Mike Andes answers a lawn-care business owner on Vancouver Island asking when to hire a first full-time employee. Andes emphasizes that the right timing depends on service mix (maintenance vs. materials-heavy landscaping) and local labor rates. He recommends not hiring full time until monthly revenue is roughly $6–8k, and says at $10–15k/month a full-time hire will likely become necessary. He describes a scaling path: start by converting a part-timer to full-time in one truck, then add a second truck/employee as estimating and workload require; in his markets a field worker should generate roughly $15–16k/month, and market labor-pay examples cited were ~$18/hr (his market) and ~$10/hr (El Paso).
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Next question. Hi Mike. Just turned my side hustle into a full time career and want to build the business. I'm on Vancouver island in a small valley or town with about 30,000 people which by the way one of our franchisees is up in on Victoria island, just outside of Victoria bc. Can't come down here. Hasn't been able to come down here for training for like six months because the coronavirus. But anyways, back to Vancouver island, about 30,000 people since April I've probably done 60 to $70,000 in sales and I am hoping to reach another 20 before the end of November. They're small goals only because it's just me. I guess my question is when should I hire my first guy? I have a part time guy two days a week, but he has other commitments and I need a guy full time but don't feel at the moment I can generate enough revenue to supply us both while I have a family. As winter is approaching my, my goal is to start someone full time starting next season and just bite the bullet and take the dip in revenue. I think he meant profit there. As a solo guy, how much should I be making before I hire a full time employee? Thanks for everything. And once Covid is over, you best believe I'll be at the next landscape summit. Thanks again. Awesome. Can't wait to see you there. All right, so in terms, so this gentleman over in Vancouver island gonna do about 100, a little short of 100,000 in revenue. It looks like this year has a part time guy, works with him two days a week and wondering when he can hire a full timer. So this is the big deal here. I can give a range here. I'm gonna give a range in terms of what revenue you should be doing before you hire your first employee. But gotta remember the reason there's a range here is based upon two things. Your service mix. So if you're doing maintenance, it's a lower number because if you're doing landscaping, there's a bunch of material costs and equipment and you're usually charging a higher hourly rate. So let me make it very clear, service is going to change this range in terms of dollars until your first employee as well as your labor rate in your local area. For example, in our market we our base pay is $18 per hour for our employees. Our franchisee down in Texas, in El Paso, like his base pay I think is $9 or $10. I think it's $10 per hour. And it's not that he's way lower, it's Just that cost of living is way lower, he char. And so therefore the amount of revenue he needs to get an employee is so, so much lower than us, almost like half, like 10 to 18. So it's not even right to say, oh, you need $20,000 in revenue, then you get your first employee. Or you need 10,000 in revenue. Like you can't do that because it's gonna based upon services. Because if I'm selling hardscaping, waterscaping, pools, walls, things that are really dense in materials. In terms of cost structure, most of the estimates are made up of materials or a lot of it. Yeah, it's going to be like $25,000 per employee that you make every year because 10,000 of that is just materials. So looking at revenue is definitely not the best thing. But this is the range I'm going to give you. I would not hire a full time employee until you were doing 7 to 8,000 in monthly revenue. All right. And I know that's a general number because I know down in El Paso that's difficult to do with one person. I'm just saying El Paso is an example. But in our market, seven or eight thousand dollars, you can do that literally three days a week if you work some long days as a solo operator, because we're charging more. But our labor rate to hire someone is a lot more too. So what I would recommend is do not, don't even think about hiring someone full time, full time until you're making at least 7 or 8,000amonth in revenue. Cause you can do that. You can do that by yourself working in the field. When you start hitting like 10 to 15,000 in revenue, that's when you're going to be forced almost to have someone working full time. So I'm thinking about one of our franchisees right now over in, just outside of, in the Carolinas. I'm just gonna say in the Carolinas. In the Carolinas. That has really started to grow the business in the past couple months. And I can see on his dispatch board the fact that, hey, now he needs that full time employee like consistently. It used to be part time, now he's needing them consistently. He's been, I think three months, three, four months now in the franchise. And the first couple months just kind of getting things started, getting things figured out. And now he's getting to the point where this month he'll probably be like 14, 15,000 revenue. He needs that full time employee now and it becomes pretty organic. So if you can get this guy that was working with you for two days a week. If you can get him to commit to full time. You got to look at it as if I spent that time working on the business and focus on selling and marketing, would I be able to generate twice as much revenue? And a lot of times the answer is yes. And so in terms of dollar per month, I would be saying don't hire anyone until you're hitting 6 to 8,000 in revenue. Don't even think about it. In terms of hiring someone full time, between 10 and 15,000 in revenue, you're going to feel a natural, like you will have to hire someone full time. If you're growing, like it'll just push you. Like you'll be doing 14, 15,000 revenue. You're working every single day, you're working your brains out and you get home, you still have a bunch of estimates to do. You have to hire someone, it'll be forced on you. And I would do that first person just with you in the truck, don't go out and buy a bunch of equipment and buy a shop, just put one person in the truck. Then you're gonna keep working and you're gonna get more revenue. And now it's like, okay, I need to be able to do estimates throughout the day. I can't just do them at the end of the day once this employee's gone, therefore I gotta get another truck so that that person can be working all day long. Which now you've trained them for a few months, they've been with you working for you for a month or two, and they can go out and work in the second truck by themselves. Now you can do estimates throughout the day and do a little bit of work. And that might get you to like 20 or you know, in our market we can do like 25/000 in revenue with just that setup. An owner, an employee, and two trucks. And so again, you might bet 15 to 20,000 in your market if your labor rate is like really low, if your cost of living is lower, what you charge the customer is lower and what you get charged from that employee is lower. So a few things that kind of like go with each other, like the ebbs and flows is labor. The cost of labor traditionally mirrors pretty closely what you can charge the customer in terms of your hourly rate to the customer. Therefore that's going to also correlate with how much revenue you need to have in order to make it worth having a full time employee. So you know, locally we try to hit between about, let me see here, 15, about 15 to $16,000 per field worker per month. Okay. But you gotta realize you have a lot, we have a lot of infrastructure in terms of office and efficiencies of trucks and all the rest of it that costs overhead. Right. So there's always a balance. But I've seen solo operators pull in 15, 20,000amonth in revenue by getting tight, tight routes and really focusing on efficiencies and their setup and all the rest of it. So it's definitely possible. But if you're trying to scale quickly, that's kind of the ranges I would give you. But don't think about if you're doing 5,000amonth in revenue, it's just not gonna make sense. If you got someone working two days a week, I'd try to get them three, try to get them four, try to get them five. And definitely knowing your market in Vancouver island, wait until next spring to make that big jump to a full time employee.
