do about it? And all of this. And so Liz had a royal meltdown that week, and Mike and I had to figure out what we were going to do to give me some more help so that we could be much more efficient at Augusta. So he talked to the team members out in the field and asked some of them to step up into more leadership roles. And then we figured out what we could do to add some more people to help me, which is where a lot of you are, I would say. Some of you are starting out, and you're just trying to handle everything yourself, and you're ready to bring somebody on, but what do they start with? And so, because I was just thrown in because Mike was already so busy trying to figure it all out together, we've tried to make it a little easier as we bring people on to help us at the office. So right now, I would say that.

My current role to Mike is more like his personal assistant. I would be called an intrapreneur. So I'm not an entrepreneur like him with the big visions, but I'm an intrapreneur. So I have caught the vision of what Mike is trying to do and what he's trying to build, and I just do everything I can to facilitate the growth of that. I believe in him and what he's trying to do. And as I said at the conference, he is the most selfless person I know. And really, he spins 22 7, pouring himself out for others and trying to build something great. And everything he does is for folks like you. And he reflects that all in the way he lives his life before our staff as well. So he lives in the studio in a little closet. He has a tiny little fridge, and he lives very humbly. We eat similar. So I make Mike's food every day and bring it to work for him. And so just basically trying to support all that he's doing, which most of you know a lot of, as he shares with you all the time. So my current responsibilities would be staff and job scheduling and the scheduling of the project. So we have full mowing routes in our county here, and then the projects besides, so cleanups and landscaping. I order materials for the jobs that we have planned and any equipment that we need to rent, excavators, et cetera. I rent those and have them ready to roll for the guys. And then I execute the project with the guys as they're out in the field and communicate with them and the customer to the finished product of the invoice. I also do conflict resolution for yellow slips, which you have heard about and we'll talk more about later. And there will also be a video explanation at the end about our yellow slip process. I do the invoicing at the end of the month, which, with service autopilot, it has become much more simple and a lot faster. I check the timesheets each day, as does Lonnie, for accuracy. And I do payroll prep. So now Charity is one of our staff members. I'll tell you more about how we break down the office soon, But Charity does the payroll, but I prep it all for her. So I've checked all the time sheets. I shoot her an email before payday, and she sees all the employees names, all their hourly rates, any changes. Lee and Brad got a raise. Hank moved out of town. This is his last pay period. All those type things. She does the payroll, and then she sends it to our bookkeeper, who sends us back their pay stubs. And then it's an automatic deposit into everyone's account.

I communicate with the field crew during the day as they're all out on their separate routes, and then just try to have everybody come back to the office about the same time, troubleshoot with them throughout the day as well. And right now, what I'm focusing on getting better at is watching everyone's hours to make sure we don't go into overtime. And there's as little overtime as possible, as well as recording tardies. So in service autopilot, there's an employee profile, and we record tardies in there, pay raises, yellow slips, and damages. So it just gives us a place where we can just keep all that. And it's still all tracked in service autopilot. So currently at Augusta, we are staffed with an operations manager, which is myself, and three office assistants. So Lonnie is with me full time every day, Monday to Friday, 8 to 4. And then we have Charity, who comes in in the morning from 8 to 12, and then Rachel comes from 12 to 4. Lonnie and I don't always need office assistant help. And so we try to be careful to watch our hours.

For the efficiency of the business and to watch our numbers. And so we communicate together. Do we need help today? Are we okay? And then we just give them a heads up. Yeah, we need you today. We don't. But typically in our busy time, we are going all day long, and it's really busy.

So our focus for productivity is that nothing should ever be touched twice. So everyone has a designated responsibility and a role. If they can't fulfill their role, if they're really Busy, they're behind, they reach out to another team member. But we've split it up between all of us. What my role is, which I've just told you. Lonnie will tell you what hers is. And then Rachel and Charity each have their role and it's very delineated. So we'll tell you more all our steps to break that down. We've tried different things. Some things haven't worked and we just collaborate on what does. And right now, what we've got is a pretty good system. And every day, all the time, we talk and try to make it more efficient as we can. When it gets super busy and a little bit overwhelming, we just look at it like we eat the elephant one bite at a time and the most important customer is the one in front of you. So we try to deal with each situation one time, not doubling anyone's work. And we each take our step and we resolve conflict and we try to move the ball down the field and have efficient routes and just run the business well.

So right now I'm just going to introduce Lonnie again to you. I so appreciate Lonnie and I'd like her to tell us a little bit about yourself and where you've come from and your background. Lonnie is an engineer, and so you just go ahead and share about yourself.

Yeah. So I have a degree in civil and environmental engineering. I've had, I think, three engineering jobs, kind of varying in different industries. I worked for a wind turbine manufacturer. I worked for, for a networking device startup as well as the state of Montana. I worked for the Department of Environmental Quality, working for the Air Quality Bureau with permitting.

I have lived all over. So that's kind of like its whole other story. But basically, when I was working at the state of Montana, I loved my job, but it didn't really connect with me and my partner, the town itself. So we decided to kind of sell everything. We took a six month road trip. We lived in a mountain town and skied in the winter and we found ourselves in Bellingham. So we have our roots here in Bellingham now and we're just so excited to be here. We love Washington. And through our move, finding a professional job was a little difficult for me and this opportunity presented itself and I had to go for it. So part of my role, based on my background, is to find efficiencies and try to implement them as needed. Also kind of fielding what Mike sees as inefficiencies and trying to implement them as well. So like the scoreboard is something that I take care of for him. That was his vision, but I understood it and then now I implement it and I calculate it all. And that's kind of my sole response responsibility as well as like a piece pay performance system and how we will calculate that. I think maybe we'll get into that a little bit later. That's kind of a future thing. That's something that's in the works as well as working with our accounts, paying our bills, doing QuickBooks. I'm the main point for the customers, so I receive all the phone calls. I try to tackle all the emails accordingly. Sometimes I do pass them off to Liz, basically kind of at the point where they've accepted an estimate. That's where we try to draw the line. But there are some difficult customers that I do end up passing it over to Liz or she knows the history behind, you know, the story with the customer. So I'm just trying to delineate that and make sure that there isn't that overlap, but making that call so that it is more efficient at times.

I do QuickBooks, so that's most of the accounts as well as paying all of the bills and tracking that as well. Sending stuff to collections, working with the client that has had overdue invoices to not send them to collections is one of the main roles because it is an expensive endeavor for both parties. So it ends up being way more efficient for me to just hound them for months at a time. Honestly, if we can get the bill paid in full or even 80%, it's way more efficient as well as productive in revenue for us. So that's kind of the call for that.

So we're going to jump into these one by one. I'll get Lonnie's view on them to tell us kind of how we do each item that we've thought might help you tonight. And then we can break it down a little bit and talk a little more. So what would you suggest? Say the other assistant's responsibilities are to help you and I.

The retail side of things, that's definitely one of the things. So one of the main.

Obstacles, I would say for the office assistance is kind of keeping on track of what you're doing. Because you do field in calls as they come in. You do field in the emails that are important and you're trying to tackle all the moving parts, but prioritize them accordingly. And when people come in for the retail side, that alleviates that distraction and that can end up being a lot of time and inefficiency where you go out and you help a customer. It could take 10 to 15 minutes. You come back, there's three or four more emails. You've missed two calls. And then trying to play that catch up.

Right. So what I was finding, when I was by myself, I would try to start an estimate and I wouldn't get it done until 9 or 10pm because there were so many customers and phone calls. So what we've tried to do is split it up. So she's saying we have charity and Rachel. So if a phone call comes in, Lonnie primarily answers it. And then whoever the other office assistant is, if a customer comes in, they know it's their priority to run out and greet the customer so that Lonnie can get the phone call. And then we'll just go in order here because I don't want to miss anything. So can you tell us about our office setup, our main hub, and how it's kind of laid out?

It's a big room. It's a big room with three to four computers, depending if Mike is there working as well. But we're kind of just in one line and it's an open room and you can hear what everyone else is saying, even if it's a whisper? Honestly, yes. So for that, that's a blessing because we're all kind of connected into what's going on. So you can pick up 80% of the story or figure that out and actually help someone mostly, even if you haven't helped them before. But that's also a double edged sword.

Right? So that's the positive.

Sam.