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I think zero to a hundred thousand many times is like, can you do the work?
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Getting to $500,000 is many times a function of, can you sell?
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In order to be able to go from 500,000 to a million, you now have to leverage the labor of other people, organize it, create systems around it, and then lead those people so they want to still work for you.
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What's the lowest leverage task that is not actually moving the business forward?
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But then also like, what do you hate doing?
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And then what are you not good at doing?
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So those are, I have to kind of triangulate those three because if you just hate doing something, even though it might be a little bit higher leverage, it's still gonna suck the life out of you to where you don't even wanna go to work every day.
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And if you don't wanna go to work every day, good luck trying to get other people to work for you and they wanna somehow love their job.
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And so I kind of look at through those three lenses because some people will actually love admin.
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They're super good at organization.
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And so they should actually focus on like creating systems for selling over the phone, modifying the website, using technology, because they actually really get an admin and organization, but what they probably lack in is the ability to sell.
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And so that's what you have to go find a salesperson.
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And so it's constantly a function of like, where can I recruit to plug the holes in the business?
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But the challenging part for a small business that's doing 500, 600,000 is like, you don't have the capital to go find an actual like a plus player and then pay them.
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for a role that is taking up 20% of your revenue.
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It's a very scary proposition when you're going out and recruiting, is that you're literally giving all your profit away to get on board an employee that, yes, hopefully will double the business, but that short-term pain is why so many businesses will stall around that size.
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I kind of look at it as like there's three different functions in most service businesses.
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There's sales, there's operations and admin.
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It said otherwise, it's like sales, I get the work.
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Operations, I do the work.
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Admin, I grease the gears of the business.
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So payroll, taxes, et cetera.
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And so, you know, when it comes to, okay, I have now established that I am very good at sales.
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I hate operations and I'm decent at admin.
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Okay, great.
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I probably need to find an operations manager if I'm trying to scale to a million dollars.
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And so in finding that, before I go find that person, I'm gonna first define what does success look like for that role?
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Is it that the crews are efficient?
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That the schedule is booked out?
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What are those units of success?
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I'm gonna usually tie incentives to those metrics, and then I'm gonna create training as to how they hit those metrics.
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And so that way when that person steps into that role, they know exactly what to do and what good looks like.
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So that I don't just like, hey, first off, you gotta figure out the role.
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Secondly, you've gotta figure out what good looks like.
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And then third, then we will figure out a compensation plan.
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In the perfect world, I'm able to have those three things identified and clarified before they start the role.
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setting them up for the highest level of success, and meaning I don't need a top one percentile of a person that can step into a role and create it for you.
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I'm usually not going to be able to afford that person.
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With the advent of AI, too, it just allows us to be even more seamless.
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There's no reason why leading up to making this hire, I can't have an AI tool recording everything I'm doing, processing, making SOPs for me on my behalf using Loom, using Chack2BT, et cetera,
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like chat to Petit, I can make a screen recording, take the transcript from that video, throw it in a chat to Petit and say, make an SOP for this.
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And so there's just no reason why, in my opinion, you can't at least give them, hey, here's where I'm at.
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If you want to improve this, great, but here's where I'm at.
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Instead, and the reason most people will not get the big hire is because they don't have these things nailed down and they can't afford two to three months of unproductive labor while that person's trying to figure out the SOPs.
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But every day you're doing their job, so record it,
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use screen recording, use AI to be able to create these SOPs.
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And that's like where I think AI right now shines and like everyone's like, oh, so scared about AI, like robots in the future.
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That will come like 15, 20 years maybe, we will be out of jobs mowing grass.
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However, right now, the advantage of AI and the companies that will win and even be alive for the robotic revolution will be the companies that use it to be able to streamline operations and make sure that things like onboarding are really, really smooth.
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The frustrating part with any sort of labor industry is the fact that the employee is compensated.
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If you're paying them by the hour, the longer the job takes, the more money they make.
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Whereas the shorter the job takes for me as an owner, the more money I make, because the job is done more efficiently.
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And so that's the constant push and pull and kind of friction between an employer and employee.
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And so with P4P, it's simply a function of like, hey, you get a percentage of all the labor revenue.
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So the harder you work, the more money you make.
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We're all going in the same direction, which is we want the job done as efficiently as possible and the customer remain happy.
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And we all speak the same language.
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I don't have to look over their shoulder.
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Are they on, you know, scrolling through TikTok?
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Are they on their phone?
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They stop at gas stations.
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Like, hey, if you want to do that, that's fine.
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You will make less money.
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And if someone else is over here, wants to make more money, they can outperform someone and make two to three times as much if they're hustling throughout the day.
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And it just didn't make any sense to me why a young, hungry person that's been working for the company for three months can be making more profit for the business, double or triple in profit, not just revenue, but profit for the business, doubling or tripling.
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And yet they're making a dollar or two less per hour than someone else has been around there for three or four years, but yet sleeps in the truck, stops at every gas station, takes 48 smoke breaks in a day.
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and is completely detached from the value of the company.
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And to high performers, this is attractive, because the thing that they want to do the least is work with B and C players that are sucking the life from them every single day, and they have to know that they're literally making the same pay as this person, and they're pulling all the weight.
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And so it's also a way to kind of like self purge and self clean the business.
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Because when a new team member comes on, in the past it would take me three to four months and all of a sudden I get all these stories of what was happening in the field when I fire them.
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Now it's like within a day or two if they're not pulling their weight and the crew doesn't feel that way, they're like, hey, we want this person off of our crew because they're affecting our performance.
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And so it's a self purging mechanism as well internally for the team to keep only A players.
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It's a percentage of the labor revenue.
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Because materials can get in there and mess things up, et cetera.
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So it's like we have budget hours and then we have our hourly rate.
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So let's just say there is 40 budgeted hours on a job and our hourly rate is $100 per man hour.
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That's $4,000 worth of labor revenue.
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Now, as a crew member, I would know, okay, I'm making one third of that, which means I am making $1,333 on this job regardless if it takes me 10 hours, 20 hours, 50 hours, or 70 hours.
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And so how I do the job as efficiently as I possibly can come up with is going to be up to me, how hard I work, whether I take breaks, all of that is now up to the employee and them figuring out more efficient ways of doing the work and making sure that when they leave the customer's happy.
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Cause the thing that people always say, like, if you do that, all the, you know, quality goes out the, out the window.
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Everyone just makes mistakes.
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Okay, great.
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So what we do is we have yellow slips.
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If someone has a callback, they have to go back to the job site.
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There's no more revenue being made.
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So they're, they're, they're, they're on the hook.
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And then if there's damage cases, it's coming out of their pay for performance.
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So we protect their base pay.
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And that's what we would market in terms of their hourly rate.
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And we make sure that on overtime hours and legally everything is dotted and crossed.
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But when it comes to their bonus, their pay for performance bonus, that is on the table if they don't do a high quality job where their customers leave, complain, they damage stuff.
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And so it keeps the crew accountable, and the push and pull of quantity and quality is met.
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And that quality control doesn't fall on me as the owner.
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It falls on the crew, because now the crew will make sure that other people on the crew are doing a good job, because if they don't, they know they'll be impacted.
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It's becoming more like that.
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Like as the brand has grown, I do a lot of social media.
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So a lot of times like the team members will watch the videos.
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They'll see what's going on.
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They'll hear about P4P.
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And again, the only people that it sounds appealing to is hard workers.
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The people who like, just they know they skate along.
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They hate the system.
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Now we're getting to the point where there are hundreds of applicants every week coming into Augusta just organically through the website.
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And it is many times it is after a year, two, three years of a location being in an area.
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And all of those other employees that talk to each other, gas stations, etc.
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Oh, I can like even though their base pay is the same as what I'm making.
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People are making five, ten, fifteen dollars more an hour.
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And it's if they're hardworking, I want to be over there.
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And so it is very much of a long-term brand play to just attract the best talent.
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And the objective is not to put other competitors out of business.
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It's a function of, I hope, that they just adopt P4P.
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Like, we have it made for the public, and we create software.
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We have free training and books about it.
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So, like, it's all there.
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Anyone can do it.
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And our goal is to change the level of professionalism in the landscaping industry.
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And to do that, I put pressure on my competitors to have to adopt these systems.
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And so if they want to retain their people, my goal is that we get so big that they have to use P4P.
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They have to do open book management.
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They have to do profit sharing in order to retain their best people.
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Because it's easy to pay.
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It's, well, it's lazy to pay by the hour.
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Because all I'd have to do is track their time.
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At the end of the week, I write them a check.
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P4P does take more work.
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You have to have budget hours in every job.
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You're going to have employees questioning you on your estimates.
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You're going to have crew members that try to abuse the system.
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And then there's always a question of like, well, what happens if there's non-revenue producing work like oil changes or sharpening the blades or shop work?
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These are all things that we've had to think of.
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What about if there's a trainer?
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And then is there someone really novice?
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Well, now the revenue for the day is going to go lower.
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What happens there?
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So each of these little things we had to try and create mechanisms for.
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So there's a trainer bonus.
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There is a shop maintenance.
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Like there's all these different ways of manually adjusting P4P to make sure it stays balanced.
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And it's also difficult to explain to your team.
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They come in, never have worked a job like this, always hourly wages.
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So like I've got to know, I've got to train them on the system.
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And it can sometimes take three, four, six weeks for them to really understand it, grasp it, and then buy into it.
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And so that's a much more difficult proposition for an owner than just like, hey, yes, your hourly rate is X. Oh, you want to raise?
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Yes, I'll give you a dollar more.
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Like this is, it takes more work.
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on the back end, creating systems around pricing.
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It creates much more of a transparent relationship with your team because it would share all of the numbers.
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And you better make sure if you're going to share all your numbers and you're going to pay them based upon it, you better know what's going on.
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So it's much more work.
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And the bottom line is what I always point to is like the year I switched, I went from hardly making money to my crew being, I was able to afford benefits for them, pay them about $4 more per hour, as well as I worked literally 5% of the time in the business.
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And that's actually the year after that when we franchised, because I actually had time to do stuff.
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And so, uh,
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The results kind of speak for themselves.
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Once people actually fully embrace the system, it works.
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What I see over and over again, people like this half-baked system.
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Like, well, I kind of do P4P, but on big projects I don't, or on this other service I do, or I don't share the numbers with the team, I only share some of it, or I give them like a percent.
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Like, they start to hybridize the system and then it doesn't work.
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And then for that reason, they think that the whole system doesn't.
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If you were to work for somebody
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would you work harder for someone that A, you liked, or B, someone you did not like?
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Like I happen to believe that if you like somebody, you're gonna work harder for them.
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You're gonna have, you're gonna put the extra mile forward, you're going to pull a little harder.
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If you don't like them, you're probably gonna like siphon gas out of their trucks, look for ways to damage their stuff.
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You're gonna say bad things about them with the rest of the crew, there's gonna be bad culture.
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Well, then the question becomes, well, how do I make sure that someone doesn't like me?
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I hide things from them, I'm dishonest.
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And so, you can read things from your team, just realize that they are not going to trust you.
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And if they don't trust you, they're not going to like you.
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And if they don't like you, they're not going to work as hard for you.
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And so, in my opinion, although it is somewhat intimidating to share your numbers with your team, it's also a function of, it does return back to you from a business and economic perspective.
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And then the argument is, well, if I'm not making any money, I don't want to scare my team and they all leave.
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The bottom line is this is the halftime speech from the coach, which is like, hey, guys, we're all in it together.
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We've got to turn this thing around.
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And I've had that conversation.
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I've also had the conversation when we were making a bunch of money and I wasn't out in the field at all.
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The crew hardly knew me, and I'm showing up to an off-site meeting sharing about how much profit we made.
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And so that's when it leads to you can't do just open book management.
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I've also got to have profit sharing, which is when we make money, I will give you a chunk of it.
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And so when you start giving out thousands of dollars worth of profit sharing,
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They still want that number to be bigger.
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And so in my opinion, there's really no reason not to open up your numbers or they're a mess or you're commingling funds with personal funds and accounts, et cetera.
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That's usually honestly why most people can't do open book management and they can't do profit sharing is because they don't actually have clean books.
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I think right away, because when you're small, it's that we're a team, we're a band, we're the underdog, and you rally around that.
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And also, when you're growing and you're super small, you're growing 200,000, 400,000, 600,000, you're buying more trucks, you're getting more equipment.
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To the team member, they just look at that and like,
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rolling in the dough when you literally might be barely scraping by because you're plowing money back into the business.
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So if that's the case, prove it to them, like show to them.
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And then they will say, Oh wow.
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Like he's not even making as much as me, but he shows up every single day.
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He believes in this business.
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And so I think it's a function of like,
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There's no point in time when hiding things from your team is a great idea.
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And so there's certain levels of transparency that some people are comfortable with.
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For example, maybe you don't share how much everyone's making in the business.
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Maybe you don't share how much you're making.
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These are levels of the gray area.
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But ultimately, it's like show your profit and loss statement.
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Share what's happening with the debt of the business.
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And if anyone has a question, if you can't answer it, just be like, hey, I don't know.
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I don't know.
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I'm trying to figure this out with you guys.
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And it creates a culture of like, we are in this together, we are figuring this out together, and whether I'm making a bunch of money and giving a piece of it to the team, or I'm making no money and I'm still showing up and working 14 hours a day, we all are on the same page.
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And there's no bickering or backbiting or people saying stuff about the owner that are not true, but simply,
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in lack of information being flowed, nothing good is gonna come of that in terms of the culture.
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The reason, like most owners get really frustrated by the fact that, you know, why don't people treat the business like me?
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And like, ultimately you own the equity.
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So no one's gonna necessarily treat it like you.
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However, if you wanna get as close to that as possible,
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And the two things you can do is given the information that an owner has and the compensation that an owner has.
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So in my opinion, the compensation of an owner is the harder I work, the more money I make.
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And the information of an owner is I have open book management.
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I see the numbers.
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I know what's going on.
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The reason you work so hard and you're so efficient is because you know that if you don't get this job done tonight, that you're going to lose a customer.
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If you don't get this project wrapped up this week, we're going to be overbooked next week.
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So you have full information, and so if you can't share it with your team, I would implore you to clean up the books, do whatever is required, so you can share that information, because then you at least get that discretionary effort that is unlocked when they have the information and the compensation like you have.
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Create landscape business course for free for the community.
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and started just sharing all the systems and stuff.
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And it was fun.
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I enjoyed making the content, but ultimately what I found is like people just looked to me as like a content creator, maybe a consultant.
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It was like an optional thing.
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And so I was always frustrated by the fact that I saw the impact that pay for performance had on my business.
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And yet like the, the amount of people you doing, it was like so low.
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I had a free book, free course.
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I had software that they could run P4P from all of that.
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And.
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just low adoption.
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And so like, Hey, great.
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The only way for me to be able to actually compete, to see these systems change the industry is actually compete with every single person.
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And so that's when we started franchising.
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And so we have 180 locations.
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Now we want to get to a thousand.
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I think if we get to a thousand, we'll penetrate enough of the,
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market to our work computers.
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There's 600,000 of them in the US alone.
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But in terms of geography, we would be competing with most of them.
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And so by doing that, we put the pressure on them to answer their phones 24 seven like we do, get pricing to customers immediately like we do, use pay for performance like we do.
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And so like the systems that we,
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we live by will inherently be required to compete with us.
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And by doing that, then the customer starts to demand that improved level of service.
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And that's how we kind of elevate the whole industry.
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So as much as I don't want to see anyone hurt or like our competitors, quote unquote, be hurt, it's a function of in order for them to listen, they have to compete.
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And we can see directly when we move into a new market, I can see people sign up for pay for performance software.
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They get home service web design.
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They use Copilot CRM.
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They start to actually formalize the systems of their business.
247
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And that's the whole objective.
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Yeah, the first 10 are really difficult because you have no track record, right?
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So I still don't know why they all joined.
250
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There was a first group of 10 I kind of pre-sold and they all came.
251
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And yeah, you look back and kind of cringe at the level of support you had, the training that you did, but just an evolution.
252
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Every year just gets better and better.
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We offer more support.
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You put more infrastructure in place.
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command center now does like all their phone calls and can run their payroll and do their email like manage a lot of the admin side of things for them you know even the sales perspective now we have like instant pricing on the website and we have you know ai to be able to do a lot of the pricing so like that's all good now but like at the beginning how i got them i have no idea i think i only had like i want to say like eight to ten thousand subscribers on youtube maybe less actually would have been like six thousand subscribers on youtube so like it was from that like that's where they came from
256
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But you're basically giving them anything.
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It's like, hey, I'll give you a bigger territory.
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I'll give you a lower initial fee.
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Like, just get them in.
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And so, yeah, I'm very appreciative for the first 10, the first 30 even, before there's really any proof that we're even gonna survive.
261
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Most franchises don't survive because there's a lot of them that start, but very few that actually stick around for a very long time because it's a very difficult business.
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And I can talk about that more.
263
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But yeah, how we got the first 10 is really just the content.
264
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Yeah, like everyone has this idea that they're going to franchise their business.
265
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And, you know, it's funny because like if I say anything negative about franchising, people think I'm trying to like gatekeep franchising.
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So, but it's also a function of like the only people who know how it actually feels is the people who have started them and actually know what's going on.
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Because you're going to talk to every franchise business consultant and they get paid for you to set up your franchise documents and your FDD and your operations manual.
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You just need 50 to 100 grand and you can get that done.
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And you are now a franchisor.
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is a very different business than selling the franchises.
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And it's a very different business than supporting the franchisees.
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And those are very different functions.
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It's nothing to do with lawn care, it has nothing to do with your actual service unit.
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You are now in the business of coaching, in the business of mentorship, you're in the business of marketing, and you're a marketing agency, you're an advertising agency, you're a content creator.
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So like, it's a whole different business
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And I think that franchising is going to get completely changed up in the next several years as a lot of private equity has moved in and bought out the legacy brands.
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And because of that, the way that they will market is simply based upon their reputation and their brand, which is valuable.
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But you're seeing cracks in this, even like with Subway, where now there's thousands of locations closing.
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They completely overwhelmed the market with locations being right next to each other.
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They did not operate in the best owners and the franchisees.
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And for that reason, now the brand is suffering.
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And for years they could just skate by with the fact that hey, we're Subway, we're the best, just by us.
283
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That doesn't work in the long term if you don't support the owner.
284
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So if the franchisee doesn't have great economics, if they aren't growing year over year, same store sales aren't going up, if you're not supporting them adding more and more every single year, then your brand will eventually fail.
285
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And most of the time, the challenging part with franchising is,
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you really usually have to get to 100 plus locations to become profitable.
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And if you look at almost every franchise, the ones that are successful get past 100 locations.
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If you don't, you usually die.
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The reason for that is because you need to be able to, from the get-go to attract your first 100 owners, you need to be able, required, that require really 100 locations worth of revenue.
290
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And so you're going to burn a bunch of money.
291
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So either you have private equity behind you, or you have a debt, or you have a cash flowing business.
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And
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Many times what happens is people have one cash flowing business or location.
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They go start this franchising thing and they dump all their money into it.
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Now they do a poor job of both because they can't really do.
296
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And now the first person suffers.
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And now the economics of their primary location suffers.
298
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And so I just see over and over and over again that people who say, I want to franchise my business don't actually know what they're doing.
299
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They think they're just going to scale.
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They think they're going to create some documents.
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People are going to show up and give them money.
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And if that's the mentality that you have, you will not succeed as a franchisor.
303
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And it's just simply in the numbers, like new franchises started last year, less than five of them statistically will be around in five years.
304
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And so the ability to actually stay in business as a franchise or extremely difficult.
305
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And people just simply think they can sign some documents and the people are gonna show up and give them money.
306
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If that happens, you're in a world of hurt legally.
307
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And so, yeah, that's why there's so many bad actors.
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And unfortunately, franchising gets a bad rap because of the 90% of people that just jump into it thinking it's so easy.
309
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And they don't give support to their owners.
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They don't do things in the best interest of owners.
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And for that reason, when we started, I was like, okay, great.
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You can leave at any time and there's no fee.
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you can take your customers at any time.
314
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We will give you your initial feedback if you just stay inside the systems for five years.
315
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So I just try to build the franchise in a way like I would want to join it.
316
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I was a franchisee at Anytime Fitness beforehand, so I kind of knew the pros and the cons.
317
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And so I just try to make it like...
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a no-brainer as much as possible.
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The level of success and the success rate of being a franchisee is so much higher.
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Assuming you join a system that is going to support you, is going to do a lot of things, especially from zero to a million.
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Like there's so many things that a business owner has to do that you can just take off your plate as a franchisee.
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Your website doesn't, you don't have to worry about branding and logos and colors and marketing schemes and your print digital stuff.
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Like all that's taken care of.
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Your email is set up for you.
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Like all of these little things that clutter up the mind of a business owner, take it off your plate.
326
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And then you guys focus on growing the business.
327
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And that to me is the advantage of a franchise system.
328
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And the reason like I'm a big believer in franchising and why even came up in my mind is that I owned any time fitness.
329
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And I remember thinking like, why in the world would anyone start a gym?
330
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That's not a franchise.
331
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Like, I don't even know how you make this the math work.
332
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And so I try to just take a lot of their principles and apply it to a service-based business.
333
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The first few years was really just a function of me like sharing all the things that I was doing around the business and what I was changing.
334
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So pay for performance, estimate video, all the systems we talk about.
335
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And that was literally just me in my bedroom up against the wall with a whiteboard.
336
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And I think that got to me, got to make 8,000 subscribers and very, very niche content, not produced, no edits, just me standing up against the wall.
337
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As time went on, there was one of our guys on the field was a friend of mine, and I knew he was kind of like looking at something besides long carried.
338
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Worked for me for three or four years.
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I said, hey, look, if you can stick around until June 2020, I will get you full time doing media.
340
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Because I knew he liked cameras and video equipment, et cetera.
341
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Well, all of a sudden, that was like, well, COVID hits.
342
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So I pulled him right out of the field a little early and said, hey, let's go full into this.
343
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And so that's when we started creating content more religiously.
344
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And every single year for the past five years, it's just been a function of as we make more money on the media, we just spend more.
345
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And so it's very much the Mr.
346
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Beast idea, just make better videos and pour money into the videos.
347
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And so even up to this day, there's probably 10, 11 team members full time on the media only and streaming.
348
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you know, to over $2 million that we'll spend on like the traveling and we go out and do these turnarounds and create free courses and all this stuff.
349
00:22:51.952 --> 00:23:01.999
But just a function of like, it's the marketing branch of the business, whether it be for the CRM, for the software stuff, um, for the franchise, like all of that, like we do tons of web, just websites.
350
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It's all just from the content.
351
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So I look at it as like the marketing machine that happens to pay us.
352
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And if we can just break even on it, we just keep scaling it up and hopefully generate more leads for the businesses.
353
00:23:12.420 --> 00:23:13.761
Um, it really depends.
354
00:23:13.781 --> 00:23:16.224
Like if you want to become famous, then yes.
355
00:23:16.904 --> 00:23:20.828
Um, and, and again, when I say famous, I just mean awareness, like people know who you are.
356
00:23:21.429 --> 00:23:28.436
And if, if that somehow aligns to your goals of like, you know, if you want to help your industry, if you want to help other business owners, then yes.
357
00:23:28.976 --> 00:23:30.277
Um, if you want to make more money, um,
358
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is what I suggest 99.9% of people do in home services or any local business is you become the mayor of your city and everything that happens in your local area, you comment on it, you post about it from the framework of a landscaper, the framework of a barber, a framework of a builder, like whatever you are for your local community.
359
00:23:49.281 --> 00:23:54.262
And then people come and follow you because they know you are tapped into your local ecosystem.
360
00:23:54.842 --> 00:23:56.822
And so if you want to make more money, that's what you do.
361
00:23:57.523 --> 00:23:59.523
Like if there's a new mayor in town, you're like,
362
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you know, go mow the grass for the mayor, take a picture, say welcome to the community, blah, blah, blah.
363
00:24:04.566 --> 00:24:13.832
Like every single business owner can become the mayor of their city on social media, where everyone in your local area wants to follow you because you are the digest for what happens in your local town.
364
00:24:14.132 --> 00:24:15.253
And that can be 5,000 people.
365
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That can be 50,000 people.
366
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That can be a hundred thousand people.
367
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The smaller, the better, because you're become a micro influencer in that area.
368
00:24:21.097 --> 00:24:27.681
And you will absolutely generate more leads, but generating content about your day, how you feel about your business, the things are changing your business.
369
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I'm going to tap into like
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0.01% of the people that watch your video will be in your market and will be a potential lead.
371
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And so be very clear as to what am I trying to be famous or am I trying to make more leads?
372
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And if you're trying to make more leads, stay very narrow on the scope of your demographic.
373
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If you're showing a project, show Main Street.
374
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We're in Main Street here in Bellingham.
375
00:24:45.468 --> 00:24:48.789
Or show all the landmarks of people like, oh, this is for me.
376
00:24:49.349 --> 00:24:51.730
And yeah, it's a function of which one do you want.
377
00:24:52.330 --> 00:24:58.933
Yeah, and I think even as we go into the era of AI, it's even so much more important for a personal brand because inherently a personal brand is human.
378
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A human makes mistakes.
379
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AI doesn't make mistakes and it's perfect every time.
380
00:25:03.174 --> 00:25:09.177
And so the imperfections of you behind the camera or not being able to say words correctly, et cetera, is actually what differentiates you from AI.
381
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And so, mistakes are inherently human.
382
00:25:13.319 --> 00:25:19.503
And so, I think most people are afraid to get in front of a camera or record what they're doing or a project they're on.
383
00:25:19.523 --> 00:25:20.504
What if someone picks me apart?
384
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You are human.
385
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And that is what differentiates you from AI.
386
00:25:23.766 --> 00:25:30.430
And I believe that's actually a huge win for you to get behind the camera, a further reason as to why you should share about what you're going through.
387
00:25:31.443 --> 00:25:37.084
Yeah, and once people know, like, and trust in your local community, the likelihood of them buying from you is much higher than someone they see another ad from.
388
00:25:37.485 --> 00:25:41.246
And so that's where creating personal social media content is going to win.
389
00:25:41.266 --> 00:25:47.447
And, like, why being an influencer, even if that means in your local market, is so important because it drives customers.
390
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Like, if you're like, I just want to make a bunch of money.
391
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Great.
392
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You still need to do this.
393
00:25:50.848 --> 00:25:53.809
The reason for that is because you can get customers for nothing.
394
00:25:54.757 --> 00:26:06.260
And so even if you want to make more money, if you want to be famous, or if you just want more leads, like regardless, like make content, be a human, make mistakes in front of the camera, share what's where your wins and your losses are.
395
00:26:06.520 --> 00:26:09.741
And more importantly, be very clear in terms of what your demographic and your target audience is.
396
00:26:10.041 --> 00:26:13.462
Is that local or am I trying to actually talk to the entire country?
397
00:26:14.235 --> 00:26:16.516
I think it's more a function of what's your bandwidth for this.
398
00:26:16.876 --> 00:26:23.920
And so when I start looking at all the things you're doing in the business, is posting on social media going to make me money today?
399
00:26:24.360 --> 00:26:24.900
Probably not.
400
00:26:25.181 --> 00:26:26.441
Building a personal brand, no.
401
00:26:26.461 --> 00:26:28.482
I got three views on my first video.
402
00:26:29.043 --> 00:26:30.183
You're not driving any awareness.
403
00:26:30.383 --> 00:26:36.166
Your time would probably be better if you had to spend doing a follow-up phone call and closing three jobs in the next hour instead of making this content.
404
00:26:36.406 --> 00:26:37.727
And so there's very much a balance.
405
00:26:37.747 --> 00:26:41.549
And social media and brand building is very much of a long-term play.
406
00:26:41.869 --> 00:26:43.410
So I would look at it as like I'm planting the seeds.
407
00:26:43.450 --> 00:26:44.351
I'm going to spend some time.
408
00:26:44.371 --> 00:26:46.693
This is my discretionary time, the evenings, the weekends, et cetera.
409
00:26:47.013 --> 00:26:51.077
I'm going to be putting the seeds in so it goes from three views to five views to 10 views to 40 views.
410
00:26:51.097 --> 00:26:53.419
And one day maybe I'm going to get 100 or 200 views in my local area.
411
00:26:53.859 --> 00:26:57.622
20 of which have my demand for my service, and they're going to buy from me.
412
00:26:57.982 --> 00:27:01.125
But right now, like today, you probably need to pick up the phone and do a follow-up phone call.
413
00:27:01.325 --> 00:27:02.746
you probably need to go sell the next job.
414
00:27:02.766 --> 00:27:07.048
You probably have the person that's waiting for estimate request form that you need to go, you need to go to the house.
415
00:27:07.709 --> 00:27:09.429
That's going to put food on your table today.
416
00:27:09.490 --> 00:27:11.511
And I, it'd be, it'd be stupid for me.
417
00:27:11.551 --> 00:27:14.512
And there are influencers that say like, yes, just do social media, just make content.
418
00:27:14.532 --> 00:27:16.553
It's like, look, I need to also provide for my family here.
419
00:27:16.954 --> 00:27:18.675
And so I think it's like longterm.
420
00:27:18.695 --> 00:27:20.455
I need to plant the seeds of content.
421
00:27:20.475 --> 00:27:24.418
I need to plant the seeds of building the personal brand, whether it be locally or nationally.
422
00:27:24.758 --> 00:27:28.720
And then I also need to like focus on today, working 12 to 14 hours, making money.
423
00:27:29.180 --> 00:27:30.703
Yeah, just go to mikeandies.com.
424
00:27:30.883 --> 00:27:32.045
All the courses are free.
425
00:27:32.425 --> 00:27:33.808
I just did a new workshop on there.
426
00:27:33.848 --> 00:27:34.729
It's completely free.
427
00:27:35.350 --> 00:27:37.314
We try to do everything as we possibly can for free.
428
00:27:37.334 --> 00:27:38.235
So it's all on there.
429
00:27:38.656 --> 00:27:40.379
And then watch the YouTube channel.
430
00:27:40.559 --> 00:27:41.521
We do these turnaround shows.
431
00:27:41.541 --> 00:27:42.683
There's one coming out tomorrow.
432
00:27:42.703 --> 00:27:43.364
It's really good.
433
00:27:43.384 --> 00:27:46.850
$1.7 million business owner that has a lot of ego problems.
434
00:27:47.130 --> 00:27:48.913
So we went into the business like an hour and a half long.
435
00:27:49.013 --> 00:27:49.754
Hopefully it's helpful.
436
00:27:50.035 --> 00:27:51.698
But yeah, I just check all those channels out.
1
00:00:00.191 --> 00:00:03.394
I think zero to a hundred thousand many times is like, can you do the work?
2
00:00:03.634 --> 00:00:08.698
Getting to $500,000 is many times a function of, can you sell?
3
00:00:08.918 --> 00:00:18.885
In order to be able to go from 500,000 to a million, you now have to leverage the labor of other people, organize it, create systems around it, and then lead those people so they want to still work for you.
4
00:00:18.926 --> 00:00:22.568
What's the lowest leverage task that is not actually moving the business forward?
5
00:00:22.849 --> 00:00:25.110
But then also like, what do you hate doing?
6
00:00:25.511 --> 00:00:26.832
And then what are you not good at doing?
7
00:00:27.432 --> 00:00:35.977
So those are, I have to kind of triangulate those three because if you just hate doing something, even though it might be a little bit higher leverage, it's still gonna suck the life out of you to where you don't even wanna go to work every day.
8
00:00:35.997 --> 00:00:40.980
And if you don't wanna go to work every day, good luck trying to get other people to work for you and they wanna somehow love their job.
9
00:00:41.380 --> 00:00:46.323
And so I kind of look at through those three lenses because some people will actually love admin.
10
00:00:46.343 --> 00:00:47.944
They're super good at organization.
11
00:00:48.364 --> 00:00:59.370
And so they should actually focus on like creating systems for selling over the phone, modifying the website, using technology, because they actually really get an admin and organization, but what they probably lack in is the ability to sell.
12
00:00:59.770 --> 00:01:01.511
And so that's what you have to go find a salesperson.
13
00:01:01.871 --> 00:01:06.713
And so it's constantly a function of like, where can I recruit to plug the holes in the business?
14
00:01:06.954 --> 00:01:15.378
But the challenging part for a small business that's doing 500, 600,000 is like, you don't have the capital to go find an actual like a plus player and then pay them.
15
00:01:15.838 --> 00:01:18.261
for a role that is taking up 20% of your revenue.
16
00:01:18.281 --> 00:01:31.955
It's a very scary proposition when you're going out and recruiting, is that you're literally giving all your profit away to get on board an employee that, yes, hopefully will double the business, but that short-term pain is why so many businesses will stall around that size.
17
00:01:32.155 --> 00:01:35.657
I kind of look at it as like there's three different functions in most service businesses.
18
00:01:35.677 --> 00:01:37.738
There's sales, there's operations and admin.
19
00:01:38.178 --> 00:01:40.319
It said otherwise, it's like sales, I get the work.
20
00:01:40.499 --> 00:01:41.740
Operations, I do the work.
21
00:01:41.960 --> 00:01:43.481
Admin, I grease the gears of the business.
22
00:01:43.501 --> 00:01:45.142
So payroll, taxes, et cetera.
23
00:01:45.702 --> 00:01:50.665
And so, you know, when it comes to, okay, I have now established that I am very good at sales.
24
00:01:50.785 --> 00:01:52.866
I hate operations and I'm decent at admin.
25
00:01:53.206 --> 00:01:53.666
Okay, great.
26
00:01:53.686 --> 00:01:56.968
I probably need to find an operations manager if I'm trying to scale to a million dollars.
27
00:01:57.388 --> 00:02:04.551
And so in finding that, before I go find that person, I'm gonna first define what does success look like for that role?
28
00:02:05.012 --> 00:02:06.992
Is it that the crews are efficient?
29
00:02:07.012 --> 00:02:09.153
That the schedule is booked out?
30
00:02:09.854 --> 00:02:11.274
What are those units of success?
31
00:02:11.294 --> 00:02:16.417
I'm gonna usually tie incentives to those metrics, and then I'm gonna create training as to how they hit those metrics.
32
00:02:16.937 --> 00:02:21.042
And so that way when that person steps into that role, they know exactly what to do and what good looks like.
33
00:02:21.303 --> 00:02:23.806
So that I don't just like, hey, first off, you gotta figure out the role.
34
00:02:24.126 --> 00:02:25.809
Secondly, you've gotta figure out what good looks like.
35
00:02:25.849 --> 00:02:28.732
And then third, then we will figure out a compensation plan.
36
00:02:29.053 --> 00:02:33.999
In the perfect world, I'm able to have those three things identified and clarified before they start the role.
37
00:02:35.074 --> 00:02:43.239
setting them up for the highest level of success, and meaning I don't need a top one percentile of a person that can step into a role and create it for you.
38
00:02:44.520 --> 00:02:46.001
I'm usually not going to be able to afford that person.
39
00:02:46.461 --> 00:02:51.204
With the advent of AI, too, it just allows us to be even more seamless.
40
00:02:51.224 --> 00:03:03.672
There's no reason why leading up to making this hire, I can't have an AI tool recording everything I'm doing, processing, making SOPs for me on my behalf using Loom, using Chack2BT, et cetera,
41
00:03:04.092 --> 00:03:09.777
like chat to Petit, I can make a screen recording, take the transcript from that video, throw it in a chat to Petit and say, make an SOP for this.
42
00:03:10.077 --> 00:03:14.601
And so there's just no reason why, in my opinion, you can't at least give them, hey, here's where I'm at.
43
00:03:14.661 --> 00:03:18.103
If you want to improve this, great, but here's where I'm at.
44
00:03:18.464 --> 00:03:29.412
Instead, and the reason most people will not get the big hire is because they don't have these things nailed down and they can't afford two to three months of unproductive labor while that person's trying to figure out the SOPs.
45
00:03:29.813 --> 00:03:32.355
But every day you're doing their job, so record it,
46
00:03:32.755 --> 00:03:36.097
use screen recording, use AI to be able to create these SOPs.
47
00:03:36.117 --> 00:03:41.620
And that's like where I think AI right now shines and like everyone's like, oh, so scared about AI, like robots in the future.
48
00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:46.043
That will come like 15, 20 years maybe, we will be out of jobs mowing grass.
49
00:03:46.343 --> 00:03:59.290
However, right now, the advantage of AI and the companies that will win and even be alive for the robotic revolution will be the companies that use it to be able to streamline operations and make sure that things like onboarding are really, really smooth.
50
00:03:59.470 --> 00:04:04.438
The frustrating part with any sort of labor industry is the fact that the employee is compensated.
51
00:04:04.458 --> 00:04:08.004
If you're paying them by the hour, the longer the job takes, the more money they make.
52
00:04:08.795 --> 00:04:14.237
Whereas the shorter the job takes for me as an owner, the more money I make, because the job is done more efficiently.
53
00:04:14.678 --> 00:04:19.620
And so that's the constant push and pull and kind of friction between an employer and employee.
54
00:04:20.080 --> 00:04:24.402
And so with P4P, it's simply a function of like, hey, you get a percentage of all the labor revenue.
55
00:04:24.582 --> 00:04:26.323
So the harder you work, the more money you make.
56
00:04:26.543 --> 00:04:31.025
We're all going in the same direction, which is we want the job done as efficiently as possible and the customer remain happy.
57
00:04:31.645 --> 00:04:33.066
And we all speak the same language.
58
00:04:33.266 --> 00:04:34.547
I don't have to look over their shoulder.
59
00:04:34.567 --> 00:04:36.568
Are they on, you know, scrolling through TikTok?
60
00:04:36.588 --> 00:04:37.648
Are they on their phone?
61
00:04:37.668 --> 00:04:38.689
They stop at gas stations.
62
00:04:38.709 --> 00:04:40.790
Like, hey, if you want to do that, that's fine.
63
00:04:41.050 --> 00:04:41.870
You will make less money.
64
00:04:42.351 --> 00:04:48.574
And if someone else is over here, wants to make more money, they can outperform someone and make two to three times as much if they're hustling throughout the day.
65
00:04:49.054 --> 00:05:02.319
And it just didn't make any sense to me why a young, hungry person that's been working for the company for three months can be making more profit for the business, double or triple in profit, not just revenue, but profit for the business, doubling or tripling.
66
00:05:02.559 --> 00:05:10.242
And yet they're making a dollar or two less per hour than someone else has been around there for three or four years, but yet sleeps in the truck, stops at every gas station, takes 48 smoke breaks in a day.
67
00:05:10.702 --> 00:05:13.644
and is completely detached from the value of the company.
68
00:05:13.784 --> 00:05:25.734
And to high performers, this is attractive, because the thing that they want to do the least is work with B and C players that are sucking the life from them every single day, and they have to know that they're literally making the same pay as this person, and they're pulling all the weight.
69
00:05:26.254 --> 00:05:30.418
And so it's also a way to kind of like self purge and self clean the business.
70
00:05:30.718 --> 00:05:36.944
Because when a new team member comes on, in the past it would take me three to four months and all of a sudden I get all these stories of what was happening in the field when I fire them.
71
00:05:37.484 --> 00:05:44.250
Now it's like within a day or two if they're not pulling their weight and the crew doesn't feel that way, they're like, hey, we want this person off of our crew because they're affecting our performance.
72
00:05:44.610 --> 00:05:49.435
And so it's a self purging mechanism as well internally for the team to keep only A players.
73
00:05:49.535 --> 00:05:50.816
It's a percentage of the labor revenue.
74
00:05:50.916 --> 00:05:53.678
Because materials can get in there and mess things up, et cetera.
75
00:05:53.698 --> 00:05:56.840
So it's like we have budget hours and then we have our hourly rate.
76
00:05:56.900 --> 00:06:02.884
So let's just say there is 40 budgeted hours on a job and our hourly rate is $100 per man hour.
77
00:06:03.044 --> 00:06:05.385
That's $4,000 worth of labor revenue.
78
00:06:05.745 --> 00:06:12.130
Now, as a crew member, I would know, okay, I'm making one third of that, which means I am making $1,333 on this job regardless if it takes me 10 hours, 20 hours, 50 hours, or 70 hours.
79
00:06:16.052 --> 00:06:28.996
And so how I do the job as efficiently as I possibly can come up with is going to be up to me, how hard I work, whether I take breaks, all of that is now up to the employee and them figuring out more efficient ways of doing the work and making sure that when they leave the customer's happy.
80
00:06:29.256 --> 00:06:34.317
Cause the thing that people always say, like, if you do that, all the, you know, quality goes out the, out the window.
81
00:06:34.377 --> 00:06:35.178
Everyone just makes mistakes.
82
00:06:35.418 --> 00:06:35.798
Okay, great.
83
00:06:36.058 --> 00:06:37.338
So what we do is we have yellow slips.
84
00:06:37.358 --> 00:06:39.879
If someone has a callback, they have to go back to the job site.
85
00:06:39.899 --> 00:06:41.019
There's no more revenue being made.
86
00:06:41.299 --> 00:06:43.240
So they're, they're, they're, they're on the hook.
87
00:06:43.520 --> 00:06:46.241
And then if there's damage cases, it's coming out of their pay for performance.
88
00:06:46.521 --> 00:06:48.581
So we protect their base pay.
89
00:06:49.041 --> 00:06:52.062
And that's what we would market in terms of their hourly rate.
90
00:06:52.282 --> 00:06:57.104
And we make sure that on overtime hours and legally everything is dotted and crossed.
91
00:06:57.464 --> 00:07:06.586
But when it comes to their bonus, their pay for performance bonus, that is on the table if they don't do a high quality job where their customers leave, complain, they damage stuff.
92
00:07:06.846 --> 00:07:11.429
And so it keeps the crew accountable, and the push and pull of quantity and quality is met.
93
00:07:11.569 --> 00:07:14.070
And that quality control doesn't fall on me as the owner.
94
00:07:14.330 --> 00:07:21.735
It falls on the crew, because now the crew will make sure that other people on the crew are doing a good job, because if they don't, they know they'll be impacted.
95
00:07:22.570 --> 00:07:23.792
It's becoming more like that.
96
00:07:23.852 --> 00:07:26.376
Like as the brand has grown, I do a lot of social media.
97
00:07:26.396 --> 00:07:28.859
So a lot of times like the team members will watch the videos.
98
00:07:28.879 --> 00:07:29.881
They'll see what's going on.
99
00:07:29.921 --> 00:07:30.942
They'll hear about P4P.
100
00:07:30.982 --> 00:07:33.746
And again, the only people that it sounds appealing to is hard workers.
101
00:07:34.127 --> 00:07:36.290
The people who like, just they know they skate along.
102
00:07:36.491 --> 00:07:37.372
They hate the system.
103
00:07:37.732 --> 00:07:43.534
Now we're getting to the point where there are hundreds of applicants every week coming into Augusta just organically through the website.
104
00:07:43.874 --> 00:07:48.495
And it is many times it is after a year, two, three years of a location being in an area.
105
00:07:48.835 --> 00:07:52.196
And all of those other employees that talk to each other, gas stations, etc.
106
00:07:52.456 --> 00:07:55.537
Oh, I can like even though their base pay is the same as what I'm making.
107
00:07:55.897 --> 00:07:57.937
People are making five, ten, fifteen dollars more an hour.
108
00:07:58.217 --> 00:08:00.578
And it's if they're hardworking, I want to be over there.
109
00:08:01.278 --> 00:08:06.201
And so it is very much of a long-term brand play to just attract the best talent.
110
00:08:06.221 --> 00:08:09.283
And the objective is not to put other competitors out of business.
111
00:08:09.623 --> 00:08:11.705
It's a function of, I hope, that they just adopt P4P.
112
00:08:12.045 --> 00:08:14.646
Like, we have it made for the public, and we create software.
113
00:08:14.666 --> 00:08:16.527
We have free training and books about it.
114
00:08:16.828 --> 00:08:18.128
So, like, it's all there.
115
00:08:18.249 --> 00:08:18.809
Anyone can do it.
116
00:08:18.849 --> 00:08:21.951
And our goal is to change the level of professionalism in the landscaping industry.
117
00:08:21.971 --> 00:08:25.433
And to do that, I put pressure on my competitors to have to adopt these systems.
118
00:08:25.893 --> 00:08:29.814
And so if they want to retain their people, my goal is that we get so big that they have to use P4P.
119
00:08:30.094 --> 00:08:31.435
They have to do open book management.
120
00:08:31.455 --> 00:08:34.096
They have to do profit sharing in order to retain their best people.
121
00:08:34.716 --> 00:08:35.996
Because it's easy to pay.
122
00:08:36.256 --> 00:08:38.637
It's, well, it's lazy to pay by the hour.
123
00:08:38.797 --> 00:08:40.298
Because all I'd have to do is track their time.
124
00:08:40.658 --> 00:08:42.238
At the end of the week, I write them a check.
125
00:08:42.578 --> 00:08:43.719
P4P does take more work.
126
00:08:43.839 --> 00:08:45.299
You have to have budget hours in every job.
127
00:08:45.679 --> 00:08:47.960
You're going to have employees questioning you on your estimates.
128
00:08:48.500 --> 00:08:51.321
You're going to have crew members that try to abuse the system.
129
00:08:51.641 --> 00:08:57.442
And then there's always a question of like, well, what happens if there's non-revenue producing work like oil changes or sharpening the blades or shop work?
130
00:08:57.723 --> 00:08:59.043
These are all things that we've had to think of.
131
00:08:59.063 --> 00:08:59.983
What about if there's a trainer?
132
00:09:00.223 --> 00:09:01.484
And then is there someone really novice?
133
00:09:01.504 --> 00:09:03.104
Well, now the revenue for the day is going to go lower.
134
00:09:03.304 --> 00:09:03.944
What happens there?
135
00:09:04.144 --> 00:09:07.485
So each of these little things we had to try and create mechanisms for.
136
00:09:07.525 --> 00:09:08.685
So there's a trainer bonus.
137
00:09:08.946 --> 00:09:10.226
There is a shop maintenance.
138
00:09:10.246 --> 00:09:14.347
Like there's all these different ways of manually adjusting P4P to make sure it stays balanced.
139
00:09:14.747 --> 00:09:17.328
And it's also difficult to explain to your team.
140
00:09:18.248 --> 00:09:21.391
They come in, never have worked a job like this, always hourly wages.
141
00:09:21.671 --> 00:09:24.534
So like I've got to know, I've got to train them on the system.
142
00:09:24.875 --> 00:09:30.340
And it can sometimes take three, four, six weeks for them to really understand it, grasp it, and then buy into it.
143
00:09:30.680 --> 00:09:36.366
And so that's a much more difficult proposition for an owner than just like, hey, yes, your hourly rate is X. Oh, you want to raise?
144
00:09:36.386 --> 00:09:37.327
Yes, I'll give you a dollar more.
145
00:09:37.507 --> 00:09:39.389
Like this is, it takes more work.
146
00:09:39.729 --> 00:09:42.013
on the back end, creating systems around pricing.
147
00:09:42.433 --> 00:09:47.421
It creates much more of a transparent relationship with your team because it would share all of the numbers.
148
00:09:47.721 --> 00:09:51.728
And you better make sure if you're going to share all your numbers and you're going to pay them based upon it, you better know what's going on.
149
00:09:52.128 --> 00:09:54.211
So it's much more work.
150
00:09:55.533 --> 00:10:11.811
And the bottom line is what I always point to is like the year I switched, I went from hardly making money to my crew being, I was able to afford benefits for them, pay them about $4 more per hour, as well as I worked literally 5% of the time in the business.
151
00:10:12.011 --> 00:10:15.155
And that's actually the year after that when we franchised, because I actually had time to do stuff.
152
00:10:15.815 --> 00:10:16.456
And so, uh,
153
00:10:17.297 --> 00:10:18.498
The results kind of speak for themselves.
154
00:10:18.558 --> 00:10:21.080
Once people actually fully embrace the system, it works.
155
00:10:21.441 --> 00:10:24.443
What I see over and over again, people like this half-baked system.
156
00:10:24.483 --> 00:10:32.170
Like, well, I kind of do P4P, but on big projects I don't, or on this other service I do, or I don't share the numbers with the team, I only share some of it, or I give them like a percent.
157
00:10:32.190 --> 00:10:34.852
Like, they start to hybridize the system and then it doesn't work.
158
00:10:35.152 --> 00:10:37.494
And then for that reason, they think that the whole system doesn't.
159
00:10:37.775 --> 00:10:38.956
If you were to work for somebody
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would you work harder for someone that A, you liked, or B, someone you did not like?
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Like I happen to believe that if you like somebody, you're gonna work harder for them.
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You're gonna have, you're gonna put the extra mile forward, you're going to pull a little harder.
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If you don't like them, you're probably gonna like siphon gas out of their trucks, look for ways to damage their stuff.
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You're gonna say bad things about them with the rest of the crew, there's gonna be bad culture.
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Well, then the question becomes, well, how do I make sure that someone doesn't like me?
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I hide things from them, I'm dishonest.
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And so, you can read things from your team, just realize that they are not going to trust you.
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And if they don't trust you, they're not going to like you.
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And if they don't like you, they're not going to work as hard for you.
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And so, in my opinion, although it is somewhat intimidating to share your numbers with your team, it's also a function of, it does return back to you from a business and economic perspective.
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And then the argument is, well, if I'm not making any money, I don't want to scare my team and they all leave.
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The bottom line is this is the halftime speech from the coach, which is like, hey, guys, we're all in it together.
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We've got to turn this thing around.
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And I've had that conversation.
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I've also had the conversation when we were making a bunch of money and I wasn't out in the field at all.
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The crew hardly knew me, and I'm showing up to an off-site meeting sharing about how much profit we made.
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And so that's when it leads to you can't do just open book management.
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I've also got to have profit sharing, which is when we make money, I will give you a chunk of it.
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And so when you start giving out thousands of dollars worth of profit sharing,
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They still want that number to be bigger.
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And so in my opinion, there's really no reason not to open up your numbers or they're a mess or you're commingling funds with personal funds and accounts, et cetera.
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That's usually honestly why most people can't do open book management and they can't do profit sharing is because they don't actually have clean books.
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I think right away, because when you're small, it's that we're a team, we're a band, we're the underdog, and you rally around that.
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And also, when you're growing and you're super small, you're growing 200,000, 400,000, 600,000, you're buying more trucks, you're getting more equipment.
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To the team member, they just look at that and like,
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rolling in the dough when you literally might be barely scraping by because you're plowing money back into the business.
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So if that's the case, prove it to them, like show to them.
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And then they will say, Oh wow.
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Like he's not even making as much as me, but he shows up every single day.
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He believes in this business.
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And so I think it's a function of like,
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There's no point in time when hiding things from your team is a great idea.
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And so there's certain levels of transparency that some people are comfortable with.
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For example, maybe you don't share how much everyone's making in the business.
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Maybe you don't share how much you're making.
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These are levels of the gray area.
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But ultimately, it's like show your profit and loss statement.
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Share what's happening with the debt of the business.
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And if anyone has a question, if you can't answer it, just be like, hey, I don't know.
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I don't know.
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I'm trying to figure this out with you guys.
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And it creates a culture of like, we are in this together, we are figuring this out together, and whether I'm making a bunch of money and giving a piece of it to the team, or I'm making no money and I'm still showing up and working 14 hours a day, we all are on the same page.
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And there's no bickering or backbiting or people saying stuff about the owner that are not true, but simply,
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in lack of information being flowed, nothing good is gonna come of that in terms of the culture.
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The reason, like most owners get really frustrated by the fact that, you know, why don't people treat the business like me?
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And like, ultimately you own the equity.
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So no one's gonna necessarily treat it like you.
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However, if you wanna get as close to that as possible,
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And the two things you can do is given the information that an owner has and the compensation that an owner has.
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So in my opinion, the compensation of an owner is the harder I work, the more money I make.
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And the information of an owner is I have open book management.
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I see the numbers.
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I know what's going on.
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The reason you work so hard and you're so efficient is because you know that if you don't get this job done tonight, that you're going to lose a customer.
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If you don't get this project wrapped up this week, we're going to be overbooked next week.
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So you have full information, and so if you can't share it with your team, I would implore you to clean up the books, do whatever is required, so you can share that information, because then you at least get that discretionary effort that is unlocked when they have the information and the compensation like you have.
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Create landscape business course for free for the community.
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and started just sharing all the systems and stuff.
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And it was fun.
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I enjoyed making the content, but ultimately what I found is like people just looked to me as like a content creator, maybe a consultant.
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It was like an optional thing.
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And so I was always frustrated by the fact that I saw the impact that pay for performance had on my business.
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And yet like the, the amount of people you doing, it was like so low.
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I had a free book, free course.
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I had software that they could run P4P from all of that.
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And.
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just low adoption.
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And so like, Hey, great.
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The only way for me to be able to actually compete, to see these systems change the industry is actually compete with every single person.
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And so that's when we started franchising.
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And so we have 180 locations.
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Now we want to get to a thousand.
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I think if we get to a thousand, we'll penetrate enough of the,
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market to our work computers.
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There's 600,000 of them in the US alone.
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But in terms of geography, we would be competing with most of them.
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And so by doing that, we put the pressure on them to answer their phones 24 seven like we do, get pricing to customers immediately like we do, use pay for performance like we do.
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And so like the systems that we,
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we live by will inherently be required to compete with us.
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And by doing that, then the customer starts to demand that improved level of service.
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And that's how we kind of elevate the whole industry.
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So as much as I don't want to see anyone hurt or like our competitors, quote unquote, be hurt, it's a function of in order for them to listen, they have to compete.
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And we can see directly when we move into a new market, I can see people sign up for pay for performance software.
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They get home service web design.
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They use Copilot CRM.
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They start to actually formalize the systems of their business.
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And that's the whole objective.
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Yeah, the first 10 are really difficult because you have no track record, right?
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So I still don't know why they all joined.
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There was a first group of 10 I kind of pre-sold and they all came.
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And yeah, you look back and kind of cringe at the level of support you had, the training that you did, but just an evolution.
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Every year just gets better and better.
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We offer more support.
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You put more infrastructure in place.
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command center now does like all their phone calls and can run their payroll and do their email like manage a lot of the admin side of things for them you know even the sales perspective now we have like instant pricing on the website and we have you know ai to be able to do a lot of the pricing so like that's all good now but like at the beginning how i got them i have no idea i think i only had like i want to say like eight to ten thousand subscribers on youtube maybe less actually would have been like six thousand subscribers on youtube so like it was from that like that's where they came from
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But you're basically giving them anything.
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It's like, hey, I'll give you a bigger territory.
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I'll give you a lower initial fee.
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Like, just get them in.
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And so, yeah, I'm very appreciative for the first 10, the first 30 even, before there's really any proof that we're even gonna survive.
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Most franchises don't survive because there's a lot of them that start, but very few that actually stick around for a very long time because it's a very difficult business.
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And I can talk about that more.
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But yeah, how we got the first 10 is really just the content.
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Yeah, like everyone has this idea that they're going to franchise their business.
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And, you know, it's funny because like if I say anything negative about franchising, people think I'm trying to like gatekeep franchising.
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So, but it's also a function of like the only people who know how it actually feels is the people who have started them and actually know what's going on.
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Because you're going to talk to every franchise business consultant and they get paid for you to set up your franchise documents and your FDD and your operations manual.
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You just need 50 to 100 grand and you can get that done.
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And you are now a franchisor.
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is a very different business than selling the franchises.
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And it's a very different business than supporting the franchisees.
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And those are very different functions.
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It's nothing to do with lawn care, it has nothing to do with your actual service unit.
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You are now in the business of coaching, in the business of mentorship, you're in the business of marketing, and you're a marketing agency, you're an advertising agency, you're a content creator.
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So like, it's a whole different business
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And I think that franchising is going to get completely changed up in the next several years as a lot of private equity has moved in and bought out the legacy brands.
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And because of that, the way that they will market is simply based upon their reputation and their brand, which is valuable.
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But you're seeing cracks in this, even like with Subway, where now there's thousands of locations closing.
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They completely overwhelmed the market with locations being right next to each other.
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They did not operate in the best owners and the franchisees.
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And for that reason, now the brand is suffering.
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And for years they could just skate by with the fact that hey, we're Subway, we're the best, just by us.
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That doesn't work in the long term if you don't support the owner.
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So if the franchisee doesn't have great economics, if they aren't growing year over year, same store sales aren't going up, if you're not supporting them adding more and more every single year, then your brand will eventually fail.
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And most of the time, the challenging part with franchising is,
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you really usually have to get to 100 plus locations to become profitable.
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And if you look at almost every franchise, the ones that are successful get past 100 locations.
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If you don't, you usually die.
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The reason for that is because you need to be able to, from the get-go to attract your first 100 owners, you need to be able, required, that require really 100 locations worth of revenue.
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And so you're going to burn a bunch of money.
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So either you have private equity behind you, or you have a debt, or you have a cash flowing business.
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And
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Many times what happens is people have one cash flowing business or location.
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They go start this franchising thing and they dump all their money into it.
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Now they do a poor job of both because they can't really do.
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And now the first person suffers.
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And now the economics of their primary location suffers.
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And so I just see over and over and over again that people who say, I want to franchise my business don't actually know what they're doing.
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They think they're just going to scale.
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They think they're going to create some documents.
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People are going to show up and give them money.
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And if that's the mentality that you have, you will not succeed as a franchisor.
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And it's just simply in the numbers, like new franchises started last year, less than five of them statistically will be around in five years.
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And so the ability to actually stay in business as a franchise or extremely difficult.
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And people just simply think they can sign some documents and the people are gonna show up and give them money.
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If that happens, you're in a world of hurt legally.
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And so, yeah, that's why there's so many bad actors.
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And unfortunately, franchising gets a bad rap because of the 90% of people that just jump into it thinking it's so easy.
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And they don't give support to their owners.
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They don't do things in the best interest of owners.
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And for that reason, when we started, I was like, okay, great.
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You can leave at any time and there's no fee.
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you can take your customers at any time.
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We will give you your initial feedback if you just stay inside the systems for five years.
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So I just try to build the franchise in a way like I would want to join it.
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I was a franchisee at Anytime Fitness beforehand, so I kind of knew the pros and the cons.
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And so I just try to make it like...
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a no-brainer as much as possible.
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The level of success and the success rate of being a franchisee is so much higher.
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Assuming you join a system that is going to support you, is going to do a lot of things, especially from zero to a million.
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Like there's so many things that a business owner has to do that you can just take off your plate as a franchisee.
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Your website doesn't, you don't have to worry about branding and logos and colors and marketing schemes and your print digital stuff.
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Like all that's taken care of.
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Your email is set up for you.
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Like all of these little things that clutter up the mind of a business owner, take it off your plate.
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And then you guys focus on growing the business.
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And that to me is the advantage of a franchise system.
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And the reason like I'm a big believer in franchising and why even came up in my mind is that I owned any time fitness.
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And I remember thinking like, why in the world would anyone start a gym?
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That's not a franchise.
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Like, I don't even know how you make this the math work.
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And so I try to just take a lot of their principles and apply it to a service-based business.
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The first few years was really just a function of me like sharing all the things that I was doing around the business and what I was changing.
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So pay for performance, estimate video, all the systems we talk about.
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And that was literally just me in my bedroom up against the wall with a whiteboard.
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And I think that got to me, got to make 8,000 subscribers and very, very niche content, not produced, no edits, just me standing up against the wall.
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As time went on, there was one of our guys on the field was a friend of mine, and I knew he was kind of like looking at something besides long carried.
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Worked for me for three or four years.
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I said, hey, look, if you can stick around until June 2020, I will get you full time doing media.
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Because I knew he liked cameras and video equipment, et cetera.
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Well, all of a sudden, that was like, well, COVID hits.
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So I pulled him right out of the field a little early and said, hey, let's go full into this.
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And so that's when we started creating content more religiously.
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And every single year for the past five years, it's just been a function of as we make more money on the media, we just spend more.
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And so it's very much the Mr.
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Beast idea, just make better videos and pour money into the videos.
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And so even up to this day, there's probably 10, 11 team members full time on the media only and streaming.
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you know, to over $2 million that we'll spend on like the traveling and we go out and do these turnarounds and create free courses and all this stuff.
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But just a function of like, it's the marketing branch of the business, whether it be for the CRM, for the software stuff, um, for the franchise, like all of that, like we do tons of web, just websites.
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It's all just from the content.
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So I look at it as like the marketing machine that happens to pay us.
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And if we can just break even on it, we just keep scaling it up and hopefully generate more leads for the businesses.
353
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Um, it really depends.
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Like if you want to become famous, then yes.
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Um, and, and again, when I say famous, I just mean awareness, like people know who you are.
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And if, if that somehow aligns to your goals of like, you know, if you want to help your industry, if you want to help other business owners, then yes.
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Um, if you want to make more money, um,
358
00:23:30.978 --> 00:23:49.001
is what I suggest 99.9% of people do in home services or any local business is you become the mayor of your city and everything that happens in your local area, you comment on it, you post about it from the framework of a landscaper, the framework of a barber, a framework of a builder, like whatever you are for your local community.
359
00:23:49.281 --> 00:23:54.262
And then people come and follow you because they know you are tapped into your local ecosystem.
360
00:23:54.842 --> 00:23:56.822
And so if you want to make more money, that's what you do.
361
00:23:57.523 --> 00:23:59.523
Like if there's a new mayor in town, you're like,
362
00:24:00.143 --> 00:24:04.386
you know, go mow the grass for the mayor, take a picture, say welcome to the community, blah, blah, blah.
363
00:24:04.566 --> 00:24:13.832
Like every single business owner can become the mayor of their city on social media, where everyone in your local area wants to follow you because you are the digest for what happens in your local town.
364
00:24:14.132 --> 00:24:15.253
And that can be 5,000 people.
365
00:24:15.273 --> 00:24:16.074
That can be 50,000 people.
366
00:24:16.334 --> 00:24:17.254
That can be a hundred thousand people.
367
00:24:17.475 --> 00:24:20.877
The smaller, the better, because you're become a micro influencer in that area.
368
00:24:21.097 --> 00:24:27.681
And you will absolutely generate more leads, but generating content about your day, how you feel about your business, the things are changing your business.
369
00:24:27.721 --> 00:24:28.522
I'm going to tap into like
370
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0.01% of the people that watch your video will be in your market and will be a potential lead.
371
00:24:32.743 --> 00:24:36.004
And so be very clear as to what am I trying to be famous or am I trying to make more leads?
372
00:24:36.024 --> 00:24:40.586
And if you're trying to make more leads, stay very narrow on the scope of your demographic.
373
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If you're showing a project, show Main Street.
374
00:24:43.847 --> 00:24:45.188
We're in Main Street here in Bellingham.
375
00:24:45.468 --> 00:24:48.789
Or show all the landmarks of people like, oh, this is for me.
376
00:24:49.349 --> 00:24:51.730
And yeah, it's a function of which one do you want.
377
00:24:52.330 --> 00:24:58.933
Yeah, and I think even as we go into the era of AI, it's even so much more important for a personal brand because inherently a personal brand is human.
378
00:24:59.293 --> 00:25:00.353
A human makes mistakes.
379
00:25:00.773 --> 00:25:02.814
AI doesn't make mistakes and it's perfect every time.
380
00:25:03.174 --> 00:25:09.177
And so the imperfections of you behind the camera or not being able to say words correctly, et cetera, is actually what differentiates you from AI.
381
00:25:09.997 --> 00:25:12.919
And so, mistakes are inherently human.
382
00:25:13.319 --> 00:25:19.503
And so, I think most people are afraid to get in front of a camera or record what they're doing or a project they're on.
383
00:25:19.523 --> 00:25:20.504
What if someone picks me apart?
384
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You are human.
385
00:25:21.985 --> 00:25:23.746
And that is what differentiates you from AI.
386
00:25:23.766 --> 00:25:30.430
And I believe that's actually a huge win for you to get behind the camera, a further reason as to why you should share about what you're going through.
387
00:25:31.443 --> 00:25:37.084
Yeah, and once people know, like, and trust in your local community, the likelihood of them buying from you is much higher than someone they see another ad from.
388
00:25:37.485 --> 00:25:41.246
And so that's where creating personal social media content is going to win.
389
00:25:41.266 --> 00:25:47.447
And, like, why being an influencer, even if that means in your local market, is so important because it drives customers.
390
00:25:47.587 --> 00:25:49.168
Like, if you're like, I just want to make a bunch of money.
391
00:25:49.408 --> 00:25:49.648
Great.
392
00:25:49.768 --> 00:25:50.588
You still need to do this.
393
00:25:50.848 --> 00:25:53.809
The reason for that is because you can get customers for nothing.
394
00:25:54.757 --> 00:26:06.260
And so even if you want to make more money, if you want to be famous, or if you just want more leads, like regardless, like make content, be a human, make mistakes in front of the camera, share what's where your wins and your losses are.
395
00:26:06.520 --> 00:26:09.741
And more importantly, be very clear in terms of what your demographic and your target audience is.
396
00:26:10.041 --> 00:26:13.462
Is that local or am I trying to actually talk to the entire country?
397
00:26:14.235 --> 00:26:16.516
I think it's more a function of what's your bandwidth for this.
398
00:26:16.876 --> 00:26:23.920
And so when I start looking at all the things you're doing in the business, is posting on social media going to make me money today?
399
00:26:24.360 --> 00:26:24.900
Probably not.
400
00:26:25.181 --> 00:26:26.441
Building a personal brand, no.
401
00:26:26.461 --> 00:26:28.482
I got three views on my first video.
402
00:26:29.043 --> 00:26:30.183
You're not driving any awareness.
403
00:26:30.383 --> 00:26:36.166
Your time would probably be better if you had to spend doing a follow-up phone call and closing three jobs in the next hour instead of making this content.
404
00:26:36.406 --> 00:26:37.727
And so there's very much a balance.
405
00:26:37.747 --> 00:26:41.549
And social media and brand building is very much of a long-term play.
406
00:26:41.869 --> 00:26:43.410
So I would look at it as like I'm planting the seeds.
407
00:26:43.450 --> 00:26:44.351
I'm going to spend some time.
408
00:26:44.371 --> 00:26:46.693
This is my discretionary time, the evenings, the weekends, et cetera.
409
00:26:47.013 --> 00:26:51.077
I'm going to be putting the seeds in so it goes from three views to five views to 10 views to 40 views.
410
00:26:51.097 --> 00:26:53.419
And one day maybe I'm going to get 100 or 200 views in my local area.
411
00:26:53.859 --> 00:26:57.622
20 of which have my demand for my service, and they're going to buy from me.
412
00:26:57.982 --> 00:27:01.125
But right now, like today, you probably need to pick up the phone and do a follow-up phone call.
413
00:27:01.325 --> 00:27:02.746
you probably need to go sell the next job.
414
00:27:02.766 --> 00:27:07.048
You probably have the person that's waiting for estimate request form that you need to go, you need to go to the house.
415
00:27:07.709 --> 00:27:09.429
That's going to put food on your table today.
416
00:27:09.490 --> 00:27:11.511
And I, it'd be, it'd be stupid for me.
417
00:27:11.551 --> 00:27:14.512
And there are influencers that say like, yes, just do social media, just make content.
418
00:27:14.532 --> 00:27:16.553
It's like, look, I need to also provide for my family here.
419
00:27:16.954 --> 00:27:18.675
And so I think it's like longterm.
420
00:27:18.695 --> 00:27:20.455
I need to plant the seeds of content.
421
00:27:20.475 --> 00:27:24.418
I need to plant the seeds of building the personal brand, whether it be locally or nationally.
422
00:27:24.758 --> 00:27:28.720
And then I also need to like focus on today, working 12 to 14 hours, making money.
423
00:27:29.180 --> 00:27:30.703
Yeah, just go to mikeandies.com.
424
00:27:30.883 --> 00:27:32.045
All the courses are free.
425
00:27:32.425 --> 00:27:33.808
I just did a new workshop on there.
426
00:27:33.848 --> 00:27:34.729
It's completely free.
427
00:27:35.350 --> 00:27:37.314
We try to do everything as we possibly can for free.
428
00:27:37.334 --> 00:27:38.235
So it's all on there.
429
00:27:38.656 --> 00:27:40.379
And then watch the YouTube channel.
430
00:27:40.559 --> 00:27:41.521
We do these turnaround shows.
431
00:27:41.541 --> 00:27:42.683
There's one coming out tomorrow.
432
00:27:42.703 --> 00:27:43.364
It's really good.
433
00:27:43.384 --> 00:27:46.850
$1.7 million business owner that has a lot of ego problems.
434
00:27:47.130 --> 00:27:48.913
So we went into the business like an hour and a half long.
435
00:27:49.013 --> 00:27:49.754
Hopefully it's helpful.
436
00:27:50.035 --> 00:27:51.698
But yeah, I just check all those channels out.
