Videos

0:00
welcome back to Callahan’s corner where
0:01
you ask the questions we had some live
0:03
right here on Facebook got a User
0:04
submitted question uh by Jose here I’m
0:07
going to read this out actually going to
0:08
pull this up on the screen here uh Jose
0:10
and one of the user groups says I
0:12
created a form so all my texts can fill
0:14
out uh on the field after a service
0:17
created V2 since I believe I was told it
0:19
worked better on V2 and linking services
0:21
and forms on mobile uh so before I go
0:24
farther into that question Jose is
0:25
correct if we’re using it in the field
0:27
and we’re using the Legacy app on our
0:30
phone that is we want to be working with
0:32
V2 forms V3 forms uh will not show up in
0:36
the Legacy app
0:38
um
0:39
uh got it to work but I have uh
0:41
questions on the Forum uh with four
0:43
multiple answers I have linked to custom
0:45
uh list field with same list in answers
0:49
when I fill out the answers on the
0:50
mobile app the answers don’t link spend
0:52
a good amount of time troubleshooting it
0:54
cannot seem to get it to work called sa
0:57
but they are confused like I was I also
0:59
tried to do this on V3 form but I cannot
1:01
even get the form to show up on the
1:03
mobile so I’m back to V2 any helps
1:04
appreciate it so
1:06
um Jose wanted to actually dive in and
1:08
break this in there no need to give us a
1:09
call or drop us a DM for the answer uh
1:12
here in the mindset of abundance on
1:14
Callahan’s Corner we’re actually going
1:15
to show you how to do this so uh Jose’s
1:17
got a couple screenshots just to put
1:18
some context in here
1:20
um
1:21
first of which is he’s using some radial
1:23
buttons uh with the field selection so
1:27
um not too sure without looking at your
1:29
account but these if you’re using these
1:31
custom Fields they need to be mapped to
1:33
the customer and they also need to be
1:35
mapped to text not a list
1:38
um so that’s the first thing I’m looking
1:39
at but I’m going to break down and
1:40
actually show you a a form that we used
1:42
at Callahan’s lawn care Mike my lawn
1:44
care company how we actually did this
1:46
and as we go in here there’s the other
1:49
picture of the custom fields of
1:53
um the areas here back only front only
1:55
and how we actually put that together so
1:57
uh Jose I hope you don’t mind showing
1:59
that but I want to actually put some
2:01
context this question because it’s a
2:02
great question uh so as we dive into
2:04
this here we’re going to go into service
2:06
autopilot forms this is a form that we
2:07
used in my lawn care company
2:10
um right up to the day we sold
2:12
and I’ve made a copy of it and put a
2:15
little tweak on it just so it fits
2:17
Jose’s question a little bit better so
2:18
first thing as we’re talking about it
2:20
here we’re going to be going in node in
2:21
the service autopilot and we’re going to
2:24
go in and just so everybody’s on the
2:26
same page here on my phone uh you’re
2:28
going to be pulling up the Legacy app
2:31
there that is the app that you want to
2:34
have okay and when we dial in there
2:37
we have the ability to go in and uh
2:41
click into that now there’s a drop down
2:42
area for forms we’re going to go in and
2:46
fill out a form and when we click to
2:48
fill out a form I’m going to click on
2:51
the 50 dot commercial inspection form
2:53
and that is the form that we’ve got
2:55
right here haven’t figured out how to
2:56
cast this on my computer it’s on the top
2:58
of the listings to do but if you’re
2:59
looking at it I’ve already filled this
3:00
out to show you how the data flows over
3:02
so first thing we’re doing then is going
3:04
into marketing marketing forms or adding
3:07
a V2 form this is my pre-built form so
3:10
there’s certain things Jose I’m not sure
3:12
if you had on there or not but we really
3:14
want to tackle is the client’s name and
3:17
we did that by adding a field the name
3:19
and then address these two things need
3:21
to be mapped back in the V2 form so when
3:24
we click in there it is listed to
3:26
client’s name first name last name
3:28
service address is going to be the
3:30
service address before we get into the
3:32
custom fields and how to map this this
3:34
into uh bonus work that I got you I’ve
3:37
actually got report that’s going to
3:38
report out on this for your Jose so
3:40
pretty cool stuff
3:41
um form settings
3:43
um
3:44
right now we want to make sure it’s Auto
3:46
proof create and submit and we want to
3:49
create update the lead or I guess you
3:51
can create and update the client because
3:52
this is an existing client for a
3:54
follow-up form uh we also want to show
3:56
on the mobile and the mobile option is
3:58
on the client so when those are set
4:01
um we also probably want to show it on
4:03
the timeline so we have a receipt of
4:05
that basically or a view of that on the
4:07
timeline uh but basically what we’ve got
4:09
here is first name last name service
4:12
address or map back we’ve got our
4:13
manager’s name we’re mapping that back
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um potentially to another custom field
4:19
in the date of inspection so you’ll see
4:21
a naming convention here of zero four
4:23
kpi inspection uh what we did is
4:26
actually went in
4:28
and created these custom fields and I’m
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going to hit this real quickly because
4:33
this is part of the problem that
4:34
intentionally Jose or anybody else
4:35
watching this that may be confusing so
4:37
we’re going to go to the gear icon and
4:39
we’re going to go to our custom field
4:41
dive into the custom Fields here we’re
4:44
going to go in and add a custom field so
4:46
o4 was my naming convention that allowed
4:49
me to find it and that’s a profile tag
4:51
or profile custom field
4:54
um and this could be managers name for
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the kpi that I did we want to associate
5:02
it to the customer not the employee not
5:05
the property reason being is when I show
5:07
you the bonus report how to pull this
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quality control report up from the
5:11
manager property is not going to be
5:12
available
5:14
um so hey what’s up Jose watching right
5:15
now brother great question
5:17
um and I’ll send you a link to this as
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well
5:19
um and I’m actually going to show you
5:21
how to create a report on this as well
5:22
value type here on most of these is
5:24
going to be a text so in Jose’s instance
5:28
um not a list but a text is where we’d
5:30
want to go
5:32
um and then in addition uh what I’ve
5:34
done in my form is for the first couple
5:37
examples I did a net promoter scores on
5:40
the quality so lawn mowing uh rate the
5:44
lawn mowing performed at the last visit
5:46
this includes even cut no turn marks on
5:48
the grass trash was not run over and the
5:50
grass was direct away from beds blown
5:52
off prior to finishing the job and then
5:54
zero is the worst 10 is the best so
5:58
we’re gonna have a ranking score of this
6:00
so the manager now uh just like Paul did
6:02
at Callahan’s and a few others Jordan uh
6:04
went through on the mobile and filled
6:06
this out and then this triggered a
6:07
report that we could actually go through
6:09
and take action on and eventually add
6:11
some tags to and actually create some
6:13
automations to create an automated
6:14
ticket not going to get into the
6:16
automation part today but I will later
6:18
in another video
6:20
um but obviously just trying to set the
6:21
mindset of abundance here great
6:23
Community around sa um these are things
6:24
that all users need to know how to do
6:26
you shouldn’t have to pay somebody to
6:28
show you how to do this if you need some
6:29
help obviously we’re here but the idea
6:31
is if if this is something you need you
6:33
should be able to do it yourself if you
6:35
need to be do it so uh what we’ve done
6:37
here is we go into lawn mowing
6:39
and I’ve created a custom field 04 lawn
6:42
mowing kpi and the way I did that was
6:45
just like this o4 allowed me to easily
6:48
find them and I’ll show you how easy it
6:50
made that’s o4
6:53
lawn mowing
6:55
kpi customer Associated value type is
6:59
actually a number and we’d hit save so
7:01
that’s how when we went in we would go
7:04
in and select custom field and go in
7:07
and type o4 Dot boom and now all the o4
7:11
profile tags for my kpi here are all
7:14
connected together so you’ll see uh
7:17
shrubs on property KPM managers names
7:19
sucker growth lawn line trimming blowing
7:22
weed for appearance kpi instruction date
7:24
and then the notes was a text field so
7:26
that’s kind of what Jose was asking
7:28
about but what I’ve got here is we’ve
7:30
got the ability to go in now and rank
7:32
the lawn mowing the line trimming the
7:34
blowing We Fear Weed Free appearance and
7:37
Landscape that sucker growth on trees
7:39
shrubs on property other inspections do
7:42
so these can trigger by tags automations
7:45
and we’ll talk about that in another
7:46
video and then inspection notes and
7:49
inspection notes is exactly what Jose
7:50
you were trying to actually do so your
7:53
custom view was uh in my instance o4 kpi
7:56
notes and when we look at the 04
8:01
this is kind of the cool thing is when
8:03
we search for that now everything’s all
8:05
together
8:06
o4 kpi nodes and we can tell is a text
8:10
field and that’s the missing thing we
8:12
really don’t want that as a list
8:13
probably wanted a text field
8:16
um
8:17
so once we get all that literally we’re
8:20
either going to go into the mobile like
8:21
I previewed here under the client
8:24
and we’re going to fill this out which
8:27
we did and I tested it on this client
8:31
and if I go under edit and custom fields
8:34
we can indeed see that these numbers on
8:37
my fictitious inspection came in right
8:39
from the form or from the mobile so that
8:41
does work it’s a V2 form and it’s a
8:44
legacy app those are the key things we
8:46
want to be looking at
8:48
so how that’s going to play out on the
8:51
desktop or if we got a throwaway
8:52
Chromebook where we’re using the desktop
8:54
uh version in a Chromebook would be we’d
8:57
want to go to the a for auto assist and
8:59
create a quality control forms
9:03
go to our summer QC form
9:07
and fill in
9:09
the manager’s name
9:11
so Mike the manager
9:14
and I would go in and now click in the
9:17
radio buttons
9:19
as I walked around the property either
9:20
in the mobile
9:21
or on the desktop version
9:25
and is it to do recruit required for X
9:28
to work if it is we could click this and
9:29
that could create ticket or to do
9:31
automatically and we could say
9:34
um
9:35
a landscape beds need to be
9:42
rereaded
9:45
nine six eight slash 2023 and put my
9:49
initials there so all that information
9:51
now is in the automated report so we’d
9:54
hit submit all that data now would start
9:56
to flow in so the final thing that I
9:58
want to leave you guys with here is uh
10:01
two things actually one other thing that
10:03
you may not be aware of
10:05
um Jose asked the question anybody else
10:06
when you have the visibility level of
10:10
this question set to office only most of
10:14
the time it will not appear in the
10:16
report
10:17
not exactly sure to buy to be honest
10:19
with you but when I tested it as office
10:22
only the custom field did not come in
10:24
the report when it was set to everyone
10:26
it showed up in the report so the final
10:28
thing that I’m going to suggest we do is
10:31
go to the service autopilot report
10:33
Center
10:34
and we’re going to go in data hit client
10:36
simple and we’re going to grab probably
10:39
not account balance but I did that
10:40
because I have so many test accounts so
10:42
I could confirm which test account was
10:43
what which
10:45
um but basically we’ve got client name
10:46
client sense service address City and
10:49
postal code and you probably also have
10:51
type residential or commercial so we
10:53
could segment that the next option is
10:55
going to be custom field so once again
10:57
we we broke it into o4 that’s our
10:59
profile tag and we were able to go in
11:02
and say all the op4 profile tags here is
11:05
what we needed so we checked them all
11:07
then we scroll down and hit OK
11:10
when we did that it populated some data
11:15
now the next thing we could do is
11:17
actually put in a date filter
11:19
um and I’ll show you how to do that but
11:20
the idea here is we have not
11:23
um
11:25
updated any more of these test accounts
11:27
and I filtered down the just the test
11:28
accounts in this account
11:30
um but uh Testament Jagger and test 887
11:34
um
11:35
one of them ones right here was done
11:37
Mick Jagger was done through the mobile
11:40
and then the other one here was done
11:41
through the desktop through the a for
11:43
auto assist but now what I’ve got is
11:45
I’ve gone in and averaged
11:48
the ranking
11:50
of the scores per service
11:54
and any notes
11:57
so sucker growth needs to be cut back an
11:59
entire property at 6 8 20 23. so this
12:02
thing here actually is a custom field
12:04
that now can also be tied into
12:07
um an automated email or other
12:08
confirmation information that needs to
12:10
be pulled into a work order uh later
12:12
down the line and this could also
12:14
automatically trigger a ticket or a
12:16
to-do as an event for someone to
12:18
actually be on the hope to do that
12:20
um probably wouldn’t want account
12:21
balance but some of the things I would
12:22
want to look at is okay when had they
12:25
been a client since
12:27
and when was the inspection date and
12:31
what I’ve done has gone in and grouped
12:34
and I’ll remove the group but I’ve
12:36
actually grouped it by the manager’s
12:38
name so each manager now is chunked
12:40
together
12:42
to go in group
12:44
by managers names each manager has their
12:46
own chunk of inspections there or if we
12:49
had a signed resource we could have uh
12:51
the ratings by each signed crew
12:54
but this is going to give you uh this
12:57
information so the final piece is we’d
12:58
want to go in and hit the home button to
13:01
get back out and save it
13:03
now remember these custom Fields every
13:05
time we do this inspection are going to
13:06
get overwritten so we probably want to
13:08
create an automated
13:10
um report to go in and click in the
13:14
thing here and you only get
13:18
um five of these so you need to
13:20
obviously use them sparingly but I would
13:22
take the analysis and bucket it up into
13:24
a report to save some of those but once
13:26
we have the analysis of the report we
13:27
would literally go in hit from to two
13:30
whoever’s sending it to the subject
13:32
would be uh
13:36
monthly
13:38
property reports
13:41
and we’d probably want to put it in
13:43
landscape and we’d want to schedule this
13:45
on a say a weekly basis
13:49
and it would go out
13:53
maybe every Monday
13:56
and the start time we’d have that go out
13:58
probably at say 5 a.m so it’s their
14:00
first thing and then we would start it
14:04
um
14:05
the following Monday here
14:07
so once that’s set we hit done that’s
14:10
going to automatically trigger that PDF
14:13
email so if the custom Fields do end up
14:15
getting it overwritten month after month
14:17
we now have an email copy or hard copy
14:20
or refer back to as well on the client
14:21
record uh when we go into view client
14:26
uh essays compress this for Speed when
14:29
we go down to the bottom here where it
14:31
says details
14:35
all the custom fields are viewable and
14:38
we can open up and take a look at the
14:40
form submissions as well
14:43
um in this area so that will give us all
14:45
the data that we need on a historical
14:47
basis so remember if you’re updating
14:50
these don’t override the existing form
14:52
submission update and enter a new form
14:55
submission and that’ll get you the data
14:57
so
14:58
um once again this is how we tackle it
15:00
we go in we create our form we map them
15:02
back to the customer in a text field or
15:05
a number field it’s going to be Auto
15:07
create prove on submit update the client
15:09
or lead and we want to map back the
15:12
client’s name here and the service
15:13
address
15:15
and when we get to the client we want to
15:17
add under the auto assist
15:19
make sure when you build your your form
15:22
it’s also set to Mobile on client but we
15:24
want to go in and put our quality
15:25
control forms and our shortcut there
15:29
and when it’s on the forms we have under
15:31
form settings we have show in Mobile and
15:35
we want to update that to the client and
15:38
finally we want to go back into the
15:39
report Center and once we make the
15:42
report we automate the scheduling of it
15:43
and when we go into the property
15:45
inspection report
15:47
we want to be able to go into client
15:49
simple pull out the custom fields we
15:52
have client name service address that
15:54
we’ve already put in here and then we
15:57
want to aggregate these guys on top to
15:59
average them and then we want to sort
16:01
from lowest to highest so the worst uh
16:05
offenders would be here
16:07
and any notes would be here so I can
16:10
systematically go per crew or per
16:12
manager for quality control with a
16:13
weekly or monthly report based on your
16:15
quality control inspections and I
16:17
recommend taking those quality control
16:18
inspections and assign them as a ticket
16:21
event with a deadline assigned and
16:24
dispatched through the closeout day
16:25
screen do not make it a service because
16:28
a zero dollar amount service and zero
16:30
budgeted amount service will screw up
16:32
your data for your job costing and price
16:35
raising reports uh whether you’re
16:36
building yourself or especially if
16:37
you’ve done it through simple growth so
16:38
you want to use those tickets to be able
16:40
to filter out anything that’s not in
16:42
actual Revenue generating job and use
16:44
them as a ticket it can be scheduled
16:46
through the closeout or through the
16:47
dispatch board track through the
16:49
closeout day screen budgeted time can be
16:51
tracked but it’s not going to show a
16:52
zero dollar for Revenue when we go to
16:54
run a report so Callahan’s corner you
16:56
ask the questions we had some live right
16:57
here on Facebook Jose appreciate the
16:59
question and um if anybody has any
17:01
questions or you’d like a free analysis
17:03
of your service autopilot or any other
17:05
software you’re using www Dot
17:08
sgscall.com and you can grab a three 30
17:11
minutes
17:12
um call it myself or one of our uh seven
17:15
figure business experts on the simple
17:16
growth team so
17:18
sgscall.com to book a free call and feel
17:21
free to submit your questions here in
17:22
the messages or on the private user
17:25
groups that uh we are in where we answer
17:27
the questions uh free of charge to help
17:29
you run your business uh easier without
17:31
trying to have to take the guesswork and
17:34
try to create these things that have
17:35
already been created

0:00
first ever office hours here with um
0:03
simple growth it looks like Dylan has
0:05
taken over the main screen and I am
0:07
hanging down to the bottom here let’s
0:08
see if we can even this up a little bit
0:10
there we go uh sorry about the delay uh
0:13
we were trying to start about 15-20
0:15
minutes ago but uh had some technical
0:17
difficulties getting in here but uh
0:19
happy to announce we’re gonna be doing a
0:20
weekly at least once if not twice a week
0:22
open Office hours and myself Dylan and
0:25
other people from the simple growth team
0:26
are going to be coming in live and
0:28
answering your questions around service
0:30
autopilot around job costing workflow
0:34
um automations other things in there and
0:37
we’re going to actually open up the
0:38
screen and show you how a lot of these
0:39
things are done as we continue to evolve
0:42
in uh some other crms such as co-pilot
0:44
these will also open up to your
0:46
questions around the different crms
0:48
we’re working with but right now this
0:49
will be a Facebook live that we’re doing
0:52
at least once or twice a week
0:53
pre-announced and we’re gonna be putting
0:55
in
0:56
um a set schedule but if you’re just
0:57
joining us we had some technical
0:58
difficulties here so it’s gonna be an
1:00
abbreviated version today but rolling
1:02
into holiday weekend I don’t I can’t
1:04
think of anything better that I would
1:05
want to do is uh hang out with some
1:06
business owners ask them some questions
1:08
and build some clarity going into the
1:10
holiday weekend so if you’re just
1:11
joining us and you haven’t pre-submitted
1:13
any of your service autopilot questions
1:15
drop them in the comments um and Dylan
1:18
and I are going to answer them live if
1:19
we don’t get to them live in this one uh
1:21
like I said once or twice a week we’ll
1:22
be doing live office hours it no cost
1:25
for the users of service autopilot
1:29
um and eventually some of the other crms
1:31
that we work with so Dylan I know you
1:32
had a couple pre-submitted questions off
1:34
the service autopilot Facebook group
1:37
um if you want I can uh show your screen
1:40
here it looks like and we’ll see what
1:41
happens here so it looks like we’ve got
1:43
five or six people piling in here even
1:44
the late notice so uh welcome to the
1:46
first office hour here that uh we’re
1:48
gonna be rocking and rolling with and I
1:50
think we’ve got some new screen options
1:51
here Dylan so this might actually uh
1:53
this
1:55
oh wow we might be able to make it big
1:57
what let’s not get crazy but maybe
2:01
it’s questionable hold on
2:04
what do we got going on here oh that’s
2:07
that’s that’s better the better all
2:09
right let’s see if I hide myself bring
2:12
myself back this might work
2:17
there we go wow Helen
2:21
all right and the screen what could be
2:24
going right this is good we’re good it’s
2:26
as close as we’ve ever had on a screen
2:27
share so I want to thank a couple more
2:29
people piling in here simple growth
2:31
office hours uh if you put your comments
2:34
in the chat we will answer them live
2:35
here um Dylan has some pre-submitted
2:37
questions so Dylan I’ll let you take the
2:39
wheel and um let’s go
2:43
cool all right well yeah the first one
2:46
um long time friend of the show Steve
2:47
Delaney uh had a good question and yeah
2:52
what’s that he also goes by sevi
2:55
it’s heavy I forgot how to spell his
2:57
name so that’s what printed out on the
2:59
name tag
3:01
gotcha gotcha yeah it was a good
3:03
question uh so Steve said I want to know
3:05
how to create or where to find a report
3:07
that tells me how long a client has been
3:10
with us I have one that uh I he has a
3:13
report that shows if they cancel how
3:16
long they were with us but he wants to
3:18
know specifically if they’re with us
3:21
what is the average time that they have
3:23
been with us so hopefully that makes
3:25
sense
3:26
um but yeah I took a took a stab at it
3:28
this might I don’t think this is a
3:31
pre-built report in essay like I don’t
3:33
think that report exists so I just
3:35
started kind of playing with
3:37
um some of the formulas in the report
3:40
Center here so it’d be clear Dylan
3:41
you’re uh you’re going into the uh the
3:43
third party bolt on the the Reporting
3:46
Center
3:47
um you don’t need to go in there under
3:48
reports reports and then uh you are
3:50
building out an analysis unlike the
3:52
toaster oven off on the left we’re going
3:54
over to the little guy with a square and
3:56
the plus create analysis and this is
3:58
where we’re going to access those data
3:59
tables inside uh service autopilot so I
4:02
will let you roll there I just want to
4:03
put some clarity to that because a lot
4:04
of people have no idea this even exists
4:07
yeah and and to be perfectly honest this
4:09
was a little bit of trial and error but
4:11
it ended up you know there’s I think
4:12
it’s worth the 15-20 minutes that it
4:14
took um because I think this could be a
4:16
valuable report for for quite a few
4:18
people
4:19
um so
4:20
yeah it’s called Steve test for now
4:23
um I was thinking about going into
4:24
Steve’s file and just building it right
4:25
in there for him but I figured this
4:27
might be better
4:28
um so first things first is I just use
4:31
like the clients detailed section here
4:33
and I just brought in the least amount
4:35
of information that I thought might be
4:37
applicable so client name client sense
4:39
date and then the termination date
4:41
didn’t really end up using that but not
4:44
a huge deal
4:46
and then I just pressed OK down here
4:49
and it brought in quite a bit of data
4:50
this is kind of like our demo account so
4:53
I just filtered out
4:55
um everybody who’s not didn’t have
4:57
Callahan in the name so we’re just
4:59
looking at Mike in here so we just got
5:01
basically two examples we got client
5:04
name Mike Callahan client send state is
5:08
looks like
5:10
I don’t know what kind of format that’s
5:12
in maybe it’s November 6 2016 or
5:16
June 11th yeah we can change the
5:19
formatting but yeah that’s perfect so uh
5:20
apparently halfway decent I’ve been
5:22
around since uh 2016 and the other me
5:24
was around uh 2018 so I have to lipstick
5:28
yeah yeah 100 so the next thing and this
5:32
is where I took most of my time and if
5:34
someone’s like already has this formula
5:36
I would have taken them two seconds but
5:37
some of these formulas in here
5:39
can get pretty complex and I guess you
5:43
can’t see it on the screen here but if I
5:45
click into this little formula section
5:47
there’s some very complex formulas there
5:49
at least in my opinion
5:51
um so the one that I ended up choosing
5:53
that I think solves what Steve was was
5:56
hoping for
5:57
is there’s a formula called Date diff
6:00
and I know you can’t see me clicking in
6:03
here but if you go to the date diff
6:05
formula and you just kind of hover over
6:06
it
6:08
and we’ll give it a second on my screen
6:11
it says computes the difference between
6:13
two dates
6:14
so I’m like I think that’s kind of what
6:17
Steve wanted I’m pretty sure so I put in
6:21
and honestly I had to click into this
6:23
formula help thing here to just kind of
6:25
see what were the variables that it’s
6:27
actually requesting for with a couple
6:29
attempts at trial and error so D equals
6:32
days
6:33
and here is the
6:36
um basically the column that we’re
6:39
referencing so this is the clients since
6:42
date
6:43
and then this last part here just
6:46
basically Compares it to today’s date so
6:49
this will be a rolling number
6:51
so that’s how I got the number of days
6:54
in here now Steve might be looking for a
6:57
number of months or number of years or
6:59
something like that but this is kind of
7:00
the the first iteration does that make
7:02
sense yeah it looks really good Dylan
7:04
I’m glad you talked about the formula
7:05
the formula help this product is
7:07
actually called Low G l-o-g-i it’s a
7:10
third party bolt-on so the first couple
7:11
years of this service autopilot did not
7:14
have the formula help or the
7:15
availability of some of these formulas
7:18
that they’ve just added so if there’s a
7:19
formula you’re looking at and it’s not
7:22
there if you look up logi logi into
7:25
their help
7:26
um desk a lot of the additional stuff
7:29
that’s not visible in essay will be
7:32
visibly from their help site you can
7:33
copy and paste some of that stuff over
7:34
or kind of iterate it off like Dylan did
7:36
bases days or years with the operators
7:39
so it makes complete sense Dylan awesome
7:41
work on this one yeah so I titled the
7:44
column days as clients it was the first
7:46
thing that came to my mind maybe Steve
7:48
you might call it something else but
7:51
you’ll basically be able to just if you
7:53
want I can actually even just kind of
7:54
send this over to you after but if you
7:56
copy this formula exactly you’ll arrive
7:59
at this and then
8:01
this would be optional but I clicked on
8:04
the column header here
8:06
and I did Aggregate and then I did
8:10
average
8:11
I figured that would probably be at
8:14
least one of the numbers that you’re
8:15
looking for here is the clients that are
8:19
still with us what is the average number
8:22
of days that they have been with us so
8:24
in order to do that you might need to
8:26
filter out the clients that have a
8:29
termination date
8:31
so if you only want to look at the
8:32
clients that are still active any client
8:35
the termination date needs to be
8:36
filtered out
8:37
and maybe you want to have two analysis
8:40
analyzes
8:42
um
8:43
one with clients with with no
8:46
termination dates or active clients and
8:48
then ones a different one for clients
8:51
that have actually canceled what’s like
8:52
that final
8:54
um
9:03
Dylan has froze here so we’ll give him a
9:05
minute to get back but hopefully that
9:07
makes sense
9:08
um what uh Savvy or Steve is looking for
9:11
over there uh the other thing too is
9:12
you’re looking at it exactly oh yeah I
9:15
was just you froze up there for a minute
9:16
so I was just talking there um but yeah
9:18
the the other thing that um we may need
9:20
to be aware of is uh when you update
9:23
those we do not want to go in and add
9:25
them we want to be able to hit that
9:27
replace button and update it so if it’s
9:28
an update to the current existing
9:30
formula uh that will lock up your report
9:32
Center in ways that sa cannot even
9:34
untangle it so uh kind of a pro tip
9:36
there
9:37
yeah um and you can hear me okay now yep
9:40
you’re good yeah listen to you well
9:41
you’re coming from what Auto is it
9:43
Ottawa yeah I’m not in New York so
9:45
you’re a little long distance over the
9:46
internet here it’s all right
9:48
yeah but no that is a good point like
9:50
when I was doing my trial and error I
9:52
was clicking right here with my mouse
9:54
and then I was editing the formula here
9:57
and I wasn’t adding it I was just
9:59
replacing it
10:01
um and I mean it’s such a simple report
10:04
that even if you did lock it up
10:06
um it wouldn’t be the end of the world
10:07
to rebuild but yeah that’s a good point
10:09
you want to try to minimize
10:11
um having to start from scratch because
10:13
a report is totally locked up awesome
10:16
um so sevi we will send you the code
10:17
here and uh you’re gonna owe me a Corona
10:19
at the uh the poolside Cabana at the
10:22
masterminds uh event in Nashville so uh
10:25
and move a beer we’ll send you that over
10:27
for you and Dylan you got any other
10:29
questions that were submitted I’m
10:30
looking right now on my phone it doesn’t
10:32
look like there’s any other in the live
10:33
chat but I think you got a few more
10:35
yeah I do have one other one and Mike I
10:38
just sent you the formula I don’t know
10:39
if you want to put that in the uh in the
10:41
chat um yeah I’ll message it right over
10:44
to sevi okay
10:46
um so yeah the other question it looks
10:48
like Leslie is going to get us a uh
10:51
expert level report question for next
10:53
week which should be interesting all
10:55
right
10:55
um but PJ post um had a pretty good
10:58
question here so
11:00
he said what is a good workflow for
11:03
employees to know how much material they
11:05
will need for a job mulch is easy for
11:08
him because he separates the actual
11:10
installation of the mulch in a template
11:12
and he budgets one hour per yard so we
11:17
know the material amount to purchase
11:18
based on the budgeted hours produced in
11:21
the Matrix but for a service that one
11:23
budgeted hour doesn’t coincide with a
11:26
certain unit amount is there a easy way
11:29
to figure this out of course I can do
11:31
the math each time and communicate that
11:33
in job notes but I was hoping to find
11:35
something better
11:37
so there definitely is a better way 100
11:40
percent
11:41
really you shouldn’t in a perfect world
11:44
you should not really be basing the
11:45
quantity of how much mulch you need even
11:47
in that kind of simplistic example
11:50
based on the amount of budgeted hours
11:54
yes I agree with separating out the
11:56
labor and the product 100 percent but
11:59
really you should be telling your Crews
12:01
how much
12:03
how much of a quantity of a product that
12:05
they need to bring by the quantity of
12:08
product that’s associated with the job
12:11
so that might sound super super basic
12:13
but it is a common error that people
12:16
make with service autopilot where the
12:19
products that are getting hopefully
12:21
you’re using products some people don’t
12:23
even use products but when they do use
12:25
products sometimes the quantity or the
12:27
amount of the actual product from the
12:30
estimate that gets transferred over to
12:31
the job
12:32
doesn’t actually correlate with anything
12:34
so it’s
12:36
I see sometimes people will calculate
12:38
for example mulch based off of mulch bed
12:41
square feet well that’s great but the
12:44
unit of measure that that will use is
12:46
square footage so I don’t know about you
12:49
Mike but if I told my guys hey you need
12:52
875 square feet worth of mulch that
12:55
could be potentially a little bit
12:57
disastrous I’m just a simple man that
12:59
mows Lawns over here I don’t have that
13:00
many fingers to do the mass that would
13:02
probably uh that would definitely be an
13:03
issue for me
13:05
but you know x amount of yards they can
13:08
go and pick that up you know or whatever
13:10
that is so
13:12
PJ what I would recommend without going
13:15
too deep into the weeds is how they
13:18
should be figuring out
13:20
how much product they need and I took a
13:23
couple screenshots from the mobile app
13:25
on the Legacy version of the app
13:28
it’s not the greatest they do need to
13:30
basically click into the job
13:32
and I’ll kind of highlight it right here
13:35
this would be like a 10
13:37
yard mulch example and in our demo
13:40
account here brown mulch doesn’t have
13:42
the word yard in it which it should
13:45
but you would see
13:46
a yard of brown mulch or brown mulch
13:50
with yard in Brackets and then a
13:52
quantity of 10.
13:54
but in the Legacy app they actually do
13:56
need to click into the job so if you got
13:58
like five mulch jobs for the day they
14:00
would need to basically click into each
14:02
one I believe to view the quantity
14:05
on the team app it’s actually a little
14:08
bit better and I personally didn’t use
14:11
the team app that much but in this
14:14
specific scenario and I’m curious to
14:16
hear your opinion Mike once I show this
14:17
but I do think it’s a little bit of a
14:20
simpler workflow
14:21
so
14:23
so I took a couple screenshots from the
14:25
team app and this is a
14:27
just like that single mulch job with 10
14:30
yards well in the t-map you click menu
14:32
up here on the top left
14:37
and then there is a load list right here
14:43
and that leads into as you would expect
14:45
the load list with the products that
14:48
we’re going to actually need for the day
14:49
so if you got 10 mulch jobs rather than
14:52
having to click into 10 specific jobs if
14:55
you do use the tmap you can hit this
14:57
load list and see all the products that
14:59
you need for the day whether that’s
15:00
loading up at your shop or driving to a
15:03
mulch yard and picking up the correct
15:05
quantity and correct color of mulch
15:09
awesome awesome explain explanation
15:11
there Dylan so I I’ll be honest I’m kind
15:13
of on the fence in this one
15:14
um we’ve been I’ve got a really good
15:16
relationship with Tara over at uh sa
15:18
that had a product and Tara has been
15:20
very uh candid and honest about the road
15:22
map and and publicly uh talking to
15:24
everyone uh she’s even gone out and
15:26
worked in a lot of our clients offices
15:28
need to need with him to understand the
15:29
workflow and how people are using sa
15:32
um so at the current time I do like that
15:35
option Dylan
15:36
um there is a couple of major things
15:38
that essay I do believe from what Tara
15:40
is telling me I can’t guarantee it but
15:42
from what I’m hearing from essays are
15:43
going to be some additional
15:45
um advancements to the new app there not
15:47
the Legacy app uh one of the fallbacks
15:49
right now is your V2 forms are not
15:51
available there
15:53
um that’s something that they’re
15:54
actually going to probably be working
15:55
um on to actually make those available
15:57
so with that a few of the other little
15:59
minor tweaks
16:00
um that at that point I think my
16:01
recommendation is go to the new app
16:04
um but depending on whether you’re an
16:06
estimator or a crew leader there may be
16:09
some pros and cons of both so it’s kind
16:11
of explore the options but if you’ve got
16:13
a design build or install Crew That’s
16:15
strictly doing a lot of material stuff
16:16
uh this would probably be the app I’d
16:18
have that team use uh based on on this
16:20
functionality you’re showing us
16:22
yeah 100 the only way that I’m aware of
16:25
in the Legacy app that I think the
16:28
majority of users are still using
16:30
um is you can view job notes for the day
16:33
in bulk so like if you wanted to just
16:37
kind of keep everything status quo PJ
16:40
um there is a scenario where actually
16:42
putting the quantity of product in the
16:43
job notes might honestly be the cleanest
16:46
workflow for you right now because
16:49
before at least I instructed my guys
16:51
before they left in the morning hit view
16:53
all job notes on the mobile app and if
16:55
it says oh you need an aerator at this
16:58
specific property for the day like that
17:00
was their cue to actually load that up
17:02
in the morning if it was in a regular
17:04
piece of equipment that they needed
17:07
so if you are kind of dead set on
17:09
continuing to use
17:11
um the Legacy app until all of V3 is out
17:15
and you’re happy with it then I would
17:18
probably recommend just keeping things
17:19
in the job notes if you have started to
17:22
dabble with V3 and the tmap then I say
17:27
go for it and just try to make sure that
17:30
the pro the unit of measurement that
17:32
you’re using in the products on the
17:34
estimating template is going to be the
17:36
unit of measurements that actually makes
17:38
sense to the guy guys in the field 873
17:41
as a quantity for mulch
17:44
they’re going to still have to do some
17:45
division there and say well
17:48
how many feet can a yard cover and then
17:50
they got to call the mall chart and say
17:51
hey do you have
17:53
5.39 yards of mulch that’s not a super
17:57
clean workflow I’d prefer for the
17:58
estimator or the owner to do that math
18:01
when they’re doing the estimate
18:03
so that the crew just has a simple
18:05
number here such as yeah and what a pro
18:09
trip trick when we do these essay setups
18:10
or deep Dives if you’re using an
18:12
industry standard of a budgeted hour per
18:14
yard the budgeted hours can be your
18:17
cheat sheet of how many full yards you
18:19
need for the jobs you take the budget
18:21
hours and transfer that five hours of
18:23
budgeted time into the product and that
18:25
would be five yards of black mulch or
18:27
brown mulch whatever that is so there
18:29
are some ways that when we dive in a
18:30
little bit deeper with these deep Dives
18:31
or essay setups that we uh we’ll put a
18:33
standardized workflow to some of these
18:35
things if it’s available based on some
18:36
of the standards and averages we have
18:38
um Dylan can’t thank you enough for
18:39
coming on today and just crushing it out
18:41
for the last 20 minutes obviously we had
18:43
some technical difficulties
18:44
um but we’re going to be announcing here
18:45
shortly next week at least once or twice
18:48
set times each week where you can
18:50
pre-submit your questions or live like
18:52
Leslie did we’re going to dive in and
18:54
answer your questions and uh no need to
18:57
wait on chat or phone for support
19:00
um if you want actual live workflow
19:02
industry expert approach for guys and
19:05
girls that have done this in the field I
19:07
think we’re up to nine or ten full-time
19:08
people now the team Dylan that Naval
19:10
owned seven-figure businesses past
19:12
current or past simple growth clients
19:14
that have sold their businesses now on
19:16
the team so uh not only do we get sa but
19:18
we get how it works in your business on
19:20
a day-to-day basis
19:21
um and we understand how you probably
19:23
should be using it or how you do use it
19:24
and how we can make it work for you so
19:26
uh Dylan can’t think enough any closing
19:28
thoughts here on simple growth office
19:30
hours the first time uh in 2023
19:33
ah yeah just I mean submit some
19:36
questions I think Leslie’s going to have
19:37
a tough one for us next week so whether
19:39
it’s simple or expert level uh we’ll try
19:42
our best to answer them I wouldn’t
19:44
expect anything less from Leslie quite
19:45
the power user herself so uh we’ll see
19:47
if we can tackle that one head on
19:49
um well everybody out there have a great
19:51
holiday weekend coming up here in the
19:52
states and uh Dylan you enjoy your your
19:54
non-holiday Monday off uh in Canada and
19:57
we’ll see you guys uh again next week
20:00
here at our set hours that we’re gonna
20:01
be announcing in the simple growth page
20:03
and the sa users Facebook group so we’ll
20:05
see again simple growth office hours
20:07
2023 Dylan Mike and the simple growth
20:09
team coming at you Dylan thanks a lot
20:11
brother have a good weekend

0:00
the questions we had some live right
0:01
here on Facebook so had a lot of
0:03
questions this weekend over the holiday
0:05
weekend uh Memorial Day to be exact if
0:07
you’re watching this live or just
0:09
recorded uh Mike Andy’s co-pilot CRM has
0:13
just released uh what I believe to be
0:15
the first AI assistant for copywriting
0:18
built in natively inside their document
0:21
editor so a lot of questions via private
0:24
message and Facebook uh reaching out to
0:27
myself at simple growth uh asking Mike
0:30
can you give us some insight how to
0:32
actually use the AI assistant inside
0:34
co-pilot to help generate
0:37
marketing copy for us inside copilot so
0:40
what we’re going to do is actually
0:41
opening up uh copilot CRM and breaking
0:45
down how do you actually use the AI
0:47
assistant uh to generate marketing
0:49
copies so uh it’s simple growth that are
0:52
done for you automations we’ve got well
0:53
over 200 Services way before AI that we
0:56
went through and actually wrote expert
0:58
content in here so uh one of the cool
1:01
things with this tool is it’s not going
1:02
to necessarily replace a copywriter 100
1:04
it’s going to get you about 90 percent
1:06
of the way there
1:08
um but I’m going to open up copilot CRM
1:09
and actually show you how this works uh
1:11
but we did have a lot of conversation so
1:13
I just want to heed the warning uh this
1:15
is a great tool it’s groundbreaking love
1:17
it
1:18
um but as the AI continues to season
1:21
itself and get more advanced
1:23
um the marketing copy is going to be
1:25
even better but we need to make sure
1:26
that we are thinking about our client
1:28
Avatar and that is the um ideal client
1:31
that we are trying to serve or Market to
1:33
and once again your marketing copy is
1:36
going to be a little more effective if
1:39
it’s personalized but automated now this
1:42
is an automated tool to do that I highly
1:44
recommend diving in if you’re using
1:46
copilot and that’s why we’re making this
1:47
video to show you but I just want to
1:48
give you a little bit of warning uh with
1:50
this this will not completely replace a
1:53
marketing person or copywriter but it’s
1:55
going to get you at least 90 95 percent
1:57
of the way you’re there and then you go
1:59
and customize it so without any further
2:00
delay I’m going to open this up
2:02
um pretty stoked about showing this here
2:04
and let me pop the screen over here so
2:07
you can see it so uh if you haven’t been
2:08
into copilot CRM uh by Mike Andes this
2:12
is actually the the cockpit here of the
2:15
screen so we’re going to go into
2:16
marketing right here and we’re going to
2:19
go into the emails area uh when we click
2:21
in there
2:23
right now is making the video there’s a
2:24
V1 and a V2 my understanding from Mike’s
2:27
videos uh the shortly after this video
2:29
there’ll only be a V2 Builder but if
2:31
you’re in the system today and you’re
2:32
saying Hey how do I use the AI assistant
2:34
this is where you actually find the AI
2:36
assistant so once again marketing emails
2:38
we want to go to the V2 Builder which is
2:40
going to be according to Mike put into
2:43
Legacy and basically removed in your V1
2:46
estimates or s or V1 marketing documents
2:49
will be transferred into V2 from what
2:50
Mike said um so what we’re doing is
2:52
we’re going in here
2:53
um this product here is a bolt-on called
2:56
be free and what we’re going to do is
2:58
it’s a drag and drop Builder made a
3:00
video about this last week how to
3:01
actually utilize this but basically
3:03
you’re going to go in and build some
3:04
rows as we have here we’re going to drag
3:06
in the paragraph area and once you’re in
3:09
there and you click into it off to the
3:10
left it will updates what you can see
3:13
here says write with AI so this is a new
3:15
AI assistant inside copilot so we’re
3:17
going to click in here and it gives you
3:19
some examples how to do this I’m going
3:21
to kind of click off this
3:23
um
3:24
there we go and we can go in and put
3:25
what would you like to write about so
3:28
what we’ve got is I’m going to show you
3:29
some examples and I’m actually going to
3:30
do one live here uh but before the
3:32
Facebook live to answer the questions
3:34
here I wrote In
3:37
um why hire a lawn care professional uh
3:41
so basically it gave us four or five
3:44
reasons of why you would want to hire a
3:47
lawn care professional so these could be
3:49
the five or six steps of why to hire a
3:51
lawn care professional so expertise lawn
3:53
care professional has the knowledge and
3:54
expertise to maintain your lawn properly
3:56
Time Savings Lawn Care takes time in
3:59
hiring a professional could save you
4:00
time and focus on other important tasks
4:02
equipment Lawn Care Professionals have
4:03
the necessary equipment to get the job
4:05
done efficiently and effective for
4:07
consistency professionals will maintain
4:09
your lawn regularly ensuring that it
4:11
looks great year-round number five cost
4:14
effective hiring a professional they
4:15
save you money in the long run for
4:16
preventing costs and mistakes or damage
4:18
to your lawn and six a healthier lawn
4:21
professionals know how to keep your lawn
4:22
healthy by using the right fertilizers
4:24
we control products watering techniques
4:25
and finally number seven increase
4:27
property value a well-maintained lawn
4:30
care can increase your property if you
4:32
are planning on selling it in the future
4:33
so these are types of of marketing
4:36
things that we can start to take this
4:37
and actually really formulate a
4:39
marketing piece the next one I’ve got
4:41
here
4:42
was really good so write a holiday email
4:45
for Callahan’s lawn care which is going
4:47
to be my lawn care company which
4:49
maintains landscapes for the Fourth of
4:50
July so coming off the holiday let’s
4:53
think about how do we communicate any
4:54
monthly newsletter to provide value
4:58
um in there and if we’re going to rate a
5:00
Fourth of July holiday letter this was
5:03
the prompt up here that I put in to
5:05
write an email for Callahan’s Lanka
5:07
which retains landscapes for the 4th of
5:08
July and when we hit apply it actually
5:11
plugs that in there and then we’re going
5:13
to manipulate it but the AI copy that
5:16
came in
5:17
here as we hope we find this email finds
5:20
you well and a happy and health uh happy
5:23
and healthy as we approach the Fourth of
5:24
July holiday as a company takes pride in
5:27
maintaining beautiful landscapes we
5:28
understand the importance of a
5:30
well-maintained lawn for your
5:32
celebrations our team at Callahan’s Lawn
5:34
Care has been working hard to ensure
5:36
that Lawns are looking their best for
5:38
this special occasion we have been
5:39
mowing trimming edging to make sure the
5:42
outdoor spaces are ready for all your
5:43
gas we know that the Fourth of July is a
5:46
uh a time for celebrating with friends
5:48
and family we want to help make your day
5:50
stress-free as possible this is why
5:53
we’re offering special discounts on our
5:54
services for this holiday whether you
5:56
need a one-time mower would like to sign
5:58
up for an ongoing maintenance program we
6:00
have you covered thank you for
6:02
entrusting us with your lawn care needs
6:04
we wish you a happy and safe Fourth of
6:08
July regards Callahan’s lawn care so
6:10
obviously we would go in and chunk this
6:13
out
6:14
uh with some proper
6:17
formatting to really have this uh work
6:20
but this is all generated from AI so
6:22
basically you need to create a prompt uh
6:25
like we did
6:27
and we paste it in here so hopefully
6:30
everybody’s starting to see the power of
6:31
this it’s not perfect but it is an
6:33
amazing starting point so if you’re
6:34
looking
6:35
to write a newsletter for Fourth of July
6:38
that is the prompt right there and what
6:41
we did here is took write a holiday
6:44
email for and you enter your company’s
6:46
name which what do you do maintain
6:49
Landscapes and lawn care for what
6:51
holiday Fourth of July Annie call to
6:54
action request an estimate and this is
6:55
the actual copy
6:58
that we copied and pasted right in here
7:00
so I want to do one of these on the fly
7:03
if I can
7:05
um
7:06
we’re going to write a welcome email so
7:08
the prompt I have is write a welcome
7:10
email for your product name which does
7:12
the following services
7:14
uh with the benefits and has the
7:16
following
7:17
so I’m going to copy and paste this in
7:19
here
7:20
um so I wrote write a welcome email for
7:22
Callahan’s lawn care which does
7:25
uh the following most Lawns with the
7:28
benefits of Time Savings and has the
7:31
following request for an estimate uh and
7:33
what we’re going to do is stick that in
7:35
there and actually take a look to see
7:39
what goes on here with copilot so this
7:41
will actually take a few minutes as this
7:43
takes to the um the prompt but what it’s
7:46
doing is actually building marketing
7:48
content and sweeping through
7:51
um
7:51
the internet and actually generating
7:53
copy and once that’s done as that’s
7:56
thinking you’re going to hop back if
7:58
you’re just joining us
7:59
uh this was the prompt I put in here why
8:03
hire a lawn care professional so take a
8:07
look back we haven’t got one in here yet
8:09
so sometimes you got to tweak with it to
8:10
actually get it to go the way you want
8:13
um
8:14
but here’s one that we I tested a little
8:16
bit earlier so we’ll clear that out and
8:18
actually
8:20
go in and we hit right with AI we paste
8:22
that in write an email to follow up on
8:24
an overdue invoice
8:26
um and that will go in and actually
8:28
generate marketing copy you can tweak
8:30
for your business so as this Ai and chat
8:33
GPT and the different products out here
8:35
get a little bit stronger and more
8:37
seasoned uh it’s going to be pumping
8:38
these things out probably a little bit
8:39
quicker but if you had to write uh as
8:42
we’re waiting for it this entire thing
8:44
for Holiday email uh this took maybe a
8:46
minute and a half to maybe three minutes
8:48
ballpark but we literally just wrote in
8:50
and took our prompt
8:52
right here of write a holiday email
8:56
for Callahan’s lawn care which maintains
8:58
landscapes for Fourth of July and the
9:00
the call to action was to request an
9:03
estimate so uh what we’ve got here is
9:05
the overdue invoice so it took maybe a
9:07
minute minute and a half seems a little
9:08
bit longer here live on Facebook but it
9:10
would take twice as long so this is the
9:12
uh The Prompt was to write an email to
9:15
follow up and overdue invoice and this
9:17
is what it came out with so I’m going to
9:19
hit apply
9:21
and it actually has a subject line in
9:24
here
9:27
so
9:28
we’ve got it here
9:31
um and I hope you find this email I hope
9:34
this email finds you well I’m writing to
9:35
follow up on an overdue invoice for
9:37
services provided to you now what we
9:38
would do
9:40
is take this date and use our merge tags
9:43
and go and actually uh pull in some of
9:45
the specific invoice numbers and due
9:48
dates and that and this will actually
9:52
give you the merged information in based
9:55
on it so
9:56
that would that’s where we would merge
9:58
that in uh we have yet to receive your
10:00
payment for invoice number and we’d put
10:02
in the merge tag for invoice number
10:03
which was due on this due date
10:06
so we probably hit return as a valued
10:08
client we appreciate your prompt
10:09
attention to this matter we understand
10:10
that sometimes delays occur and we’re
10:12
happy to work with the resolve any
10:14
issues that may have been preventing
10:16
this timely payment uh please let us
10:18
know if there any problems or concerns
10:20
regarding the invoice I’d probably go in
10:22
and hit return again we would be happy
10:25
to discuss payment options or provide
10:26
additional information needed we kindly
10:28
request that you settle the outstanding
10:30
amount as soon as possible
10:32
and if payment has already been made
10:35
please disregard this message and accept
10:38
our apologies for any inconvenience
10:39
caused we’d probably break this out here
10:41
not perfect grammar but this is probably
10:43
how it would play out in your email
10:45
um and then we’ve got our close with the
10:47
signature here
10:51
so you can see with AI uh you can go in
10:55
and tweak this and set some formatting
10:57
and merge in
10:59
um the due date here and you can date
11:01
the invoice amount in these areas and we
11:04
can do that all through the merge tags
11:05
here but really cool product up
11:08
enhancement copilot CRM right with AI
11:11
and that’s going to be under your
11:13
marketing emails and we want to use the
11:15
V2 Builder not the V1 and when we drag
11:17
over a row
11:20
here and we’re going to go in content of
11:23
paragraph
11:24
we click into the paragraph and write
11:26
with AI and that opens our sidebar to
11:28
paste in any of the prompts that we’ve
11:30
made here so the ones we did was write
11:32
an email the follow-up and over invoice
11:34
uh write a welcome email for Callahan’s
11:37
lawn care which does the following lot
11:39
Mo’s Lawns with the following benefits
11:41
Time Savings and has the following call
11:44
to action request an estimate and the
11:47
final one we did was write a holiday
11:48
email
11:50
for Callahan’s lawn care which maintains
11:52
landscapes for the Fourth of July and uh
11:55
request an estimate is your call to
11:56
action so those are the prompts or some
11:58
ideas of problems that you may want to
11:59
be going in with the AI
12:03
um
12:04
assistant here inside copilot CRM so
12:07
really excited to answer these questions
12:09
that were submitted over the weekend
12:10
with the latest update of copilot CRM if
12:12
you have any other questions feel free
12:14
to drop me a private message
12:16
um or comment on the videos and we come
12:18
to you at least two to three times a
12:20
week where we answer questions live on
12:22
Facebook Callahan’s corner you ask the
12:23
questions we had some live right here on
12:25
Facebook

0:00
welcome back to Callahan’s corner where
0:01
you ask the questions and some live
0:03
right here on Facebook had a User
0:04
submitted question inside the service
0:05
autopilot Facebook group regarding uh
0:09
web-based forms and tracking lead
0:11
sources far as uh whether they came from
0:13
a Facebook ad or they came from your
0:16
website or maybe they came from a
0:20
um email blast and you sent them to an
0:23
actual form so the question really was
0:25
around how do we set up lead Source
0:27
tracking uh and forms to actually track
0:30
the lead source for your marketing so
0:32
I’m going to show you how to set that up
0:34
as well as how to set up the campaign
0:36
within the lead source track and
0:37
actually get the data out automatically
0:38
so this is a piece that a lot of people
0:40
miss so I want to make sure we spend
0:42
some time and something we take
0:44
um time and actually look at uh when we
0:47
do our essay setups and deep Dives as
0:49
well as part of the training so what
0:51
we’ve got here is service autopilot
0:52
first place we want to actually go is
0:54
into the gear icon and go into client
0:58
source
1:02
and what we’re going to do is create a
1:05
lead Source here
1:10
and once we set up this lead Source
1:12
we’re going to be able to set up the
1:13
lead source so it is applied to either
1:15
the intake inside the office a web form
1:20
or if you’re driving them through an
1:21
email so I’m going to call this our
1:25
Facebook
1:27
Lawn Care ad uh with
1:31
picture
1:33
or with pick
1:37
and what we’re going to do here is add
1:39
this and we’re going to come back later
1:40
but we’re going to add the marketing
1:42
campaigns in here so let’s say if we’re
1:44
going in from June 1st to uh June 30th
1:48
and we don’t have a distribution
1:50
quantity but we know we’re going to
1:51
budget
1:52
um
1:53
three thousand dollars we would set that
1:55
in by doing such it would give us the
1:58
ability
2:00
um
2:01
here to track the attribution of that
2:05
area here so we put that in now if this
2:08
was a door hanger we could say hey we
2:10
put out
2:11
ten thousand door hangers for three
2:13
thousand dollars that’s the first thing
2:15
we want to do is set up the lead source
2:17
and if there’s any campaigns around that
2:18
so we’re going to say it’s a Facebook ad
2:21
and uh we don’t know the distribution
2:24
quantity but we know it’s going to run
2:25
for the whole month and we’re going to
2:26
hit save so now that that’s set up
2:28
there’s two different ways of actually
2:30
setting this up so the first of one is a
2:32
V2 form
2:34
and we want to have a couple things set
2:37
up here so we’d want to show on timeline
2:39
send internal email to notify probably
2:41
any tags on submit and auto proof create
2:44
on submit is one of the most important
2:46
ones the final one here is you want to
2:48
create an update delete and select the
2:50
source so that is our Facebook ad
2:54
for lawn care and you can see in this
2:56
account we’ve had quite a bit here
2:58
because this goes all the back to 2018
2:59
we’ve been doing this but uh if that was
3:01
the actual source that we had set
3:03
originally that would be the one we
3:05
would tie it to so we’d go in and grab
3:08
the Facebook lead Source in there
3:11
and hit save and close and that would
3:13
actually take care of that the second
3:15
option here is if we’re in a V3 form we
3:18
would scroll down and click into how did
3:21
you hear about us
3:22
and we would set in the settings the
3:25
different lead Source options where the
3:27
client can click in so if we’re driving
3:29
Facebook ads or things that we want to
3:31
not emotionally track I’m going to wreck
3:33
probably a V2 form where it
3:35
automatically sets it
3:37
and when we go in and save and close
3:40
that we can go in and publish
3:45
here and the version of the form we
3:48
would give to our webmaster would be the
3:50
strip form and they could take this code
3:52
and customize it to make it friendly on
3:54
your website and brand it to your brand
3:56
awareness so we’re going to set up the
3:57
lead Source we’re going to go in under
4:00
sources and set up the campaign
4:04
then we’re building the form and tying
4:06
in the actual lead source
4:10
on here and then I will show you the
4:12
final step here but if we had our form
4:15
in the V2 we’re setting it to Auto
4:18
create on submit
4:20
and submit on and connect to the lead
4:22
Source in V3 once we get into settings
4:24
and edit edits here we would set up a
4:27
lead Source tracking here as a drop down
4:28
extra steps it may not be as effective
4:31
final step here is if we’re going in
4:34
workflow wise we should be training our
4:36
team and this is what we do in a lot of
4:37
our live or virtual training is we
4:39
should be going into the gear icon
4:40
adding a lead-in when they call filling
4:43
out all the main information here second
4:45
tap details the account type commercial
4:47
residential and finally sales how did
4:49
you hear about us
4:51
the door hanger by doing such now all
4:54
the data comes in so when you want to
4:55
know your lead Source tracking how many
4:57
people came from each lead Source your
4:58
average closing ratio and with some math
5:01
or custom a report inside the report
5:04
Builder which is low G we can probably
5:06
get our client lifetime value per lead
5:08
source so uh Callahan’s corner you ask
5:10
questions we had some live right here in
5:12
Facebook lead Source tracking forms and
5:14
proper workflow to track and capture
5:17
that lead Source inside your office on a
5:19
day-to-day basis

0:00
everybody coming live today with Dan Ralphs um with the simple growth
coaching team myself Mike Callahan our
0:05
other person that usually joins us on these Aaron suttonfield was actually
unable to join us he’s live actually at a lawn care company currently
helping
0:13
them walk through some of the stuff we’re actually talking about here on
this Facebook uh but Dan if people
0:18
haven’t met you um obviously I’ll have you introduce yourself but um when I
met Dan I was
0:23
probably eight or nine years ago and Dan uh and the content he brings to
the simple growth coaching team was
0:29
instrumental in my lawn care business so about 12 months maybe 13 months
ago uh
0:35
we formed the simple growth coaching with our scale plus and masterminds
and the things that I learned that helped me
0:42
really turn some things around the the culture and the six areas of my main
part of my business that really need to
0:47
be dialed in uh Dan was able to come in as an eight-figure business Expert
not just seven figure but eight figure
0:54
um so it really was my kind of purpose now to be able to go out and bring
the knowledge that Dan used in my company to
1:00
everyone else out here in the lawn care and Landscape industry so I just
want to put some some background to this because
1:07
um we’re just not going out and uh doing this we’ve been doing it over 12
to 13 months Dan you’ve been doing it for a
1:13
long time I’ll let you get into that uh but this is something not that
we’re just like selling to try to make money on this is something I
actually used my
1:19
business made a huge impact um and really I just feel like it’s my duty to
actually be able to get this out to all the lawn care companies
1:25
um in the industry US and Canada for sure so Dan without any further delay
uh if you want to give a little background and how you ended up in this
crazy uh
1:32
Lawn Care industry yeah long story I’ll make it really short I love love
love
1:38
not inappropriate way like Mike was trying to get me to be inappropriate
but I love love entrepreneurs I I just love
1:45
the spirit of Entrepreneurship and the spirit of business ownership where
it’s like I’m gonna go Take On The World and
1:51
I’m going to try to win and everyone else be damned right it’s like I’m
gonna go figure it out and I love that energy
1:57
and for the past 10 years I’ve been really lucky to be able to coach
hundreds and hundreds of of small business owners especially those who are
2:03
at a million dollars in revenue and trying to scale up to 10 million and
the truth is that most business owners who
2:09
are at that phase um or have or even before like even if you’re like 250 or
500 000 a year like
2:16
if you’re just getting started on this entrepreneurial Journey like most
people who are in those seats
2:23
aren’t technicians I don’t know if you are like they’re technicians not
business like mbas right and so if you
2:30
haven’t had like business training or you have learned some of this
fundamentals of business like you can be
2:36
really really good at your craft and still struggle to grow and scale up a
business and so I feel a lot of um
2:43
empathy for those guys and gals who are trying to make it and just duct
tape and bailing wire and we’re trying to bring
2:49
really like high level business coaching to that group and we watch just
just
2:55
amazing how businesses Sprout up as a result of that um my number one
favorite metric mic I
3:01
don’t even ask me about this but my number one favorite metric just popped
my head my number one favorite metric is cell phone free vacation days
3:09
because I love businesses that scale to a level and scale in a way that
allows
3:15
the business owner to have the freedom that they started to pursue in the
first place and so our goal is to create
3:20
businesses that have cell phone free vacation days um and that’s like the
ultimate metric
3:26
because it means your business is humming and running in an awesome way and
allows you to one have enough
3:31
Revenue to take a vacation and two have the freedom and team that you need
uh that allows you to go just enjoy the
3:37
freedom that entrepreneurs deserve Dan I’m glad you mentioned that so crazy
thing we haven’t talked about this
3:43
beforehand but literally one of the first things I did after going through
this process is we were in the Dominican
3:49
Republic and you know they got a little safe in the uh in the hotel closet
I actually took my cell phone and it put
3:56
it in there actually had my wife Sarah put the code in there um and said
hey if there’s an emergency
4:02
you know the world’s on fire you could call her cell phone or call the
hotel but I’ll tell you what that cell phone
4:08
never ever left that case um and I never got a phone call and things were
just as good if not probably a little bit better than they were when
4:15
I was there because sometimes as business owners who like to get in there
and micromanage and become that bottleneck um and really what’s been really
fun is
4:20
watching this journey of 60 70 plus companies now in the last 12 to 13
months
4:26
um go through these transitions a lot of them coming in and having that
grind mentality of um you know where Gary Vena
4:33
but a lot of these people are talking about you know grind grind grind
grind grind work 70 80 hours a week and you can just grind through it and
the truth
4:39
is Daniel you probably can grind through it to a certain point but it’s not
sustainable and at some and in some ways
4:44
you kind of have to grind there’s a little period where grind is part of
the game but we don’t want a living right we
4:50
don’t want to stay in granted we don’t want to be there forever because
there is the truth is is that um usually those guys who are grinding
4:56
aren’t the same guys who are building scalable systems and up leveling and
5:03
training people and empowering their people to really grow things and so
like the grind works for a period but there
5:09
comes a moment where you have to abandon the grind mentality only and you
have to blend it with strategy
5:16
and and just smart business sense making sure you’re making good business
decisions and that allows you really to
5:21
scale up yeah could could agree with you more obviously you got to put the
work in but at some point it just is not sustainable
5:27
it’s just not a good look by the way I like I love I love that grind I love
that energy and that Vibe and if you’re
5:34
a grinder like deepest respect and props to you like it is
5:39
if you couldn’t have gotten the business to where it is today without that
grind energy
5:45
um what we what happens though is that when we’re only grinding and just
struggling we end up becoming the
5:52
bottleneck in our business and we end up you letting work be the way we get
out of problems rather than smart just
5:58
business decisions that allow us to get our problems and so when we watch
the
6:04
really that the CEOs I admire most in lock your space are the CEOs who
actually are spending the least amount
6:10
of time grinding who are like I’m spending four or five or six hours a week
in my business and it’s producing
6:16
two million or three million dollars of Revenue a year like it’s like those
are the guys I really admire because they’ve
6:22
learned how to build a scalable business yeah and that kind of walks us
into the first area that we traditionally look at
6:28
when we look at a business um is really the owner’s time we kind of call
that step one
6:34
um and traditionally we look at it Dan and we should say hey you should
have at least four hours set aside a week you
6:39
can actually work on the business not in as Michael Gerber would say so I
don’t know if you want to elaborate kind of yeah time management how that
plays into
6:45
this let me zoom out a little bit because we we went we got really
intentional like it was Mike and I and
6:51
Aaron suttonfield we got together and we said our right if I were if I were
Dave Ramsey trying to describe the baby steps
6:58
to go from I’m I have no time and no money in my business I’m a business
owner and I just feel like I’m drowning
7:05
and if we were to start there we would say all right what are the baby
steps to get out and get to a point where you’re
7:10
at a million or and then eventually to a 10 million dollar lawn care
company like what are the fundamental steps the
7:16
Practical what do I do first what’s step one and step one that we did we
feel
7:22
like is really important is the business owner has to gain that control
over their calendar enough
7:28
to where they have at least four hours a week to work as Michael gerberus
would say on
7:35
their business and not in their business because we know like if you’re if
you’re like so many
7:40
business owners I know like you were I’m shocked you’re listening right now
because you have so much going on that
7:46
you it just it becomes overwhelming and if you can’t break away enough
7:52
to start like if the boat is sinking you have to find at least a little bit
of time to stop bailing and start filling
7:58
holes uh in the boat and so step one is that is we’re going to we’ll find
some
8:04
time we’re going to carve out and block time usually in in at least two
hour blocks one four hour block or two two
8:10
hour blocks and you’re gonna say hey we are going to block this time it’s
going to be
8:15
turn off the cell phone I’m going to like lock myself in a closet and I’m
just going to be working on the business unplugging the holes that are
causing
8:23
this boat to fill sometimes like it’s sinking yeah and there’s a lot of
different taxes that we go in there how to actually manage your calendar
and I know
8:29
as an entrepreneur like even five years of college no one taught me these
simple skill sets it’s not like it’s complete
8:35
rocket science but man when it’s put together in a simple framework um and
it’s easily digested and implemented in Little Steps
8:42
um it really just takes the weight off of business owner’s shoulders at
least it did mine so these are the things we’re diving into and then kind
of back
8:49
into that time frame thing uh we’re talking about Dan um Step number two we
look at finances
8:54
and that is um I think one of the most interesting things when we do setups
on different
9:00
software such as service autopilot or copilot CRM a lot of times business
9:06
owners will get in there and what we find is on the outside it’s a very
successful business
9:11
um financially we think but when we get in there they really the business
owners running in the dark they don’t have an
9:17
understanding of their financial numbers um and they don’t really
understand what Cadence should be happening in
9:23
their bookkeeping how to keep things reconciled so by the 10th of the 15th
of the next month at a bare minimum they
9:28
can actually take a look at those financials that are clean in a setup
chart of accounts and then I guess some of the scary things Dan is
9:35
um you know we had a gentleman running 150 to 160 000 for lack of a better
terms yacht out of his business
9:42
um and he was wondering why his his business profit was so low and I was
like hey you know so and so it actually
9:50
you’re doing pretty good but you got this freaking boat another ten
thousand dollars for this slip tied in your business expenses so
9:57
um you really need in my opinion and Dan I’m sure you’re an elaborate is is
we need to be able to to handle the business and somewhat of the personal
10:03
finances and make sure the personal house is in order too and how they can
co-mingle and work together in parallel
10:08
at the beginning right it’s it’s all sort of one cash flow coming into our
lives and we have to learn how to
10:14
separate those out we have to make sure that we’re not trying to pay an
elaborate
10:19
salary to a CEO to an owner that we can’t yet afford as a business and so it
10:24
is a part of our personal finances make sure our finances are in order um
because there is going to come a day where we’re going to have lots of extra
10:31
for the owners but if we but not if we are just barely getting by as a
business today so we have to figure out our
10:37
personal finances and what we come to find is you know I was chatting with
Aaron the other day he’s our head coach
10:42
and he’s awesome man he is the poster child for what we hope to build and
10:47
Aaron runs a really successful lawn care company but one of the things he
kept um discovering is he goes I feel a little
10:54
bit like I’m a fractional CEO when I’m sitting and chatting sitting across
for people and we’re chatting about the
11:00
business and if you’ve never been a CEO before that’s a new role and just
like Tiger
11:07
Woods has a golf coach sometimes it’s helpful to have someone sitting
across and looking at books and it’s and it’s
11:13
fundamental things that we want to like dive in and make sure you have
straightened out because we’ll go into a
11:18
business we want to do a business the other day and this woman was awesome
super cool hard-working smart her and
11:25
her husband running this lawn care company together but when we opened up
our books we’ve came to find out that she was her actual margin on her her
11:32
profit margin was like one percent and sometimes negative 0.5 percent
11:37
and so there was something wrong with the numbers the model of her business
she was either not charging enough she
11:44
was either spending too much in different areas she was maybe like so there
was something wrong with the
11:50
numbers and so we helped her get that sorted out and when you get that
sorted out all of a sudden now I understand all
11:56
right I need to decrease I need to increase my efficiency a little here and
I need to charge a little bit more over here and she was able to go from a
one
12:03
percent margin to a 15 margin or 20 margin in the business because we don’t
want to scale a business that’s
12:10
making one percent or making negative one percent like we don’t want to
scale maybe one percent so we want to make sure that those numbers are
clean and
12:16
tight and that the business model will bear the weight of a growth and
that’s all about the numbers yeah the bare
12:23
minimum just to roll out with those trucks you got to be doing in my
opinion you should be doing at least double digit uh net margins bottom
line to
12:29
there um and I think one of the things that kind of at least right that she
had made I think I want to say
12:36
she was at a million or near a million and had like made two percent of that
12:43
well that was all her work amounted to two percent of a million now that’s
still a lot of money for for me at least
12:49
when I was a kid but man there’s so much more like two and twenty like she
could 10x and she’s going to 10 extra profits
12:56
just because we sat down together and we got those numbers right and so if
you’re not a numbers person that’s not your
13:03
expertise or even if you’re like I’m pretty sure they’re right it’s good to
have someone a fractional CEO sit across
13:10
from you and kind of give it a look yeah just just a little confidence and
just to make sure everything’s tightened up and if you’ve never looked at
those
13:15
numbers and never been taught uh which in the early days I wasn’t either um
you know we had to go out and get
13:21
that education but it paid big dividends um and I see one of the things
that right now is very popular a lot of
13:26
people starting businesses or even really uh you know 15 20 years in
business now uh they’re going out and
13:33
trying to do everything and be everything and what I mean by that is we see
this a lot of times there’s work and need to need with hundreds of
businesses
13:39
every year um setting up their software their job costing their automations
their fighting you know million dollar million and a
13:46
half dollar business they’re providing 20 or 30 different types of services
um and it’s it’s it’s the chaos of a
13:53
non-simple business so as we’re growing the scale a business we want to go
up with one or two maybe three core
13:58
services that are scalable um and then eventually we can spread out amongst
that once we get a little bit
14:04
bigger and cross-sell into that database but uh one of the things we look
at Dennis is how do we create a simple
14:09
business and simple service offering yeah so Step One is time step two is
14:15
finances and step three is making sure that the model itself is really
simple uh it’s hard to grow business no matter
14:21
what it’s really hard to grow a complex or convoluted uh business and what I
14:28
mean by complex probability is simply this that we have multiple products
streams
14:33
selling into multiple markets I mean different types of people are buying
our products I’m doing commercial I’m doing
14:39
residential I’m doing uh government I mean yeah it’s government I’m doing
and then I’m not only am I doing all that
14:45
which is complex on its own but I’m also trying to do different services
with them I’m doing 24 I’m doing design build
14:52
I’m doing uh cleanups like I’m doing all of this stuff and as a result of
that I
14:59
feel spread really thin and the truth is you are because it’s really wide
and we can’t go very deep and the systems get
15:06
really complex and convoluted and so one one of the processes we want to
take you through is making sure that we’re
15:13
spending time in the most profitable things that take the least amount of
time and that we are going deep in those
15:20
areas so that we’re seeing really great results from those areas because
you know like if you’re listening and you’re
15:26
like you’re serious you know there are some parts of your business that you
go yeah I know we’re kind of like just
15:32
breaking even on that stuff you know that you might absolutely just hate it
so a good example now that
15:37
there’s great money to be made in design build but traditionally most
businesses with design build a good portion of
15:43
design build requires the business owner to be in it in a very integral
piece of
15:48
it almost babysitting it or they haven’t been able to delegate a lot of
that because it’s so complex and that’s where
15:55
those non-self-free vacation cell phone free vacations actually happen
because you get calls on stuff that technically
16:01
you’ve created such a complex service that you have to be there for it to
succeed and that’s that’s the scary thing and don’t get me wrong you could
16:07
have a simple design build business yep but and and you may even see some
bigger
16:12
companies that have like a lot of different services and that works because
they have really high paid managers high paid leaders that are
16:20
running divisions of a company but when you’re little you only get one
division you don’t get 12 divisions unless you
16:25
can somehow afford 12 awesome maybe you have like 11 brothers and all the
16:31
brothers are awesome and they’re all going to run their own division all
right I could buy it but it’s really hard to do if it’s just one guy or just
16:37
one one couple that is trying to run uh run a business and so um so step
three we’re just going to try
16:42
to help you simplify the business make sure we’re really focused on keying
on uh the simplest way to get things done
16:48
the simplest way to sell things the simplest way we’re just trying to make
it super easy and get to the cash as
16:53
quick as we can let’s just say step four Dan now that we’ve got this simple
business in place
16:58
we got some cash flow we got some time uh biggest issue right now in any
service business especially lawn care
17:04
and Landscape is hiring the key people like how do we go out and figure
that out and that’s something and that that
17:11
you’ve really helped master master master master and actually rinse and
repeat systems uh for really key key
17:18
higher acquisition yeah it’s interesting I go across the country this is a
major complaint
17:23
um from lawn care companies across the board that I’ve talked to um but not
all of the lung cares I’ve
17:29
talked companies I’ve talked to meaning it’s not a universal problem uh
because there is a way of doing it
17:36
that works and is predictable and the next thing you know you have a flow of
17:41
people working coming in and you’re retaining them and onboarding them well
and so I could like honestly my I I know
17:48
we don’t have enough time for all this but I have like I could talk for two
hours on how to build a killer
17:54
onboarding and hiring process that allows you to feel uh like you’re you’re
18:00
picking that you’re Harvard and not the Community College you know what I
mean so you’re the one who’s getting all these people coming to you and
you’re
18:06
going oh out of all of these people I’m going to choose you rather than the
other way around where it feels like well I have to just accept everyone if
18:12
I’m going to fill the seats and you’re you’re kind of in the two feet in a
heartbeat style of hiring where it’s
18:17
like hey if you will like to go out and hold this machine and do the work
I’m hiring you and as you know that employee
18:24
turnover especially early on as a business owner is extremely painful and
extremely costly
18:29
um they’ve said and I don’t know I’ve heard various numbers but something
to the tune of each time you lose an
18:35
employee and have to replace that employee the cost is something like was
it one times their salary like their
18:42
annual salary I’ve seen it probably in my business almost two times because
if if you’re not making those decisions the
18:49
damage they’re causing the no show no call issues with your clients so it’s
not just the retraining but it’s the
18:56
ancillary things of damaged property uh morale and a lot of your real key
19:01
employees now are feeling uh like you’re not respecting them because you’re
letting these people with literally a
19:08
heartbeat two feet uh continue to go and break the rules so it’s if you
really compounded the whole thing uh the
19:14
numbers really it’s astronomical it’s monstrous and you and if you’ve been
if you’ve been in business for very long
19:20
you know the pain of bad a bad hire and and so so the one of the things we
19:26
want to coach coach you through is this process of how do you hire
efficiently and effectively and if I were to give
19:32
just one bit of advice in out of the two hours or three hours I want to
talk to you about it the one bit of advice is
19:37
simply this uh higher slow and that’s going to feel really
19:44
difficult in the moment where there’s a lot of work to do and I don’t feel
like I have time to
19:50
wait to put someone in that seat but higher slow and Fire fast meaning as
19:57
soon as someone is not fitting not working that you pull the trigger and
you’re moving on to the next person so that you’re built filling your team
with
20:04
people who are a great fit by way of their performance and a great fit by
way of their culture
20:09
love it so now we’ve got the time we’ve got the finances we’ve got a simple
business that’s ready to scale and be
20:14
able to sell simple Services got the people to perform the work Dan uh next
step is literally putting the rocket
20:21
fuel in the rocket and going out and building a repeatable client
acquisition
20:27
model and there’s a couple pieces that we tackle in that part uh once again
we’ve got this machine running it the
20:33
the sales process and client acquisition process should really just be a a
really a non-emotional math game that does not
20:40
revolve around the business owners selling yeah the really sad part that
I’ve I
20:45
bumped into and I don’t know why but it feels like particularly in the lawn
care industry there there are a lot of people
20:52
spending a lot of money on marketing that isn’t producing results and and I
and I’ve been we’ve been
20:58
hunting and working and we’ve we’ve dialed in and found a couple of
companies that really support lawn care
21:03
and service businesses in really powerful ways that produce predictable
results the current world especially
21:09
with online marketing if we just talked about the online marketing should
you should be it should become over time now
21:15
it’s going to take some time but over time it should be very predictable
you should know exactly what you’re going to get and you should be able to
say I’m
21:22
going to spend a hundred dollars and I know and put it in the box and how
the other end is going to come a thousand dollars and I just know every
time I put
21:29
that hundred dollars in we’re gonna get a thousand dollars out so we want
to build a predictable enough
21:34
uh acquisition machine that we know if we’re going to put money in we’re
going to get that money out and and there are
21:41
a lot of different strategies and techniques and tactics um that’s why
again sitting across from
21:46
a fractional CEO so to speak and to say all right out of all of the tactics
we
21:52
want to do where do we start and what’s the first thing that we want to do
21:57
um I was chatting with a really good friend of mine who is a talented
marketer and the services industry
22:02
and I said what’s first and she said really easy it’s you’re you’re just
22:08
getting your Google uh certified uh a local business certified and to go get
22:14
your local Google Certified is really easy and really effective to produce
the
22:19
highest result fastest so those are the kinds of things we want to get you
to are what are the fastest things you can
22:25
do to produce predictable results awesome and now that we’ve got this
22:30
thing uh the business is getting to a size now where the business owners
hiring people they don’t know and these people they don’t know are probably
22:36
hiring people they don’t know um and it’s going to get to a point when we
get to that seven figure Mark and
22:42
Beyond now that we’ve got to actually build a Leadership Model and a
leadership team and get crystal clear
22:48
about that purpose and some core values and it was interesting Dan when I
first
22:54
met you um I basically become an absentee owner uh in the business really
wasn’t working
22:59
that much in the business but when I when I got back into the office um the
gentleman who’s running the
23:04
business blew out his Achilles tendon so I kind of had to hop back into the
role um and as I got back into that business
23:11
I looked at man we don’t we don’t we don’t have a culture like there’s
nothing there but really come to find
23:16
out we actually had a culture it was a culture that it evolved out of the
guy running the business
23:21
um and it really wasn’t the culture that I wanted to have within that
business so we went out and found Dan and
23:28
really got really clear on how to create a purpose in uh mission and vision
and
23:34
values and then how to actually create a plan annually and quarterly to be
on
23:40
track and actually get that business to hum um and then when everybody was
kind of rolling in the right direction magic
23:45
happened um but then it got to a certain point or literally I had to create
many leaders
23:51
underneath me that basically carry that same strategy and vision of the
company um so Dan I don’t know if you want to
23:56
talk about this this is really uh this was a pivotal part of my business
and this is was so important to me that I
24:01
was like man I’ve got to bring this experience to the lawn care industry
because it not only changed my life uh
24:09
but it changed everybody else within the organization and now that we’ve
been doing this in the lawn care instance specifically in the masterminds
group
24:16
for about 13 months now to see that journey in all the companies and how
these business owners have become proper
24:22
CEOs and gotten really clear um and the thing I always hear is Clarity
they’re really clear about the
24:28
business and where they stand what they stand for and how they actually
execute and how they actually go out to hire
24:34
fire and train to those core values that you were kind of alluding to in
Step number three yeah if if you haven’t
24:42
experienced this yet uh as you go through these steps and as you put each
building block in place you’re going to
24:48
come to a moment where the business starts to grow fast and maybe some of
you the business grew fast without these steps in place
24:54
because sometimes it does sometimes it’s you hang up your sign and people
are flocking and you just are trying to keep it all together
25:00
and in order for the as the business accelerates in its growth you have to
be
25:06
able to uh make more decisions faster that makes sense right so there are
more
25:13
problems there are more questions there are more challenges and we have to
be able to make the rate of our decision
25:18
making has to accelerate and there’s a reason like there’s something we
call the million dollar Plateau I think in lawn care it might be like the
million
25:24
five Plateau or somewhere in there um but you get to the point where the
business owner if they’re the only real
25:30
decision maker in the business they they just can’t physically keep up with
the pace of decision making that’s required
25:37
and it will feel like after a while that they’re drowning in decisions that
they have to make and problems they have to
25:43
solve and that’s the moment where you have to transition from business owner
25:49
entrepreneur into CEO leader of leaders and again it would be to put in
25:55
perspective it’s not even business owner it’s full-time babysitter cat
herder firefighter it’s just surrounded by
26:02
animals chaos so I I got to put a perspective because I’ve lived this now
um in multiple seven-figure businesses
26:09
I’ve that I’ve started up um and I will tell you the second or third time
around is significantly
26:14
easier when these things are in place but the first time in the lawn care
company I didn’t know any better I just
26:19
thought that this was normal and this is the way it operated man when we
met you and the team and you guys I was like wait a minute I don’t have to
make every
26:26
decision I don’t have to fight everybody every day if we wake up and you’re
just ready to enter the boxing match and
26:32
you’re getting pounded with one thing up the other um it’s so resilient
this is the amazing part this is why I think entrepreneurs
26:37
are the coolest people ever is because they’re so resilient that they’re
bouncing back again and again and
26:45
getting punched and figured uh they’re like all right let’s go again like
the Rocky Balboa man and so yeah so there’s
26:51
gonna come a time where you’re going to have to lead a group of leaders so
that and we’re all making decisions together
26:58
and all of those decisions are in harmony because they are part of a shared
vision and so if I’m sitting
27:04
across from a CEO and they’re at this phase I’m saying all right we have to
get really crystal clear on your vision
27:11
and vision for me it’s Jim actually Jim borrowing it from Jim Collins there
are three elements of vision the first one
27:18
is purpose why are we doing what we’re doing what the why is it like at the
core Center of how we operate as a
27:26
business and it allows people to make a decision understanding that so if
our business is simple growth our purpose is
27:33
to help business owners take their life back from their business get their
life back from their business and so as a
27:40
Mike’s Iran we’re we’re in separate rooms we can make similar decisions
because we both know hey what’s going to
27:46
help this business owner get their life back and that’s why we do all of
this this is why we’re giving away free content it’s like we want to help
27:53
business owners get their life back from their business and so I know that
I can make a decision in harmony with that and I’m to be in harmony with
every other
27:59
leader the second piece is we want to create a mission which is a
three-year strategic objective this is a clear
28:05
understanding of what we’re trying to do right now what mountain we’re
trying to climb right now and the third element that we’re trying to get
clear on is a
28:11
set of core values of how we’re going to operate what our attributes
characteristics and behaviors will be uh
28:18
when we’re in different rooms so I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced
this but if you ever walk by one of your employees and you kind of cringe
with
28:23
something they said or did and you go oh that’s not like that’s not how I
would do that
28:29
oh oh and it just makes you skin crawl and what we got to do in order to
cure
28:35
that throughout the organizations we got a deeply like communicate and and
have
28:41
all of our employees drink the Kool-Aid of the values to where they’re
operating in a similar way to the way the business
28:48
owner would operate if they were in their seat so again our goal is to have
this harmonious decision-making organism
28:54
it’s making decisions all together in similar ways the way we do that is
that they’re operating with a shared purpose
29:01
a shared set of values and that they have a shared understanding of what
29:06
we’re trying to accomplish together right now what’s our three-year
strategic objective and so for example
29:11
I’ll give you a lawn care example so my buddy Aaron I’m pretty sure he’ll
be okay if I share this but he said his
29:17
purpose is to is to save Lawns and Elevate people so every time any of
their employees go
29:22
out they all have that tattooed on their minds their goal is to save
Montana people so each interaction they have
29:28
elevates people what’s the outcome of that well his attrition rate just just
29:33
drops and drops and drops so I think they’re like 50 right now like just
drops and drops and drops on the
29:38
nutrition rate because all of their employees have that on their hearts
they have a set of core values I can’t recite all their core values they
have a set of
29:44
core values that all of their employees have memorized like literally every
employee in the company has memorized their core values and their seven core
29:50
values and then the last they have a mission which is to really focus in
and dial in this part of their business and
29:56
scale up their acquisition model and and it’s very concrete and specific it
includes very specific Mission goals
30:02
like Revenue numbers client acquisition numbers so they’re very clear
across the
30:08
board every employee in their company have understanding and Clarity around
that and that allows Aaron again to step
30:14
away from the business and know that the decisions that are happening in
this business are going to be in harmony for this overall vision and so
that’s what
30:20
we we really spend time with if you’re if you’re on a rocket ship of
business right now and it is flying and you do
30:27
not have Clarity or you do not have your leadership team is not in harmony
around clear a Clear Vision of where we’re
30:32
going uh like be prepared to bump into things and to have pain as a result
of that
30:38
because people are going to be making decisions that are that are just a
little off track and when you’re going
30:43
fast that one degree difference turns into a big Chasm really fast and
30:50
so we have to really be committed leaders around Clarity of vision yeah you
couldn’t sound better myself
30:55
Dan and if anybody’s watching this because I know at first I was a little
skeptical I’m like well how is this going to work in the field
31:01
like how does that work with our crew leaders our technicians um and the
biggest thing I hear especially working with hundreds of businesses each
year is
31:08
how do I get these guys or girls to to actually be accountable how do I get
them to actually do just the bare
31:14
minimum what they should be doing in their role when we actually dive in
with some methodology we call it Big Three
31:21
um and this it literally creates Clarity once again throughout the
organization and you know
31:26
um if you can only do three things in your position these are the three
things that are driving towards that actual
31:31
Mission um so it’s not just the people in your office it’s right down from
your technicians with running weed whackers
31:37
there’s blowers your mechanic your team leaders and right up everybody’s on
the same page and when that happens it’s
31:44
absolute magic so um you know one of one of the industry Consultants came
up to me we actually
31:49
start to Institute this at Callahan’s Lawn Care um we basically said Mike
you’re crazy the only thing that would motivate the
31:56
guys and girls on your team is a team picnic some hot dogs hamburgs and
maybe a couple cold beers at the end of the
32:01
day once a month um yeah that’s great but honestly I’m here to tell you that
32:07
um I gotta completely disagree with that that methodology or that feeling
because now I’ve seen it in three different
32:12
organizations that I’ve owned and been a part of and it really goes right
down to
32:18
the person answering the phone the person taken out of the garbage at the
office or the technicians so everybody
32:23
no matter their position their pay rate will buy into this if we hire
correctly through this methodology and all the
32:30
headaches of the past 99 of them at least you’re still going to have some
headaches um in any business but it gets really
32:36
really good and everybody’s now trying to help you with any of those little
headaches that pop up and you’re clear and you’re all going in the same
direction so Dan I can’t thank you
32:43
enough because honestly that was one thing that I invested a lot of faith
because here I had some of these
32:48
industry uh professionals saying you know what you can’t do that with field
staff you can’t do that with your laborers maybe your office well I’m here
32:55
to tell you you can and we’ve got close to 100 people now uh in the group
that have recognize the same exact thing and
33:02
heard some of the same advice uh in the different industry events and that
you can’t do this with labor but we’re not
33:07
just looking at them as labor anymore we’re looking as part of the team
part of the culture and we’re living and
33:13
breathing um that that purpose um just like we do it simple it can be a
33:18
very specific example so I was with a company the other day uh they’re a
fertilization company out of the
33:25
southeast and they I was sitting at a lunch and one of their technicians
just
33:30
a guy who likes to spray things and he was sitting uh and and he was sat
across
33:36
the table for me and he said Dan I want to tell you I’m so proud I did this
I can’t remember
33:42
this 2400 24 000 square foot house in 15 minutes and it was like I have a
whole
33:47
system and how I do it and it’s super fast and efficient and this guy had a
ton of personal and
33:53
professional pride in the work that he did and that was trans that changed
from
33:59
and and that business owner reported that his trucks were making 25 more
34:06
um per truck per week um and all that had changed all that had changed is
that we sat down
34:13
with them and we included them in the vision of the company and the next
thing you know he was out there I’ve been but I can not the
34:21
fastest on the team and everyone’s like no I’m the fastest right and they
were like all bought in and committed and
34:26
they loved their job and they said hey man I love my boss because he treats
me like a human being and I used to work at
34:32
Applebee’s and then you know like there’s no like there’s a whole culture
shift and and human beings will always
34:40
respond uh to to this kind of respect and care and connection it’s a deep
34:45
human need to be part of something bigger yourself and I can go on for a
long time Mike I know our time’s almost up yeah okay can’t think enough
you’ve
34:50
got to compressed schedule uh actually I do two today uh we actually are
hopping on here uh in a little bit with
34:57
um the monthly masterminds webinar so if you guys are watching this this
sounds of interest uh feel free to book a call
35:02
it’s sgscall.com um to see if you actually qualify to uh
35:07
join the masterminds or our scale plus group but in addition we’ve got a
bit of urgency here if this is something you
35:13
want to do every quarter we do a live event so we’ve been to Shreveport
Louisiana we’ve been to Dallas we’ve
35:19
been to Charlotte North Carolina all of which have had live shop tours so
not only do you get to go in and learn all
35:25
these things but then you can actually see them in action inside these
multi-seven-figure businesses interact
35:30
with the business owners or office staff uh check out their equipment how
they operate how they set up their yards all
35:37
of that to be said we’ve got our next live event coming up in the beginning
of August in Nashville Tennessee we’ve
35:44
taken a different spin on this one because we found there’s a lot of value
in business owners being able to network
35:50
with each other not only during the teaching and and we don’t just teach
this stuff we actually Workshop this
35:55
stuff to stuff this is where it’s completely different um we do have some
fun events uh one night for team building with the group
36:01
what we’ve done is dedicated a whole day on this Nashville event uh where
business owners literally can just
36:06
Network have a good time uh go golfing see some things in Nashville and
we’ve rented out about six or seven Cabanas
36:12
poolside Dan uh where we can hang out and have a good time and um catch up
with this hand and and here’s the truth
36:19
like every time I share people with people what we do and how we do it
especially I was chatting with a
36:25
seasoned entrepreneur last night and he goes where were you 20 years ago
36:31
where who are you 20 years ago when I uh when I was a brand new bright-eyed
entrepreneur and I didn’t really quite
36:37
know what I was doing but I was making it up as I went where were you then
and I mean like I’m not we’re not trying to
36:44
be egotistical or anything we just have done it a lot of times and we’ve
seen a lot of companies and and we have this
36:50
big heart to help uh companies make progress in that direction and so like I
36:55
you can’t I’m kind of like you can go do it yourself we want you to take
these steps and run with them man if if you’re
37:00
the type person that doesn’t need help or support or accountability great
uh but if you do need help support
37:06
accountability please let us let us support and help you um the cool part
about our coaching is
37:12
it’s not theoretical it’s very practical and down to earth all of our
coaches currently are CEOs of lawn care
37:19
companies of really successful ones and so you’re sitting down across from
somebody who’s sitting in your same seat
37:25
and you get the chance to uh connect with them and talk kind of fractional
CEO style CEO to CEO and work through
37:32
your business and kind of accelerate things again it it’s you can do it on
your own it’s just a lot harder and
37:39
takes more time and and you end up making similar mistakes to to what these
37:45
guys have already been through so uh if you’re interested if you’re curious
we’d love to love to support you and serve
37:50
you if not uh we don’t care about you okay we love you we care about you
37:56
um but uh we would love to we’d love to serve you however we can and and uh
Mike
38:01
they can reach out to us through Linkedin Facebook wherever you’re finding
this yep feel free to find us reach out we’d be happy to help or you
38:07
can go to S call.com and just get on the phone and
38:14
we can kind of walk you through and maybe evaluate we’re in the six steps
you might see some opportunity awesome Dan can’t thank you enough and
38:20
uh I will see you in a few minutes on the other call where what are we
talking about today just as a little teaser yeah see we’re we’re talking
about
38:26
supervising your leadership development so uh leadership development is so
so important but sometimes hard to get your
38:32
fingers around how do you actually go about it and we have a very specific
process a four-step process of like okay
38:37
step one step two step three step four here’s how you supercharge that
leadership development I’m still can’t wait to see it Dan appreciate it I’ll
38:43
see you on about 10 minutes with the masterminds group live in our monthly
webinar and uh once again if you want to
38:49
uh see if this is right fit for you or it could be a help in your business
sgscall.com and uh look forward to talking to you
38:55
thanks bye

0:00
growth live office hours uh Mike and Dylan here with the simple grow team
where we go on live uh once or twice a
0:06
week and answer your questions regarding your software questions and
business questions to help you along your way to
0:12
seven figures and well beyond uh Dylan well welcome back to the show here
and uh just about going on and it’s probably
0:18
uh just like last week where uh there we go you were you were front and
center so we’re good now video wise
0:25
awesome yeah we got a couple uh returning questions from last week uh that
we didn’t quite answer properly I
0:33
guess uh we needed a little bit more clarification and then we got a new
question from Orbin this week about
0:39
scheduling so I kind of have some initial answers sort of fleshed out here
but I’m curious to definitely hear your
0:46
opinion on them and how you tackle them in service autopilot all right and
since I haven’t seen the questions yet this should be interesting so let’s
see what
0:53
happens yeah well let’s let’s go back to the one from last week just to
make sure that we don’t forget it so I’ll share uh
1:00
my screen here [Music]
1:05
Support Center got an area
1:11
this one’s from Steve Delaney from last week so I’m gonna hop off here a
second hop back
1:19
on so I can get that I think from last week we figured out how to actually
get that on top yeah no worries
1:26
um let’s see if we can get that a bit bigger if not we can just kind of
just all
1:33
right hold on I’m gonna I’m gonna pull you off and we will uh
1:39
what could go wrong here we go I think we are good here all right perfect
we got it big enough okay by week three
1:45
we’ll have this down pat sure um week 300. so
1:51
yeah the the issue if you remember from last week Steve wanted to know what
I thought was
1:57
um basically who had can who who was still active in his company how many
clients were still active in this
2:03
company and how long they had actually been with the company but I guess
either I misread it or Steve added some some
2:10
additional information I guess he was actually looking for the client
lifetime value which I don’t know how I I messed
2:16
that up but um so Mike I don’t know if you did this at your company or
2:22
um with any of our clients at all but I was just kind of spitballing a
little bit before this um I don’t think we have like a
2:27
pre-canned report for that or anything we do not but kind of what I I know
a lot of the
2:34
actual service details like when we’re doing our kpi reports and stuff like
that this is typically one of the main
2:41
analysis that we start with so I pulled in the job cost detail here
2:47
I pulled in you know obviously we need some client information so I did
client name client sense
2:53
um and then cancellation reason and then this was just like the next thing
that it the only next level of
3:01
information that it allowed me to pull up so I don’t know if we necessarily
need that per se but
3:08
It’s tricky sometimes with these reports because you kind of go down this
Rabbit Hole of what does service autopilot or
3:15
low G kind of let me pull into the reports and with this kind of string
3:21
that I’ve created it doesn’t let me pull in like cancellation date or
anything like that so this might
3:28
honestly not be the the optimal way to do it but I think this will actually
work so down here I have it set and this
3:36
is just our our demo account to kind of mess around with but
3:42
I have these columns here client name actual revenue and this would be for
each individual service with the date
3:49
uh cancellation reason and then client sense so
3:54
Mike I’m curious your opinion but I would think if they have a cancellation
reason they would be a canceled client and we
4:00
can filter those people out right correct yes I think that um had a pretty
interesting conversation
4:07
with jonathoshnick the founder of sa um or co-founded with John Caldwell and
4:13
one thing that Jonathan and I did a lot in the early days is we did a lot
of these Regional events or spoke at conferences or did Facebook lives we
4:19
answered questions and um Jonathan and I were pretty much on the same exact
page if we hadn’t served with someone in probably 12 to 13 months
4:27
that that would be considered basically a a dead client um so there’s a
couple different ways of
4:33
tackling it ideally I would look at it yes cancellation reason first place
I’m looking uh for sure
4:39
reason and if you’re going in we should be tracking the cancellation reason
on all our clients now uh if that’s not the
4:46
case we may be able to build some logic and a case statement in saying has
this
4:51
if it is a reoccurring service um we could take a look at it based on
4:58
reoccurring but if the service hadn’t happened in over 13 months of the
case statement we could filter it out that
5:04
would obviously take some formulas being built in yeah I think the one
thing that I would probably look at though is is
5:10
really going in and getting those cancellation reasons because that’s going
to be the cleanest easiest way of doing it the way you’ve done
5:16
um the other thing that’s interesting is you got actual Revenue total there
and the service name so if you scroll back
5:22
down they’ll know some other things here it looks like you probably have
done that didn’t touch uh touch on yet uh but
5:27
it looks like you went into the client and actually grouped them is that
correct
5:34
and Dylan may have froze here so we’ll see in a minute um but as we’re
waiting for Dylan to
5:41
kind of glitch back in here uh a couple of the things it looks like he
probably did was under uh the test client on the
5:48
far left there under client need he went into aggregate group and that is
probably I’m guessing so actually did
5:55
you just on aggregate I did can you you can’t hear me can you I can hear
you now oh okay there we go
6:02
at Verizon commercial over here but yeah so we uh so client so you did a
couple things here obviously so the first thing
6:08
as you build in that data table you would want to go in your client name
and actually group the clients
6:14
exactly yep so that was the first thing I did I actually forgot that I I did
6:19
that um the the other thing that I did is like um
6:24
it will make the report many many pages if you have a lot of data so I don’t
6:32
know this is just more so a personal preference but under the data table
right here if you go into settings and
6:37
then uh paging you can select to show all rows rather than have you know
6:44
sometimes up to like 80 pages of data yeah completely agree the bigger
companies we work with with kpi reports
6:49
that’s that’s definitely the way you want to go and then
6:55
the if we now on that do you have the ability to do
7:00
um service date uh yeah yeah I believe we do let me just I think it’s right
here
7:08
so that might be another one that I would look at too because then we’ve
got clients in service date and uh if we
7:14
were so inclined we could probably go in and sort it um from oldest to to
newest or newest
7:20
oldest we can actually build some formulas in there but I think down and
dirty if you’re looking just to answer the questions today uh the way I
tackle
7:27
I would tackle Donuts probably just the way you tackle it identically um I
would go in and make sure
7:32
everything has a cancellation reason and then be able to uh put in the
7:37
termination or cancel date and then run some math off that yeah and that’s
like
7:42
kind of what I was trying to say earlier is this is just my first step
there might be one A different kind of pathway
7:50
starting with a different item here that would actually let you pull in the
actual cancellation date yeah and it may
7:57
not um because I think on job costing detail as well it does it the uh that
and then
8:02
the the over one on leads and clients it does not so I think this is
probably the closest you can get to it
8:08
um so I would probably drive it off the cancellationary uh I hope it’s
helpful that people can just
8:15
kind of hear our like thought process too because a lot of this stuff in
service autopilot it’s like you can there’s so many different combination or
8:22
things that you can do that it’s like you kind of just need to sometimes
take a second think about it and a little bit
8:28
of trial and error and you’ll usually get there um yeah filter
8:33
the cancellation reason and we would go uh
8:41
not equal to I suppose
8:49
and I think there’s only one cancellation reason so yeah and the test count
there’s probably not a lot but
8:54
yeah you would put your test your cancellation reasons in there yeah you
might have a bunch of them
9:00
um but then if we add this filter then it should kind of filter out one
other clients anyways so then in theory
9:06
we’d be left with every client who does not have a cancellation reason
which should be active now whether or not
9:13
you’re you’re keeping your database nice and clean by canceling the clients
that don’t have any active service with you
9:18
that’s a maybe a topic for another day but let’s just assume the remaining
clients are the active clients
9:26
from here um Steve basically like this still isn’t
9:31
very useful you’d really have to start doing some totals for for some of
these
9:37
items so under this Revenue column that’s the first one that I would
definitely want to basically Aggregate
9:45
and then do a summation and that should give us the total
9:52
revenue I don’t have a date filter applied here so it’s not only pulling in
like this year for example this should
9:59
be pulling in once again this is our test account but for test client
number one their total
10:06
revenue their total value essentially to the company is six thousand two
hundred
10:12
and eighty now if you want average um lifetime value of your current active
10:18
clients then you would need to do an average of course as I’m sure you
10:25
probably know so let’s see kind of what how that looks here
10:30
and so you know once again a test test account your average might be four
thousand dollars or or something like
10:37
that right who definitely depends on what uh what field you’re in but in
this example our average kind of client value
10:44
is 191 14. now if you have like your costs and
10:50
things like that in the system you could drive this down to like a net
profit amount and then average it from there
10:57
that might be a little bit better because maybe some of these services are
a high
11:02
dollar amount in Revenue but they’re a low margin service so you kind of
need to factor that in as well but this is
11:10
basically what I’d be looking at and if this report is probably very
lengthy for for some
11:16
people that are doing this um I believe you can actually remove the
11:21
detail in some of these forget which one it is I think it’s this
11:28
one right here so you can hit exclude detail rows
11:34
and I believe that will get rid of basically every single line item in here
11:40
so if you wanted to you know if you got thousands of clients you might not
be going in and looking at each single line
11:46
item and say oh that fertilizer service was 60 bucks like that probably
isn’t the meat and potatoes of this report you
11:54
probably just want to have this load fairly quickly and be able to pop in
here and maybe say well which clients
12:00
are lifetime value under 500 bucks and we got to figure out why and maybe
Target those customers and maybe do some
12:07
upsells or something like that and try to get that value up so just a
thought I know some clients
12:14
that I’ve come across do have that where they do like a single aeration for
the client each year and it’s like that
12:19
might be a good candidate to reach out to and try to upsell into
12:24
you know overseeding or grow control or something like that so I’m hoping
with this version too
12:31
Steve that’s a little closer to what you’re looking for it’s definitely not
the prettiest report in the world but
12:37
hopefully this average here would get you to very close to what you’re
looking for like I said if you did want to do it
12:43
based off of net profit instead of uh basically gross revenue
12:50
that might be a little bit more useful to you but this would just be shown
you
12:56
if you just wanted to do it based off of Revenue so hope that helps any
13:01
yeah I was just playing on the other side here I think the only other thing
that you may want to put in there um we don’t have to do it on the screen
13:06
here but it is client source so you may be able to see the client lifetime
value based on each marketing source so those
13:13
are the things we’d want to dial in um there so I’m just looking on my
other screen here
13:18
um other things you could potentially run into if you build uh some
formulas in there we won’t dive into that today uh but we do have the
ability of invoice
13:26
date and invoice amount so we could potentially uh do some logic if they
13:31
haven’t been billed within x amount for a reoccurring service or x amount of
13:37
time for one-time service then that would that would basically filter them
out as a canceled client yeah and yeah that is definitely one
13:46
thing that I I do um recommend you do whether you do it how Mike said or
you just look at your
13:52
Client List CRM Client List and select um active service I think it is and
then
13:59
do there’s a couple different like date filters that you can do there um
but yeah if you don’t have a client
14:06
that receives service in the last year um I think it’s definitely safe to
to mark them as lost and you could just put
14:13
a cancellation reason as a one-time client right I mean they were a client
they’re no longer a client it’s not
14:19
really a bad cancellation it’s a natural cancellation but you definitely
don’t want to have
14:24
like 10 000 clients in your system when in reality you have 500. yeah and
that’s
14:30
that’s a good stat twos if that’s the case you’re probably not using an
automated upsell to actually go in and reactivate them so when we put those
out
14:37
for clients 60 to 80 estimate requests in the first 24 to 48 hours is not
uncommon so those you’ve got some data
14:43
points in there so you could really focus in and have some standardized
marketing copy ought to activate those people that have
14:49
left too so we have a cancel uh basically reactivation nurture that that
happens there too sometimes so that’s
14:54
those are things you want to look at if you’re building your own automation
to segment that database uh good work on that one Dylan what do you got
next for
15:00
me so the next one is from Orbin and he was asking you know paraphrasing
here
15:08
but I guess he has grown his fertilizer division it seems like and usage
have one technician and he’s curious what is
15:16
like the actual steps that I need to do to break that route that was
previously one person into two routes essentially
15:24
where two sales reps are fertilizer technicians are actually going to be
performing two separate roads
15:31
um that makes sense so in my opinion there’s a couple different ways to
tackle that but
15:38
I’m curious your opinion obviously as well Mike but how I would think about
it I’m just logically is I would probably
15:45
go to the CRM Client List and sort for every single client who has a
fertilizer
15:51
package with me right now if he hasn’t done this already and and maybe this
is just like because
15:57
I did this in the past but I always thought about my service area in zones
and I I don’t know how I would
16:04
necessarily survive without that so I I kind of just started a little bit
16:09
of a Google sheet here I’ll share this sheet and I’ll zoom in a bit
16:14
but I feel like a lot of people and we’ll get back to the fertilizer
example here in a second but I feel like a lot
16:20
of people are they do know this method when it comes to lawn mowing like
most people because
16:26
there’s five days in a week Monday through Friday they think okay it makes
sense to break my service area into five
16:36
zones and it doesn’t need to be one ZIP code per Zone you might have 25 zip
16:41
codes per Zone the number of zip codes per zone is is essentially
irrelevant but you kind of want to break it up into
16:47
zones is that what you did at Callahan’s yeah we did I was actually just
pulling to see if I could pull up a screenshot
16:53
of it you’re going to pull up a mapper I like this because we want to
blueprint it before we implement the change Yeah
16:59
well yeah we can definitely go to the the map next um but I was just
thinking and I’ve had
17:05
this conversation with a couple of people while we do deep Dives and stuff
like that where their fertilizer division is expanding and they they the
17:13
mowing is fairly simple in service autopilot the fertilizer is a little bit
more abstract it’s a little bit harder
17:18
to plan because it’s less frequent you’re doing it maybe once a quarter
once a month at the most so kind of how
17:27
I like to think about it is you still want to have your zones for fertilizer
17:33
um but it does work a little bit differently because you’re going
17:38
you know five or seven times a year instead of once a week so for fertilizer
17:44
Mike did you still have five or ten zones however you ran it yeah we did let
17:49
me see if I can actually share my screen here I just pulled this up so full
transparency I was completely unprepared
17:54
for this call doing some homework for some other stuff but let me see if I
can pull this up here
18:00
and show it in the screen and I’ll get this CRM Client List
18:07
while you’re doing that oh there you go perfect
18:13
all right side note if you’re running this yourself down when you’re off
screen you people cannot hear you talk so uh what we’ve got here is the old
map
18:21
here for Callahan so what you’ve got is basically we had three or four
different zones so obviously we kind of started
18:26
the business shop was right about here um but basically this this area here
was
18:32
like Zone one and then there was a major uh Highway that kind of went
through her Road this was kind of zone two
18:38
three and as we came down this was basically four we ended up
18:45
getting rid of this stuff up here past this 104 because Rob density um and
then this was the other Zone here so
18:52
we had another one here it covered this area and this area here uh some of
these guys were Big commercials that were like
18:58
hanging out way out of nowhere um just like the one that’s hanging out down
here there’s some some very large
19:03
Big commercials over full day jobs uh but the majority of this was all
residential so we we broke those in uh
19:10
Zone one zone two three four five and then these basically just bigger
19:16
commercials um so that’s how we kind of tackled that the main thing that we
looked at too is
19:22
we broke it up a lot of people have probably seen this here but this is
this would be for a mowing crew uh but if we
19:28
went in and made this for a a Fert crew
19:33
obviously it’s a one-person technician unless it’s a large commercial
property uh where you got multiple write-outs
19:38
going but if you had one individual on there and you were doing four tens
uh we would go back to an average wage of that
19:46
division so if we had certain techs or crew leaders you’d have an average
wage of say 30 to 25 with overtime would be
19:54
33.86 so you’d go in and actually plug that in uh right here
20:00
and the labor burden uh is that number that we came up with fictitiously in
this example for um uh FICA workman’s
20:07
comp uh workers comp in uh see FICA unemployment workers comp
20:14
liability insurance and some other things such as holiday pay vacation pay
and they come out as a percentage of the dollar so we’re going to add that
in as
20:21
well to the the crew breakout on where I’m going with the stone so a lot of
times and then we have a overhead
20:27
recovery if we’re using a bar system uh to cover a fixed g a cost that’s
about 25 here so let’s say on an industry
20:35
average we want to make say 45 50 net profit on fertilization um let’s say
it’s 45 so 1.45
20:43
our daily labor costs just for that technician with a 45 net margin is seven
20:49
seven seven hundred thirty dollars um we’ve got a truck we probably don’t
have a trailer so we would zero that out
20:57
um and our hourly rate then is going to be coming in for the truck at 758
10 hours a day
21:04
because we’re going to capture the curb time as well not just the
utilization time got already recovery and our profit
21:10
now built in at 45 um so why I’m doing this is the thing
21:16
that orbin’s asking about a lot of people that ask about it with this is
when we schedule
21:21
um fertilization or any service we don’t have a dollar amount that we need
to be producing so in callahans it was about
21:27
12 to 1300 a day each technician had to produce to hit our numbers so it’s
without kind of giving it all away right
21:33
here as I’m walking down what we’re going to see is we finish filling this
out is we’re actually going to see
21:39
um what fictitiously this crew would have to bill out so if orban’s going
out he’s gonna have a fixed number he needs to
21:45
bill out to hit his projected profit margin and his overhead recovery so
this would be not our truck but this would
21:51
just be our truck um there’s no mowers but let’s just say our hourly rate
for our ride on spreader
21:57
is 9.75 and we’re going to be using that probably seven of the of the 10
hours so
22:03
it’s just the time it’s being used and
22:10
our equipment cost for the spreader maybe the right on spreader and the
push spreader that’s possibly on there or the
22:15
hose in real attachment is 98 bucks a day and then we really don’t have a
maintenance package we’re doing
22:21
maintenance it’s going to be our stick address weed whackers blowers things
like that uh maybe you do have a
22:27
backpack sprayer and some different canisters and things like that if
you’re doing perimeter pass that’s where this would be in come in but you
would
22:33
actually add in how many hours a day are using that maintenance package or
what’s the hourly rate how many hours is being
22:40
used overhead recovery and the overhead recovery so let’s assume maybe
22:46
Orbit’s doing lawn care and he’s now he’s created a perimeter pest division
so he’s doing that at the same time as he’s doing the fertilization to
probably
22:53
double or triple that ticket or if you’re doing um mosquito control so
that’s where we
22:59
would bundle this additional equipment up uh so obviously this is
fictitious but the daily sales goal here before product
23:06
is a thousand dollars it would be costing uh Orban or somebody 715 dollars
23:11
before profit 10 hours a day and is Break Even to be 71.49 that’s what it’s
costing per hour
23:18
before it makes a profit so he needs to have an hourly Bill rate of about
101 dollars
23:24
so this right here uh my guess with product is going to put if this was his
23:30
numbers would put him probably around 13 to 1400 a day in product with
product so
23:35
when you when you break up the areas first and then use that 1300 a day as a
23:41
kind of a benchmark or a guideline to make sure that the roots are at least
feasible so you yeah you absolutely nailed it so just like your Google sheet
23:47
we broke out the zip codes or zones the zip codes that are in that zone and
then optimized it
23:54
um here but obviously we need to build more route density down here can we
realistically in a 10-hour day
24:01
capture all of these homes in this area yeah and what’s it going to
generate so
24:07
really especially if you’re using a waiting list job we want to take that
waiting list job and be able to delegate
24:13
it we don’t want it to rely on the business owner so not emotionally let’s
say with product in there uh it’s a 1300
24:19
day that’s literally a sticky note like it’s going to be right here we’re
gonna stick the sticky note up on the corner
24:25
Christine in my office did the same exact thing but she knew when she did
the waiting list and put that together per Zone that
24:32
um that’s how it lined up now the other thing to take a look at too that I
would recommend is when we’re doing those
24:39
waiting list jobs we’re grabbing say this route here
24:44
one day and then this route here the next day um or if he has two Crews
24:50
potentially have route group number one start from the farthest place in and
24:57
then group The Crew number two start from the farthest place out and work
its way in so the crews actually meet each other reason being if there’s a
25:03
breakdown equipment wise they can help each other or if there is a rain
delay or any issues if you’re tackling this
25:10
whole side of town in one day and you only get half the day done on both
technicians and there’s like a washout
25:16
with rain you can only have you only have to send back one truck and you
can reoptimize it and then that other crew
25:21
can start working out the next day’s work so those are the things we looked
at when we routed especially with snow removal as well in the mowing because
25:27
that eliminated the drive time from out here all the way back and that was
probably an hour and 25 minutes round
25:32
trip if you took two sides of traffic sometimes and the thing I’ve ran into
with a
25:38
different company was they knew how long a round was taking them each round
25:44
so I use that number to kind of back into like a similar system to like the
day of the week and the zip code
25:50
but instead like the company that I worked with previously I don’t know
Orbin how much fertilizing you do
25:56
currently but let’s just pretend he has like one round currently takes him
five
26:02
weeks I mean that would be pretty perfect to kind of use almost the exact
same system
26:07
as the mowing but instead of in this fictitious example 902 zip code 90210
26:13
being on Mondays zip code 90210 could be potentially the first week of every
26:19
round yep yeah and we keep consistency so it’s going to give that um the
CSR that’s routing that some
26:25
consistency too and why I like using the CRM Client List like you’re on
right
26:31
right here is let’s say Orbin you determine like Mike said the the North
26:36
West area is going to be Zone one let’s say well you can bulk
26:42
select those jobs and then bulk apply a tag from here so I see some people
trying to do it from the dispatch board
26:48
or the waiting list which can be helpful but I don’t believe you can bulk
apply
26:54
tags from the dispatch board or waiting list yet hopefully that’ll come in
the future so this is the way to do it so
26:59
you can tag them and then from there you can find these customers and make
sure that they are getting routed um
27:06
on the appropriate days if you’re pulling from the waiting list you would
pull everybody with the Zone one tag and
27:12
make sure that those are getting scheduled on week one of the round and
week one of round two
27:17
awesome advice love it um hopefully that answers the question or been there
uh I’m assuming that’s
27:23
probably all we had but is there anything else that we have uh lined up
here I think that’s it for today
27:30
um those were the two big ones I’ll make sure to reach out to those people
and hopefully we did answer those correctly
27:36
if they need any clarification we can hit those uh first next week and yeah
any future questions just comment them
27:43
on this video and we’ll make sure to get them next week yeah Dylan and
after the video is up here uh can you put a link
27:49
to your calendar link because I know a lot of people after the call
yesterday wanted to basically have us go in
27:55
um and do for lack of a better term and Analysis of their system where it
was set up uh was it set up to scale for
28:01
workflow uh they’re having some issues so I think it’s like a 15 or 20
minute call that you were doing but basically
28:08
no charge you went in and actually gave some people some insight of these
areas I’d work on setting the system up a
28:14
couple people I know did it themselves and then a couple people actually
ended up uh one purchase to Deep dive on the
28:19
last seven days here um just because they saw some things they just didn’t
have the time to tackle it so if you’re looking for a free
28:25
resource to just do that Dylan’s gonna pop that in the chat uh right after
this or during the call and
28:31
um somebody on our team who’s done this will um we’ll definitely show you
how to how to
28:36
do that and then it looks like you want to share your screen so I will yeah
if I could just kind of show me uh hold on
28:42
one second I’m gonna pull this I’m gonna pull us both off again so we can
actually see it
28:47
uh but as we do it we will not be able to hear each other
28:54
all right you’re trying to talk I’m gonna take myself off here okay well
yeah this is just like a glimpse at our
29:00
audit that we do I’m sure you maybe have seen this before but um basically
yeah depending on your size
29:06
of business we kind of walk through all aspects of your your CRM and some
people
29:12
honestly like they got everything in there it’s just a kind of pat on the
back but others are missing some some
29:18
things that they just weren’t even aware about so at a bare minimum you can
kind of walk away this is just like
29:23
fictitious results here but you can kind of walk away with an actual score
of how your business is doing as it relates to
29:30
kind of service autopilot as a CRM so love it um yeah so make sure you check
29:37
that out Dylan and the team is available to do those analysis uh there is
no charge for him you walk away with an
29:43
actionable report like that and uh that’s your blueprint if something we
can help you with obviously we can get you some pricing on it but really
29:49
um you know some stuff on there that we we technically don’t even help with
uh but we can get you resources of people that could help you as well so
29:56
um Dylan appreciate you joining us I know we’re still trying to iron out
between your schedule nine set days and times this moving forward but we’ll
get
30:02
at least one of these live uh next week as well yeah awesome sounds good
30:07
everybody has a good weekend yeah so until next weekend drop your comments
questions below and we’ll be tackling
30:13
again next week

0:00
welcome back to Callahan’s corner where
0:01
you ask the questions we had some live
0:03
right here on Facebook got special uh
0:05
guest host here Dylan from the simple
0:06
growth team uh Dylan was not only uh our
0:09
first client but actually one of our
0:11
first team members um who actually has
0:13
gone out and mastered the skills of
0:15
service autopilot and scale the seven
0:16
figure lawn care and snow removal
0:18
business up in Sudbury Ontario um so I
0:21
was trying to mix up a little bit uh so
0:22
everybody is not just watching me
0:24
provide the content but with our team of
0:25
almost 30 full-time people now uh going
0:28
to get some of the simple grow team on
0:29
here to kind of expose some of the bench
0:31
and some of the skill set that we can
0:32
provide so had a question that was
0:34
submitted here I’m going to take a quick
0:36
look at it uh and read it but it was
0:39
around a V3
0:41
um estimate form here so
0:46
it says does anybody know if it’s if
0:48
there’s a possibility that I can connect
0:49
service autopilot to my web web page
0:51
curious uh when someone sends her
0:54
information for bid requests could it
0:55
all get entered in so uh there’s
0:58
automatically a lead in the system so uh
1:01
great question by um Matthew and uh
1:03
Dylan we’re gonna be jumping into this
1:05
but uh there is a bit of a confusion now
1:08
that there’s a V2 and a V3 website form
1:10
or forms in himself so there’s V2 V3 uh
1:14
we’re recommending as a company right
1:16
now for probably your website lead CAD
1:17
for using a V3 uh but for your on-site
1:21
estimate forms and things that are
1:22
interacting with your cruise uh as it
1:25
lays right now we’re gonna be using
1:26
those as V2 because they’re accessible
1:28
in the Legacy app so uh Dylan without
1:31
any delay really do you want to hop in
1:32
and kind of just break down the basics
1:34
of a V3 website lead capture
1:36
yeah for sure and I guess the main point
1:38
right off the bat is like yes you can
1:40
have a form that will primarily go on
1:43
your website and replace like a
1:44
WordPress form or whatever you might
1:46
have on there
1:48
um so that those leads can come directly
1:49
into service autopilot with no Double
1:51
Entry
1:53
um a lot of people are just accustomed
1:55
to having that just go right to their
1:56
email
1:57
they read their email they type it into
1:59
service autopilot you definitely don’t
2:01
need to do them so I’m in the marketing
2:04
forms section here and this is a V3 form
2:09
when you hit on the top right there’s a
2:11
little add form button
2:13
it brings you to this screen here but
2:15
it’ll actually prompt you to say like do
2:17
you want to just start with a template
2:19
of a form that that we’ve kind of
2:21
already created now this one’s not bad
2:24
and we can start with this template it
2:26
is a multi-page form which I know some
2:29
people don’t necessarily love but that’s
2:31
okay we can tweak it from there
2:33
so if you hit next down here then it’ll
2:38
prompt you to say do you want to rename
2:40
this form
2:41
I mean we can just put demo beside it
2:43
for now
2:46
and now it brings you to basically the
2:49
form editor
2:50
one thing that I thought was kind of
2:52
confusing when I first started using
2:54
these types of forms was the pages are
2:56
actually down here so what you see here
2:58
is not the the entire form
3:01
um when you when you first start out
3:02
you’re in the design section once the
3:04
form is actually designed the way you
3:06
want it then you kind of do some final
3:08
configurations
3:11
um we’ll get to that in a second and
3:13
then the third and final step is you
3:15
actually publish the form and that gives
3:18
you like the final code that you can
3:19
kind of copy and paste and put on your
3:21
website so it seems like a lot of steps
3:23
but once you have it down pad it’s
3:25
sometimes a you know couple minute
3:27
process at most
3:30
Mike I don’t know about you but I don’t
3:32
necessarily love the multi-step form
3:34
expially for like a website
3:37
um
3:38
so I’m actually going to click uh on on
3:41
here
3:43
and I’m going to delete the additional
3:46
pages
3:48
yeah I agree that they’re doing for sure
3:50
the multi-step
3:51
um experience for most thing most things
3:53
we’re doing is probably not ideal the
3:55
only place you may want to use that is
3:57
maybe for a um a cold lead capture
4:00
semi-warm lead capture off like a
4:02
Facebook ad or something like that where
4:03
you can go in and capture at least first
4:05
name last name and email
4:06
um so that’s getting registered in the
4:08
system yeah usually off your website
4:09
you’re going to want it one quick form
4:12
yeah and alternatively if you’re
4:13
drowning with leads and you can’t even
4:15
keep up with the amount of leads you
4:16
have well a multi-step form might make
4:18
sense where you’re like weeding out the
4:20
leads and saying what’s your budget do
4:22
you have a forty thousand dollar budget
4:23
for this patio if not
4:25
we’re not a good fit stuff like that but
4:28
if you just want to capture the leads
4:29
quickly you don’t necessarily want them
4:31
to go through three or four pages if
4:33
necessary
4:35
so I just renamed this field up here
4:38
when you click on a field the editing is
4:41
off to the left hand side here so if we
4:44
wanted to you know change any text here
4:46
we would just do that right here
4:49
now these are the actual fields that are
4:53
basically going to map to an actual
4:56
field in the client screen
4:59
or lead screen so when someone once this
5:03
form is already when someone types in
5:05
you know Dylan in here for their first
5:07
name that’s what’s going to filter over
5:10
and map over to the the first name
5:12
section when you’re adding a client so
5:14
that you don’t need to retype any of
5:16
this so this one’s fine first name last
5:19
name
5:20
contact email that might be a little
5:23
weird we might just want that to say
5:25
email that’s a little bit more common
5:27
yeah and if they’re using a V2 form
5:29
Dylan this is a necessary step so V3
5:32
kind of pre-maps a lot of this for you
5:34
yep exactly so I do I do really like
5:37
that about V3 now this might look really
5:40
weird on your website the way that that
5:42
these fields are very very small so I
5:44
won’t necessarily get into it right now
5:46
but you can increase the length or the
5:50
the width I guess of these fields if
5:52
you’d like for now we’ll just keep them
5:54
as they are
5:56
um but sometimes when you take this and
5:58
put on your website it’s going to look
6:00
kind of like really really skinny
6:01
instead of filling out to the the full
6:03
width of whatever kind of box you copy
6:06
and paste the code into
6:08
so obviously this isn’t all the
6:10
information that we need we probably
6:12
want to know what what’s their address
6:13
what services they’re interested and
6:15
things like that so you would just
6:17
basically click on this last one here
6:20
and then we’re going to add some some
6:22
additional fields
6:24
so we are probably going to want at
6:27
least address
6:29
and what it asks you what type of
6:32
address this is I mean presumably we
6:34
want their service address right we want
6:37
to know where we’re I’m actually going
6:39
to be potentially performing the service
6:42
um so it basically fills it all in here
6:44
for you if you want to double check and
6:46
make sure that it’s mapping to the right
6:48
area which it is already then that’s
6:51
great
6:52
we probably also want to make this a
6:54
required field we don’t want people just
6:56
putting in their name uh an email and
6:58
then we got to say hey where do you live
7:01
so we can kind of make all of these
7:02
required
7:09
and these ones already are required they
7:11
got the little asterisks beside it
7:15
and it says postal code if you want to
7:17
change that to zip code you can post the
7:19
code that’s what we call it in Canada
7:21
anyway so that that’s fine by me and
7:24
then the last thing is or usually this
7:27
is the last thing anyways we’ll usually
7:29
want to do
7:31
um
7:32
not multiple choice uh checklist
7:36
so like I made a error here very easy to
7:39
kind of fix that just by clicking on it
7:41
and then hitting delete
7:43
and then the checklist here is where
7:46
we’re going to prompt them to actually
7:47
choose the services that they want to
7:49
quote for
7:50
so normally what we’ll do is we’ll kind
7:52
of replace this and say you know
7:55
Services you are interested in
7:59
something along those lines you know
8:01
everybody kind of wants it named a
8:03
little a little differently
8:04
and usually I’ll kind of get rid of that
8:08
secondary option just to keep it as
8:09
clean as possible
8:11
and then if you scroll down here on the
8:13
left I will probably want to make that
8:16
required
8:17
don’t necessarily need to map it
8:19
anywhere per se
8:21
but we definitely do want to change the
8:23
generic options here so I’ll just do it
8:26
kind of what my services were but it
8:28
might be
8:29
lawn mowing
8:31
fertilizer and meat control
8:37
third cleanup
8:40
and maybe
8:41
you know removal and then you might want
8:45
to include a fifth one or however many
8:48
services you have include one extra one
8:50
that just says other
8:52
because people will have kind of Oddball
8:53
requests that you just want to make sure
8:55
they don’t
8:56
bounce off your website because you
8:58
didn’t have an other section so
9:01
um and then usually if you’re going to
9:02
have another section you probably want
9:04
to have one final field here and that
9:07
would be like a paragraph feel there
9:09
maybe it’s a long text entry yeah long
9:12
long text entering so you probably just
9:16
want to have like renate rename this to
9:18
something like other or comments
9:22
something like that or you know service
9:24
details
9:30
and that will allow them to you know if
9:33
they want to add any additional comments
9:35
they can do that there
9:37
um
9:38
if you want to change what this submit
9:40
button says you can just by clicking on
9:43
the button so you might want to say get
9:44
your free quote no
9:47
whatever you’d like it to be and I think
9:50
you can change the color and stuff like
9:51
that so if you want to kind of brand it
9:53
up to what your branded colors are
9:56
that’s great
9:58
um
9:58
next thing is you’ll actually want to go
10:02
over to the
10:04
configure section I believe it
10:06
automatically saves this as you’re
10:08
working but probably a pretty good habit
10:10
to get into just hit that save draft
10:12
button down there
10:15
um
10:16
so
10:18
you know if you’re doing
10:20
um
10:21
conversion tracking on your website you
10:23
might want to redirect them to like a
10:25
web page like a thank you page or
10:26
something but for simplicity’s sake
10:28
we’ll just leave it like this so when
10:30
they submit this form eventually this is
10:31
going to be on your website the lead or
10:34
the prospect is going to see this
10:36
message
10:37
so pretty common feature of a form on a
10:40
website
10:41
email notifications here this is
10:43
important
10:45
what do you want to happen when someone
10:46
submits this form you probably want to
10:48
get an email saying you know
10:50
Bob Jones just submitted an estimate
10:52
especially if you’re driving around
10:53
you’re not going to be on service
10:54
autopilot all the time so you would
10:57
actually add a notification here and it
11:00
could just be like a custom email
11:03
recipient I’ll send this to Bill
11:07
and
11:09
you could kind of just say it’s coming
11:11
from you know
11:13
oops I clicked off of there definitely
11:17
don’t want to do that
11:21
so you have to say who it’s coming from
11:22
which is a little weird you could just
11:24
say you know simple growth quote request
11:26
form something like that and then you do
11:29
need to put an email and there’s the
11:31
there’s the cat the cat is back
11:35
um so you do need to put an email where
11:36
it’s actually coming from
11:38
and then you do need to put a subject
11:40
line as well so usually that’ll just be
11:42
like website book form
11:44
and you know something like you for
11:47
receive a new estimate request
11:51
but something like that so that the
11:53
email that you receive with this
11:55
information actually makes sense and
11:57
then you’re going to hit save
12:07
and that’s the email notification you
12:09
can always click back in there and edit
12:11
it a little bit that’s that’s no problem
12:13
this right here though is specifically
12:15
what the um the person who asked the
12:19
question is is going to want to to look
12:21
at so this is where
12:23
you’re basically telling service
12:25
autopilot when someone submits this form
12:27
if they don’t already exist in my system
12:29
create them in my system so it might not
12:32
seem like a huge deal but manually
12:35
entering each one of these leads does
12:36
take you know 30 seconds if you’re doing
12:40
500 a thousand quote requests a year
12:42
that is just like monotonous time that
12:45
you can get back by by doing this task
12:46
once and for all yeah so this is
12:48
definitely the way to tackle it so I’m
12:50
glad you brought this up because this is
12:52
the part that everybody misses and ends
12:53
up sitting on your my day screen you
12:54
gotta do double entry
12:56
exactly so kind of like the default
12:59
things what it’s saying here is what
13:00
what is the matching criteria at what
13:02
point should service autopilot say don’t
13:04
add this person again they already exist
13:07
in the field in the system so for
13:10
example if Mike Callahan fills out this
13:12
form and Mike Callahan already exists in
13:14
the system based on how this is
13:16
currently set up it would say
13:18
I don’t need to create another Mike
13:20
Callahan where that becomes an issue
13:22
though is if we got two people named
13:25
Mike Callahan with two in your trouble
13:27
emails two totally different addresses
13:30
well now we might have just overridden
13:34
you know another Mike Callahan with this
13:36
Mike Callahan so you do want to have
13:38
typically at least one more field in
13:42
here and that would be the email so that
13:44
if you have two people with the exact
13:46
same name you know Mike Smith
13:49
um
13:49
but they have different emails
13:51
it would say oh this is a new person and
13:54
we’re going to create another person in
13:55
your system as a lead
13:57
so you can get a little bit more
13:59
granular with it if you wanted by saying
14:00
well
14:01
what if my Callahan has multiple
14:04
properties like rental properties that
14:06
we want to get serviced well if he
14:08
submits another quote request for a
14:10
different property
14:12
we might want to have an address field
14:15
in here that says all four of these
14:17
things need to match in order for
14:19
service autopilot to say this is the
14:22
same contact
14:24
that makes sense I appreciate you
14:26
hopping on here dealing with me and uh
14:27
breaking this down is there anything
14:28
else we need to know before we hop onto
14:31
the team call but I I think this is
14:32
probably an eye-opener for a lot of
14:33
folks that have not seen a V3 form
14:35
actually configured yeah last thing is
14:37
you probably want like a my day
14:39
notification so when this quote request
14:41
gets submitted um you’re probably going
14:43
to want to turn that on so that you can
14:45
see those notifications right on your my
14:47
day screen because you might not be
14:48
checking your email 24 7.
14:50
and then last but not least you’re going
14:53
to want to publish this form
14:55
so there’s a couple fields in the form
14:57
that I didn’t map like such as what
14:59
services you wanted a quote for that
15:02
information is just going to exist in
15:03
the form itself it’s not really going to
15:05
map anywhere on the the client file
15:08
typically
15:09
but so These Warnings aren’t sometimes
15:11
they are beneficial but these you can
15:13
kind of just disregard it’s I knew these
15:16
weren’t mapped anywhere
15:17
but you want to go to form options here
15:20
and when you hit publish
15:25
sometimes it takes a second
15:29
says your form has been saved and
15:31
published now we can actually take these
15:34
codes and it gives you a couple
15:35
different options and copy and paste
15:36
that and put it on your website wherever
15:38
you’re hosting your website so the most
15:40
common one that we recommend is this
15:42
actual embedded form just so that when
15:45
we copy and paste this we put it on the
15:46
website you don’t need to repeat this
15:48
process ever again if you want to change
15:51
your form
15:52
maybe you add another service well you
15:55
would just come into this form add the
15:57
option in here and then
16:01
come back here hit publish again and
16:03
that would actually automatically update
16:05
on your website
16:06
that’s one of the biggest issues
16:10
yeah so hopefully that was helpful and
16:12
if you do have any more questions about
16:14
that form just comment on the video or I
16:16
think Mike’s going to include a link
16:19
sgscall.com and we can chat more about
16:22
it absolutely yeah if any questions uh
16:24
around this or anything else in your
16:25
business check us out at
16:27
sgscall.com for free business analysis
16:29
or software analysis uh once again we’ll
16:32
see again on Callahan’s corner you ask
16:33
the questions we had some live right
16:34
here on Facebook Dylan and Mike on our
16:36
way to the weekly leadership meeting

0:00
are you asking questions Ransom live
0:01
right here on Facebook been a lot of
0:03
talk about emails and estimates going to
0:07
the spam folder and potential leads and
0:09
clients not getting the communication
0:11
from your business that you need to get
0:13
in their hands via email well uh there’s
0:16
a lot of misconceptions of why this is
0:19
happening and I’m about to
0:21
um literally demystify why this is
0:23
happening in a lot of your
0:26
um companies if you’re having issues
0:28
with email deliverability believe it or
0:29
not it has nothing to really do with the
0:31
software itself or their sender
0:34
reputation
0:35
um we work with service autopilot as a
0:37
certified advisor their user sending uh
0:40
ratings actually really really uh well
0:42
they meet from my understanding with the
0:44
email provider that sends these uh
0:47
emails and
0:49
it’s really dialed in this is something
0:51
to have a handle on uh the concern is
0:53
that the end user being us as consumers
0:56
contractors uh are unaware of some of
0:59
the simple steps we need to take so I’m
1:01
going to take the next few minutes and
1:02
actually talk about uh something that’s
1:04
not really sexy or exciting uh DNS and
1:07
SPF records
1:08
um but that’s really really important
1:10
I’m going to break down in just simple
1:11
layman terms what it is and what you
1:12
need to do to fix it in addition I’m
1:15
going to give you a link to a uh article
1:17
out of our help desk from simple growth
1:19
how to actually go in and connect uh the
1:21
DNS SPF records in service autopilot for
1:23
yourself and I’m going to hop into an
1:26
additional CRM that we use called keep
1:27
which used to be previously in Fusion
1:29
soft and I’m going to break down the top
1:31
seven or eight things that you need to
1:33
be looking at when you build email
1:34
content for email deliverability
1:38
um to your current leads and clients and
1:41
a lot of people ask what’s the
1:42
difference between simple growth and
1:44
some of the other providers out there
1:46
doing done for you marketing or done for
1:48
you automations well uh in the next few
1:50
minutes you’re gonna definitely see the
1:51
difference because when we go out and
1:53
write all your email copy and your text
1:55
message copy
1:57
um particularly as well as call scripts
1:59
um it’s done for you in the Box hitch
2:01
them but we don’t only just do that we
2:03
go in and actually check the email
2:06
deliverability and make sure it’s not
2:08
going to be flagged to spam
2:10
um and that’s the key thing and I’m
2:11
going to show you how to do it yourself
2:12
here over the next few minutes so
2:14
without any further delay I’m going to
2:15
open up the screen here
2:17
and talk about this so uh Tech Tweeter
2:21
had a great diagram I didn’t want to
2:22
recreate the wheel if it’s already out
2:23
on the internet uh so this actually
2:25
probably will bring a little more
2:26
credibility to me to actually drawing
2:28
this out on a uh Google slide sheet or
2:31
Lucid chart uh but what we’ve got here
2:34
is
2:35
uh what’s happening here is you are the
2:37
sender you’re sending your email here
2:40
um and it’s going out to this inbound
2:42
mail server and it’s looking up the SPF
2:45
at the DNS server and kicking it back
2:48
what you are doing is hopefully if you
2:51
have your SPF DNS record set that you’ve
2:54
given service autopilot basically the
2:57
permission to send on your behalf and
2:59
the other email providers are going to
3:01
recognize this is a credible source so
3:03
if it’s recognized here
3:05
um plus the reputation date of the
3:07
sender which essay has really good
3:08
sender information it’s going to go
3:11
either in the inbox spam quarantine or
3:13
blocked
3:14
um what we’re seeing here is a lot of
3:16
our estimates and emails if we have not
3:18
taken this essential step and this is
3:21
something that uh simple growth as an
3:23
expert in email deliverability and
3:25
automations uh has been teaching and
3:28
talking to all our clients about for
3:30
probably the last four and a half
3:31
probably five years so this is nothing
3:34
new
3:35
um so there is a difference when you go
3:37
out and work with someone they need to
3:40
be telling you about these things since
3:41
I’m here to basically demystify what
3:44
needs to be done even if you’re not
3:45
working with simple growth because in
3:46
the mindset of abundance this needs to
3:48
happen this is why people are not
3:50
getting their estimates out they’re not
3:51
getting their invoices out sometimes and
3:53
getting delivered
3:54
um so right from Tech Tweeter here
3:57
why is SPF important
4:00
um SPF is a senate centers policy
4:03
framework extremely important for
4:04
protecting your domain from being used
4:06
for fraudulent and email activities so
4:08
we need to go in and actually register
4:10
these for these to work SPF is a type of
4:12
domain service DNS record that
4:14
identifies which mail servers are
4:17
allowed to send emails from your domain
4:19
so we are going in and allowing service
4:23
autopilot to send emails from our domain
4:26
so simple growthsystems.com that domain
4:29
for me and why we do this it helps
4:31
prevent someone from spoofing your
4:33
domain and sending out malicious emails
4:35
which would not be good and I’ve seen
4:37
this in the past so we need to register
4:40
um those those things and SPF can help
4:42
prevent your emails from being marked as
4:44
spam sounds familiar correct we are
4:46
being marked in spam or not actually
4:48
getting there if we haven’t registered
4:50
this so it’s very very essentially we do
4:52
this so by adding SPF record to your DNS
4:55
you are essentially telling the
4:58
receiving mail server that this is where
5:01
my email comes from your Contracting
5:03
Company
5:04
um and that other mail servers claiming
5:07
to send emails from your domain is
5:09
fraudulent so once again once we have
5:11
gone in
5:12
we have registered with the service
5:15
autopilot
5:16
uh in SPF DNS records
5:20
the the mail services oh it’s good we’re
5:22
going to go through with the good
5:24
reputation we’re going to get in the
5:25
inbox this is why some of those emails
5:27
are going to spam or bouncing basically
5:29
getting blocked so we need to get that
5:31
DNS SPF record so the good news is in
5:34
the chat I am going to give you a link
5:36
to setting up your business email
5:37
addresses for use by service autopilot
5:40
so this was an article that we wrote two
5:42
years ago like I said we’ve been telling
5:44
our clients about four or five four to
5:46
five years ago when we really started
5:48
automating on service autopilot as a
5:50
certified advisor so this is going to
5:52
give you the step-by-step directions you
5:53
don’t need to be a simple growth client
5:55
um to do this but we’re going to give
5:57
you this here and I’m going to put that
5:58
in the chat after the live event uh next
6:01
thing I want to show you though is what
6:02
does this all mean
6:04
um so outside of service autopilot
6:07
um and and keep which used to be
6:09
Infusionsoft is where we first started
6:10
cutting our automation teeth
6:13
um so what is the most common triggered
6:15
messages for their spam Checkers I can
6:17
go in here and this is an email that we
6:19
wrote for the simple growth masterminds
6:21
for our live event in August 2023 uh
6:24
where we teach eight big eight figure
6:26
business
6:27
um methodology and actually Workshop it
6:29
uh what keep has actually done is off to
6:31
the left here there’s a Spam area so
6:33
when I go to create a email
6:36
um I can hit this and based on what I
6:39
have in here
6:41
for this actual email
6:44
this built-in spam Checker will actually
6:46
tell me the deliverability so obviously
6:48
we’ve tested this
6:50
um and this email had I think about an
6:52
85 open rate
6:54
um and almost a 10 click-through rate
6:56
but part of the reason why the simple
6:58
growth automations internally and the
7:00
ones we build for our clients work so
7:01
well is we go through this process and
7:05
do a Spam checking and deliverability
7:07
process now the good news is you don’t
7:09
need to have keeper Infusionsoft to do
7:11
this if we go online there is a lot of
7:13
free Checkers so literally
7:15
free email spam Checker and what we can
7:18
do and all of them are pretty much the
7:19
same
7:20
um some limit you how many you test
7:22
today but if you’re testing up to three
7:24
emails a day like it’s pretty much free
7:25
so you’re good but we go in and what you
7:28
can do is when you click in here
7:30
uh for that we can copy this email
7:33
address and you can send your emails to
7:35
it and it’ll actually tell you your spam
7:37
or spamminess rating to actually be able
7:40
to deliver your emails
7:42
the final thing is uh right from keep
7:44
where we’re certified advisors of
7:47
um I want to talk about some of the
7:48
things that uh the eight main things
7:50
that you as a contractor if you’re
7:53
writing your own copy and not using the
7:54
pre-built simple growth copy or if
7:56
you’re even editing on top of it or
7:57
customizing it
8:00
is the first one is the ratio of white
8:03
space to non-white space having a lot of
8:06
line breaks are other white space alerts
8:08
the internet service providers
8:10
um that critical information potentially
8:13
opt out unsubscribe list is actually
8:16
being buried at the bottom
8:18
so whether you’re in the US or Canada
8:20
Camp spam compliance we need to have the
8:23
opt out on the bottom uh some people
8:25
will inadvertently not know this and
8:28
actually push a whole bunch of white
8:29
space and push that opt out link all the
8:31
way to the bottom so it’s buried
8:34
um and these email providers now will
8:37
actually look at this
8:39
um
8:40
if you’re asking for huge sums of money
8:42
uh those are phishing schemes and then
8:46
uh the way you’ve formatted your numbers
8:48
in the US US on your actual uh document
8:51
may also trigger some spam so the next
8:54
one here is tax percent a lot of money
8:57
for you so basically
8:59
um those those ideas as big deep
9:01
discounts or
9:03
um discounts percentage off those things
9:06
in email subject line in the messaging
9:08
uh may actually trigger uh some actual
9:12
uh what do you call it uh spam rating uh
9:15
subject line isn’t all in capitals I see
9:18
this here in a lot of the documents that
9:20
we
9:21
um get from our clients or non-clients
9:24
um that they’re doing it so urgent read
9:26
things like this here that is going to
9:29
be considered spam and that will get you
9:31
a one-way ticket right to the email spam
9:34
box HTML format message contains
9:37
shortened urls
9:40
so the best idea here is any short URLs
9:43
we’re putting behind a button or a call
9:45
to action where it’s not actually having
9:46
the actual
9:48
um shortened URL in the actual email so
9:51
if you look at our broadcast here
9:53
for the simple growth masterminds attend
9:56
the register click here and that actual
9:58
short URL is behind there that’s going
10:00
to give you better email deliverability
10:01
this is the stuff that uh when you
10:04
actually dive in and get an education
10:05
around this stuff that this is what
10:07
we’re looking at here
10:08
um obviously I don’t think any adult uh
10:11
entertainment things would be in here
10:12
but uh if you’ve got something around
10:14
porn in there or Triple X it’s going to
10:16
end up in the spam thing but I think
10:17
we’re all probably safe in our lawn care
10:19
and home cleaning companies anything
10:20
around trading options probably also uh
10:23
but here’s a big one domain and IP
10:25
reputation
10:27
with this right here right
10:30
now it should not be an issue the domain
10:32
reputation is actually really good and
10:35
uh if you’ve got something around
10:36
coveted content we’ll probably get there
10:38
so um those are some of the things that
10:40
I’m looking at when we’re writing done
10:41
for you email marketing and text copy
10:44
um that needs to happen but once again
10:46
if you’re joining us we’re talking about
10:48
DNS SPF records so when we send
10:51
we’re giving
10:53
um and basically
10:55
the DNS record identifies which mail
10:57
servers are allowed to send emails from
11:00
your domain so we’re letting everyone
11:02
know that sa service autopilot is
11:05
allowed to send from our domain and then
11:07
it goes in through reputation and it
11:09
gets in the inbox that’s how you’re
11:10
gonna get your emails for your invoices
11:12
your estimates
11:14
and any other communication to your
11:16
client so you need to go in and register
11:18
your SPS and dnf Records otherwise
11:22
um you have not made it aware that
11:24
service autopilot is sending on behalf
11:28
of your domain like your website like
11:30
simple growth systems now the other
11:32
thing that probably no one has told you
11:34
which I’m going to tell you that we tell
11:35
all of our paying clients and I’m just
11:37
going to let this out as some expert
11:39
advice uh Mike at gmail.com is not the
11:44
email you want to be sending eventually
11:46
that is also going to get flagged so you
11:48
want to be sending from
11:50
uh Mike at simplelawncare.com so you
11:54
need to be sending from an actual domain
11:55
that’s registered
11:57
um and that is going to be the key so
11:58
what I’m going to put here is uh our
12:00
article here
12:01
to set up your email address to use by
12:05
service autopilot so in the chat here
12:07
I’m putting that in here and I’ll post
12:10
it again afterwards so this is how we
12:12
tackle it literally scroll down step by
12:14
step
12:15
and this will be the step-by-step
12:18
newsletters go out get a spam filter
12:21
check your emails before you send them
12:23
out to make sure uh just like I’m doing
12:25
in my email broadcast that I’m okay with
12:27
the spam check and
12:29
take an idea of some of the things if
12:31
you’re just joining us uh the top
12:34
nine things we should be looking at that
12:36
will uh almost guarantee you a one-way
12:39
ticket to the spam folder if your DNS
12:40
and SPF records are created correctly so
12:43
these are the things we’re talking about
12:44
I’m going to drop this in the
12:47
chat as well how to do this on your own
12:49
and go out and get an email spam Checker
12:52
to check your content uh if you’re not
12:54
using simple growth as a uh content
12:57
provider with your done-free automations
12:58
want to check that make sure you do it
13:00
correctly and this is one of the reasons
13:03
when people ask what’s the difference
13:04
between simple growth and other
13:06
automation providers we’re bringing 10
13:08
15 years of expert knowledge here for
13:11
things not only for the automations but
13:12
how to actually get those automated
13:13
emails and text messages to their inbox
13:15
and providing you tools with done for
13:18
you fashion and not only do we after the
13:21
first 30 days to launch is set up we
13:24
actually continue to support these so on
13:26
average with about 28 to 30 full-time
13:28
people on our team uh updating and
13:30
supporting these things we probably
13:31
average I would say 150 to maybe almost
13:34
200 uh updating and help tickets on our
13:39
team every week depending on the
13:40
seasonality of the season so that’s what
13:43
we’re doing we’re living this we’ve got
13:44
a full team that owns this does it and
13:46
uh we’re showing you here on this video
13:48
how to take care of yourself if this is
13:50
something you’re doing yourself so
13:51
Callahan’s corner you ask questions we
13:53
end some library on Facebook make sure
13:54
you check the link in the comments
13:57
um how to actually set up your SPF DNS
13:59
records to have essays send

0:01
there we go Sean so let’s uh we’ll start
0:05
this over here so uh if we’re looking at
0:07
going in
0:09
um Sean let me know if you can hear me
0:10
buddy but I think uh that should solve
0:12
the problem
0:13
um but basically the question here that
0:15
we submitted to Callahan’s Corner was
0:17
how do we go out and when should we
0:19
renew our snow and ice removal uh in
0:22
that process what we’re looking at is
0:24
going out right after the Fourth of July
0:26
within about a week to week and a half
0:29
we want to renew our snow removal
0:30
services so good news is I’ve got some
0:33
really
0:33
um great Insight because my lawn care
0:35
company Callahan’s lawn care located in
0:37
Upstate New York uh is probably the
0:39
Third on average one of the third
0:41
highest snowfall markets for snow
0:43
removal in the whole United States
0:44
averaging 120 to 130 inches Lakeside
0:47
where we’re at so the process of
0:49
renewing 600 residential contracts and
0:52
probably 40 or 50 commercials every time
0:54
we went out we plowed a little over
0:56
um 100 acres of pavement uh that was a
1:00
big task to get those renewed so we’re
1:01
going to do is go out right after the
1:03
Fourth of July
1:04
and renew those contracts we’re going to
1:06
do is create some scarcity and urgency
1:08
around that
1:09
um and we’re going to do the first part
1:11
is working our existing clients in our
1:13
our CRM or customer relationship
1:15
management software and actually send
1:17
out a renewal um and allow them to view
1:20
and up uh view their updated pricing if
1:23
there’s a price change and click and
1:24
accept uh the next thing is we want to
1:27
actually start working our database net
1:28
CRM of our leads and lost estimates and
1:31
previous clients that we actually want
1:33
to work with
1:34
um so this is where we’re going to dive
1:35
in and really start to create that
1:37
scarce and urgency because we don’t
1:39
overbook our schedule we provide quality
1:40
service and the way we do that is we go
1:43
out and sign people up so if you’re
1:45
going to renew in my case 600 plus
1:47
clients maybe 700 snow removal clients
1:49
that’s something you don’t want to do in
1:50
October September November you want to
1:53
know well in advance of where you’re at
1:54
and if we’re looking to grow by 30 how
1:57
many of our existing clients have
1:58
canceled so how many do we need to
2:00
replace the cancellations and how many
2:01
we need to grow where we’re going but
2:04
the the other cool thing is you’ve got
2:05
to jump on 99 of the competitors in your
2:07
Market by going out in July most of them
2:09
are still struggling to figure out their
2:11
summer Services we’re already going out
2:13
and selling our snow removal services or
2:15
if you’re not in the snow removal area
2:16
it’s going to be the same exact thing
2:17
for Holiday Lights
2:19
um but what I’m going to recommend is
2:20
after we create the new renewal process
2:22
through an automation
2:24
uh in your software we’re going to go
2:26
out and work that database to get new
2:27
people and I’m going to recommend that
2:29
we do it through email and also direct
2:31
mailing direct mailing right now uh not
2:33
the cheapest but having really really
2:35
good response because no one else is
2:37
investing in direct mail uh the last
2:40
week or so I’ve gone out to my mailbox
2:41
and it’s lucky if there’s anything in
2:44
there outside of a bill I think I’ve
2:45
seen in the probably last month maybe
2:47
one direct mail piece um that really
2:49
wasn’t well done with no call to action
2:51
so I’m going to break down some best
2:52
practice so if you’re going to start
2:53
selling your snow removing Services
2:54
right now in the middle of July this is
2:56
how you do it
2:58
um so our buddy Tyler of an Integrity
2:59
Paving also does snow removal
3:02
um what we’ve done with him for his seal
3:04
coating but this is the same exact
3:05
process we’re going to be doing with our
3:07
snow removal
3:08
um this is something we actually did at
3:09
Callahan’s lawn care with a new updated
3:11
twist I’m going to show you is we’ve got

0:00
welcome back to Callahan’s corner will
0:01
you ask a question to answer them live
0:02
right here on Facebook had a User
0:04
submitted question Mike when is the best
0:06
time to start going out and getting the
0:08
renewals for snow removal and upselling
0:11
people in our current database that
0:13
haven’t signed up for snow removal so
0:15
great question so at calhan’s Lawn Care
0:17
my lawn care and snow removal company in
0:19
the Northeast uh located in Rochester
0:21
New York actually the third largest
0:23
snowfall Market in the United States
0:26
um for plowing the time that we actually
0:29
went out and started up selling and
0:31
renewing the contracts uh were actually
0:33
the week or two after the Fourth of July
0:35
so perfect timing here
0:37
um and the rest of the question was like
0:39
what’s the best way to go in and get
0:41
your leads or other people in your
0:43
database that you’re upselling to
0:45
actually go in and get these estimates
0:46
because right now after the holidays uh
0:48
we don’t have time to actually get these
0:50
estimates done in a quick fashion so uh
0:53
first thing timing for your seasonal
0:56
upsells for snow removal and renewals
0:59
right now in July is the time to do it
1:01
right after the Fourth of July we sold
1:03
several hundred thousand dollars of snow
1:05
removal literally in the two weeks after
1:07
Fourth of July uh the way I’m gonna I’m
1:09
gonna have you approach this is we’d
1:11
send out automated renewals for existing
1:12
clients anybody who is in your database
1:15
that has not signed up we’re going to
1:16
send a email with a link where they can
1:19
up uh click and request it and we can do
1:21
a direct mailing to the neighborhoods
1:23
that we’re in as well so I’m gonna open
1:25
up the screen in normal fashion show you
1:27
what this looks like so this is simple
1:29
estimate and it’s an on-demand live
1:31
estimate that you can drive to your
1:34
leads so we can have a link behind a
1:35
button or a QR code or in this example
1:40
uh it’s seal coding but same idea we
1:42
would change this out to snow removal
1:44
and we want to go in and send this to
1:46
our leads so what are you tired of all
1:49
the things that your competitors are
1:51
doing wrong and why you should hire us
1:52
what we promise to do and there’s a QR
1:55
code if you’re doing the direct mailing
1:57
that’s going to open up this website
1:58
that I’m showing you in addition we’ve
2:01
got the address here Tyler of Integrity
2:03
seal great client of ours has allowed us
2:05
to share this but same idea uh Tyler’s
2:07
Direct Mail pieces are actually going
2:08
out live right now but same thing as
2:10
seal coding I’m recommending with the
2:12
same practice for our snow removal
2:13
services with some scarcity and urgency
2:16
for them to sign up and some route
2:19
density 10 off if you get nine or more
2:21
of your neighbors to sign up so once you
2:23
drive them in you’re gonna go to a
2:24
landing page just like this simple
2:25
estimate one I’ve got here demo
2:28
and what you’re going to do is go in and
2:30
your client is going to type in their
2:32
address for snow removal and literally
2:34
hit continue and what’s going to happen
2:36
is our tool on the right is going to
2:39
show them what not to do and on the left
2:41
we’re going to color it in in green and
2:43
that is what we actually want them to do
2:45
so once they color in their service area
2:47
they can literally in seconds buy your
2:50
snow removal services online and put a
2:52
PCI Compliant credit card on form so
2:54
they’re going to literally go in and
2:56
just highlight their driveway area
2:58
that easy
3:00
and save and see estimate and then when
3:03
we click that that is going to actually
3:04
drive a property specific price with a
3:08
checkout where they can add their credit
3:10
card and if you’re using service
3:11
autopilot it’ll automatically sync to
3:13
service autopilot with a PCI Compliant
3:16
credit card form a picture of the
3:18
service area to make sure it’s accurate
3:19
and then in addition it’s also going to
3:21
send that leader contact in the sa here
:25
um
3:25
and as this loads in you can see here
3:27
we’ve got the normal landing page with
3:30
this embedded in here and snow and3
3:32
pavement services so this would be your
3:33
snow removal services residential
3:35
plowing
3:37
um every three inches of snow for an
3:39
unlimited contract at three inches or we
3:41
could do per trip or with a retainer so
3:43
a lot of variability you can stick into
3:45
this a simple estimate but then
3:47
literally we go in and add the
3:49
subscription and we’d go to the checkout
3:51
and once we have the checkout we have a
3:52
service you could add in your custom
3:54
terms and conditions in here so not only
3:57
can you go in and estimate live your
4:00
clients can go live on your estimate now
4:02
to uh on your website to get live
4:03
estimates but now you can do your
4:05
pavement services such as sealing and
4:07
snow removal and to answer the questions
4:08
submitted we want to go in and sell
4:11
those snow removal services now with
4:13
scarcity and urgency just like our
4:15
friend Tyler Integrity seal act now
4:18
August only
4:19
and we want to highlight what the wrong

Transcript:
0:08
everyone welcome to this very first very first time ever the simple growth
0:14
business podcast I’m Dan Ralphs this is Aaron suttonfield and we’re kicking
off something that we have no idea if anyone
0:21
is ever going to watch or pay attention to but we’re doing it anyway
because we
0:26
care about a small business across the country especially service business
uh businesses across the country and we’re
0:32
really curious about how we might be able to help them um so Aaron welcome
welcome to our very
0:37
first inaugural edition of the simple growth business podcast we I don’t
even
0:42
know if we’re 100 decided on the name that’s what we’re calling it right
now sounds great I’m excited
0:49
so um I wanted just to introduce it this way so we
0:54
um I don’t know how long ago it was Aaron you and I are sitting in a a
beach house in Wilmington North Carolina
1:01
and we were talking about our experience because you’ve been coaching small
business lawn care companies for a
1:08
long time because you’ve run and been very successful in the lawn care
space you have a small company in Charlotte
1:15
and and we were talking about like some of the clients that you bump into
that
1:21
are like these service based companies these lawn care companies are like a
three hundred thousand four hundred thousand five hundred thousand and
1:27
they’re just kind of a mess a little bit is that fair to say yeah yeah yeah
so we uh at simple growth
1:35
uh systems I was helping companies build out
1:40
um their rate Matrix and their services and helping them uh use a software
to to
1:47
manage your business better um and we kept seeing that that when we were
kind of done helping them with sort
1:53
of some basic functions or some processes that they they really wanted to
talk more about their businesses they
1:59
really were you know lost to entrepreneurs and we we talk a lot about
entrepreneurship being a lonely place
2:07
um because typically it’s just the owner or maybe there’s a partner but
they’re they’re kind of lonely
2:13
um and I just could sense that as we were working with these companies they
they wanted more they wanted they wanted
2:21
just it is super lonely to be a business owner like you were doing you have
to tell the story you have to tell them
2:26
about the time when you you’re like maybe we shouldn’t say this public but
we don’t don’t you’re like I don’t even
2:32
go to certain parties unless there’s another business owner there like I
need someone I need another business or else I can’t
2:38
have fun at a party because I don’t know how to talk to normal people right
I feel that way sometimes too I’m like
2:44
people are like so what do you do and I’m like well I’m a business coach
and I help companies and and they kind of
2:49
glaze over as if being an entrepreneur is the most boring confusing world
right it’s like we live
2:55
on another Prime almost I I know I know that I have to kind of watch myself
in Social settings to not get really
3:02
excited about business and talking about business um most most people that
are you know
3:10
mid-level managers or managing a little division in a large corporation
I’ve got a great friend of mine
3:17
um who is he runs a pretty nice little group at Wells Fargo in Charlotte
and he’s a CPA and he’s like man I wish I
3:23
could get as excited about my spreadsheets as you do it and he’s someone
that for seriously 27 years he
3:30
has one friend that has always been he just loves talking to me about my
business and he genuinely does is
3:37
interested but they’re few and far between and I guess most people don’t
and so that’s what one of the reasons
3:42
why we’re here we recognize that most people aren’t as nerdy about business
as
3:47
we are like literally Aaron and I are sitting at a Charlotte Hornets game
and we just basically talk business during
3:54
the entire game wasn’t a very good game but uh we were sitting there
talking like the entire game we had good seats
3:59
we were just sitting there chatting business because we’re nerds for
business like we absolutely love it it’s all we want to think about it’s
all we
4:06
want to talk about so what better way to do that than starting a podcast
where we actually can give you some really sound business advice and so we
were sitting
4:12
there in North Carolina we were at this beach house and we were asking
ourselves the question question what are the fundamental steps what are the
4:18
fundamental like elements that if we were to meet any business owner and we
were to say how do we get that business
4:24
owner from 300 000 more or less the reason 300 000 because that’s like
right when you’re something you’re not a real
4:31
business before that but that’s like like when you’re finally got at your
first employee or two
4:37
and you’re you’re finally starting to get your head out of being just a
solopreneur and you’re starting to
4:42
really run a business somewhere around that 200 300 000 Mark where you’re
like
4:47
yeah that’s okay that point when you’re like I can’t really take venmo
anymore I
4:53
need you to like I need totally I need to take a credit card I I you know
cash
4:59
is fine but you know like I need to start reporting more things I got to
pay payroll taxes I gotta you know I gotta
5:05
do workers comp and all these things that that are real business things you
know I have to get like business
5:11
insurance and it it becomes less of a side hustle and more of the hustle
right
5:17
that’s from that’s the right where we get up like the transition from side
hustle to a main hustle is where we want
5:24
to talk to you and so if you’re that spot or anywhere beyond that probably
anything past 10 million we won’t have a
5:29
lot of good wise things to say to you but anywhere between like all right
it’s finally become my main hustle maybe we
5:36
should call this the main hustle podcast right where it’s like this is but
like when we finally got to our main hustle
5:44
and now it’s like all right we’re gonna try to grow it and we ask ourselves
the question what are the fundamental steps of how to go from from barely
becoming
5:53
our main Hustle to it being a million dollar company and that’s what the
primary that’s what
5:58
we’re gonna be talking about throughout this podcast and it’s going to be
the major theme of all of the different things we talk about is how do we
make
6:05
the main our main Hustle how do we turn that into a million dollar company
or
6:11
better and and we’ll we won’t talk too much about once we get to a million
plus we’re going to spend most of our time on
6:18
a simple growth business podcast I don’t know Maine hustle podcast might be
better but we’re going to spend most of
6:24
our time talking about that growth from point A to point B and and we
literally got together in a room and we asked
6:31
ourselves the question if we were trying to outline it what the steps would
be and we came up with five fundamental
6:38
steps five fundamental steps so I thought Aaron today on the podcast would
be cool
6:43
if we just talked through those five fundamental steps so starting at step
6:49
one so Aaron if you want to introduce step one of our five fundamental
steps again if you’re if you’re in that
6:55
category where it’s like it’s my it’s my main hustle now but I do not know
how to
7:00
grow this to a million like what what Where Do We Begin what’s step one yeah
7:06
so step one is just finding four hours each week each week find four hours
7:13
where you can you know separate yourself from your company from your you
know phone goes off you
7:20
treat this like you are unavailable so detached from you know social media
phones uh from the company you need to
7:28
have four hours dedicated to work on the business and I think it’s
important to kind of Define what is on the business
7:35
mean I’ll tell you what on the business is not really quickly it’s not
selling something it’s not producing something
7:42
and it’s not solving problems that come up from producing or selling so you
know
7:48
there would be things like reconciling your books or you know I I’ve
coached a lot of companies on the very first
7:55
couple of calls they’ll say I’m cash poor and I look and they have an
invoice for work right
8:01
um and so accounts receivable invoicing um hiring what’s your strategy for
8:07
hiring probably hiring is the number one thing we’ve heard about since 2019
2020
8:12
um you know how are you going to what’s your process for that what’s the
strategy all of that that stuff right
8:18
it’s all of the budgeting all of the stuff that isn’t selling and
fulfilling it’s all the stuff that isn’t selling
8:25
and fulfilling and and the truth is we all have we all have four hours
8:31
we every person in the history of the planet has four hours a week and I
like to say you know you have four hours a
8:37
week because if your tire went flat you would fix it you have four hours
and so what what’s
8:43
funny and I don’t know why this is Aaron maybe it’s like the question pops
the Mind why
8:49
don’t we I think every business owner that I’ve ever talked to if I said
hey should you be spending at least four
8:54
hours a week working on your resume not in your business they would all say
yeah yeah I definitely should be and yet yeah
9:01
for the most part if I ask how many actually are devoted committed
four-hour period it’s not as many as
9:08
like so why don’t we why don’t we yeah four hours a week because we’re very
9:15
much yeah we’re we’re we’re technicians like most of us got into this
because you know we like from a lawn care
9:23
perspective right we’re talking mainly Lawn Care here now so you know I
probably started in this business either
9:30
because in my case uh it became a summer job that became a career
9:36
um out of necessity if you don’t uh do well in college you got to find
another Avenue so you know or maybe there was
9:43
someone who really excelled at a lawn care company or a landscape company
and they became a leader in that company and
9:49
they’re like you know what I can do this I can I can do this on my own and
so so we kind of get here in two different
9:55
ways both of which require us to be really good in the field right we we
don’t
10:01
start lawn care companies rarely without knowing something about the
technical side of lawn care right whether it’s how
10:08
to stripe a lawn really well or how to fertilize a lawn or how to landscape
or or they love plants yeah it stays your
10:15
side hustle if you never figure it out it never becomes your main hustle if
you can’t figure those things out yeah and
10:21
so we we all are most comfortable in that and and and I can kind of tell the
10:27
the maturity of the lawn care business owner based on the things they talk
about most
10:33
um nothing wrong with this but you know they tend to talk about what type
of mower are you purchasing or you know
10:41
some of the you know less mature businesses what we’ll focus on man what
kind of blades are you running or or
10:46
some of the things that are honestly in the scheme of things aren’t going
to scale your company I think you’re right
10:54
I think because we because we start in the technical detail of the business
10:59
when it comes time for us to actually take our side hustle make it our main
hustle and then make our main hustle
11:05
like a legitimate business uh that’s a million dollar company like I think
sometimes we don’t even
11:11
know what to spend our time on it’s like I don’t know how to do that and it
reminds me I don’t know I’m sharing the
11:19
story but it reminds me of a buddy of mine who is playing tennis with his
wife and his wife kind of like said oh you
11:26
know I don’t really like tennis and his response was do you know why you
don’t like tennis because you suck at it
11:34
which which for the record is not the right thing to say to your wife when
she’s trying to we’re trying to
11:39
introduce her to a new hobby but there’s sort of some truth to that right
like the reason we don’t want to spend the
11:45
four hours the reason we don’t like discipline ourselves is to like get in
front of a computer screen and build
11:50
systems or whatever that four hours might need us to do is because we suck
11:55
at it like we just don’t know we’re just not very good at it do you think
that could be it right I mean I spend our
12:02
time there and yeah I mean I remember the days when I was starting a
company and and I was making a little bit of
12:08
money I didn’t know what a p l statement was I didn’t know what the balance
sheet was I mean I knew they were accounting
12:13
things but I didn’t really know like when I was looking at it it was you
know like like a monkey doing a math problem
12:19
like what what is this stuff and so I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at
it I certainly wasn’t concerned about
12:25
balancing my books every month or you know uh those types of things I
didn’t know how to look at those things and
12:31
project you know if my pricing was correct or not you know and so
12:37
um you know hiring like you know I have a job here’s how much I pay you
want to
12:43
come work for me you know like so those are all things and time that we
have to spend on those processes like a sales
12:49
process um you know I wouldn’t even know where to start with that stuff so
again early days step one step one is for us to go
12:57
we got four hours and I’m gonna I’m gonna sit down in front of a screen
even if I don’t know what to do even even if
13:03
I’m not good at it even if I suck at it I’m gonna sit down for four hours
and I’m gonna start working on things to
13:10
make my business better four hours a week and if and if if it’s like I
don’t know what to do Step One is
13:16
figure out what to do all right if you like and we’ll talk about what the
other steps are and what you should be
13:21
spending your time on but just the fact of the matter is we can’t like that
there are two core resources required
13:27
for us to grow a business and the first one is time like one of the reasons
we stayed treading water and we stayed pretty much
13:34
where we are is because we spend no time improving
13:39
um and making our business better like we just don’t spend the time there
I’ll I’ll tell you something Dan that makes
13:46
me think about this that I think is relevant here is um
13:51
sometime maybe about 11 12 years ago um I was a huge Sports fanatic I mean I
13:58
I watch sports I’ve invested a ton of energy into that you had the Dream
Team
14:04
be right behind you right yeah yeah I mean I I and I still love sports okay
but there was a point at which the the
14:11
Carolina Panthers owner at the time was gonna basically give away the year
14:17
because he was in charge of renegotiating the player’s cut of the of
14:22
the revenue share and he knew that they were going to be in a position to
be a more favorable share for the owners and
14:29
he basically gave away a season he didn’t sign any players he waited to
sign players till the next year and I
14:34
remember thinking you know that’s pretty smart number one on his part but
as a fan if he doesn’t care about this year
14:41
why do I need to watch this and it’s kind of done them it’s like by the way
I really don’t make any money my family
14:46
doesn’t become better because at the time I invest in sports you know if I
really invested this time of the things
14:52
that were made me a better person or a better company or you know were
invested
14:57
in something that would actually pay me back later like how much better
would my would my life be
15:03
um and you know I think that we all invest our time in something we all have
15:08
the same 24 hours a day and I think successful people um my son is a really
accomplished
15:15
guitar player he plays guitar three or four hours a day I mean they’re
really they’re literally I mean that may
15:21
be on the on the low end um and he also just started teaching some younger
kids how to play guitar and
15:28
he said they just don’t want to practice you know and and and you know so
we have to use our time wisely and business
15:35
owners don’t have enough hours in the day I used to tell my wife she’s a
teacher and I’d say you know you might
15:40
be able to accomplish some of the things that you’re supposed to at your
job today I have no chance of accomplishing most of what I need to in my
job today
15:47
and so I think successful business owners are very careful with their time
but they also prioritize their time
15:55
correctly yeah they work on the biggest things and good business owners
learn
16:00
how to delegate the things that they can pay someone to do you know we used
to talk about I
16:06
remember back in the day talking about you know work on thousand dollar an
hour ideas if you’re the owner and and
16:12
delegate those 20 an hour yeah the ten dollar an hour nobody you can’t
delegate ten dollars an hour anymore yeah it used
16:18
to be ten dollars an hour right so so step one step one is like go go cut
out
16:25
four hours of your week and sit down and if you honestly don’t move on to
step two until you figure that out until you
16:31
figure out how to discipline yourself in that way um because the truth is
you’re never gonna make to be a million dollar
16:36
company if you haven’t disappointed if you haven’t learned to discipline
yourself in the area of time and it really is a requirement I I’ve seen it
16:43
done a bunch of times I remember one woman she said Hey listen I just I
just told my husband I’m out of commission
16:49
from 6 p.m to 10 p.m on Wednesday nights I just do not have
16:54
just don’t plan on me being around from 6 p.m we’re not saying four hours
17:00
at one time it could be one hour four days I recommend at least a two hour
17:06
break it up I recommend at least into our blood because it can be hard
right to get
17:11
uh to do get a project significantly underway just like if you’re doing like
17:16
20-minute Sprints but but four hours that’s all we’re asking and it can’t
like I know another business owner who
17:23
he literally would like send everyone home from his business uh on Friday
afternoons at 3 P.M he called early
17:30
release Fridays and that way he could finally be alone and work on stuff so
whatever it looks like for you it
17:35
doesn’t need to be fancy special but we just need four hours so Step One is
the four hour rule you have to put in at
17:40
least four hours a week if you want to grow business that’s not fulfilling
or sales or the basic operations of your
17:46
business you need four hours a week step number two so once you have time
the first the next thing we’re going to
17:53
focus on is money so the next thing we’re going to focus on is money so
once you have some time to get your ducks in
18:00
order the first place we’re going to focus is on your money and that step
number two is we have to get our personal
18:06
and Business Financial house in order and it doesn’t mean our business and
18:12
personal house has to be a a nice house it just has to be an orderly one so
that
18:17
we can actually know what’s going on in our business because at the end of
the day our business our ability to build our business is really dependent
on cash
18:24
it’s the it’s the lifeblood of your business and so if we don’t have clean
arteries uh for us to pump our blood
18:31
around we’re going to have a business heart attack some people you know
have had business
18:37
heart attacks where literally I was chatting with a guy the other day who
said I’m having a business he didn’t say
18:42
this but he was having a business heart attack why was he having business
heart attack because he owed 250 000 in taxes
18:49
that he and they were unpaid and the IRS was showing up uh you may have a
business heart attack didn’t you have
18:55
one the other day that was having a business heart attack because he uh
hadn’t paid his what was the story
19:01
well yeah I mean you know it’s just you know when we’re small or you know
we’re running a business we might have you
19:07
know we might put guys on a 1099 you know and at some point they become
employees and and uh so yeah we’re
19:13
working through a situation where we we’ve got to figure out you know how
do we overcome a a situation we’re a pretty
19:20
large business running a lot of 1099 labor and the Department of Labor in
his
19:25
state is auditing his company and we call that a business heart attack right
19:31
it’s like holy cow business emergency and uh you know they’ve they’ve done
an
19:37
awesome job with this business and and we’re hoping that this situation is
something they can work through we’ll see we’ll find out
19:43
um but yeah you know understanding and having a good understanding uh of
your
19:50
of the finances of your business and of of you know just your break even
number like what is it you know Dan we were
19:56
talking at a conference in Wilmington uh site one invited us invited me to
speak there and and uh you know I show hands
20:04
who knows their Breakeven number I mean you know no one no one knows to
break even and they’ll say well we kind
20:10
of knew like what what it cost what our labor is per hour it’s like no no
like what does it cost your company per hour
20:18
um and and then you know it’s it’s pretty easy to figure that out um
doesn’t take long but then we got to
20:24
go to that other sheet that balance sheet we got to understand well how
much debt do you have yeah very few of the
20:31
companies we’re coaching are debt free um some have gone into some form of
debt so we need a ballot you know we need to
20:37
pull that number over um you know no one very very few that we
20:43
coach I shouldn’t say none but very few that we coach have a budget you
know what what are they what is their goal
20:49
for for this month in spending and and so at the beginning is just getting
all of those pieces in a row getting all
20:55
your ducks in a row financially now we could and we will spend a lot of
time talking about uh what the details of
21:03
your not a nice healthy profit loss look like what the details of a nice
healthy personal budget look like business
21:09
budget looks like how do we account for debt and all those things but if I
have my four hours and I’m I’m breaking away
21:16
on a Saturday afternoon and I’m just hiding up in a in a coffee shop
somewhere and I begin I begin by opening
21:23
up my my books and I make sure that we’re healthy and clean now sometimes
this means that we have some hard
21:30
decisions like right away we might start to discover things within our in
our family live or within our business life
21:36
that are hard because at the end of the day a small business can afford an
21:42
extravagant CEO they just can’t you can’t afford to be
21:47
an extravagant CEO at the level of a small business and if you’re living an
extravagant personal lifestyle
21:53
like you got to cut it because we we need that 300 you’re spending on your
jet skis a month we need that in your
22:00
marketing budget we need that 680 car payment you’re paying for that nice
22:06
truck we need 480 of that in your marketing budget we need so like
22:11
sometimes the reason our business is handcuffed is because our personal
finances aren’t in order and so at least
22:19
for a little while we have to like cinch up the belt personally and
professionally so that then we can go uh
22:26
you know spend extravagantly yeah what is it Dave Ramsey says like live
maybe like no one else so later you can
22:32
live like no one else or if you live like no one else today you’re probably
gonna live like no one else later
22:38
because you know if if you if you’re doing wrong things today you’re gonna
have pain later if you do right things
22:44
today you’re not you’re gonna avoid the pain so yeah you’re gonna you’re
gonna have pain or sacrifice at some point
22:52
um and I think you know we we talk about you know the personal finance I
think it’s important to talk about this for a
22:58
second you know a lot of times I’ll I’ll coach someone and I’ll say you know
23:03
um they want to make a big change or they make a pretty aggressive change
in their business and it a lot of times that means reducing revenue for a
period
23:10
of time to build revenue somewhere else right like we we we learn it we’ll
talk
23:15
about a little bit more of this in step three but I think the reason it’s
important to understand personally where
23:21
you stand is you know are you the breadwinner of this family are you the
23:26
person who needs who makes the majority of the money for this family off of
your business well then if you’re going to
23:32
make a big change in that we’ve got to be careful we’ve got to make that
slowly we’ve gotta you know it’s almost like a
23:39
business break even and then there’s a personal break even it’s like hey
what is our personal break even number
23:44
meaning how much money does my family need to pay all the bills and live
and eat and survive and and once I figure out that kind of
23:51
personal break even then I I know what my business I know the flexibility I
have now to build my business up or down
23:58
or remove that division add this product take on this debt but until we know
24:04
those numbers that like little personal break even number we don’t know how
to kind of move forward
24:09
yeah we don’t know how to coach you and then you know I’ve had clients who
say you know my wife makes three times what
24:15
I do and you know I’m thinking well why are you working you know no but uh
you
24:20
know she makes three times what I do so I can rip this Band-Aid really
quickly and we can transition really quickly to
24:28
this other you know model that we want to run which we know has the ability
to scale faster scale better you know have
24:34
a lot of advantages there the other thing I’ll tell you too is like you
know I’m 27 years in business and and I own
24:42
and operate a lawn fertilization Company in Charlotte North Carolina but I
haven’t always owned and operated
24:47
a lawn fertilization company for the first 15 years of my company’s
existence we we were kind of that we were a mess
24:54
you know we we did everything in the industry wait wait wait don’t scan now
three yet don’t skip to step three yeah I’m not I’m not I’m not but but the
25:02
reason I know how why I would sacrifice so much more than I did to
transition to
25:10
a healthy scalable business because I’m kind of living the scalable
business life now and I know what that looks like
25:16
and so I I would have been even more aggressive
25:21
um and so the cool thing is we’re going to give you the steps and
strategies to really that are tried and true right
25:26
these are things that a lot of our coaches are either doing or have done
25:32
um and and so knowing what we know I would have been I would have
sacrificed even more and so we talk about Dave
25:38
Ramsey someone here and you know why do people sell the truck or why do
people sell the car because they know their
25:45
debt snowball they know like why they’re doing these things and they get so
excited about they’re like yeah I want
25:51
that more than I want this other thing um and so um you know when we get
your house in
25:57
order in step two uh we’re gonna we’re gonna give you that that Financial
26:02
Freedom to go and invest in the things that that we know are the most
important
26:08
so you want to talk about step three so it’s step step one
26:13
get your time right have time step two get your get your head above
26:18
water once we have these two things accurate meaning all right I can pay my
bills
26:24
and I can and I have time to work on the business now we can really start
building the business but until we have
26:30
those that’s like that’s like the water line and before we’re there like
we’re underwater and and we just got to get
26:36
our head above water so we can breathe so that’s priority number one and
some of you are in a position and you know if
26:41
if you’re that person right where where you your head isn’t even about
water enough to breathe but once we do get our
26:47
head above water and once we can breathe once we know that our bills can
get paid well now what do we spend our next
26:54
amount of time on and that is we we need to build a simple business we need
to
27:00
build a business craft a business model that will actually work and that
will be simple and scalable
27:07
over time there’s a reason why companies like apple or Verizon or the like
the go
27:15
across the board of the biggest companies in the world why for the most
part they get really good at one thing
27:21
they get really good at just one doing one thing and crafting a business
model it’s a very simple
27:28
um and scalable and so our we always the you know it was my assertion Aaron
you
27:33
can tell me if I’m wrong but um it’s my assertion that far too often
business owners build a business a
27:40
little bit like um I I spent some time in Africa and sometimes it felt like
their homes were
27:46
just bolted on like when they got a little extra money they built this room
and then it feels like our businesses
27:52
are just kind of like a hodgepodge of different eras and moments in our
27:57
business but it’s not a elegant simple business and as a result we find
28:02
ourselves with our fingers in all kinds of different pies trying to make
money in all kinds of different ways and we
28:08
become just the center pin of that business and we can’t really grow and
scale it and so like
28:14
I I think to myself what can we do to build a simple business but the
simple business really should be the goal right
28:21
Aaron like simple yeah yeah I mean you it’s like your example
28:26
is like you would never build a house without a plan right like you and
when you do build something without a plan
28:32
what does it look like when you’re finished well yeah I mean maybe you get
lucky it’s kind of a mess yeah that’s
28:38
what it looks like yeah it’s like you get lucky sometimes yeah um yeah I
mean I I think
28:45
it’s it’s doing one thing really well and being really good at that
28:51
um when when I’m coaching companies um and and we bring them in for the
28:56
first call or a couple calls I’ll I just had one the other day and and the
guy said you know I’m right at 900 000 in
29:03
revenue and I was like man that’s that’s really awesome uh you know we’re
gonna get you to a million quick right that’s
29:09
what I’m thinking and as I dug in a little bit and we do we dig into the to
the company a little bit we find out he
29:16
really has three three hundred thousand dollar companies right he’s got a
maintenance division he had a tree
29:23
service Division and then he had a um and he had like a little small project
29:29
Division and each one of those made up about 300 000 in revenue and I said
so
29:36
awesome this is great we’ve got three strong little companies right um
under one umbrella
29:43
um are you ready to go hire three managers for those three small companies
29:48
and and hey do you have about a half million bucks in the bank to do this
and
29:54
and he goes heck no I’m cash poor right now I was like well we really don’t
have a simple business now and we certainly
30:01
don’t yeah we can maybe put your name on one of those divisions but we
can’t put your name on all three and scale that to
30:07
three million dollars because basically I look at the 3x you have to 3x
your work in a lot of those areas right you
30:14
have to have a great marketing campaign for tree and you have to have a
great marketing campaign first your projects
30:20
and you have to have a great marketing campaign and then you have to have a
great system for selling and estimating
30:25
trees and then you have to Great system for selling and estimating so every
one of those has to be like 3x and it’s hard
30:32
enough to grow one business much less trying to go three at the same time
so let’s go back to what our first two
30:39
steps so you you have to find you know 12 hours yeah 12 hours a week of
course
30:44
you know you have to find the money for three businesses and you said
marketing
30:50
campaigns like it’s it’s one thing to find the time to design all the
systems and things we need for three divisions
30:58
but now we gotta fund three divisions right and and a half million dollars
31:03
might not be enough right and and sometimes sometimes I think we do this
because we look at the other big company
31:10
in our neighborhood who’s like got 50 million and they’re and they do all
of the services and we think to ourselves
31:16
well that’s the model that’s what we should pattern ourselves after but at
the end of the day you can do that when
31:24
you have five great leaders in five different divisions that that works at
31:30
that stage in the game but early on the simpler really the better and by
the way
31:35
when I say simpler I mean means simpler across the board the simplest way
to service the simplest way to mow a lawn
31:42
the simplest way to write all of these little details of Simplicity add up
to
31:48
me creating room and space to grow even if we’re talking about a lawn
maintenance company we need to be very
31:54
simple in that are we going to be a residential company or are we going to
be a commercial company because you know those are two
32:02
different you know this is two different sales models right two different
trucks
32:08
yeah right and so yeah we need to simplify all the way
32:15
down like yeah to what we sell and how we do it it’s exactly right and and
when
32:22
you see it done right like the companies who do emerge as the million
dollar companies the ones who make it out uh my
32:28
buddy Mike Callahan who many of you might know but uh Mike Mike was showing
me he got all nerd at nerded out he’s
32:34
like do you know how simple we got like when we would pull up to the yard
we knew which side of the yard we wanted
32:42
the truck on because it was simpler for our guys to get the job done so I
mean we want to build a very so step three is
32:49
to build the simple business model build a business model is simple build
one that can scale
32:55
um because we want something simple because we want we want a business we
33:01
want to sell a product that’s simple we want to have fulfillment be simple
we want to have the sale be simple because
33:06
we’re gonna we want to do it uh thousands of more times
33:15
so like you there you’re talking sorry step three is kind of two parts right
33:21
you got three a which is we need to decide like where are we going to focus
33:27
our time what do we love what what do we like doing in the business we’re
not going to direct you into one space we’re
33:34
not going to transition everybody to a lawn mowing company or everybody to
a lawn fertilization company we’re gonna
33:40
let you choose that but we’re gonna push you to pick like what do you what
do you feel you can scale the best
33:46
um and that’s kind of 3A but 3B is is all these things you’re talking about
now which is like the systems and and
33:52
how do we hire people and what is the organizational structure look like
for this model
33:58
um you know what do our truck setups look like at this model um but
probably the most important part
34:04
of this this 3B is the cells and systems I mean the systems and processes so
34:11
sales processes hiring processes lead you know how do we make when we’re in
34:17
that same meeting remember this meeting we we were chatting you had a
competitor in the
34:22
room essentially a smaller guy and he go and you said how long does it take
you to get an estimate out
34:30
and his process from start to finish what did he say three days four days
so there were two guys they were
34:36
actually direct competitors to us they were wanting the same exact client
that my company
34:41
um goes after in the same market and they set one guy said I was about
three to four days for me to get to get back
34:47
to a car the other one was very honest and I appreciated him being honest
because he said I’ll be honest with you
34:54
I’m at least a week and he goes there’s times where my voicemail is full
and and he said this word for he said my
35:00
voicemail is full and they can’t even leave me a message yet and so here
were two guys and and one might not get back
35:07
to him at all One’s Gonna Get Back in two three days but if we want to go
sell that product a
35:14
thousand times and it takes in two to three days to get back to that client
35:20
you realize how many compounded days that is so so the spirit of this step
35:26
three is as we’re spending our four hours a day a week whereas a day that’d
be great four hours a week working on
35:33
the business we’re gonna start to look for ways we can make sure we have a
simple business model and look for ways
35:40
we can simplify the work that we’re doing because each time we simplify it
so in the same way when I go sell a
35:46
product and I I make a hundred dollars a month every time I go MO
35:52
I I’m I’m storing and and putting in the bank dollars I want us to think of
35:59
simplifying as a way of storing and putting in the bank hours so every time
I can simplify a portion
36:06
of my business I I’m I’m becoming time richer and we need in order for us
to get out
36:12
of the rat race of the business in order for us to finally be free of the
business and own it and not have it own
36:18
us is we have to store time and so I want you to think about each
36:24
time you’re doing something if it takes you 45 minutes to create an
estimate if
36:29
you can do that same estimate in 25 minutes or 20 or eight
36:36
like all of a sudden you’re gaining and storing in your book in your log I
have 40 more minutes than my competitor
36:43
and that 40 40 more minutes times a thousand that’s like years of your life
right
36:50
that you’re getting back each time you can simplify so the third step one
get four hours step two uh get your personal
36:58
and business house in order so we at least know what’s going on and we get
our head above water so we can pay our
37:04
bills and then step three is let’s start to go about the business of
crafting a business a simple business model with
37:11
simple Business Systems is step three then step four we’ll go through the
last two quickly because most of you need to
37:19
be working on one through three but step four is then we figure out and we
start
37:24
pouring fuel on by creating and and designing an awesome acquisition model
so how do we acquire new business how do
37:31
we do it at a price point that works within our business model and how do
we do it in a way that we can do it over and over and over and over again
uh so
37:39
that we can really start to put gas on the rocket right gas not on the
rocket in the rocket uh yeah we can really
37:45
start growing this thing yeah I mean I I was you know I always look at
steps one through three as kind of building the
37:52
rocket like yeah you know if you were NASA you know they’re not worried
about Rocket Fuel and pouring it on the launch
37:58
pad until there’s a rocket out there right yeah and so we need to really
build something that that one can handle
38:05
like imagine like you know and we’ve seen it tragically you know where
rockets explode
38:12
um and you know we want to make sure that when we build this model that it
38:17
can handle the pressure of a heavy marketing campaign right a marketing
38:22
campaign that is geared towards you know generating thousands of leads and
you
38:28
know hundreds and hopefully thousands of new clients every year and the
process of of just flowing that through your
38:36
business and you know the bad part about Lawn Care is you know it’s really
all
38:41
about February through May that’s when we get to get new clients and so
we’re
38:46
really even stress testing testing the business even more because we’ve got
like a four month window to really do
38:53
our sales well um sure we pick up clients in other months we all we all do
but I can tell
38:59
you as we’ve looked at you know you know 60 different businesses and look
at their scorecards that we compile with
39:06
them all the sales come in a really short period of time and so you know the
39:12
worst thing we could do is start marketing your business when it’s not
ready it would it would fail
39:18
um and uh and also we know that small businesses and if it doesn’t fail
you’re
39:23
gonna you’re gonna have the same pain like what’s the number one complaint
of clients in this industry is they’re
39:30
saying I can’t get a hold of anybody I tried to call that company I
couldn’t get a hold of them well why is that because they’ve marketed
they’ve out
39:36
their marketing’s outpace their systems but Aaron if anybody calls your
company is there ever a time where they can’t
39:41
get a hold of you live every day and and so we have to
39:48
build that system first and then we start really putting putting the gas in
the marketing this is the weirdest
39:53
industry in the world because I’ve coached companies from all the kinds of
different Industries this is one of the few places in lawn care and Lawn
Care
40:00
Services where the major issue isn’t lead volume it’s not not an issue but
40:06
it’s like most companies like man if we can figure out how to sell stuff
and here it’s like man we have plenty of
40:11
business opportunity if I just pick up the phone right the guy who’s like
man my voicemail box fills up so step four
40:20
is once we do have the system and it’s ready to roll now we can start to
really answer all of those phone calls then we
40:26
can start really connecting with all of those clients but we need a great
acquisition model that’s the four step
40:32
five it’s simply that now we scale up now we put start putting into place
the
40:37
other healthy systems that a business has we start putting in place are a
great hiring model we start adjusting
40:44
pricing on a nice Rhythm we start just pruning and caring for the business
that
40:49
we’ve now built and and Aaron you’re still working on systems you’re still
working on simplifying you’re doing it
40:56
the other day you’re making a simple form for your for your staff yeah you
you know step five is kind of just that
41:02
healthy stage right we just want to keep you know it’s like Steps one
through four are kind of the big weight loss and
41:08
then you’ve lost all the weight now you keep it off how do you you know and
that’s that’s staying healthy and and and healthy
41:17
businesses scale um I think too like we talk about steps
41:22
one and two are things we need to fix and we kind of they’re one-time fixes
probably step three we kind of go back
41:29
to step three a good bit we’re always refining step three and maybe you
know maybe you grow one of your you know your
41:36
services up to a million and a half dollars a year and you’re like you know
what we’re ready to take on X and so
41:42
we’re gonna add a service and we’re gonna you know we’re gonna hire the
manager for that and so and by the way like the the healthy step five right
is
41:49
you’re really revisiting all of these steps you’re constantly improving the
amount of time that you’re spending on
41:55
the business you’re constantly improving your understanding of the finance
your financial situation and your your debt
42:01
position all that you’re constantly refining the quality of your business
and then finally you’re constantly refining and improving your your ability
42:07
to go acquire customers so stage five is really like the keep it off stage
where
42:13
you’re saying how do we how do we get better the truth is if you do stages
one through four correctly you’re you’re
42:19
going to have all the tools you need to get to be at that million dollar
company and more importantly we want you not
42:25
just to be a million dollar company because I’ve met plenty of Million
Dollar business owners who are miserable because they’re buried they may
have a
42:32
lot of money but they’re very short on time and so we want you not just to
be a million dollar business owner we want to
42:38
have you to have a simple Million Dollar business and that simple Million
Dollar business means that you it allows you to
42:45
have not only a bunch of money but it also means you have time to spend it
time to use it uh in your life and so
42:52
Aaron I know this is like showing like a big diamond ring where that
doesn’t make anybody feel good about themselves when
42:58
someone has a big diamond ring but um but how much how much time do you
spend in your business you you know
43:05
million plus Dollar business um it depends on the week but I mean on
average I would think uh eight hours or
43:12
less um a week you know um that that is what we want we want to
43:17
get to a point where you have a really really successful business and you
haven’t just been storing money
43:23
but through building a simple business you’ve also been storing time and as
you
43:28
start to store time in your bank account in your in your calendar account I
don’t know what we call it but you start
43:34
storing time all of a sudden now I have a lot of time and a lot of money
and that’s where real Freedom comes comes in
43:40
where you get to do what you love you get to do it with who you love and
that’s what a true like that’s the dream
43:46
of at least most of the entrepreneurs I meet is I want the dream of not
only having the money but the time to use it
43:52
yeah and and Dan I mean I think as somebody who’s built a very simple
business and and uh it it is it I get to
44:00
spend time where I like it you know like that’s the important thing like
there were times where I really didn’t like my
44:06
business over the last 27 years um and and I think you know now
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there’s things that we do that I don’t want to have to do in fairness um
and I don’t I I you know those those
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responsibilities do fall to someone else they get taken care of we don’t
ignore anything but I get to spend my time in
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the areas one where I’m where I’m the strongest um and I think in a lot of
ways
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um my time spent in the business today is probably better than maybe when I
was full-time for the for the business right
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the people that that work with me and that we work with um probably get
better time for me at
44:44
this point even though it’s less technically less time my time is better
spent and it and it’s for me it’s on
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things that I like doing doing I love doing and I’m strong at doing um so
that’s the beauty that’s the dream
44:57
that’s the dream that we want to that we want to share here on the simple
growth business podcast
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um because we want to help as many people as we possibly can genuinely like
Aaron and I are both in a position where
45:09
we don’t have to do this like our families are taken care of we we have
businesses that are that are successful
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uh but the reason we do it is because we actually legitimately feel bad for
those
45:21
of you who are out there just grinding away in businesses that are complex
and convoluted whose heads are just above
45:26
water we and it’s not that we pity you you’re just fine you’ll be all right
but we do want to help if we can and so
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that’s why we are doing this that’s why we and as you can tell we’re not
Pros we
45:39
kind of suck at it a little bit but we’re gonna try we’re gonna try to do
it in a way that will be really helpful and
45:45
because we want to see more and more of these companies thousands and
thousands of these companies get out of that day-to-day Rat Race in the
business get
45:52
out of business debt where it feels like your time and money are already
all spent before you even get them and give you the freedom that you were
45:59
looking for when you started the business in the first place that’s our
goal and so stick with us we’re going to keep recording we’re going to keep
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talking whether or not anyone’s listening to be honest and uh but we hope
that it’s helpful uh so thank you
46:10
for being with us on this simple growth business podcast thanks sir thanks