Ca22

I have had this happen to me. They had 800 number to schudule with heavensbest and so I called. The guy told me that Heavensbest was not available, but he could put me in contact with an equally reputable company. I asked for his supervisor and then I threatened to sue the s@#t out of them if they did not take this down. It took a couple of days and then it was gone. Good luck

We will start our employees based on needs and experience. I have started them at $8 for a guy who is just a ride along and really needs a lot of work. I have just hired another one at $11.00 that has experience that will be on his own in no time. After 60 days we will have a review and make adjustments as needed. What ever works for you is going to be the best way to do it. There is no way I could do a percentage pay plan with 6 employees. I would have to spend a fortune on accounting to get it right. I do know that employees will work hard for me, because they know I never ask any more of them then I would do myself. Respect goes along way with them. I have a few guys that are making $14-15 an hour and they are worth every penny. It is amazing what breakfast at the shop or lunch on me does for moral. The hardest thing I ever had to do in this business was getting off a truck and putting my trust in the staff.

I saw one on a lot a few weeks back. It looked to be smaller than an astro, but taller. It also has sliding doors on both sides. I like the gas mileage that it offers. This would be a good fit for a second van, but I could not see using it as a primary van. I have all sizes of vans, and they get packed full of equipment. I always cary power stretcher, 2 fans, tool box, metal strips, tackstrips and enough products to do 8 jobs in the van. It can be done but it is tight.

I would be in for a pool of money to get the hb site seo. The ranking is killing me. Not only for the lack of estimate request that we lost, but the pride of being below rug doctor and some of the mom and pops out there. I know we just switched to new servers, but anything we can do to get in the top 5 would bring so much more jobs in.

I have met Steve at least a dozen times. I have never done business with him, but he is a great guy. I have also talked to quite a few of his customers and they all seemed to be a believer in him. Most of the things that he does are things that you can do on your own. It all depends on your discipline and drive. It is like having a home gym vs. a membership to a gym with a personal trainer pushing you to be the best.

What is your budget that you are spending? How much is the company that you are using cost in comision? What companies have you tried? It might be time to do it yourself. It takes a little time to get it down, but it is not that hard. I just looked up your cities and you seem to be in the top 3 most of the time. I myself never like to be number 1 due to cost, but I do like top 2-5. Some times 4 is a great spot if it takes you to the top on the left hand side.

I am still behind the advertising fee 100%. I called it an advertising fee because it can be implemented from our current contracts. The other reason is that it is not called a royalty fee or a franchise fee. I do not want these tacked on to the royalty fees in any way. I would like whatever happens to not affect my relationship with my operators. I do not want the fees to go through me, or have my royalty fees go through the corporate office. Here is the list that Cody gave us. The $ indicates areas that would be covered directly under this new plan.
$• We need a graphic designer.
$• We need to make ads more effective.
$• We need to work over the web site and have uniform look, feel, and pull, for carpet cleaning sales,
Franchise sales, and Operator support.
$• We need more computer personnel working on Search Engine Optimization, Organic Searches, and
Pay Per Click campaigns.
• We need to replace our legal counsel.
$• We need better ongoing training for our Operators.
• We need better cash reserves to protect the entire system.
$• We need more profit for City Operators, State Owners, and Corporate.
• We need a better plan in case Cody Howard, one of my staff, one of you, or one of your Operators is
no longer around.
With an increase of $50 and an additional increase down the road we could check off most of these items very quickly. I liked the suggestion that Laura posted about selling off some additional states to raise the reserves that Cody is looking for. As operators make more money than more revenue will be brought in from product sales. This would allow more revenue for legal counsel. As you can see the majority of the items have to do with hiring personnel for marketing and advertising in one way or another.

I want to clarify what the operators would get out of this fee. They would get a proper landing page on Heavensbest.com. They would receive access to graphic designs that the corporate office would have made available. The web site would get a serious face lift. We can offer better training classes via the web and archive them on the site so that guys that are not able to participate can go back and review. We can offer tutorials on how to advertise on the internet and pay-per-click. We will have the site SEO The goal here was to find a source of revenue for corporate to accomplish many things that have to do with advertising. Most of the cost for the web site is front loaded meaning most of the cost is to get the changes done and our ranking up. After that the maintenance is much less. The revenue could then be allotted to graphics and pre made advertisements. We really need someone at corporate that can do the changes for the operators on pre made advertising. We can have staffing that can do these things, as well as multi task on others.
A flat fee is a good way of charging per operator. What corporate would be providing is the TOOLS to use for advertising. Every operator would be set up with a landing page that could have a feel of a website. The site would be organically tweaked so that it would be placed in the top position. Not all of the money would go to website development. It would be used to develop radio and TV ads as well as print ads. We would have the ability to have changes made to print advertising directly from the corporate office. When it comes to fairness of the cost I am hoping that we are not assuming that this fee is going to be the only amount each operator will spend on advertising. Larger territories will still spend more on advertising then the smaller areas. Everyone would have the same opportunities to grow their business as the operator next door, or across the nation. Many feel that some areas of the country have a bigger web presence than others. I agree and I think that no one would argue. A few years back my area was not computer savvy either. I believe it was Gordon that once told me that it takes a few years for them to “ feel “ the things that happen down here in California. Do we want to wait until it is a factor and try to play catch up? Or do we want to be in the forefront. Mind you our competition did not wait. We cannot compete with the advertising power of the competition in print, radio, TV. What we can do is compete online. Not only can we compete we can be better than the competition. Most of the training that I have found operators need work in is in the marketing areas.

At the end of the day we need to look at the objectives that we are seeking to achieve. Cody’s objective is to bring more money into the corporate office. We want to not lose our existing operators. We would like to make our operators more successful and make them more money. This would in return put a little more money into all of our pockets. We need to make changes that do not appear to be drastic to our operators, or potential buyers. I have a website that was made for my operators in AZ. It does OK for them. They never complain, because I never charged them for it. It needs to be better. It needs to have a better organic ranking. I have helped over 13 operators set up pay-per-click advertising campaigns. I have done it for guys that are not just in my state, but some of yours as well. I have a waiting list of eight more. The one key thing that we always talk about is the way people find them. Each of them is making more money and can’t believe the difference. I make each of them go through the heavensbest.com site for a landing page. I make them create coupons on the heavensbest.com site. I make them turn on text messaging of the leads on the site. I am always hearing how come we did not know about this before. I have no answer for that. I can only assume that most of the state owners do not even realize how many changes that we have had in the last 12-6 months on the site. Justin has been fantastic for listening to my suggestions, and implementing them in to the system for me. I always talk to the operators about pooling money together for the website. I usually bring it up and show them how organic searches work. I tell them of what my vision of what and where the web site would be. Once they really get a grasp of the power of the advertising they always say that they would not mind putting money into getting more leads off the internet. These are the things that we are trying to get behind and give to our operators. Not every operator will benefit the same, but it is usually not the size or demographics that hold them back. It is usually their own desire and willingness to work and use the tools that we offer. I just let one of my operators go in Arizona. He held the most territory, and paid the most fees. He was still stuck in 2004 when he bought the business. He did not embrace the new logos or any changes at all. His average income was less than almost any other operator in the system. I know this has been long winded, and I want to close by saying that I will buy a ticket to Rexburg and be up there for 2 days to discuss this. I hope others can and will join me. I just need to know when the best time for Cody to sit down and talk in person will be.