The Secret to Scaling Past 10 Employees (Coaching Call)

I think mainly it's me. I think I'm the problem.

You've been doing it for a long time. You're burnt out right now. We need you to show up to work and being happy about it.

I just want to introduce myself. Name is Juan Alvarado. I know we communicate a little bit there through Instagram and I've been doing trees for a long time. It's kind of what I do. And, you know, we're kind of at a slump where we're at, you know, and a lot of that is, I think has to do with me, you know, so just trying to pick your brain a little bit on, you know, some changes that I can do. Obviously, I've been following you for a while, not just on social media, but on YouTube.

So. Right. So right now you guys are doing trees in Sacramento. How many team members are with you now, Juan?

So right now we have one at the office who answers the phones. We have one guy who does 99% of our sale. So I kind of brought him along, taught him everything, and now he does all of ourselves, like 99% of it. I do very little of it. And then out in the field, we're down to three, six, nine guys on the field. And then we have two guys that we do lot maintenance. We have one crew that we do lot maintenance that I kind of didn't want to do lawns because I honestly, I mean, I can mow a lawn, you know, I can, you know, anybody can mow a lawn, stuff like that. But it's not my expertise at it. So we just did it because one of these customers pretty much begged us to do it. And I figured, okay, if I did one, I just sent out a couple emails and I filled out my day for or my week for one crew, a two man crew. So we do that now. Kobe, we were running a lot more. Kobe, we were running five crews, you know, and that's a three man crew. But I think you and I know, and a lot of people know Covid was, you know, a special time, you know, So I, I, I, I always tell Everybody we skipped 2020-2021-2022-2023. Seems like 20, no, 2024. Seemed like it would be 2020, right, going from 19 to 2020 because we were running three crews in 2019. So to me, like, it's just kind of started all over and, you know, and we didn't struggle at all through Covid for no work. Like, we were like, you know, four months out, five months out, like Everybody, if you weren't busy during COVID you had a problem, you know. But now we're back at, okay, now I gotta strategize again and figure out where do I want to go from here. You know, a lot of it is being complacent, I think, and being comfortable of where I'm at. I think that's the biggest problem, you know, so we didn't do much advertising the last, I don't know, four or five years. We didn't do even pre Covid, we weren't doing much advertisement. We are doing some now, but it's. I don't know if that's where my money should be going or what's, you know, I. I don't know. You. You know more about this than I do, you know, so.

And what. What's your kind of goal, Juan, with it? Is it to grow it to like, 5 million? Is it to you know, make it more passive and get a general manager? What's sort of like the goal that you want?

My ultimate goal. And it's really simple. I just don't want to struggle for work. I'm comfortable where we're at. I mean, obviously, if we get to 5 million, 6 million, it's fine.

But we're not there. You know, we're. I think we're going to be like, at 2.5 this year. Last year we were at 2.9, you know, Covid, we were in the threes. But like I said, that's Covid. That's something that, you know, I don't think it's very hard to get to. I think get into my hundred thousand, you know, because I work for Valleycrest. I don't know if you're familiar with Valleycrest. It's a huge Corporation, spent 12 years there. So when I left, I was making 50, 60,000 a year. So making that on my own was really easy. You know, getting it to 100 was really easy. 200 was really easy. Even once I got to the million mark, to me, it seemed really easy. It's been since 2009, so, I mean, it's been a few years, but it seemed like I got there really easy. It seems like to get over the 2, 3 hurdle mark, I think it's. I find it, like, extremely difficult and. And I don't know if. Because my energy's kind of gone down a little bit or. Or what, but it seems like it's almost impossible to get it up any further, you know?

Yeah, it's very common. Once you hit around 10 to 12 employees, regardless of the revenue, to kind of hit that plateau of like, something in the organization has to change if you're going to continue to scale. And so, like, my big thing is like, do we want to scale or do we just want to book ourselves out so far where it's just like, look, we raise prices, we optimize profits, and we don't necessarily aren't trying to grow. But we need a more dependent. From what I'm hearing, we want a more dependable lead source to ensure that we not always, like, wondering where the next job's at.

Yeah, yeah. And we stay. I mean, this month has been pretty tough, but we're still staying somewhat busy. I think next week, it seems, like, really slow for us. You know, we've been staying pretty consistent with the two crews. We were running three up, up into January, and then January we were running three, but four days a week. So then I made the decision to, hey, let's cut it back down to two. So the guys that we do keep could continue to work their 40 hours. But now it's getting to, okay, well, now we're doing the two crews. And it seems like this is going to be the first week that we might have to run it four days, you know, so tomorrow we really don't have nothing on the schedule. I mean, I have little things here and there that I need to tighten up and I got to take care of. But nothing that's really, like, was sold because I told Jeremiah, which is the gentleman helped me in sale. I told him, hey, just leave everything and push it for next week so we can at least get four days next week. Yeah. You know, so. And another problem, too. I mean, I think it is. I think mainly it's me. I think I'm the problem. You know, I hate to say it, but I feel like, like, in your organization, if something's going terribly wrong, like, you know, you may not catch it right away. Depending on how big you guys are, you may not catch it right away. But if it gets big enough to where it gets to you, then I feel that you're the problem, you know, because you didn't do nothing about it. You didn't address it right. Like, for example, we have this gentleman who's working for us, but he does a lot of side work. And I feel like there's a huge conflict in that. Him doing side work and him working for us, you know? But I also have a hard time letting him go because I'm like, okay, well, he doesn't have a Full time job. And you know, I think I care too much and I think I need to stop caring about the business, about the people in general and care more about the business.

Yeah. Like one thing might be something to consider to want a current size of the business is like, does it need a general manager that will come in and be less emotional about the operations of the company? 100%. Yeah.

Because I'm too emotional and I'm too like, for example, they're out of sick days, I'll tell the girl at the office, just pay them for the day because I feel bad. Right. Versus you being my general manager to say you're like, sorry dude, you only work four days. What am I supposed to do? Yeah, right.

Your current size, if you can say go from 2.5 to say 3.5 by you focusing on everything besides operations. Like I feel like right now you have admin, you have sales and you're basically serving as the operations person and.

I'm not doing a good job at it.

And you just got to get someone in there that is incentivized on profitability. Right. And they're going to be much more by the book. They're going to be create standard operating procedures, they're going to be much more rules and regulations. But the reason you don't do that is because you don't want to feel like the bad guy. Whereas what you do is you hire someone that is strong operations and they're incentivized to ensure that you're profitable. And then by you delegating probably what is 60, 70% of your day, you're then going to go focus on growing the business. Things like optimization of the website, upselling existing customers, turning a $10,000 job into a $20,000 job. Like these are the things that you are going to be really good at. And then, then you focus on the two things. One, strategic growth like that and secondly, leadership of the team. Because now you're going to have an admin person, you're gonna have an operations person and you're have a salesperson that that leadership team needs cultivating. You'll have to step in occasionally and be like, hey, you could do this better than the sales. Hey, you could do this better in the admin side. Hey, the operations side. This could be, this could be tweaked. But now you step away from the business, act much more like an AR builder, the manager in the, in the building.

Right? Yeah, that makes 100 sense. And you know, not something that, that I hear you a lot on Your videos mentioned, you know, stepping away, you know, so you can do other things, you know. And honestly, like, I'll be flat out honest with you, right? I don't do nothing all day. Generally, I don't do anything. And a lot of that is my mental health. I think the last year or two years, I think it's my mental health. Or am I, am I using that as a crutch of saying, oh, it's my mental health, it's my mental health. Like, it got to the point where I don't even want to go to Home Depot, you know what I mean? Like, I'll send one of my guys, hey, can you pick this up at Home Depot for me? Hey, can you do this? So I'm forcing myself this year, like me taking this call from you or dealing with this, like, I'll be flat out with you. I thought I scheduled it whenever it was last time, but I guess it didn't go through. But I wanted to reschedule because something came up. But that something that came up was in my head. It wasn't something that came up that I had to be somewhere or do something, right. So I think it's fighting through, through that is my biggest problem, you know.

Do you think, Juan, that's like in, like outside of work thing, like other issues that you're dealing with, or do you think that is like, in the business there's just things you, you don't want to do. You've been doing it for a long time and you're burnt out.

I think it's the business that it's burned out. I love. I've been married for a long time. I've been with my. I'm 42. I've been with my wife since I was 15. So we've been together for a long time. We have three kids and then two, two more. We had little ones. So we have a 27 year old and we have a four, five year old. So I mean, at home, I'm, I'm the happiest. I have the best supportive wife. If I go out right now and spend a hundred thousand dollars on a car or whatever, she won't tell me anything. And I think that's maybe the problem too. She'll be like, I like it. Thank you. It's nice, it's nice. You know, so she's really supportive, you know, whatever I want to do in life, she's super supportive. So not at home, you know. And then honestly, the person at the phone is my daughter. So she answers all the phones. The gentleman who does ourselves, his name is Jeremiah. He's my son in law. So he married my daughter. So and, and he was just working with me before he even married my daughter. We kind of grew up in church together. So I known him since he was, you know, a year old, two years old. I kind of known him throughout the years and then as teenagers and then you know, obviously he started working for me and then he had interest for my daughter. So that works out. Other than that, those are the only two family members I have working for me.

From your perspective, Juan, like what do you look forward to in the business? Like so daily operations? Like do you like team meetings? Do you like.

Training your, your, your son in law and your and your daughter? Like do you like seeing them succeed? Like what's the thing like that? Like outside of the money, what's the thing you enjoy about the business? Like I know right now you're burnt out on it. What part do you enjoy?

It's going out there, seeing my guys happy, smiling and seeing my equipment. I don't know why. I'm big on my equipment. I'm one of those persons who bought way too much equipment and don't really need it right now. But I also, sorry. I also have a hard time getting rid of it now. I like going out there and making sure that they're happy. Like I cook breakfast, I'll cook breakfast for them. That's what I like to do. You know, it's not very productive. You know, it makes them happy, but it's not very productive.

It's also huge for attention. I, I would imagine a lot of your crew has stayed with you for a long time.

Yeah, I got some guys, like three, four guys. I've been with me for over 10 years.

Right. So like I think there's definitely value. It's hard to attribute profit and loss value to keeping the crew happy. But like if that's the thing that turns you on and like right now you hate. No, let's just go hate the day to day operations. Going to Home Depot, we got to find a general manager. Got to find someone or an operations manager really someone that when things are going wrong in the field, they call that person. And, and the difference for me when, when I think operations manager, I think when things go wrong and when people want to call out, who do they contact and if that's you right now, that's why you constantly feel this way is because you resent the fact that when, as you grow the business, you get more jobs you get more customers, it just creates more stress for you that you do not enjoy. There's more runs to the Home Depot. There's more complaints, there's more issues, there's more problems. More people calling out and saying, hey, I don't, I can't work today. And you giving them money for free and then feeling jilted on the back end.

Right, right. Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot, a lot of sense. You know, right now Jeremiah takes the blunt of it, which is a sales guy. And I've always been, Jeremiah should just worry about sales. His goal should be sales. They shouldn't be bothered by, hey, I, I, I can't come in tomorrow, which they're going to call Jeremiah before they call me right now. And that's because I was absent for like six months. I had a little motorcycle accident, um, and I was out for six months because I physically couldn't do it physically. And then it got to mentally, I couldn't do it. So Jeremiah really, that's when he stepped in, doing 99% of the sales. Before, he was doing maybe 40% of the sales and I was doing 60% of the sales. And then he stepped in, took a huge, I mean, without him, you know, I wouldn't be here today because, you know, he carried the company for, for about a year or so, you know, so yeah, he, he takes a big burden of that. And I've always said, like, dude, all you should worry about is sales. You're a sales guy. And I think it's a problem. He's not commission based, so he's salary based. He's out about 115, almost 120. And he's just a, a good worker, you know, he really is. He's not going to take advantage of anything.

You know, like what I think you might want to do, Juan, is because, like, I think that the, the benefit of getting him not to do any operation, like when I hear them contacting him, he is acting as a general manager.

He is, he is.

Right. And so I think if we want to be able to allow him to focus on sales, we simply need to delineate what is operations and what is sales. We look at three functions of the business. We have admin, operations and sales. Right now he's doing sales and operations. I would try to delineate that and say, hey, let's write all the things you do. Here's the operations here, sales. I want you to focus on the sales part because I happen to believe that if you reached up 25, 30% of his day that's currently being ate up on operations and the crew calling out and all this stuff. If you really cut that off of his schedule, even if it means promoting, this is an idea. And I don't know who this individual is that's doing the part time work. If you say, hey, let's have this honest conversation around the fact that you're doing work outside the company, it's probably hurting us. You're not going to say that. You're just thinking that you're going to say, hey, do you want to be my operations manager? It would require you to not do outside work. But like, would you be able to do that? I'm not saying that's who we should be.

Right, right.

If you're able to do that, Jeremiah then focused on sales exclusively. I think that's what takes the business to the next level in terms of revenue and it's number of like leads. Because right now he's, he's, his attention's too split. He's trying to lead a team of 12 people and try to do sales. Like we find once you cross eight people, that general manager rule starts to need to be split up. You need to have a sales operations and an admin person. And so in my opinion, once you cross seven people in the field, once you get the 8, 9, 10, now there's nine in the field, one person in the office. And these are large scale projects. There's so much operations. If he could cut that out and then just focus on sales. And this is the thing, I think once he does that, he's able to focus more on upselling. He's able to focus more on like pitching existing customers past customers. Like if one, if someone did a job a year ago and we're not pitching them every three to three months on a different type of service, that's a huge sales opportunity. But right now he's not doing that because he's busy doing operations.

Yeah. And he doesn't do that. You know why? Because I never trained him to do that. Because I would go to a customer's house and I'm not the type of guy who would be like, hey, I see this tree needs to work. We'll do it for an extra 250. And like I know I should push those more because that's at the end of the night, we're already there. The crew's already there. That's an extra 2, 3, 4, $500. Like we should push those a lot more. And I just don't because I feel like I'm being pushy with our customers. And some customers need to be pushy. Like you need to push them. I'm one of those customers, like if I want to do something and if they don't push me, I will make a decision. I'll just not do anything, you know?

Yeah. And then what you do, what you do want is you take your, your admin, you take your sales, and you take your operations heads. So that's how I'll be looking at like three different departments. We have sales, operations and admin. You put heads of those, each of those departments and then you give them very good profit sharing, even if it's 30% of the profits and you get 10% to each. For example, you could, you could adjust this however you need to. But like now when they see five chipper trucks and two of them being used, the salesperson knows that if he can just get those trucks in operation and by using upsells and getting more leads, that's like 60, 70% profit because you just have to pay for the cost of goods sold, which is the labor.

Yeah.

And so this is the type of thing that right now there's no incentive for them to fill the trucks. There's no incentive for them to upsell. And so we like, a salesperson without any sort of commission base is like almost useless.

I know. Yeah.

And like he, he cares a lot because he's related to you. He's a hard worker, but he's also involved in operations. I would be like, well, you are going to sell and, and now you're going to have your base salary of 110 or whatever it is. But anything in addition to this, you can, the sky's the limit. You get 10% of profits or even potentially say anything above 2.5 million in revenue, you're getting a percentage of now all of a sudden he's very incentivized to grow the business and get more leads, I would probably just say based on bottom line profits. So you can speak to your leadership team the same language. They all three are just constantly thinking about profits.

Yeah, yeah, See. Cause the guys too, like for example, if they get an extra job, like, there's no commission for them, there's nothing for them. So what they do, oh, here, call the office instead of, hey, Jeremiah, I got the street. Send you a picture. How much do they want for it? You know, and I think that's, that's, that's a problem, you know, and it's not because I want to be Greedy with the money. I just don't. I just. How do you put those things in place though? For example, like, how do you know what's fair to give a. The crew? You know, let's say they got an extra job for $400. I don't know what's fair. I think of, you know, if I gave them, let's say 30 bucks each. Let's just say, right? I'm like, you know, 30 bucks I think of, that's nothing. What am I going to do with 30 bucks? But I have to keep realizing, like, that's not my $30. That makes a huge difference for them. That's their lunch for, for the day, for the week, however they want to do it. You know, I'm thinking of $30. What, what's the third dollar do for the company? It doesn't do anything.

Once you incentivize Jeremiah, like, and he, he's thinking more about like, capacity of the trucks, profitability, etc, he will come up with these ideas like, this is what. This is. Why, like, having someone just focus on sales and then giving them any sort of incentive on profitability is so important because, like, you don't need to come with the ideas. You just need to incentivize and put workhorses in place.

He needs to figure it out because he's getting the profit out of it. He's getting incentivized for.

Okay, he knows, he knows what he can afford. He knows if it's a $500 job, I can afford an X amount. And like, I would, I would encourage, like when that, when it comes that time, you make it simple for the guys. Like, hey, look guys, if someone wants an extra job, you send me a video and if they accept it, you make 50 bucks. I'm going to get you in cash at the next team meeting. And so what we would do is we'd have stacks of cash at the next team meeting. And we're just handing, okay, you got review, you got an upsell, you got a new customer. And like, it creates this, this culture of. We upsell our crew out in the field of salespeople. We're getting views and then we're reading the reviews off that mentioned a certain crew member. We're talking about a certain upsell of so and so that sold an extra thousand dollars job. And we're just handing out cash and I'm going to take the hit. I'm going to take the hit on taxes. I don't care. I want that culture of cash being handed out at Team.

Yeah.

Extra couple hundred bucks on their paycheck doesn't mean anything, but 200 being given to them at a team meeting. One of their peers. Let's go.

Yeah. Yeah. You know what? And it's so true because we just. I got some writing on here, but you see, we just did these, literally. I just got them in the mail today. I ordered them from vistaprint. They came in the mail on Monday or Tuesday, and we already got two reviews, so. And we got, like 300 reviews, I think online already on Google. So this is attitude this week. And I told the guys, hey, it's 20 bucks per crew. You come back with the review, you guys get 20 bucks, and we'll figure out how to split it between you three. So, yeah, I think doing those things, it's, It's, It's. It's working, you know, And I'll be. I'll be flat out 100% honest with you. I'm the problem. Because all these ideas that you're telling me, like, I have all these already in my head, but it's like I can never execute them. It's like the guy who says, I'm going to work out tomorrow, I'm going to work out tomorrow, I'm going to work out. And you never work out.

I think the big thing, though, is one is because, like, I don't think it's your strength and, like, you built a really big business based upon the fact that, like, you've been. You just, like, love the guys, you do great work and you care a lot. And so I would just lean more into that and less on, like, operations and sales. You have a really, really good salesperson that cares deeply about you and for the business.

Yeah.

Huge win. Incentivize him so you can pay him $180,000 because he grew a $5 million business for you. And just incentivize it. You say, I'll give them 10%. Like, you want your three heads of department, sales, operation, admin to always just think about one thing. Profitability. That way they're constantly protecting the bottom line. And then you. You go spend your day meeting up with the guys, giving them an extra ice cream, being at the shop when everyone's there doing barbecues, doing, like, that's what you. Your jam.

Yeah.

Attention. You're the. You're the mascot. Like, you would think of yourself as the mascot.

Yeah, that's exactly what I do. I'm serious. Like, that's. That's what I like to do. The guys get here and, like, hey, man, there's some sodas in the ice ch. Hey, man, I got the. The elote guy, you know, the guy who sells the ice creams. He's coming over today for you guys. Hey, tomorrow, don't eat. Make sure you have a light lunch, because I'm. I'm cooking tomorrow, you know.

And then like, you. You dropping it on. On job sites, and then all of a sudden, you start dropping on job sites, okay, you're not worried about going to Home Depot. You're going to talk with the customer and you sell them a massive job. You sell the neighbor. Because you're there. You're just around. You're the mascot. You're the guy that is just like, everyone's happy to see the crew loves you. They don't bring their problems to you. They. They're not asking you for time off because they know they need to go to the operations person. Like, you've built the business to the size where and the profitability where you can do this. And furthermore, I believe you'll be more profitable and financially successful by letting a, like, giving away some of the profits. So look at my locations, for example. Over 50% of the profits now are going to either the team general manager or regional manager. And it's because, like, I'm never there. Like, I. I need to focus on other things. And so if your focus is going to be. I'm going to be on, like, the mascot. Like, I would literally name yourself the Mat. Like, you are the mascot.

You're.

That would be your role. And like, so if there's, like, there's a big initiative around sales, like, well, that's Jeremiah's problem, you know?

Yeah.

The guys don't know they're going to figure out the HR software system. Oh, well, that's operations and admin. So you guys have a good. You report back to me. But now they're all incentivized around profitability. So you're not worried about people taking advantage of you.

Right. Right. Now let me ask you this. Like, when it comes to Jeremiah, like right now, right, he says we're slow right now, he does some door knocking, right? So wherever the crews are working, he's knocking on some doors just because he didn't fill out his day. Right. But when he has a full day, most of those leads come from the phone at the office or previous customers. Right? So how do I get Jeremiah? What I'm trying to say is how do I. Where do I find the difference at. On when to pay him, when he gets New leads or do we just look for a dollar amount a month and then give him a bonus from there? Or how would I structure that?

I'm a big fan your size. Unless you're going to go to multiple locations, etc. To, to simply give him bottom line profit percentages. Because if you give him just top line revenue, you will get more leads, you will get more jobs. He will do a better job of upselling, he'll do a better job cross selling, all of the above, but you won't make any money. And now you start watching his back because you're like, well, what are these jobs actually profitable? Now the crew's not able to hit budget hours. Now the scheduling gets behind because he didn't put enough hours on the job because he underbid it. So like, you don't have to want to worry about perverse incentives. It's like, don't do based on revenue, don't do based on jobs. Just do, hey, bottom line profits. Because if, because this is the thing. If he can fill those trucks that are currently not being used, you are literally going to make 50 to 70% profit on those jobs. Because you already have the truck, you already have the equipment. You're already paying for the insurance. It's locked and loaded.

Yeah, I am paying for it. I'm getting tired of paying for the insurance for these trucks that'll sit there. And I would say 90, 90% of our equipment's pretty much paid for. And I mean his problem, right?

Like make it now your leadership meetings is simply instruction of like, okay, so the three trucks we aren't using out there, they're paid off. We're paying insurance on them. If we go get a job and we pay, say 20% or 25% of our revenue goes to wages, we're 70% profitable in these jobs. Okay, what do we do to do that? We don't want to spend a bunch of money on marketing. I think the biggest opportunity for you, Juan, is going to be like, how do we email and text customers when we're not as busy? Like for example, next week I would be taking what's the service right now that everyone's needing? Great. I'm going to email the thousand plus people in my database. I'm going to get 10 or 15 estimates tomorrow. Now, the salesperson, the reason that those ideas are not being implemented is because one, you don't really need the money, you're okay with it. Two, Jeremiah is not incentivized to push the envelope. Yeah, incentivize to make sure you're comfortable and you are comfortable. So right now he's doing a great job. You just simply need to give him the incentives to make more money.

Okay, yeah, yeah, that makes tons of sense. So do it more on the, on the profitable side of it versus just the top line of it.

Yeah.

Now when it comes to your employees, I hear you mention a lot that people. Right. Pay per performance. How do you, how would I incorporate that into a three man, like let's say a tree crew.

Yep. So what I would do is I would, I would. So let's just say there's a $5,000 job. We're going to assume that people get different percentages of the labor revenue. Okay. So with trees you have very wide variety of skill level. You have arborist, you have people in the tree, you have people just dragging branches.

Right.

So you'd have different base pays and percentages of compensation for different levels in the company. So you might have a level one, a level two and a level three of different base pay. Because you got to have a certain base pay to like get an arborist. You're not going to get an arborist for $18 or $20 an hour base. Can't happen. So you're like, hey, what's the base? But then you're what you're also tracking. But really what all people is, I'm tracking their base pay. Then I'm also tracking the percentage of revenue that is earned them by pay for performance. So the more revenue they make, the more money they make. Now if they're split up on a job though, you can have different base pays and different percentages that go to them. So an arborist might be 40 bucks an hour base plus 25% or 30% of revenue. Great. And then I'm going to be doing lower levels for my group on the.

On the ground and stuff like that. Right, right. That makes tons of sense. See, and right now I think the problem that we have. Right. And that I would see coming up with this would be like for example, like the job that one of the crews did, they started. It's a three day job. I think realistically they could have finished it yesterday. Right. It's a twelve thousand dollar job. They could have finished it yesterday. It had six thousand dollars a day. A day. Right. So instead they went back out there today and they only had a four thousand dollar day. Right. But because a lot of that too is like right now, like how can I incentivize them to finish the job in two days when the following day they may not work.

I don't think anyone's going to complain if you paid them the same you would have paid for yesterday and today. If you. But there is no incentive for them to work less. They only make more. They make more money the longer the job takes.

So would it make more sense? Okay, let's just say, for example, right? Having to $6,000 days and then giving them almost enough to where they're home the next day because they finish it early and they still kind of got paid.

Yeah, 100%. Because right now let's say, for example. Let's just say for example, you just three day job there is. Say it's $15,000 and let's say 12. Okay, great. So 12,000. Let's assume 4,000 of that is going out to wages. Okay. What we do is P4P is essentially say you're getting paid $4,000 in this job. Regardless. If it takes you one day, two days, three days, or an entire week, you're getting paid $4,000. And so now it's just up to them to beat it. Now do. Would they rather just finish the job early and have tomorrow off? Yes, because I get paid the same amount.

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. If you're looking at that, yeah, me too. I'll be like, I'll take it tomorrow. I'm gonna get paid anyways.

You're right now you're thinking very much in terms of I need to fill the crew schedule. That's also what leads to inefficiencies. Because you're like, oh, we're not really busy. I'll just let them kind of take their time, like whatever. Well, if you were stacked up with work and you're like, I need these guys get jobs done and then they're incentivized to get more jobs done, all of a sudden you would find they would increase efficiency about 25 to 30%.

Yeah, yeah. Because every time we have like a little party here or we have something, everybody finishes early, you know, or Friday, everyone finishes early. And, and I get, you know, because I was in the crew for a long time, so I know how it goes, you know, I know what it's like when your boss calls you at three o', clock, hey, there's this emergency job you got to go do, you know, you go do it, but you're not happy about going to go do it, you know, because it's Friday.

And right now they're probably not happy when on a Tuesday they get off at 1:00 clock and it's like, man, we didn't have work today. Well, they wouldn't care so much if they just completed 15 hours of work in five hours and got paid for 15.

Yeah, see, this is what I mean. They're too nice. Like yesterday, for example, a crew, three man crew came in at 2 o' clock and they got paid till 3:30, you know what I mean? And then, yeah, they're out there cleaning this, doing that, you know, and then some people are, you can see they're not doing much.

But which is the thing, Juan, that is a very nice thing to do. The challenging part is there is no system as to how that is Delegate, like doled out.

Yeah.

Paid not or not. And so what happens, especially once you start getting less involved in operations, is people start to think that people are playing favorites because they got rounded up to 3:30. Well, why am I not getting rounded up to 3:30 today? And so you just want to create a system for being kind. You want to be like, for the care that you have for the team, you need to systematize it. Like you want to pay them well, you want to be paid fairly, you want them to work efficiently. Like, you just need to create a system for that care. Because right now the care is literally just like whether or not you want to give it to them.

Right, right. Yeah. That's basically what it comes off to. Because some guys who, not that I don't like, but I don't feel like they deserve, you know, when they're sick and like, you call in too much, I'm not going to pay you. You know what I mean? They don't get paid for it. And other ones are like, right.

So it's like, look, now, now them not showing up actually has a benefit, has a, an impact on their paycheck. So, for example, I give 10% of my profits to my crew out in the field. If they don't show up to work though, if they, if they.