How We Built an Office That Doesn’t Depend on the Owner

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Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes here, and today I am interviewing my very first office manager, and now she is the manager of all of Command Center with over 50 agents.
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And today we're gonna be talking about a lot to do with hiring your first office manager, your couple first admin people in the office as you scale past a million dollars in annual revenue, as well as the things that break as you begin to scale up the office and the admin side of things.
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So Liz, maybe give just a quick background on you coming to Augusta and being the first person in the office.
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Was it eight, nine years ago now?
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Ten years ago.
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I realized today that we are starting our 10th spring rush together.
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So yes, I used to work at the hospital and I worked night shift.
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And I remember when you texted me one night when I was at work and said, hey, can you come by when you get off in the morning?
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And you told me that you were working over 100 hours just in the office.
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And you still had to deliver materials at that time, do estimates, and you were helping in the field as well.
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So I said yes.
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And the next, I gave my two-week notice.
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And while I worked my two weeks, I worked day shift with you, night shift at the hospital.
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And the next day, I was on a tractor trying to put materials into trucks that I should have never been doing, risking the truck's life.
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But that was the beginning of it all.
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That was my first day.
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And then our shop space there was like, what, maybe, what do you think, 15 by 15?
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Maybe.
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It was so small.
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10 by 15?
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Yeah.
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Had no AC.
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Yes.
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And it got, it was like a, it had a black metal roof on it.
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So in the summer, it would just become like an inferno.
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Yes, and we had the door open because our customers would come in and order product.
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So AC was useless.
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Yeah, I remember us being dirty from head to toe and taking pictures of how dirty we were because our computers and everything were covered with dirt.
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Now, at the time, I made sense of your wages by basically having the shop space where people would come.
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We'd load them up with materials, soil, gravel, mulch, etc.
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And I think we did like maybe $120,000 to $150,000 in revenue from the material sales.
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Mm-hmm.
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And then a lot of that too, like the actual margin was made on the delivery of the dump with the dump truck.
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But that's how I made sense of it.
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We eventually moved away from doing any materials.
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And so maybe walk me through some of the operational complexities with having that space where people could show up anytime.
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You and I would work like crazy on the weekends just because that's when everyone, all the homeowners wanted their material.
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But also it's like, what were some of the benefits of having that space for customers to come into?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, so it was a great place to be to start out and to have a place where customers could just drive by and see the materials.
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And then they would pop in for their stuff.
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Oh, you do lawn care too.
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Can you install this for me?
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I won't have to do it myself.
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One thing, back to what you said about covering my wages.
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As an admin, you know that you're strictly overhead.
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And that really bothered me.
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And so I would try really hard to sell product, sell more product when they would come in than they were wanting really, and try to cover my wage.
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And in my mind, I would think, he's paying me about this today.
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I wonder if I could make this much today.
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And it always would make me feel good if I could cover the cost.
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and try to help sell jobs or anything.
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So yeah, the customers would come in, they would order product for us to deliver in dump trucks or they would come with their trucks and we would put product in, lead to other conversations, build a good relationship with them, and then we would be able to get more services.
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Plus, we already did recurring mowing and so those people would then come to buy product.
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Yeah, like in theory made sense, added a whole bunch of complexities though.
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Also, Saturdays were our big day.
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So we worked 12 plus hours.
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And those days we'd make $3,000 in revenue selling material.
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But then very well on the Monday after, we could make no sales whatsoever on the retail side.
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Maybe one person drives in with their truck.
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or it rains, you're in the office the whole day.
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Fortunately though, you were able to focus on the software side, like routing, scheduling, invoicing, all emails.
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And so you kind of were balancing, hey, I'm retail and I'm focusing on the customers when they come in, but then when they're not, I'm able to work with the crew.
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Now that added a lot more stress and pressure as we grew and you had a bunch of employees
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On the cruise, because now you have someone driving in, three people stacked up waiting for you.
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It was crazy.
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And you know that your crew is also waiting for you in the office to make sure that things get resolved out in the field.
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Yeah, I remember one day a border guard was trying to call for some product they needed installed.
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And he called, and I'm out serving a customer.
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So every time I would get done, I would come running back in, check the voicemail, call the people back.
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I played phone tag with this guy like three times, but it was constantly, I'm so sorry.
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I couldn't reach you.
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I was out loading a customer.
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And that's what you and I did.
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We ran from outside to inside to the computer.
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And we just never stopped for all those hours.
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Plus, when we had the team out in the field, we're running back in, make sure where the guys are, try to route them together.
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get them back to the shop at the end of the day because also that's revenue there if we can't route them all coming back, helping each other finish up the jobs for the day.
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So maybe walk me through some of your recommendations from your perspective, being my first office admin.
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I think the first year you were there, we probably did like...
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five or six hundred thousand.
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We doubled our mulling customers.
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Yeah, like we grew pretty quickly in the first year.
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Just having an office admin was a relief for me to be able to focus on the sales more.
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But like walk me through like those first few months because at first we were kind of stepping each other's toes a lot because we were both in the email inbox.
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We were both kind of doing scheduling, both doing routing, both doing invoicing.
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And so quickly we kind of realized we need to delineate roles.
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And one of those things was like me getting out of the email inbox completely.
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And so walk me through kind of that transition period.
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Well, at the very, very beginning, and owners are going to be frustrated by this because they're the only ones who know everything.
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And so to me, I was kind of like scared bunny because I knew nothing about this industry.
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What you actually did was answer every single email with me.
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And it seemed so tedious, I'm sure, from your perspective to have to teach me everything like that.
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Everything about square and all the materials and every little thing.
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We did big road fabric pieces.
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And so the measuring of people's properties and how to do all these things from your bids.
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to prepare their products and things.
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But the transition when I had to get out of the email, I think was probably the biggest swap.
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And that's one a lot of owners are going to struggle with is because once you hand something off, you shouldn't take it back.
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Even though I didn't know the answer to the email, I needed you to tell me what to say.
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It was never your email signature again.
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So the owner should never physically go back in and put anything on with their name on it.
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if I did that and I put my name on it and answered myself, you just let me fix my own mistake.
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I'd have to call them and I would have to fix it.
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Yeah.
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And I think at first, like a lot of people were like, I want to talk to Mike.
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Yes.
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And then later on, as you began to delegate, it was like, Oh, like, and like,
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Tara and other office assistants we hired, came in Rachel, et cetera.
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I want to talk to Liz.
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And then eventually it was handed off to command center.
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I still want to talk to the GM.
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Right.
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What do you tell an owner for those first few months when you do hand things off completely?
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I was out of the inbox.
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I think the delineation for me was getting it off of my phone.
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Yes.
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And that way I couldn't be distracted.
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I couldn't see an email coming at nine o'clock at night and respond to it.
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I couldn't see it come at six thirty.
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Like I knew like I had to rely on you seeing at the office and handling it appropriately.
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But like what would you speak to the office or to the owner that releases it to an office person or a command center on answering service or virtual assistant.
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And those first few months when customers are specifically saying, I don't want to talk to you, I want to talk to the owner.
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Yeah.
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What do you do then?
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Yeah, so I look at it like a circle of services that once the owner hands something off, he never touches it again.
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He hands you the next thing, he never takes it back again.
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So you have every single person calling your cell phone.
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So now what do you do?
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You want them to talk to the person in the office.
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You want to give them to the office and never take it back.
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So how in the world do you do that?
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You can create an automated message on your phone that is in text form.
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And the ones that text you back, it'll look like an automation.
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Just text it back to the customer to call the office at such and such a number.
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Or on your voicemail, you can say, this is Mike, the estimator.
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Please call the office for the quickest service.
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Something like that.
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And then what you would do is when they would leave a voicemail, you would forward the voicemail to me and say, Mr. Jones just called me.
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And you would just keep doing that.
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And every time Mr. Jones did that, I would call him and he's like, well, I need to talk to Mike.
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And I would say, I promise you, I can help you the quickest.
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Mike is out in the field or doing sales and I'm the best person to help you.
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And you train the customers to start calling the office.
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I think one thing we kind of figured out, too, is like as the estimator telling them I'm the estimator.
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Yes.
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So that way it was an expectation that, hey, you're going to hear from the office around your quote, around scheduling, around anything questions you have, and it's not going to be me.
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Even if on the back end I was feeding you information.
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100%.
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Just to clear delineation.
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And then once the job started, they also understand, okay, the crew is taking care of me.
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Yes.
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And maybe I reach out to the officer on billing, but like the crew is now my point of contact.
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And then making it really clear that there is that kind of chain of command and like that handoff between the different roles.
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And even then it's going to invoicing after that.
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So it's all a circle of like it goes back all the way to circles around till the final payment from the first call to the final payment.
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There's somebody who should take care of that.
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And there's an order that it should go in.
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I think it's scary for owners that are solo or have done all aspects of that circle themselves, like the whole client life cycle.
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I think, too, though, by having the handoffs, even though at first it feels clunky, at first it feels like there are going to be drop balls every time you don't have a system and then you try to pass it off to someone.
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There's always going to be some things dropped through the cracks.
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Emails don't get responded to.
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Someone says something wrong, et cetera.
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But I think that the key part is by having the handoffs, you've reduced key man risk so that if you went down, if I went down, if someone out in the field went down, that the customers aren't attached to the person, they're attached to the brand.
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Yeah.
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I think that was the thing that we quickly saw is like, we wanted people to see me as the estimator.
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And then they talked to the office, whether it be you, Rachel, Tara at the time, Charity was helping us in the office, Lonnie, like all these individuals helping you.
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Mm-hmm.
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And then there was a kid now when the crew shows up, they have a video and I'm dealing with the crew.
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So if I have a problem with the work, I'm going out and talking to them.
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I'm not calling the office.
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I'm not calling Mike as the estimator.
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I now have this new person as my point of contact.
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So that if anyone in that chain left or we let them go or they had to leave or whatever, they've still maintained their relationship with Augusta and not the individual person.
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And I think important to that is that every single person on the team puts notes in the CRM.
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So that it doesn't matter whoever touches it, they see a trail of the last person that touched it.
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Every touch of the customer should have some note in the CRM.
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So for people that are thinking about getting their first admin person, I know in Copy and Paste Millionaire, the book, I talk about really as you get past $500,000 specifically, but even getting past $250,000, you start needing either a virtual assistant or an answering service or someone helping on the admin side.
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It's the lowest leveraged task in terms of replacement cost in the business.
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As you start scaling beyond that, $500,000, $750,000, maybe $800,000, $900,000, and you think, okay, I need an in-person person.
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office person.
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Yes.
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And I'm willing to take the extra cost.
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I'm not going to go try to be cheap.
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I want a full-time office person like I got for you.
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What are some of the things that you should, you would tell the owner when are some signs they might be needing an office person now?
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I would say that the, the things that are the highest volume, which would be like the phone calls and the emails to have somebody come in and start with those.
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And,
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And then the things that are the lowest leverage, so like making coffee, cleaning the office, ordering supplies, you don't need to be doing those things.
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So highest volume, lowest leverage, and then I would say the things that you hate coming to work to do, give them away.
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So I would start with your admin person doing those things when you just have 10 or less people.
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Once you have 10 employees, you just really only need that one person.
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Also, when you can't,
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When you have a capacity of maybe I can work 18 or 20 hours a day, but then you have a family and they're not going to want you to work that many hours a day.
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So you can say in 10 hours a day, can I still get my sales done?
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My follow up calls done?
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Can I get all these things done and be out of here in 10 hours?
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If I can't, I have reached capacity and I need another person to start throwing things off to you.
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Are you tired of answering your phone calls?
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Tired of phone tag with your lawn care customers?
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Consider joining Augusta Lawn Care, where you have access to Command Center, where they answer your phone calls, answer your texts, your emails, do your payroll, and do a lot of your office activities so you can focus on growing your business.
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Click the link below, schedule a call with our team, and see if joining Augusta Lawn Care is the right fit for you.
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Part of it is not only I save time on, say, admin so I can focus on operations doing the work or sales getting more work.
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That's like the leverage part.
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I think the other part of it is, too, the things that sap your energy to where you don't want to work anymore.
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Exactly.
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Like the thing that sometimes reducing your capacity happens because I dread going and doing the paperwork.
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I hate running payroll.
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I hate...
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looking at QuickBooks.
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And so because I dread those things, it now actually reduces my capacity of doing higher leverage tasks simply because I'm doing something that just drains me physically, emotionally, psychologically, because I just hate doing it.
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So it's like, not only am I not good at it, but it's something I hate doing.
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Those are the two things.
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Let's delegate those things first.
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And I think one of the things that we did within the first few years, we made a list of all things that I did.
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And what are the things that you could take off my plate and
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whether it be lower leverage, easiest to replace.
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Like some of the things, you weren't gonna learn how to build the retaining walls and do drainage with the excavators at the get.
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So like that stays on my list.
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But then there was aspects that was like, what could she take off my plate?
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And that was a good thing for us to also prevent us from stepping on each other's toes around doing all the tasks of the business.
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Yes, so that's where I see the challenge between here's the owner, then the first admin person, and then that admin person getting another person.
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The biggest breakage points there are going to be now that one person, what is everybody supposed to be doing?
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Everybody needs an absolute defined role.
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and the first person now is going to need to take on some more complex things for the owner.
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Let's say you want to start P for P. Well, you need to be able to sit there with your first person and figure some higher leverage things out.
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And so when your second person reaches capacity, then you're going to need to start handing off those simple volume tasks
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to somebody else now so that you can now work with that person and give them your QuickBooks, give them your P4P, and start building new processes with that second person.
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So it's like, here's the perspective from the owner.
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How does he get his first person?
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Then how do we go from one admin to two admin
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And then let's say up to 10 admin, everybody has to know what everybody's supposed to do or they'll do what we did where there were times that you and I were just trying to help each other, just trying to get to it before the other person had to do it.
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And we were like messing up routes, messing up things with the crew.
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The communication was bad just because we were trying to help each other.
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So delineating the rules is absolutely important.
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I think for a lot of home service business owners, their first admin person is their spouse.
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And so from my perspective, it can be the best thing because they care dramatically about the business.
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They have skin in the game.
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And there's no one going to be as caring about the customer, about the business, about the team, about the finances, as there's no one that will ever replace that.
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And so it's one of the times when even for Augusta, we say, hey, if your spouse is willing to work full time in the admin role, maybe don't use command center.
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because we're not going to be as good as them.
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We're not going to care.
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We're not going to be able to pivot as quickly as them.
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We're not going to be able to customize things exactly the way you want.
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What are some of the downsides?
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Because from my perspective, when I do turnarounds, it's one of the actually the key man risk associated with having your spouse is huge because now if the owner's gone, usually that also means that your main admin person is gone.
247
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As well as if there was ever a pregnancy, a health problem, there was any friction in the relationship.
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Now you have a huge risk to the business.
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Yeah.
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Um, and I see that so many times when there is life events or things happening in the relationship and then it causing the business completely to go kaput because there's so much key man risk.
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But to, to the person that might be having their spouse in the office, speak to the, maybe the spouse even more, but even the person that is the owner in terms of how to, uh, to navigate that transition or navigate that relationship in the office.
252
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Yeah.
253
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Yeah, there's so many wonderful angles to having a family member there from the employee's point of view and from the two of you working together.
254
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So having the two of you work together, there needs to be a hard cutoff between your personal life and the business.
255
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Yeah.
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And you should be able to have arguments about the customer, about the business, that are non-emotional from the relationship, but can be emotional about the customers, what the customer needs, what's best for the business, because your employees will watch that.
257
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And from the employee's point of view, if I need to complain about you,
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How am I going to go to the other person?
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It needs to be a complete, I need to be able to say, Mike, Liz said this and did this today.
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And so that's one thing that you'd want to be careful of.
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Like the employee's perception of not being able to go to either of the managers.
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Yes, because they're husband and wife and they're going to gang up against me.
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So I always felt that was really important.
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Mike and I are related.
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And so we understand the family dynamic.
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We also made, and this will be a husband and wife issue two, when you're with the family.
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don't be talking about the business the whole time.
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Let your family feel special.
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Keep it separate.
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Then there's the element of the husband and wife always being in the business.
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You can do a hard cutoff that at dinner, we're not gonna talk about this.
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My opinion of that is make it a whole part of your life.
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Involve your kids.
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It's so fun.
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Let them know that it's fun to have a business with mom and dad, and you can sit and talk about it with your kids.
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But speaking to the husband and wife, with life events and things, you need to...
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as soon as you can, have somebody else that you can throw that off to, and build systems that if somebody could walk in and just sit in your chair and take over.
278
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So when you do have a life event, at least you have a part-time person.
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Your second person does not need to be full-time.
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You can bring somebody in to just take over the certain task
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Or even just during the busy season when leads are pouring in and you're overwhelmed.
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Or you're going to go out of town for a few days.
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You can set up the routes.
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You can have your guys run it, but you can have a person in the office that can do basic things on this list while you're gone.
285
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It doesn't have to be, oh, this heavy burden of this employee and things.
286
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Just get a little assistant for when the times you can prioritize your family and be a husband and wife away from the business.
287
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There was a time when we were doing like $1.7 million at the Bellingham shop, and we had more projects and things going on.
288
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But we had you and then up to like two assistants also during the busy season.
289
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Yeah.
290
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I think you were like full-time year-round, but then we had one assistant for like most of the year and then one assistant only during Spring Rush.
291
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Because it got to the point where, especially because of the time we were doing material delivery.
292
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we'd have materials being delivered or someone out in the shop.
293
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So we always needed it covered for phone calls.
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Because otherwise there were times if you had 15 people come pick up material, you'd come back into the shop and you had 20 voicemails, five emails, three people from out in the field, the crew, asking questions.
295
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And so before command center, there was times where we had to really scale up admin during the spring rush because just the volume of leads coming in.
296
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So when it comes to getting a second person,
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I like the idea of, especially if you have your spouse being your office manager, making sure that they do have repeatable processes, screen recordings is something that we did a lot of, whether it be Loom or Google Drive videos and like creating a repository of here's how we do scheduling, here's how we do cancellations, here's how we do upsells and just doing screen recordings for the office.
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Here's how we do billing at the end of the month.
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Here's how we charge the cards, et cetera.
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When you're getting that second person.
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What is going through your mind?
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And I think this is a great way for someone that might be having their spouse to reduce the key man risk, to reduce the stress in their relationship personally, and have a little bit of redundancy.
303
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But also, just in general, when I start getting above needing one employee, many times it's like 1.1, 1.2 million, you start getting back.
304
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I can't just have one office person.
305
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Exactly.
306
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Because there's times where they're way backed up in the spring rush.
307
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So when you start getting your first assistant, your second assistant, what were some of the strategies you used to make systems for them to be successful?
308
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I think a couple things that you need to keep in mind or what services can I take away to give me actual bandwidth that I wouldn't need that next person.
309
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So if you're considering to bring the next person in, what we did was we took away the material deliveries.
310
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We weren't making money.
311
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It's taken the time of a person.
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We weren't making money anymore.
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It wasn't worth it to do.
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So you could simplify services.
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And then you could also take the second person.
316
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You could eliminate a lot of what a person does by having a good CRM and good automations.
317
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And then once all of that is dialed in and you still need help, then bring a person in.
318
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So reducing complexity, essentially.
319
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100%.
320
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The things that also are harder to train.
321
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Yes.
322
00:22:16.407 --> 00:22:20.710
Because, like, for example, we are able to train some basics at command centers in a week or two, right?
323
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But if it's like, well, if I expect them to know 20 things...
324
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Now all of a sudden this could take six months before they're actually proficient at all of these different tasks.
325
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And I think for people that don't have a command center, this is their biggest challenge, is that an admin person, especially if it's not the spouse that can be neck and shoulder to shoulder with the owner all day long and at night and on the weekends and know everything in the business.
326
00:22:41.525 --> 00:22:51.409
it is very difficult to expect an admin person to know how to run payroll, how to do billing, how to do invoicing, how to answer the phone, how to email, how to do texting, like all the 20 or 30 things that an admin person does.
327
00:22:52.189 --> 00:22:55.231
And we've talked about and I talk about in the book is like, you need generalists.
328
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Yes.
329
00:22:56.111 --> 00:23:09.937
How do I train a generalist when like realistically for them to know all these tasks could very well take six months and the likelihood they're going to stick with me six months is just as great and just as high as my technicians staying with me six months, which is hit and miss.
330
00:23:10.417 --> 00:23:17.060
What do I do when I have a generalist that I am training in the office and they have 30 things they need to do?
331
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What do I prioritize?
332
00:23:18.781 --> 00:23:21.122
Do I only give them one or two or three things to do?
333
00:23:21.502 --> 00:23:26.844
How do I make sure they actually make the business money and it doesn't take them six months to get on ramp onboarded?
334
00:23:27.104 --> 00:23:29.225
Yeah, so that's a really good question.
335
00:23:29.325 --> 00:23:37.648
So what I finally did was you had this beautiful job ad and it was so, so nice and so professional.
336
00:23:37.788 --> 00:23:49.493
But I realized I'm so busy with trying to route and dispatch that I need somebody who's actually going to take care of more of these simple things and not bother me.
337
00:23:49.993 --> 00:23:54.995
Because I knew it was costing you money if I didn't get the guys routed back the next day.
338
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Plus, I was trying to take these jobs that we sold and get them on the schedule for tomorrow and prep for tomorrow.
339
00:24:02.479 --> 00:24:12.564
So I also knew it was time for another person because if I'm doing 18-hour days, it was like basically we did all the crew, got them off for the day, but now I'm planning the next day.
340
00:24:13.205 --> 00:24:17.747
So having that second person to answer the phone, answer the emails.
341
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Three active tasks.
342
00:24:18.647 --> 00:24:19.668
The things that would interrupt you.
343
00:24:19.708 --> 00:24:19.948
Yep.
344
00:24:20.148 --> 00:24:25.710
Anything that would keep me from planning the job, and that's what you would call a higher leverage task.
345
00:24:26.110 --> 00:24:30.511
We will lose money if I am not focused 100% on this task.
346
00:24:30.731 --> 00:24:33.352
Routing, dispatching, putting projects on the schedule.
347
00:24:33.372 --> 00:24:33.932
For the next day.
348
00:24:33.952 --> 00:24:35.793
Looking at the calendar, figuring out where it's going to go.
349
00:24:35.813 --> 00:24:36.133
Yes.
350
00:24:36.653 --> 00:24:38.854
And I had to have complete silence.
351
00:24:39.014 --> 00:24:47.116
So what I did was broke up the day, and I would have my assistant just go through the emails and tag the ones that I had to address.
352
00:24:47.156 --> 00:24:48.737
We flagged them in color.
353
00:24:49.497 --> 00:24:55.319
And then they would do those other tasks and just leave those one emails for me to take care of.
354
00:24:55.800 --> 00:24:58.381
I would be WhatsAppping the guys planning for the day.
355
00:24:58.841 --> 00:25:05.863
And they would know that after at 12 o'clock, I'm starting to plan tomorrow and plan for the guys to come back.
356
00:25:05.963 --> 00:25:10.085
So they're not to bother me because I have to think this through.
357
00:25:10.305 --> 00:25:14.848
Similarly to like command center where like our goal is like we create a folder called owner address.
358
00:25:15.129 --> 00:25:15.349
Yes.
359
00:25:15.369 --> 00:25:16.610
Anything we can't handle goes in there.
360
00:25:16.870 --> 00:25:21.413
But then their inbox and like the noise coming into them is reduced by 95, 97%.
361
00:25:21.433 --> 00:25:25.296
So they can focus on one or two emails that only they can address.
362
00:25:25.316 --> 00:25:29.459
But they're not sifting through 40 when you first walk in the door in the morning.
363
00:25:29.940 --> 00:25:37.566
When a lot of those are just automations, follow-up phone calls, you know, over to invoice stuff, collections, customers trying to cancel, et cetera.
364
00:25:37.626 --> 00:25:37.926
Mm-hmm.
365
00:25:38.246 --> 00:25:51.191
So as you grow the bill, you know all the stages that you've learned, that our listeners learn from you of when you get a certain million, you can get your first employee, then your second, then your third, and how your office grows.
366
00:25:51.791 --> 00:25:54.652
Well, for us, then you get to one to ten employees.
367
00:25:54.852 --> 00:25:55.713
In the office.
368
00:25:55.893 --> 00:25:56.513
In the office.
369
00:25:56.673 --> 00:25:58.434
Everybody needs to be a generalist.
370
00:25:59.734 --> 00:26:09.758
But when you get from, let's say, 10 to 50 employees, if you're going to need that many, like say for us, for command center, that many people, then you do have to have specialists.
371
00:26:10.198 --> 00:26:16.380
So you actually create departments like a P4P department or a payroll department and a phone department.
372
00:26:16.480 --> 00:26:23.663
So you have your people that maybe you could hire up in a few weeks and they would be on the phone, highest volume.
373
00:26:24.143 --> 00:26:26.846
lowest leverage, you're gonna put them on the phone.
374
00:26:27.387 --> 00:26:35.295
And then, not that it's diminished in task, but you're going to need other skills for P4P and payroll and those.
375
00:26:35.628 --> 00:26:41.250
We're an advantage now to where when someone comes on, it's like, okay, they're going to be in the payroll department, for example.
376
00:26:41.270 --> 00:26:47.233
It's like, okay, three to four weeks, we know they'll be able to get up to speed, learn QuickBooks, become certified, be rocking and rolling.
377
00:26:47.593 --> 00:26:50.034
For the phones, okay, within a week or two, we can get them up to speed.
378
00:26:50.054 --> 00:26:52.855
Then they have a training period with someone else, and then they're good.
379
00:26:53.356 --> 00:26:58.378
I think the challenge for most listeners and for people that have their own business and they're not a part of Augusta is –
380
00:26:59.198 --> 00:27:00.660
I need someone to do 30 things.
381
00:27:00.800 --> 00:27:01.040
Yes.
382
00:27:01.280 --> 00:27:04.063
So is there, should I slowly do one thing at a time?
383
00:27:04.083 --> 00:27:06.125
Like, hey, at first I just want you to do the reactive stuff.
384
00:27:06.185 --> 00:27:08.687
I want you to answer the phone and go through my email in the morning.
385
00:27:09.008 --> 00:27:10.269
I want you to send out estimates.
386
00:27:10.649 --> 00:27:18.457
What's the kind of like the early progression of some of the tasks you'd be letting go and going from just getting my very first office person up and running?
387
00:27:18.677 --> 00:27:25.962
Yeah, and so you're also going to ask the metrics of how do I measure, like are these people getting things done?
388
00:27:26.382 --> 00:27:32.746
When you're small, you're just thinking your metrics is did they get it done is basically all it is.
389
00:27:32.766 --> 00:27:36.349
You're not thinking about how much money are they making me, anything like that.
390
00:27:36.909 --> 00:27:42.973
But those first people should be able to answer the phone, and then you could have them doing the emails too.
391
00:27:43.013 --> 00:27:44.995
Eventually you'd have an email department.
392
00:27:45.955 --> 00:27:46.636
as you grow.
393
00:27:46.716 --> 00:27:55.584
But I think the breakage there that happens is learning your capacity for that amount of people before you add more people.
394
00:27:56.084 --> 00:28:05.532
It's hard to figure out those metrics because as we teach everybody, when they've filled their trucks with guys, then you need another truck.
395
00:28:05.632 --> 00:28:09.856
When all of your team is out there working the budgeted hours, you've reached your capacity.
396
00:28:10.176 --> 00:28:10.636
But how do you
397
00:28:12.818 --> 00:28:14.880
When you're small, you're also the same way.
398
00:28:14.920 --> 00:28:16.322
Okay, we're starting to miss calls.
399
00:28:16.722 --> 00:28:18.785
We're starting to not be able to reply.
400
00:28:18.985 --> 00:28:20.106
We need more people.
401
00:28:20.206 --> 00:28:21.948
And that's how you just continue to grow.
402
00:28:22.429 --> 00:28:26.273
It does not work that way when you get to 50 to 100 employees, though.
403
00:28:26.653 --> 00:28:30.037
You have to plan what were your metrics last year.
404
00:28:30.477 --> 00:28:32.418
Where were people's efficiency?
405
00:28:32.518 --> 00:28:34.278
How many calls we were losing?
406
00:28:34.398 --> 00:28:47.521
And to plan for a very large group of people, you actually have to look at your numbers from last year and say, before we hit capacity, we have to have an idea of where we're going and we have to hire to capacity.
407
00:28:47.961 --> 00:28:52.002
So I guess that would be growth when you would talk to your business owners.
408
00:28:52.702 --> 00:29:04.929
For the person that is getting their first admin, the first office person, I think one of the struggles is you don't know what they're doing because there's no real output in terms of revenue earned, budget hours completed.
409
00:29:04.989 --> 00:29:05.910
It's very hard to track.
410
00:29:06.310 --> 00:29:08.331
And it's very hard to track if they're going from one thing to another.
411
00:29:08.711 --> 00:29:14.235
For example, it's very easy to track phone calls because we can see how many minutes are on the phone versus their clock time.
412
00:29:14.255 --> 00:29:18.237
Out in the field, it's easy to track budget hours versus clocked hours, efficiency scores.
413
00:29:18.537 --> 00:29:24.745
I think as generalists, it's very difficult for me to feel good about paying overhead because there's no revenue output.
414
00:29:25.205 --> 00:29:27.548
And it's difficult to know, could they get more done in a day?
415
00:29:27.768 --> 00:29:28.649
Are they being lazy?
416
00:29:28.950 --> 00:29:29.450
Like, et cetera.
417
00:29:29.470 --> 00:29:33.555
And so even when we track in the office, someone that's doing 40% or 50% efficiency, i.e.,
418
00:29:35.397 --> 00:29:41.162
Every minute we track, every second we track, only about 40-50% of that time is usually actually doing a task.
419
00:29:41.302 --> 00:29:41.423
Right.
420
00:29:41.443 --> 00:29:49.189
Because there's so many different things that as an admin person, you're switching context, the phone rings, then you're going to email, then you're going to text, then you're doing all these switching throughout the day.
421
00:29:49.530 --> 00:29:57.097
And even someone on the phone, if they're on the phone even 50% of their day, like of that clock time, like four hours on the phone on an eight-hour day, that's actually really, really good.
422
00:29:57.117 --> 00:29:57.337
Yeah.
423
00:29:57.357 --> 00:29:57.497
Yeah.
424
00:29:57.797 --> 00:30:02.119
For someone that doesn't have that kind of metrics, because we have a lot of insights for every department, we track every single second.
425
00:30:02.399 --> 00:30:04.360
For someone who's like, hey, here's your desk.
426
00:30:04.480 --> 00:30:05.860
I'm going to go estimates all day long.
427
00:30:06.040 --> 00:30:07.701
I just need these tasks, this checklist done.
428
00:30:08.561 --> 00:30:12.603
As an owner, for a lot of people, they leave and the immediate thought is like, what are they doing all day?
429
00:30:12.643 --> 00:30:14.884
Like, I know the phone only rang five times a day.
430
00:30:15.364 --> 00:30:18.428
I know there was only a few emails and I looked at their inbox.
431
00:30:18.908 --> 00:30:19.429
Shame on me.
432
00:30:19.449 --> 00:30:21.692
But I don't think they're like, they're just twiddling their thumbs.
433
00:30:21.992 --> 00:30:31.063
How do I make sense of that and how can I make sure that they actually are generating revenue or being more of an offensive measure, not just a defensive measure for the business?
434
00:30:31.423 --> 00:30:40.010
Yeah, I remember specifically we had hired two office people and we were paying them like kind of a high wage, $25 an hour.
435
00:30:40.531 --> 00:30:43.613
And I remember you saying, what are they doing all day?
436
00:30:43.713 --> 00:30:46.196
What am I paying all of this for?
437
00:30:46.736 --> 00:30:50.719
And so we did what was called a work log is what we started to create.
438
00:30:51.180 --> 00:30:53.322
And we had them time the task.
439
00:30:53.342 --> 00:30:54.743
Did we really do it for command center?
440
00:30:55.243 --> 00:30:55.523
Yeah.
441
00:30:55.583 --> 00:30:56.084
Oh, that's crazy.
442
00:30:56.144 --> 00:30:56.404
Yeah.
443
00:30:56.644 --> 00:31:07.571
And you wanted to know, like, you know they're getting a lot done, and you know they were people with good character, and that even if you left them alone, they would find something positive to do for the business.
444
00:31:08.091 --> 00:31:10.032
But you had no idea what they were doing.
445
00:31:10.552 --> 00:31:15.395
So when they did email, I had them time it and put it in a spreadsheet.
446
00:31:15.555 --> 00:31:17.637
And there was a dropdown where it said email.
447
00:31:17.777 --> 00:31:18.337
I worked hard.
448
00:31:18.457 --> 00:31:26.283
on this account for however many hours, and I split up the task between them, and then they tracked everything they did.
449
00:31:26.743 --> 00:31:41.634
And if there was an item that it wasn't really trackable, it seemed like it would be some odd task, I would have them put zero, zero, zero as something that I could still track so there was still accountability for their time.
450
00:31:41.854 --> 00:31:44.756
And I was able to see then 60% of their day was efficient.
451
00:31:47.399 --> 00:31:49.781
And then we had an idea, okay, we pay them $25 an hour.
452
00:31:49.821 --> 00:31:50.662
They are filling 60% of that.
453
00:31:53.558 --> 00:31:57.639
hour with good tasks so we know, okay, now we know what they're doing.
454
00:31:58.139 --> 00:32:00.340
And they were pretty upset at first too.
455
00:32:00.360 --> 00:32:02.981
Like, you know, how could you accuse us of that?
456
00:32:03.361 --> 00:32:09.602
And then we realized, no, we are, we are making you look really good by now showing you how efficient you were.
457
00:32:09.622 --> 00:32:12.203
And it's just the way you frame it to the employee.
458
00:32:12.543 --> 00:32:16.484
It became a positive instead of like, don't accuse me.
459
00:32:16.564 --> 00:32:18.545
I'm working so hard for you.
460
00:32:18.745 --> 00:32:22.388
So throughout the podcast, Liz is talking a lot about command center.
461
00:32:22.408 --> 00:32:31.935
I actually want to show it's early in the morning here, but except from my office, what you can see of command center and then about that many team members is also virtual.
462
00:32:32.015 --> 00:32:33.596
So I think overall it's like 70 or 80 agents.
463
00:32:35.417 --> 00:32:36.738
And we all use HomeWorks.
464
00:32:37.098 --> 00:32:42.300
HomeWorks allows us to be able to swap between locations, all 200 plus of them at Augusta Lawn Care.
465
00:32:42.861 --> 00:32:52.845
And so if you are considering multi locations or even setting up your admin for success using systems and software, highly recommend checking out home.works.
466
00:32:53.265 --> 00:32:57.387
And there's a demo now on there that you can see for sales, operations, and admin.
467
00:32:57.427 --> 00:33:02.910
So check out the demo for admin and how it can help your admin person, your people in the office, be more efficient.
468
00:33:03.130 --> 00:33:07.272
I think the thing that helped too is when we were like, hey, we need to know when you need more help.
469
00:33:07.793 --> 00:33:10.814
And we need proof that your schedule is filled.
470
00:33:10.975 --> 00:33:12.315
There's so much you can't get to.
471
00:33:12.595 --> 00:33:16.438
And then we'll be able to mathematically know when we need another admin person.
472
00:33:16.738 --> 00:33:17.779
I want to talk about remote.
473
00:33:17.899 --> 00:33:21.641
I want to talk about US-based versus overseas, et cetera.
474
00:33:22.701 --> 00:33:24.642
for those that think about that and even AI.
475
00:33:24.982 --> 00:33:32.005
Before we do though, I think one thing that people, when they start getting above a million and they start needing a second office person, they sometimes forget this part.
476
00:33:32.025 --> 00:33:38.327
And that's, they know very well that in the field, when it comes to a solo person, one person in a truck, they're gonna be very efficient.
477
00:33:38.427 --> 00:33:39.408
There's no distractions.
478
00:33:39.748 --> 00:33:44.250
They can hop it out of the truck, especially if they're on pay for performance, they're very efficient.
479
00:33:44.530 --> 00:33:46.931
You add a second person in there, it's not like it doubles the output.
480
00:33:46.991 --> 00:33:47.591
Exactly.
481
00:33:47.731 --> 00:33:49.872
It might get a 40, 50% increase sometimes.
482
00:33:50.632 --> 00:33:52.433
I think the same thing happened with us.
483
00:33:52.453 --> 00:33:55.215
When you got an admin person, I got frustrated.
484
00:33:55.235 --> 00:33:57.736
I'm like, there's not twice as much work happening here.
485
00:33:58.157 --> 00:34:02.239
There's phone call with customer being mad, and now two people working the exact same thing.
486
00:34:02.619 --> 00:34:05.681
And debriefing after every single phone call or emails.
487
00:34:06.141 --> 00:34:08.303
Now we're touching everything twice.
488
00:34:09.083 --> 00:34:14.845
And so talk me through your thoughts on that because there is definitely periods of time where you do need someone to answer the phone.
489
00:34:14.885 --> 00:34:17.486
Oh my word, another phone call comes in.
490
00:34:17.807 --> 00:34:18.747
We do need two people.
491
00:34:18.767 --> 00:34:21.248
There's other times where people just fill the time.
492
00:34:21.268 --> 00:34:22.288
This is what I hate about admins.
493
00:34:22.528 --> 00:34:23.449
It's like gas.
494
00:34:23.489 --> 00:34:25.550
It just fills the space if you give it.
495
00:34:26.210 --> 00:34:29.431
And you could put five people in the office and all of a sudden they all look busy.
496
00:34:29.771 --> 00:34:38.795
What was some of your things that you did early on with the first couple of team members to make sure it wasn't a matter of just throwing bodies at this thing and we weren't inefficient in the office?
497
00:34:39.195 --> 00:34:42.940
Well, I mentioned that you made this lovely dialed in job ad.
498
00:34:43.480 --> 00:34:48.166
Mine was very raw and I just needed somebody so bad to help me.
499
00:34:48.246 --> 00:34:54.533
And so my job ad was must be able to grind for hours in silence.
500
00:34:54.834 --> 00:34:55.595
And I hired a
501
00:34:58.858 --> 00:35:01.501
quirky, nerdy college guy.
502
00:35:02.221 --> 00:35:04.964
And I asked him, what was it that caught his eye?
503
00:35:05.004 --> 00:35:08.807
And he's like, that you wanted me to grind for in silence for hours.
504
00:35:09.168 --> 00:35:10.669
It was right down his alley.
505
00:35:11.109 --> 00:35:16.374
So I could not handle like a girl who was talkative and needed to talk about the weekend or whatever.
506
00:35:16.835 --> 00:35:20.478
He never gave me excess conversation and I loved him for it.
507
00:35:20.938 --> 00:35:22.340
That's a big thing right there.
508
00:35:22.940 --> 00:35:25.401
I don't like any tasks touched twice.
509
00:35:26.001 --> 00:35:29.282
I don't like any words having to be repeated twice.
510
00:35:30.102 --> 00:35:33.323
And to me, all of that is money down the drain.
511
00:35:33.843 --> 00:35:37.204
So anybody who worked for me knew I was kind of like that.
512
00:35:37.424 --> 00:35:39.445
And so that didn't happen.
513
00:35:39.545 --> 00:35:44.846
So there wasn't a lot of drama or talking or this was how my weekend was.
514
00:35:45.367 --> 00:35:46.307
Not a lot of that.
515
00:35:47.407 --> 00:35:50.088
And there was another list of what you could do.
516
00:35:50.468 --> 00:35:56.133
So once you got your main things done, what I was doing at first was trying to help the sales guys.
517
00:35:56.313 --> 00:36:00.557
If they couldn't do follow-up calls, I started doing that.
518
00:36:00.797 --> 00:36:04.881
I might say, call them and tell them if we can get the job on this week.
519
00:36:04.901 --> 00:36:12.388
We'll give them this discount, you know, of however many dollars if we can sell that job to try to make them somehow beneficial.
520
00:36:12.908 --> 00:36:15.791
So they had a whole list of what they could do if they were.
521
00:36:16.331 --> 00:36:21.115
all the way down the line, the smallest things that they could do if there was time.
522
00:36:22.216 --> 00:36:23.797
And I needed their day filled.
523
00:36:24.197 --> 00:36:26.018
I could let them go home early too.
524
00:36:26.839 --> 00:36:34.525
So as we've kind of grown Command Center and now moving past us to one location, we have kind of tried all aspects of office and admin.
525
00:36:34.805 --> 00:36:41.490
In person, in an office, we've done US-based virtual, we've done overseas virtual, we've used AI.
526
00:36:42.111 --> 00:36:44.473
And I think we are pretty aligned on the fact that like,
527
00:36:45.253 --> 00:36:48.554
as you scale up in cost, you get what you pay for.
528
00:36:48.735 --> 00:36:48.955
Yes.
529
00:36:49.155 --> 00:36:55.557
Fastest training, the most compliance, usually in-house, where you can talk to them, you can see what they're doing.
530
00:36:55.597 --> 00:36:58.499
It's easier to manage because you can hear what they're talking about.
531
00:36:58.759 --> 00:37:07.582
So instead of waiting to listen to a recording or waiting for a customer to complain and being reactive, you can just hear them make a phone call incorrectly and correct the behavior very quickly.
532
00:37:07.602 --> 00:37:08.843
So the feedback loop is very fast.
533
00:37:09.383 --> 00:37:18.265
I think the thing that we've made a mistake on when we first started Command Center in the second or third year is thinking we could go remote very quickly, when in reality, we didn't have the systems in place to do that.
534
00:37:18.686 --> 00:37:20.926
We didn't track anyone's screens.
535
00:37:21.066 --> 00:37:21.386
Exactly.
536
00:37:21.406 --> 00:37:22.487
We didn't record the calls.
537
00:37:22.507 --> 00:37:26.168
We didn't have AI scrubbing the transcripts, looking for quality assurance.
538
00:37:26.288 --> 00:37:27.448
It was very spot check.
539
00:37:27.528 --> 00:37:29.268
Like, we would go through and spot check people.
540
00:37:29.689 --> 00:37:30.589
Very time intensive.
541
00:37:30.629 --> 00:37:34.930
And I think a lot of times people, they will try to save money on admin, and inherently, yeah.
542
00:37:35.150 --> 00:37:56.876
accidentally they will spend more in management so now the owner's spending more time tracking like listening to recorded calls they're going and double checking things they're spending three to four times longer to train someone because they don't they're not natively speaking english or understanding the concept of lawn care and landscaping or any home service and so i think a lot of people go cheap on admin because like oh it's a
543
00:37:57.236 --> 00:37:57.797
It's a cost.
544
00:37:57.837 --> 00:37:59.018
I should keep it as low as possible.
545
00:37:59.298 --> 00:38:09.469
When we have actually seen almost the opposite, which is if we can pay people more, if we can keep them around longer where they're here for years, they gain skills, they gain confidence on upsells, they reduce the amount of management is required.
546
00:38:09.729 --> 00:38:15.655
And something we really doubled down on, even like 2022, 2023, it was hard to find people with all the stimulus going on.
547
00:38:15.955 --> 00:38:21.937
And we're like, we're gonna pay more, we're gonna try to keep people, and we took some pretty big L's in terms of financially at Command Center just to keep the team.
548
00:38:22.298 --> 00:38:25.779
And I think the one thing that I'm proud of is the local team now, people don't leave.
549
00:38:26.139 --> 00:38:30.041
We let people go if they're not good, but people don't usually leave, and I'm very grateful.
550
00:38:30.341 --> 00:38:35.543
And I think we made the commitment financially, we're gonna lose for several years, but we need to establish this base of team members
551
00:38:35.923 --> 00:38:38.565
Now, we are thinking about, okay, we have the system in place.
552
00:38:38.585 --> 00:38:42.187
We record everyone's clicks, record their screens, record every phone call.
553
00:38:42.347 --> 00:38:45.349
AI is looking at transcripts of calls and grading them and coaching them.
554
00:38:45.689 --> 00:38:49.452
And there's a much more, less reactive approach to quality control.
555
00:38:50.092 --> 00:38:54.395
Now we are thinking about, okay, overseas, in the US, can we do remote?
556
00:38:54.415 --> 00:38:58.738
Can we get 24, no, next week it starts 24 seven answering humans answering the phone.
557
00:38:59.618 --> 00:39:05.283
Walk me through kind of your evolution on, like, your perspective of managing virtual versus in-person.
558
00:39:05.643 --> 00:39:09.386
And try to think more back the first time we tried when it was a bit chaotic.
559
00:39:09.586 --> 00:39:11.948
Because I think a lot of people go to that, immediately think that they can do it.
560
00:39:12.008 --> 00:39:13.469
And it's all saving money.
561
00:39:13.989 --> 00:39:16.311
And then they realize that there's way more management.
562
00:39:16.531 --> 00:39:17.692
Onboarding takes way longer.
563
00:39:17.912 --> 00:39:20.694
You have to educate the person about things that seem like common sense.
564
00:39:20.995 --> 00:39:22.296
There's miscommunication.
565
00:39:22.336 --> 00:39:24.798
And then you spend more time as the owner just...
566
00:39:25.418 --> 00:39:27.278
managing instead of doing the task yourself.
567
00:39:27.719 --> 00:39:32.400
And so it keeps people small because they just say, I should just do it myself because it takes them three hours.
568
00:39:32.660 --> 00:39:33.680
I can do this in five minutes.
569
00:39:34.420 --> 00:39:39.301
Well, you're building some, we are building something from scratch, something that hasn't been done before.
570
00:39:39.481 --> 00:39:42.702
And so it's not like we had people to talk to on how to do it.
571
00:39:43.182 --> 00:39:47.043
So we hired our first group of U.S. agents and,
572
00:39:47.383 --> 00:39:51.446
and we ended up firing everybody but one, and she's still with us today.
573
00:39:52.086 --> 00:39:56.349
But things you've never thought about are gonna come up, and there is no control.
574
00:39:56.429 --> 00:40:05.695
You hope that people are like yourself and are very accountable for their time and make sure they're working and would say, hey, I'm not doing anything, should I hop off?
575
00:40:06.509 --> 00:40:09.191
Very difficult to find that kind of quality of people.
576
00:40:09.291 --> 00:40:10.932
So we take all the blame.
577
00:40:10.993 --> 00:40:12.594
We didn't know what we were doing the first time.
578
00:40:13.354 --> 00:40:18.718
Then we started, we wanted to get all U.S. agents so they would have U.S. accents.
579
00:40:18.758 --> 00:40:20.500
You would think that would be better, right?
580
00:40:20.960 --> 00:40:26.364
But what we found is there's people in Canada that have different accents than those in the deep south.
581
00:40:26.564 --> 00:40:29.487
And they didn't like each other's voices either.
582
00:40:29.507 --> 00:40:29.627
Right.
583
00:40:30.087 --> 00:40:32.948
So you just can't win in that, you think.
584
00:40:33.008 --> 00:40:43.450
So I thought if I hired Philippine agents and I taught them to have their voice be more vanilla and worked with them on their accents, that we could hire some Philippine team members.
585
00:40:43.570 --> 00:40:44.550
So we did that.
586
00:40:45.110 --> 00:40:49.231
And they have qualities that a lot of people in the U.S. don't have.
587
00:40:49.411 --> 00:40:52.592
And that's they are so appreciative of the job.
588
00:40:53.132 --> 00:40:56.152
And so they are really striving to do well.
589
00:40:56.252 --> 00:40:58.913
They would work hard on their voice and their accent
590
00:40:59.533 --> 00:41:02.961
and knowing that that's a little bit of a hiccup for people in the U.S.
591
00:41:03.598 --> 00:41:11.562
And so now we really pivot to like, let's just lean into everyone's strengths, which is let's not have them on the phone, but they're usually doing a lot of the back-end tasks because they're so efficient.
592
00:41:11.582 --> 00:41:12.923
They're the people who have master's degrees.
593
00:41:13.063 --> 00:41:13.683
Incredible.
594
00:41:13.703 --> 00:41:14.184
Doing this.
595
00:41:14.284 --> 00:41:14.964
Incredible.
596
00:41:15.064 --> 00:41:15.644
Very skilled.
597
00:41:15.905 --> 00:41:31.573
And it was like, okay, if we can just take the accent away, then maybe we just need to make sure that US-based agents are answering the phone, but then we can have virtual doing the other tasks that are very much more like heads down in the numbers, meticulous, very detail-oriented, and worked much better.
598
00:41:32.008 --> 00:41:33.750
Yeah, that's worked really well.
599
00:41:33.810 --> 00:41:39.495
And it's basically a promotion for them because they've tried so hard for all these last couple years.
600
00:41:40.016 --> 00:41:44.040
And now we promoted all of the people on the Philly team to admin tasks.
601
00:41:44.160 --> 00:41:54.010
And so and then I've been able to have the Phillies themselves who are incredible, top notch people that could work in the 90 percent.
602
00:41:54.510 --> 00:41:57.532
for efficiency scores, they are the ones who trained them.
603
00:41:57.692 --> 00:42:00.273
And so I'm so proud of them that they were able to do that.
604
00:42:00.694 --> 00:42:06.717
So it comes with the training also that the people who do train, that now has to be handed off.
605
00:42:06.777 --> 00:42:17.443
So my philosophy is that you have an employee, you have a team, you have a department, and every single employee should be able to replicate themselves in another employee.
606
00:42:17.944 --> 00:42:19.685
And so that's how you're going to grow
607
00:42:20.245 --> 00:42:29.292
fast or you're going to have one person, they call them batch mates is what they call them in the Philippines, that everybody who was hired with me becomes my batch mate.
608
00:42:29.492 --> 00:42:40.381
And they always watch out for each other and make sure that they're communicating with one another and that particular coach for them to have a sustained support, which helps for the growth.
609
00:42:40.501 --> 00:42:45.685
If you need more leads for your home service business, go check out homeservicewebdesign.com.
610
00:42:45.946 --> 00:42:47.027
There's no contract.
611
00:42:47.067 --> 00:42:48.207
There's no upfront fees.
612
00:42:48.228 --> 00:42:49.408
You can cancel anytime.
613
00:42:49.689 --> 00:42:51.330
And more importantly, you keep the domain.
614
00:42:51.430 --> 00:42:52.271
Go check it out today.
615
00:42:52.351 --> 00:42:58.256
I think they're a really good use case too, is like to do those tasks that someone might not be able to get to during the busy season.
616
00:42:58.576 --> 00:43:03.020
So the challenge for us is we are okay with paying more for a local agent.
617
00:43:03.040 --> 00:43:04.000
There's way more costs.
618
00:43:04.401 --> 00:43:10.866
However, we also can't get a building and everything that has to do with an office for 200 people.
619
00:43:11.026 --> 00:43:11.246
Right.
620
00:43:11.266 --> 00:43:21.675
And so we have maybe 60 or 70 here, but if we can get 30 or 40 remote, whether U.S., Philippines, etc., we're able to keep us from exploding in overhead and then having to pass that cost to the owners.
621
00:43:21.995 --> 00:43:23.176
And that was really the conversation.
622
00:43:23.196 --> 00:43:25.638
Like, hey, how can we make sense of a lower cost structure for,
623
00:43:25.898 --> 00:43:30.600
to make sure that we don't have to pass this permanent cost down to the owners, but still be at a really high level.
624
00:43:30.660 --> 00:43:40.464
And it was like, we have to take the strengths of all these different aspects because it's great that they can answer the phone, oh, our time, 1 a.m., the other time it's in the middle of the day.
625
00:43:40.624 --> 00:43:44.986
But is answering the phone the best thing for that role or should we be having agents in the U.S.?
626
00:43:45.487 --> 00:43:55.291
And so even one thing I was thinking about when it comes to even now, us hiring U.S.-based virtual agents to, again, prevent the overhead bloat that would increase cost at command center owners.
627
00:43:56.711 --> 00:44:01.193
One thing that I think we're doing differently this year, too, is we're doing W-2s instead of 1099s.
628
00:44:01.213 --> 00:44:01.733
That's right.
629
00:44:02.093 --> 00:44:04.634
And so I think a lot of people, again, it's like cost cut.
630
00:44:04.674 --> 00:44:06.175
Like it's admin, reduce cost.
631
00:44:06.595 --> 00:44:10.436
And so when we first did it, it was like 1099s, your subcontractor, less control.
632
00:44:10.776 --> 00:44:11.937
It's harder to keep them accountable.
633
00:44:11.957 --> 00:44:13.297
It's harder to track their device.
634
00:44:13.617 --> 00:44:14.557
It is all these other aspects.
635
00:44:14.577 --> 00:44:20.359
So now it's like it does cost us a lot more to register in every state, run payroll in every state, be compliant with every single state law.
636
00:44:20.379 --> 00:44:20.940
They get medical.
637
00:44:20.960 --> 00:44:21.540
They get a 401k.
638
00:44:22.180 --> 00:44:23.740
Like all of that's way more expensive.
639
00:44:24.060 --> 00:44:25.181
I think the retention is going to be better.
640
00:44:25.481 --> 00:44:31.482
But I also believe that the compliance will be so much better because now we have more control.
641
00:44:31.642 --> 00:44:34.342
And they feel like they have more skin in the game because they're W2 and they have benefits.
642
00:44:34.442 --> 00:44:34.642
Yeah.
643
00:44:34.842 --> 00:44:35.782
And so it's one of those things.
644
00:44:35.802 --> 00:44:39.763
I just constantly think it's funny how people, like the lower admin costs, the better.
645
00:44:39.963 --> 00:44:43.504
And if you're looking at strictly a defensive measure or cost, I agree.
646
00:44:43.824 --> 00:44:51.825
But I think the thing that we really looked at this year, especially on the phone, but even across all admin, is if you can do a superb job, it can actually be your unique selling proposition.
647
00:44:51.845 --> 00:44:51.945
Yeah.
648
00:44:51.965 --> 00:44:52.165
Yes.
649
00:44:52.445 --> 00:44:56.048
And then using the phone specifically to upsell every single customer.
650
00:44:56.369 --> 00:45:02.293
And so now, even this past week, upgrading the website, it actually says words that our agents say, which is a 10 out of 10 question.
651
00:45:02.694 --> 00:45:04.655
It says on the website, on the homepage, right up front.
652
00:45:04.835 --> 00:45:06.036
It says we answer every call.
653
00:45:06.337 --> 00:45:08.598
And we know that now 24-7 humans are doing that.
654
00:45:08.639 --> 00:45:08.859
Yes.
655
00:45:09.019 --> 00:45:13.542
So these are things that I think we can take what is looked at as an admin, a cost, an office.
656
00:45:13.803 --> 00:45:14.363
It's expensive.
657
00:45:14.703 --> 00:45:17.306
And it's looked at as if I can crush that as much as possible.
658
00:45:17.786 --> 00:45:19.447
And for someone that might be doing $100,000 online,
659
00:45:20.748 --> 00:45:21.749
in monthly revenue.
660
00:45:21.929 --> 00:45:29.633
It's like, well, if I can get, instead of paying $7,000 or $8,000 for wages and a couple thousand dollars for office, I'll just go get something for $2,000 and it'll be way cheaper.
661
00:45:29.793 --> 00:45:33.315
But it's like, wait, that's about $4,000 or $5,000 cost savings, great.
662
00:45:33.615 --> 00:45:40.619
But what if a great office person, well-trained, in-person, really felt part of the brand, could take you from $100,000 in revenue to $150,000 in monthly revenue,
663
00:45:42.920 --> 00:45:52.146
Because they're upselling, they're constantly trying to save customers when they're trying to cancel, they're promoting your services more, they're pushing harder when you're doing follow-up phone calls.
664
00:45:52.426 --> 00:46:01.892
And so from your perspective, just to wrap it up, how have we turned command center and office and admin in general from a cost to how can we actually prove to the owners?
665
00:46:01.912 --> 00:46:04.353
I know this is the audit later this year coming on.
666
00:46:04.533 --> 00:46:06.655
How can we actually prove to the owners we make more money?
667
00:46:07.495 --> 00:46:12.799
in the defensive measure, because we are upselling, we're saving customers, and we're trained at a high level now.
668
00:46:13.099 --> 00:46:17.943
And how can people think about their office and admin a different way than just as a cost structure to be reduced?
669
00:46:18.783 --> 00:46:32.654
I think that you could actually completely cover the admin cost and those people that are what they seem like are overhead or costly, you can completely take that cost away by the way you train your phone agents.
670
00:46:32.914 --> 00:46:36.637
So, for instance, we require three components of a phone call.
671
00:46:37.697 --> 00:46:43.839
The first one is a 10 out of 10, so they must ask, what can we do today to make your experience with Augusta a 10 out of 10?
672
00:46:44.319 --> 00:46:46.460
And secondly is a thoughtful upsell.
673
00:46:46.640 --> 00:46:51.841
So I encourage the team by saying, you're not cold calling, you're not doing a hard sell.
674
00:46:52.121 --> 00:46:54.022
They're already calling for something.
675
00:46:54.422 --> 00:46:59.804
So all the business owners, they're already calling for a specific service of some kind.
676
00:47:00.364 --> 00:47:02.445
And I call it a circle of services.
677
00:47:02.525 --> 00:47:04.705
So they'll say, I would like mowing.
678
00:47:04.785 --> 00:47:05.526
Well, wonderful.
679
00:47:05.546 --> 00:47:07.446
Well, I'll give you this bid for mowing.
680
00:47:07.466 --> 00:47:09.407
Would you care for a bid for some treatments?
681
00:47:09.807 --> 00:47:14.910
You're just basically saying, over here on this shelf, I have something else that will complement this.
682
00:47:15.390 --> 00:47:17.311
So now they've asked for a property cleanup.
683
00:47:17.371 --> 00:47:20.253
Well, would you like a bid for some mulch while we're giving you this?
684
00:47:20.553 --> 00:47:26.597
Or if they're calling for a landscape job, well, then you're going to need mowing after that for maintenance.
685
00:47:26.657 --> 00:47:30.219
So there's always something that you can thoughtfully do.
686
00:47:30.779 --> 00:47:33.621
offer them as an upsell to the service.
687
00:47:33.661 --> 00:47:41.285
So can you imagine if your office staff asked that on every single phone call, the difference that would be?
688
00:47:41.305 --> 00:47:45.887
You're going to ask what the third component is, and that is a thought, is an upbeat tone.
689
00:47:46.407 --> 00:47:47.548
a positive tone.
690
00:47:47.568 --> 00:47:49.890
Well, you're not even going to hire somebody who doesn't have that.
691
00:47:50.031 --> 00:48:01.941
But the thoughtful upsell, I believe that you could have your admin sell so many jobs that way for you without you ever going to do anything because they can do over the phone estimates.
692
00:48:02.421 --> 00:48:08.427
They can measure a property, give a price, and then have a matrix to go off there and actually give treatment prices.
693
00:48:08.818 --> 00:48:28.349
And the difference is, too, yes, admin is a cost, but if you can increase the average customer value on an annual basis from, say, $1,000 to even $1,500 by getting them one extra service, one extra upsell from this, that likely not only does it increase, like in this case, going from $1,000 to $1,500 per year.
694
00:48:28.369 --> 00:48:30.150
If you get it for all your customers, that would increase revenue by 50%.
695
00:48:31.811 --> 00:48:41.399
It would also increase dramatically the efficiency of your marketing because now you can make sense of spending more money on ads when you have a customer that's making you 50% more every single year.
696
00:48:41.799 --> 00:48:42.840
It makes it enterprise value.
697
00:48:42.900 --> 00:48:48.064
The business actually gets better and more valuable when you have a higher annual customer value.
698
00:48:48.405 --> 00:48:51.928
And so I think so many of us get very, very much like, do they finish these tasks?
699
00:48:51.948 --> 00:48:53.829
Did they answer the phone and close the deal?
700
00:48:54.229 --> 00:48:57.212
That could be a check and you get the $1,000 per year customer.
701
00:48:57.772 --> 00:49:09.156
But the extra effort, the extra upsell part is the part that committing to the higher wage, giving them benefits, giving them W-2, investing a lot into training and AI to help with quality control and coaching.
702
00:49:09.656 --> 00:49:12.257
These are things that get them from the $1,000 customer to the $1,500 customer.
703
00:49:12.877 --> 00:49:14.037
And it's so hard to track.
704
00:49:14.497 --> 00:49:23.180
It's so hard to track the difference that your training is making, the difference that your coaching is making, the difference that W-2 versus a 1099 makes when you have that commitment to an office employee.
705
00:49:23.680 --> 00:49:30.767
I want to tell owners from Augusta is you can have your own office person and they can do that for you.
706
00:49:31.248 --> 00:49:42.398
But if you think in terms of having somebody who already has all of this training, who does it, you know, they answer 120 calls in a day, that is that skilled and bringing you those jobs.
707
00:49:42.959 --> 00:49:47.063
Imagine if you could multiply your person that's in the office.
708
00:49:47.583 --> 00:49:57.307
and you have 15 phone calls coming in at the very same time for your services, and all 15 of those people are selling jobs for you.
709
00:49:57.927 --> 00:50:02.969
So now at Command Center, with the people I've hired now, we have over 80 agents involved.
710
00:50:03.829 --> 00:50:07.252
And can you imagine them selling jobs for the owners?
711
00:50:08.113 --> 00:50:10.555
It's just it just is exponential.
712
00:50:11.396 --> 00:50:14.378
What can happen for someone who doesn't have command center last question?
713
00:50:15.859 --> 00:50:19.142
The thing about adding a new one office person, they're acting about adding a second one.
714
00:50:19.302 --> 00:50:22.365
The way that I made sense of it very early on was charging what we call e-fees.
715
00:50:22.485 --> 00:50:24.307
We still have them today at Augusta.
716
00:50:24.607 --> 00:50:28.190
And we expect that e-fees or estimate fees cover the cost of command center.
717
00:50:28.430 --> 00:50:37.340
I think for anyone who doesn't have a command center, whether they're hiring answering service or virtual assistant or hiring their own office person, one way to make sense of it financially is to charge estimate fees.
718
00:50:37.861 --> 00:50:40.464
And so I think at the beginning, I think we started like $25 or $30.
719
00:50:40.504 --> 00:50:43.347
I think we even started it at $10 even.
720
00:50:43.367 --> 00:50:43.908
But it was...
721
00:50:44.568 --> 00:50:45.489
It was such a smart idea.
722
00:50:45.509 --> 00:50:48.952
And now it's scaled up towards $100 at the Bellingham shop and it's a profit center.
723
00:50:48.972 --> 00:50:54.477
They cover far above with their A fees what they get charged at command center.
724
00:50:54.497 --> 00:51:09.831
But I think for someone that's starting out, what I recommend is inside of your pricing, every line item that is going to be one-time jobs, any sort of project, when you're doing the estimate, so basically if it requires an in-person estimate or a drive-by estimate, I am adding per line item an estimate fee.
725
00:51:10.071 --> 00:51:10.271
Right.
726
00:51:10.431 --> 00:51:12.352
And that estimate fee could start off at $20 or $30.
727
00:51:12.573 --> 00:51:13.113
It's very easy.
728
00:51:13.373 --> 00:51:20.958
Take how many accepted estimates you had last month and then take the cost of your admin person and then just take the cost of the admin person, divide it by how many accepted estimates.
729
00:51:21.138 --> 00:51:24.240
That's approximately what your e-fee should be to cover their wages.
730
00:51:24.820 --> 00:51:26.661
And so we determined at the beginning it was like $20 or $30.
731
00:51:26.681 --> 00:51:28.802
We were doing hundreds of those every single month.
732
00:51:29.303 --> 00:51:34.306
And now it's scaled up to where it's $50, then it was $80, then $100 e-fee for every single line item.
733
00:51:34.606 --> 00:51:35.887
And that covers the cost of admin.
734
00:51:35.907 --> 00:51:36.027
Right.
735
00:51:36.367 --> 00:51:40.728
That way, you kind of can make sense of just like, I know my estimate fees cover admin.
736
00:51:40.749 --> 00:51:51.872
So even at the beginning, if it is painful to get it off your plate, by doing that, it unlocks you the ability to focus on sales, growing the business, hiring more team members, better training for the technicians, higher quality for the team out in the field.
737
00:51:52.292 --> 00:51:58.835
And so that would be the first step I would say to people is like, if you've got to make sense of it financially, start wrapping it up into overhead recovery.
738
00:51:59.095 --> 00:51:59.435
Right.
739
00:52:00.075 --> 00:52:00.875
In the form of an E-fee.
740
00:52:00.915 --> 00:52:05.497
But the owner's going to then say, then I can't say I'm offering free estimates.
741
00:52:05.577 --> 00:52:12.600
But you still can because they won't actually pay that E-fee until they accept a job and it's just wrapped up in the cost.
742
00:52:12.620 --> 00:52:13.460
It's overhead recovery.
743
00:52:13.480 --> 00:52:15.581
You could very well call it a fuel surcharge.
744
00:52:15.821 --> 00:52:20.083
You could increase the amount that you're doing on overhead material markup.
745
00:52:20.103 --> 00:52:21.383
You could increase the hourly rate.
746
00:52:21.403 --> 00:52:28.306
But ultimately, we do as an E-fee so that way, from our brain, we can be like, that money has been set aside and I can pay for an admin person.
747
00:52:28.806 --> 00:52:50.499
and so um i think that's a good first that's a great idea for people with just one person two people the pain is not so much to have an office person then absolutely all right well thank you for joining me here today uh if you guys have questions about office ad and getting your first specifically your first person in the office feel free to comment below i think we'll have more team members in here talking more about like the command center side and scaling the systems at
748
00:52:50.839 --> 00:52:51.542
very high level.
749
00:52:51.643 --> 00:52:56.986
I know for the majority of people, getting their first one, two, and three admin people is the challenge.
750
00:52:57.207 --> 00:53:01.847
So in the comments below, if you have any questions for Liz, put them down there and we'll be sure to respond.