Hello and welcome to The Fight Club 4 Business Podcast, Today we have a wonderful episode planned for you so let's jump right in to this week's episode...

Were going old school, We're going to talk about all of it, all the marketing, finance, systems, and people...

Also from now on we will be doing a full podcast transcript so for all you big readers enjoy!

Unknown Speaker 0:01

Talking about the things that make your home service business go. Marketing finance systems, people. This is the Fight Club for business podcast.

Meaghan Likes 0:26

We are live Hello.

Martha Woodward 0:30

Hello and

Meaghan Likes 0:36

it's a Tuesday here today go Martha go.

Martha Woodward 0:40

Except I'm done with my tape part so somebody else go. Oh,

Meaghan Likes 0:45

dear. Oh dear. Well,

okay, Happy Tuesday. Welcome to fight club. You didn't even win. That's the best part. Welcome to fight

Unknown Speaker 0:51

club. We are a team of industry experts who are here every Tuesday morning at 7am Pacific 10am. Eastern to help you fight for your service business. We this project was kind of born out of a need for us realizing that industry, the industry many industries needed help they needed advice they needed help to fight their way through COVID. And it's been fun to watch this transition. Last year we celebrated our one year birthday or anniversary depending on how you want to go and launch our podcast so you can see all of our past 50 episodes on our podcast page. We'll be sure to include that. And we're gonna go round round round robin, we're a little light today. Tay is in Florida fighting weather. So she will be joining us soon from a unknown an undisclosed location. And we're going to do an old school this week, just the four of us. So my name is Megan likes. I'm the founder of bookkeeping Academy on line. I educate and empower small business owners to know their numbers they can live more financially rewarding lives. I also own likes accounting company, a full service accounting company. First week post April 15. So a little bit less than I am kind of awake mostly recovered from the storm that is tax season. And I'm also the CO owner of Jeff likes clean windows and gutters in Northern California with my husband, Jeff, and really excited to be here and welcome to fight

Meaghan Likes 2:16

club.

Love it. Good morning, everyone. I'm Michelle Meyers, co owner of pink collars. And I am grateful to be here today with you awesome ladies. And it's actually sunny outside I hear we have snow some places of the country. I want an update Martha pink collars takes your front and back office tasks and makes them manageable. So if you are tired of dealing with phones, and emails and chats and all of the stuff our company can for sure. Hello, and welcome to fight club.

Martha Woodward 2:47

Hello, yes, I do have snow. Um, it's pretty because it isn't going to stick so I can just enjoy it from my office window. But anyway, I'm Martha Woodward, and I am co founder of quality driven software and I run a membership called culture first. That's all about creating happy workplaces. And then lastly, I am absentee owner of a maid service in a neighboring state. So welcome to fight club everyone.

Meaghan Likes 3:25

Oh, good. I

Unknown Speaker 3:26

get so lost when taizai here. I feel like she's the way No need to like keep us going. Well, are we gonna do it? old way? Or do you want to do it?

Michelle Myers 3:38

Yeah, what

Meaghan Likes 3:39

are we gonna do? Yes.

totally up to you. Megan, why don't you just kick us up and just talk about something in the world of finance. Now that you're done with taxes? I bet you have a ton of relief. But some of us are waiting to file a little bit later talk maybe about that. Like what are the options right now for business owners? Give us some give us some good nuggets.I

I don't want to Talk about taxes.

Unknown Speaker 4:02

Meaghan Likes 5:15

the code,

Unknown Speaker 5:16

Meaghan Likes 6:59

And then we had

Unknown Speaker 7:00

some taxes that were instituted also like C corpse in partnership, C corpse and trusts are still due April 15. So we still had to do though. So it's actually harder to try and keep track of what had been moved and what have you. But if you were sitting there, you did not file your taxes last week, you're like, Oh

Meaghan Likes 7:16

my god,

Unknown Speaker 7:16

I didn't do my taxes. It's okay. It's okay. They're not due till May 17. And if you haven't contribute to your retirement account, yet, you have another month to do that. So we have until May 17 for Roth contributions, traditional IRA contributions, if you're doing a SEP IRA, then you can extend your tax return and you have till October 15. If you're doing a 401k, you have to have done it by the end of last year, so that's too late. And if you're contributing to an HSA, you have till the next month to do that. So I don't know. I feel like that's far less exciting than other things that we can talk about. But that is what I've been living and breathing. And I'm breathing a little easier. I spent the weekend in the garden. I sound like a houseplant. I just need some sunshine and water and fresh air and I do better. So I'm feeling really slightly better.

Martha Woodward 8:05

I'm funny little tax story.

I told my buddy,

Kyle Walker yesterday for quite a while and he was telling me his large large tax bill. As you know, he's a real estate agent and all kinds of things and

Meaghan Likes 8:22

tiles come on the show. Remember how impressive he was?

Yes, great.

Martha Woodward 8:28

Anyway,

they gave him his number that he owed. And he said that isn't going to work for me.

And apparently they did. And, you know, it was like, why didn't they just give that to me the first time but wow,

Meaghan Likes 8:49

I like to

Unknown Speaker 8:50

tell my clients, it's a good problem every day, except for today, like this number that I'm about to share with you is really good news every single day of the year except for today, except for right now because it means that you made more money, right? The more you pay taxes, the more you make in money. We all want to make money. I think that if you have to pay more in taxes every year, that's also a good thing. You're staying for undisclosed

Tay Meroni 9:13

Hey, patient yes gas station right

Meaghan Likes 9:17

by my house.

Oh my goodness.

Martha Woodward 9:22

It doesn't look too stormy out there.

Tay Meroni 9:25

We had we had a pretty big storm last week and we've been having issues with our electric ever since it took out one of the main power lines so hoping it wasn't gonna Oh, they made me go first. And they made me talk about taxes. So everybody's warmed up and ready for you. Yeah,

goodness. Well, marketing is a fun topic, I guess. But you have to I don't know. I saw a really great

Unknown Speaker 9:57

great breakdown of Mr. pipeline is a company that we work with actually, it took some time to break down the differences between SEO and Google Ads this week, which I highly recommend, I'm definitely going to share it to the group and to our main page, because it's something that a lot of people don't take the time to look at the differences between the two. And that's one of the biggest pieces of marketing is really taking that step into planning a budget, figuring out how much money you do want to spend, and where you want to spend it, and what's really going to be the most profitable for you. So I was reading it actually, before we got on earlier today. And it was just it hits all the points, like I don't want to give too much away. But it hits the differences between the two, because that's something that a lot of people don't take the time to research is though, kind of just jump on board and say, Okay, I want to do SEO, but that might not be the most profitable option for you, you might need leads now. And you might need to get those leads generated through a paid advertising source. So it doesn't necessarily have to be Google, it doesn't have to be you know, it could be homeadvisor, there are people that actually do well on homeadvisor. But some people really don't. So it's really dependent on your area. So this week, I kind of want to talk more about the education side of it, and like planning out what to choose. So I know it's not as much of a fun topic, like we're not talking colors and branding and all that fun stuff. But marketing really is a decision that needs to be an educated decision. And that's what a lot of people don't discuss. So when you're planning on doing marketing, take a look at what's going on in your business right now. Do you have, you know, referrals that are coming in from your clients on a on a regular basis? Are you do you have a good referral system in place, if you do, that's great, because that's one funnel that's now taken care of that really doesn't cost as much money, because you're just reaching out to your current base of customers and saying, hey, if you have family and friends, please let them know that we'd love to serve them like we've served you. And here's some contact information, maybe here's a coupon code $50 off a service, whatever the case may be. So that's an avenue that's really affordable for a lot of business owners out the gate. But then transitioning from referrals into you know, some grassroots marketing, whether or not you're putting up flyers, yard signs, you know, some people might still be going door to door during this time, but probably wouldn't fully recommend that given COVID. But that is still an option for some people. That's now spending a little bit more marketing dollars to get some print advertisements, and flyers and things of that sort. But again, not as huge of an expense as you're jumping into your paid advertisements or SEO. So once you get to that step, I really recommend the education because now you're making a decision based upon facts, what you need for your business, and what's going to work for your business. Now, I can't guarantee that, you know, if you say you need SEO, and it, you know, it takes time, that's one that like everyone gets confused out the gate, SEO is something that is going to take for us it took, you know, three years to get where we're at right now. So realistically, that's three years of SEO spend at you know, X amount of dollars per year. So say, say you're looking at let's do some quick math, say you're looking at a cheap end of about $200 a month, which is the very low end of SEO, you know, you multiply that by 12 months, you're looking at 20 $400 right there, that's being spent as an investment into your business. So you're not going to be guaranteed leads coming in from that that's one thing I want to decipher immediately is SEO is a long term game, you're really looking at that as I want to invest in my business, I want to rank higher on Google, I want to take this small chunk of change that I can afford to take at the moment, it's not going to be detriment detrimental excuse me, to our business budget.

Now paid advertisement, you're more or less with Google ads, looking at anywhere from 1000 to $2,000, depending on your market could be less could be more, depending on the type of industry as well, you know, h fac is definitely over that marker. They're really high cost per click. But you know, pressure washing, which is what I'm comfortable with what I can speak on, you know, we really range right now in the, you know, 15 $100 range for an average spend per month. But what we're generating from that what we can track ROI from that is normally double what we're putting in, so it ends up working out in the long run, because we need those leads, we're able to profit off those leads and have that ROI immediately. So education wise, look at whether you need the leads. Now. If that's the case, and you need those leads, and it's desperate, you need jobs, definitely look for a paid advertising source of some sort. There's a like I said, a bunch of different options out there. There's Facebook, there's Google, there's Google guarantee, there's you know, home advisor if that is one that you want to work with. Again, it's not one that's worked for us, but it has worked for others. Those are your kind of main paid advertising. options. And then there's even other ones that are starting to come out. Save on services is one that we signed up with recently. And it's not fully launched in our market yet. But it's more of a Costco based concept to advertising, where they have the customers, your customers actually pay a membership fee to get exclusive access to business owners in your local area. So there's a bunch of options out there for paid advertisements. And then for SEO, you really want to work with an SEO specialist, someone who knows they're the game, who has skin in the game, and who has documented processes to be able to show you what your results will be in X amount of time period.

So sorry, a lot of like, yeah.

super old school back to your john main track and their team, they hit me in the fields with their education piece today. So I had to go back to the old school and really just, you know, preach education, because that's what I'm big on, you need to educate yourself before you jump into marketing.

We just spent a lot of money on branding. So I'm, all those computations, signed that contract this week.

where you want to be like, you want to be confident too. And that's the piece that if you do your education, which I know you have Megan because I know you you've researched and it's taking you and us long conversations discussing about marketing, but you know what you want and you have that end goal in sight and you have a way to track it. So as long as you have those pieces to then you're you're going to be a lot safer and not have as many heart palpitations.

I'm excited. I'm nervous.

Jeff likes him doesn't get her is getting a whole new rebrand.

Wow,

I can't wait to exciting.

So I'll go ahead. You already went Megan right. I yeah, I went thrilling life of taxes.

Yeah, yeah, it was fun.

Well, I can't wait for Martha to jump in and tell us her story. But it made me think a lot about goals. I think it's interesting because I always talk about systems. And I love systems. And I put systems in place of everyone else's business. And I found myself this last quarter, reflecting on the goals of our business, and I felt really lost. Has anybody ever felt that way? Like at this time of year, especially, it's like, the spring rush is kind of happening? And there's so much going on? And you're like, Okay, what are my goals, what's going on. And I found myself attaching to the financial goals far more than I typically do. And I really got disillusioned this last week about the financial goals and took a walk with Doug, we've started to do time blocking in our business, thanks to fight club. So he and I have focused time where we take a walk and we talk about, you know, business goals and things that we want to accomplish. And I realized that the financial piece was really kind of yucky to me. And I have really focused and decided that my goal setting is no longer going to be about finances, but it's going to be more people based. And it's going to be on how many jobs can I create. So it's been an interesting journey for me, and I don't know what anybody else is doing about goals right now, because I know we finished, you know, the first quarter and now it's time to kind of launch into the better financial picture for all of us, most of us. So go around and tell me kind of what goals are you guys setting? And how are you identifying them? Are they financial based? Are they people based? Are they job based? Like? What do you think, weigh in, please, I'd love to hear it.

We, we just did our last week for a second quarter. And we did we use a coaching program called Breakthrough Academy. And it's a requirement of the program that you meet with your coach every quarter and actually define and set your goals and then be held accountable to the previous month's goals. And like you, you get put in the corner if you if you miss your meeting, or you postpone your meeting, or if you ignore your meeting. And it's funny, Michelle, we are the exact same. And apparently, like in this in between area for setting our first quarter goals. So like we did not meet with our coach. So she she's hard on us about our first quarter goals because we do not talk about finances and our goals. We use all these other metrics. They're like our to do list or like our big plan or like the things we like the fun things we want to do. And we don't have very many financial metrics in there. And she made us rewrite our second quarter goals and they are all tied to a financial metric. And what she said was you have to hold yourself accountable. Like you have to look at these things. And we we more than doubled the goal that we had for first quarter and we more than doubled what we did in first quarter 2020 and terrifying test because we're like, we don't even know what that means. Like, I'm an AP, he was talking to me about trending. And I was like, I don't want,

I don't want to trend this, like, this is

scary for me. Remember, we don't grow our business. We like our little tiny business. This is getting intense and uncomfortable. But I don't know, I think that the fun part about goal setting is it does take us out of our comfort zone. And if you have somebody else that you're working with, like your spouse, or coach, they're gonna push you and they're going to question you, and they're gonna challenge you. And I felt really good about what we did at the end of that meeting, because we still had our to do list and we still had our like, back end goals of Jeff wants 10 Mini Jeff's and, yeah, average length of a point employment to be one year. And you know, every time we're able to retain a good employee, that length of employment goes longer each quarter. And

it was kind of fun, actually, I don't know. But I agree, Michelle, I get a little I

don't want to talk about money, I don't want to I do

want to be motivated by money. And she she reminded me that all of those are what paper people and pay for our benefits. We launched our 401k planet, Jeff likes windows finally. on our list for a long time, and no, and it's cool, when you get to see it, they make this red light green light yellow light, what we've done, and that visual for me was huge, like all the green just made me proud. Because sometimes you feel like you're just drowning or treading water. And the reality is, we were tackling stuff. So

that's a really cool system, red light, green light. I've never heard of that one yellow light. That's really good.

Yeah, and it helps you to carry anything over, it's very easy to get over.

Oh, that's super good. I love that. I love that. So, um, so in terms of setting goals, I have put a number down, and it's really big number of jobs created. And that's where we're starting. And then what will happen on Thursday, when I meet with our coach is that we will actually put a financial piece to it. So that's my goal setting for this week. And it's really scary. I don't know why it was so scary. Because it was a really big amount of people. And I really want to do it. And I know it's possible. So how about how about you, anybody else want to weigh in on goals and what they're doing?

Martha?

Yeah.

First off, Michelle, you mentioned it was scary. And Megan mentioned, it was scary. And I think that that's a huge piece to talk through. Because, um, and I guess you have to figure out is that scary, exciting? Or is it scary? self limiting? So if, you know, because I will absolutely say I, I struggle with the scary self limiting, like, when I started thinking big, like, what quality driven? could and should do. And on a big scale. those thoughts immediately start coming in. And, and I'm still working on that. Because, you know, really, I can't think of anybody in my life that I've ever had tell me that, you know, or at least that I paid any attention to that. You know, you can't do that. So yeah, it's really internal dialogue. And, and I will tell you guys a funny story that are listening. I've even done hypnosis to get rid of that. Wow. Yeah, it is. It's pretty cool. It's a long term game. And, you know, I'm only a couple of months out and but, you know, I'm, I like to experiment. And I thought, you know, I'll try it. It was a cool experience. But I think you do have to think about why that pops into your head and define what those things are. Because sometimes, sometimes, you know, like, Megan was saying that scary. We want to keep it smaller. Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. And when you define what's scary about getting bigger, you can have a conscious decision of because you don't have to take on more clients and

you don't, it's true, you know, and use

those options. So just because

there's like, what happens when you hit the goal, like the big goal, like you know, we have our big, big, hairy, audacious goals or whatever. Like, yeah, yeah, fine. We hit That last weekend in a weird way, and it was like,

Oh, well, now what?

We don't want to keep growing packs is that was our big that was it. That was the thing. And so now what do we do? You know, and I? I don't know. So anyway, it's I like it to me it's a fear of unknown and also a fear of going the wrong direction. But I think as business owners, that's what we do naturally. Right? We just try it. Yeah. And then we try it. And then we try it. And we just keep, you know, go in different directions. I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, for many people, and I would hesitate to guess this as part of Jeff's thing is, for many people. When you deal with employees, growth, sounds like more employee issues. And, and quite frankly, I think, I mean, that's just my opinion, but I think it's the opposite. Sure, you have more employees, so you have the potential for more employee problems, but you also have so much more cushion than you had when you were small. And losing a few employees was huge. But as you get bigger, losing a few employees, is just normal and very systemized, in a way. So

yeah, well, and speaking about people, I thought it was I want to go back to your story that we talked about before we started the live. So I want to make sure we talk about that, because I found that hiring a new person in our business that could help with that cushion for us, is making me want to chase the goal harder, because I owe it to this person, I owe it to this team, I owe it to this group of people, right. And so I know as business owners, that's also something that really gets us fired up is that when we hire and support cool people, we owe it to them to have a vibrant and healthy and fun and capable company, you know, and so that was one of the things that was really scary about the first quarter and that we did ours is that we hired somebody to help us with that. That stuff. So tell me about what we were talking about earlier, Martha cuz I love that I'm going to throw it to you please. Wait to stay have a goal comment, are

you,

I would say, for us, we're kind of like a combination of what Megan was saying, like setting some financials, but still tying those to non financial goals. Because we really, for us, it's we've always centered things around wanting to support our future family and support the families of our employees. That's really what everything we do is rooted in. So finding those financial goals to tie into that allowed a lot of help and guidance to be able to check in each month and say, okay, you know, we're we're reaching that, or another step closer kind of like that we're in the yellow light process, I would assume is kind of what you're referring to. Not fully green yet. But we're getting there. So it's kind of that constant monitoring and, you know, adjusting to make sure we're putting things in place that need to be systematized because that's really what we're at to right now. We're still very chaotic, I guess you can say, Michelle would probably go insane if she's took them forever. But, yeah, systemization is really important for us right now, too. So that's a lot of our goals are centered around that as well.

As good. Those are good goals.

You know, the stage of business that you're in and growing. So that's it. I think, too many people skip that step. So that's really good.

Yeah, trying to wrangle everything in Damien's brain into a piece of paper is a whole lot of fun. Let me tell you that. Have you seen my windows? Yep, spring, can you see that there's text all over my windows. That is great. And I sit here and I take notes, like a secretary from the 1940s. And the brain dumps like beautiful mind on the windows. And then at some point that turns into some sort of policy. Um, but but Martha took a class recently, and I've been thinking I need to take this class or maybe you didn't, I don't know. But you're talking about the Google Drive. Just like Michelle we needed to organize like, Tay I what I'm realizing with systems is like, I need to put them in buckets, which are literal folders, and I need to name them correctly, and then I need to index them like, I think that's my summer project of our systems. It's there's a lot of things we have but then we lose it because it's somewhere there there. Somewhere on the interwebs Martha Did you taking that class?

Well, the reason I kind of looked I had a blank stare at Because I didn't take it, I bought it. I didn't take it. I had by VA that we just recently hired. I didn't even look at one little piece of it. But pretty much when I hired her, I said, here, here's this class I bought on organizing G Suite. And I need you to take my 12,000 emails, one account, I have 22,000 sad to say, I'll just say no. And I said, I need you to straighten this up. And, and you know, like my Google Drive, I've got files in there, but they're not organized. And so anyway, she is in the process, she's got me down to like 600, and something emails out of 12,000. So I'm super happy. But I just have her do that, you know, a little bit each week, because at it gets boring. And I don't want to make it boring. But what I was sharing before we went live is. So recently, I offered this bonus tracker class that was for field staff. But then I also had a management bonus tracker thing. And so I made it all nice and organized. And I thought, you know, I need to be doing this with the Qd s team. And I had, I had started it before, but we're small team. And. And so when I first started it, it was just, it was Zack and I and we, neither one are super motivated by money, and we just weren't good about holding each other accountable. Because it was things that I guess, I mean, I do care about but I guess not enough to really drive at home. Anyway, we recently hired a VA to join our team, and that VA is through an agency. And so I I figure that we pay her something like that, not we but she is from this agency, something like three 350 an hour, she's from the Philippines, and we love her love her. And so anyway, I made my management bonus tracker, just like I teach for Qd s, all the pieces that this VA is part of the bonus tracker, we have her on a bonus system. And we each have our accountability pieces. But I was saying this might be the secret sauce for Zack and I because you know, we weren't hugely motivated by giving ourselves a some kind of financial bonus. But we are hugely motivated by making sure the nice, I guess her bonus, because that bonus means the world to her. And so I've got accountability pieces where I have to bring in X number of leads to a quality driven a week. And

that used to be my old goal too. But now I know I absolutely bring in that number of leads because we have a certain percentage that will look demos and then a certain percentage that will convert. And in order for the Nisa to get her extra money, we have to make more revenue, which means I have to bring these leads in. So anyway, we each have our accountability pieces. And it's so cool. And it really has lit a fire under me because, you know, I found my why. And so anyway, it's so fun. I was telling them that Vanessa while she doesn't she's not a true employee. She's VA that's contracted. But she's very much a part of our team and I have given her permission to be our accountability manager. And so she will send a boxer message and say, um, Zach, you haven't made the call to so and so to follow up, you know, because we have, we use Trello board things. So Michelle, and we put labels on things. Now we're working on building it in a pipeline in automation, I mean in Infusionsoft. But anyway, they have to go through sages. And it's been pretty cool. And so but she's got this sweet little, you know, I really need you to, but it's enough that we're like, Oh, sweet bunny. So we got to get that done. We got to get that done. So I share because you have to find your why. And Michelle was saying she struggled with the Financial Peace. And then when went to giving this many people jobs and opportunities that inspired her. So

I got a smile. Oh, sorry. Cake tastes like you're just talking about leads, Martha leads, and then converting them into sales. I was still. And so all you have to do is listen to today, and then you'll meet your mark every time worth it. We'll just do it on the autopilot, right?

That's it though.

I don't know, I'm a firm believer in accountability. Because I'm the same way if I don't have that person, like, Hey, we got to get this done. Like, here's that little subtle reminder, here's a little kick in the butt. Like, I'm the same way, Martha. So I think it's awesome what you're doing, because it's doing it in a really sweet way. But it's still a motivation and a why to get you going and keep you

Yeah, not letting somebody down is a huge thing for me. So now that I've put that in my accountability, um, yeah, that's it, you know, in the maid service, in the weekly I mean, in we in the monthly meetings, when our techs need more jobs, like if their schedule is not filled. I am reporting to them. I'm accountable to them. Each month, I tell them, our average number of leads, I tell them my goal. And I have to report to them now right now, we're swamped. So nobody even wants any leads as far as the employees go. But But when their schedules open, you know, that is a good motivator for me. And I just share all those things, because you got to figure out what will help you stay accountable. And because sometimes just your own internal dialogue is not enough.

So true, so true.

All right. I love how we do it. And it's all tied together minus syntax piece, just ignore that, but all of your financial metrics in yours, so that you all did the finance part, the good part, but I love it. We didn't even talk about it. And it was really similar, like very similar. Yep, it's true, though. We talked about it at our fight club retreat to how these when we do our goal setting exercise and we tie it back to KPIs. And what we're talking about our KPI is what is your What is your acquisition cost? What is your cost per lead? What is your conversion rate? You know, all of these can tie into a financial sales goal. I love it. I thought of Jeff McConaughey a couple times. He's my KPI new. Martha's Martha introduced us. She hates it when I adopt her friends. But our friends, all of us, our friend, Jeff McConaughey. That's what I kept thinking of is, yeah, so if you want to hit this financial goal, let's work backwards. How many leads does that turn into? And then let's look at taste. Choose your own destiny. What's the best, most efficient way to get those leads quickly? Yeah, okay. warm and fuzzies from bike club this week.

are usually something tied to an experience or it's a some type of event, whether that be something around the house or bah bah, bah, bah, bah. And then then that's how I worked it backwards on what kind of profit you know what, what does it take money value to do that and then, you know, use work backwards to lead so

Yeah. All right.