Can you hire and still make a profit

This does expose a common problem though, does it not? Here it is:

" Hey, i made 120 bucks in 2 hours…"
" nothing less than $100/hr for…"
“Price it at 100 dollars an hour…”

Kinda like holding the painting up to one’s nose.

im not following…

If employee pay formula should not start from hourly income and work outward to annual income, should not owner income follow the same rule?

Ahhh…

Since its snowing out, it feels good reading “your” posts again about numbers.

If I remember correctly that works out to .65 workable months for weather related business that deal with harsh weather.

That would leave approximately .45 down time that needs to be adjusted for to maintain employees.

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yes of course.
the business gets paid first.
then the employees.
then the owners.

all follow the sams rules.

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Wish I could “like” this post a couple more times.

Its funny how you can extrapolate information from other service industries and that can directly plug into this industry. Mechanics labor book is a great example.

I would say this is true for most service industry jobs and not really unique just to window cleaning.

Tree trimmers, landscaping, lawn maintenance, painters, janitorial, carpet cleaning, handyman, mechanic, car detailing, the list goes on.

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I believe that works in mild climates like Florida and SoCal and a few others.

In the PNW and Great lakes area “harsh weather locations.” You need to adjust for more down time to sustain and to have growth.

But hurricanes are pretty harsh… (scary)… :wink:

But I hope you get what I’m saying.

Thanks @anon46335951 for staring this thread, it’s much needed.

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yeah im in FL… so we have rainy season… but the 3 day plan would def need to be different in northern states

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keep in mind this all about projecting what ifs

a solo op trying to figure how much he needs for a part time or full time guy

how much “contribution” (after payroll and payroll burden) is projected to be realized

how many guys needed to make x

the most common projection is going to be a solo op asking himself how many guys, generating what, will get me out of the field?

my mantra is that the solo op the vast majority of the time has flawed formulas he’s working with from the start

I guess the most helpful thing would be for the solo op to treat himself as employee, analyzing his own production, times, everything, to get starting benchmarks in place. not guesstimates, but solid annualized numbers to work with and plug in

I am a strong believer that everyone should know their annual on the job per man hour average - all jobs for the year, most important, then breakdown by first time jobs, comml, residential, repeats, repeat will calls etc. one is just working blind trying to project anything without that type of solid information

even a solo op, doesn’t he want to have an index to gauge progress? not just income and per man hour, but more personal hours right? that’s the success of a solo op: more money in less time for more personal time, or if he chooses more money overall for the same full schedule working hours

at least an increase that covers cost of living each year for sure, at least

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You guys keep saying this, but I don’t know why you keep saying it. At least around here, mechanics work on book rate, and get paid by book rate. If the book says it takes 1 hour to change the alternator, that’s what he’s getting paid for. That’s what the shop is going to charge you too. Doesn’t matter if he took 30 minutes, or 3 hours. We can’t pay our employees like that. We can’t set the hours on the job like that, that we will pay them.

Other than that, I am enjoying this discussion.

sounds like commission to me

30 panes of glass pays x whether you do it in half the time of squeegee with water pole or spend a half day with newspaper and ammonia

This thread has been really valuable for me. I’ve been in business for 9 months and I would really like to grow to have employees and a variety of services, including snow removal for the winter months. Making my jump from part-time to full-time and then to hiring employees seems hard to wrap my head around, but now I’m thinking I should look at it in terms of reaching benchmarks in yearly/seasonal revenue. If I can earn an average of X a month, then I can hire a part-time employee. When I reach an average of Y, offer that part-time employee full-time status. I realize economy of scale wouldn’t necessarily stay the same for the 2nd, 3rd or 4th employee, but is this the right way to be looking at growth?

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yes.

True.

But I think that rarely works for window cleaning businesses. In order to pay a guy commission, he would need to be VERY skilled and motivated. If you have a guy like that, he is likely going to start his own business. With the mechanic example, there are MANY of them that do just that, either “on the side” or try opening their own shop.

This is why I have a issue with the guy doing the work for you, also doing sales/pricing. Sooner or later they get the greedy bug, and either think they ought to be paid a lot more, or they want to start their own business and make “big money”. It only really hurts your business in the end, if you are losing highly skilled, high producing workers.

For any business to be so cocky as to think they don’t need these valuable workers, is poppycock. I see that all the time. A business owner thinks that the people out there with skills are a dime a dozen and can be replaced so easily. But the funny thing is, in my market, there are jobs everywhere unfilled, and the pay offered and the way they treat people is crap.

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This thread is brilliant.

It is extremely hard to make the jump from
Solo to “owner/manager,” and it probably comes down to a fundamental “fudging” of the numbers: losing track of how many hours were really worked, how much expenses actually are, etc.

Then you throw in more variables, like the differences in pace of employees, the huge variety of jobs we face, and so on, and you end up with a managerial challenge, for sure.

I’ve been running two PT employees this year, working with me. As an experiment, I’ve pulled myself out of the field one day/week, and I send them out on residential. Wow, talk about learning how good your pricing/bids are. It has been a very enlightening experience.

This ties into the concepts in the E-Myth of the technician vs. the manager. The skill set needed to turn a WC business into an employee-based company is so much different than that needed to run solo.

I never set out to run a business with employees that I send out. It is working, and the days I’m in the field it is fantastic. However, trying to pull myself out of the field is a whole other ballgame.

I wish I could like every post in this thread, basically.

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Epic quote. Each job is different, each employee is different. Some employees like working with others, some don’t, some enjoy residential, some enjoy commercial. The list is endless. On top of all the marketing, finance, administrative things to learn and worry about… throw in all the employee related things.

Another epic quote. This is one reason hiring an Operations Manager, Crew Leader, or something of that nature is vitally important when growing an employee-based business.

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If you plan to grow your business and not clean windows until you’re too old to do it then I would say how could you not hire.
Its breaks down to simple math. If you can average $100/ man hour. Then having 1 gut plus you is $200 an hour. You pay the guy $20/ an hour and you just went up from $100/ hour to $180/ hour. Of course you have to have enough work.

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$100 an hour is difficult to maintain on a continuous basis. I’d say my average is anywhere between $60-$80 an hour, that’s nose to glass time, not including drive time.

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It varies alot. My older accounts that I bought from the previous owner are closer to $50/ hour. I’m mostly focused on residential necause it pays better but when I do get commercials I try to price them @ 100/hour. It don’t always make that mark but alot of the time can get more. It really varies. At this point I have my employees handle the lower paying route work amd I bundle it up into a good 5-10 hour day.