A short conversation from a YouTube video (Mike Andes, Feb 15, 2025) where two speakers discuss hiring a general manager. They highlight difficulty finding a GM who can cover many services (excavation, stump grinding, irrigation) without commanding six-figure pay, and note the owner’s long experience (~15–16 years) and tendency to reduce offered services to make hiring easier.
What would be a way to get a general manager to help me out to alleviate some of my workloads?
Your role in the business is mostly the sales side, I'm assuming. Right.
I also do some work too. Okay. Good labor.
Kind of like project management, hopping out with the guys occasionally.
Exactly. Yeah.
My struggle with that is can the business afford a general manager the size but also the amount of services that you do? Like the amount of services you do would require someone that does six figures simply because they have to do like excavation, stump grinding, like irrigation, like all of those skills. They would otherwise just start their own thing if they have those skills. Right?
Yeah.
And so it's a difficult GM to find. And a lot of times that's why we will kind of condense what services we do offer so that we can find a general manager easier. Because you have like what, 15 years of doing this?
Yeah, 16. Yeah.
And so if we're going to take 120 grand, that's 10% off top line revenue to a GM, well then we've got to be at least 20% profitable now to just afford that.
