Forum Title: For those that have employees or full time helpers

at what point did you decide you were going to do that? Was there a point where you couldn't handle it by yourself or you just thought help would be nice? Was there a gross dollar figure that you wanted to hit before you hired on people or did you hire on people to hit the gross you wanted? How did you find people who were trainable? Did you headhunt or just teach the good ones? My business is growing (rapidly) this year and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to handle all of it, but want to push as hard as I can for a couple of more years. I made a very nice living last year hiring subs to help me sealcoat 10-15 times. The rest of the time my son and I knocked stuff out. My good problem to have is that I'm already contracted to do 75% of last year's gross and the season has barely started. I've been working 12-14 hours a day to keep up with estimating, accounting, invoicing, inventory, ect... Any and all help appreciated.

Category: Paving Post By: ALFRED MORRISON (Lakeland, FL), 01/08/2020

Employees are a part of growth, but they are costly. The best advice is to be lean and mean, so grow slow. When people exhibit uncontrolled growth, they usually end up failing. The way to look at employees is best to start and figure them into your job costing and bids. You'll need to account for them or else you risk losing money on jobs. Its not only a wage, but taxes-including matching taxes, workers comp insurance etc. So run the numbers on one guy, figure what approx taxes and workers comp will run, and then factor that into your bids, and if you continue to get those jobs at that new rate, then hire a guy. You can also look at employee leasing, where they leasing company will pay all taxes and insurance, and you pay a flat rate...usually 20-30 an hour. Same thing applies though, add that labor to the job and make sure each job will cover it. Im big on job costing and covering costs. Just my two cents.

- D Tucker (New York, NY), 01/31/2020

I would look to coledge kids and nick is correct make sure you’re jobs will pay for more help

- ANGELA PEREZ (Edinburg, TX), 01/31/2020

Seasonal business is tough to hire and train employees. Most will be gone on to something else at the start of the season. That may not be a factor in the southern states but in Colorado we can only work about 6 mos. My thoughts is I would start out using temps to see how it goes before commenting to workmans comp and SS taxes.