You Need to Outsmart, Not Outspend, When Hiring

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes and today we're going to be talking to AI to see what answers it gave people that asked me questions. Now, if you're like, what in the world is going on? You can go to mike andes.com AI and talk to the AI agent of Mike Andes that is trained on all of my content, my videos, my books, and everything I've said online. Today I'm going to show you some questions that were asked of Mike AI, show you the answers, and then we're going to determine which whether or not the AI did a good job and what I would add potentially to the answers. Mike, I can barely make payroll some months and then I hear about people hiring $250,000 per year managers like it's nothing. Am I missing something? I want to scale, but I'm scared of hiring someone whose salary could sink me. All right, let's see what Mike AI had to say about that. You're not missing anything. You're just at a different stage in the game. Hiring someone at $250,000 a year only makes sense when your business is generating enough revenue to support the overh, when that person will directly drive growth or free you up to focus on scaling. Right now, if payroll is tight, the focus needs to be on stabilizing your cash flow and increasing profitability before taking on that kind of risk. Here's the play. Focus on profitability. Raise prices. If you're struggling to make payroll, chances are your margins are too thin. Even a small price increase can make a big difference. Number two, delegate strategically. Instead of hiring a high salary manager, look for part time help or someone who can take admin or operational tasks off your plate. Freeing up your time to focus on sales and growth is key. Number three, stagger growth. Scale in phases. Push to 500,000 in revenue, then stabilize. Optimize for profit before making the next leap. Growth sucks cash, so don't let it outpace your ability to fund it. Scaling is scary, but it's also about making calculated moves. You don't need a $250,000 manager right now. You need to tighten your systems to raise prices and focus on profitability. Once you've got that foundation, you'll be in a position to hire strategically without sinking the ship. This is where the problem with social media is. Someone says something crazy that we don't validate. By the way, there are very, very few managers in the lawn care landscape industry that are paid $250,000. I know this for a fact. So someone might say this More of a flex because it makes them look awesome, but by saying that they pay someone else $250,000. So let's just assume for an instance that someone is getting paid $250,000. The only way for this to work is that the person they are hiring has to have massive amounts of leverage. In other words, the decision made by this person likely impacts a hundred plus people or at least fifty plus people. There's just no way you, in a small business with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 employees can hire someone for $250,000 in salary. The reason is, is because let's assume you have a 20% profitable profit margin business. That means that you would have to do $1.25 million in revenue to just get $250,000 of profit to pay this overhead person. In order for them to warrant a $250,000 wage from the business, they usually need dozens of people underneath them. Which means if they make a decision strategically, that's usually what a $250,000 person is doing is doing strategic moves. They're not actually going to like, mow grass or do landscaping jobs. They're not going to drive a truck. They're going to actually focus on strategy. And the reason you pay them so much is because a mistake. It is going to massively impact the business because everyone in the organization is following the wrong plan. I would look at this as two things. One, until you have a certain size of business, you will simply not be able to create a position that you can afford. This because there's simply not enough leverage that operates inside the system. In other words, there's not enough people until you have at least 15, 20, 30, 40 people that are going to be impacted by that person's strategy, probably not going to be able to pay someone $250,000. And, and that's in the year of 2025. I would say the second part of this is if you're an employee or a manager and like, well, how do I earn that kind of money? Two things. Number one, make sure that when someone looks at your experience or your track record of making decisions, it is extremely sound. You have a track record of not just taking a department, but you take a team of 20 people and all make them double efficient. Because if you can make 20 people twice as efficient, all of a sudden you're $250,000 don't look so bad. So it is the skill and experience matched up with, with the ability to lead and strategically leverage their skill and experience to other people that is the real unlock. That would be my $0.02 to both the owner that is thinking about hiring said manager and the person that is thinking about I want a $250,000 management job. That's what I would be doing. All right, next question. That was given to my AI. Again, you can always ask your own questions. Mikeandys.com AI says I trained this guy, gave him the tools, the leads, all of it. And then he quits and starts calling my clients. I like I got stabbed in the back. How do you protect your business from guys like that? All right, let's see what the AI said. This is brutal, man. I've been there. You pour time, energy and resources into someone and they turn around and compete against you. It feels personal. But here's the thing. It's not just about them. It's about protecting your business and setting up systems to prevent this from happening again. Here's what you need to do. Non compete agreements. If you're not already using them, start now. Have every employee sign a non compete that restricts them from working with your clients or starting a competing business within a certain radius for a set period of time. Make sure it's enforceable in your state. Some states are stricter than others. All right, let's continue. Number two, Client ownership. Make it clear to your team the clients belong to your business, not the individual. Use a CRM like Copilot CRM to centralize all client communication and data. That way if someone leaves, they don't walk out with their client list. Number three, build loyalty. Employees leave when they don't see a future with you. Create opportunities for growth. Team leader roles, sales positions, management tracks. If they see a path to advancement, they're less likely to jump ship. Protect your relationships. Number four, stay connected with your clients. If they know and trust you, they're less likely to follow someone else. Regular check ins thank you notes and exceptional service go a long way. Number five, exit strategy. When someone leaves. Handle it professionally. Don't burn bridges. Make it clear that poaching clients is unacceptable. If they cross the line, enforce the non compete or take legal action if necessary. This is the first one I've ever given low marks to Mr. Mike AI and that is mostly due to the fact that he's trained on information that is potentially six or seven years old. Because non compete agreements in most states don't really work at all, there's been legislation passed in those past few years. Non compete agreements really don't have a huge impact. Like actually enforcing them is almost ineffective. You could use it as a scare tactic. But I would strike that one from the list. Mostly due to the fact that I know legally it's not super beneficial. Have a non compete. Does that mean that you can't put it in there that you can't say so that hopefully they don't do it? You could like, if you just want to like operate in that regard, I would just rather make the incentives align with like, hey, there are trust up and down the chain of command. I'm going to do open book management. I'm going to do everything I can do to show my team that I trust them. I in return hope that they trust me and that if they ever were moonlighting or wanting to start something of their own, I can support them. I just asked for clear communication in terms of like, hey, you don't get take our customers but I will also give you jobs that we might not actually want to do or they're out of our service area. So I've had this happen quite a few times and most of the time ends really well. There was one time it ended poorly because we were kind of about to fire someone and they ended up going out and doing their own thing. So it was a bit of a pain in the butt. But I ended up calling them and just like hey, can we talk about this? Like let's just get on the same track. And I ended up just calling them and it turned out half decent. I would generally say if you do a great job and you communicate with your customers, if one of your employees call them and say like I'll do it cheaper, they might get three or four or five customers. But eventually someone's going to call you and like hey, FY so and so is doing this. And then usually once you call them out on it, most people, assuming you hired half decent people, they're going to like really try to fix it, like they're going to stop. Type of person that's going to have this grand scheme against you is probably already your competition and is already a bigger threat to you because they're probably willing to knock on people's doors, doors cold call, go and talk to strangers and tell them about their service. And if they're willing to do all of that, they're probably not working for you. I think this is an overblown thing in terms of what's in your mind. And I think that it stinks when someone does quote unquote stab you in the back. I would just say focus on what I can control. And I don't believe that I can be trustworthy if I don't trust other people first. And so I am going to give them the cards. And yes, you will be taken advantage in occasion. And it hurts when someone takes all the train that you gave them and all of a sudden they go use it someplace else. But what's worse, they could have stayed with you and you didn't give them training, you didn't give them the tools, you didn't give them the resources. And in fact they actually harbored a whole bunch of really bad culture inside the business because you didn't trust them and actually help them and motivate them and get them the next stage of their career. My goal for entry level positions out in the field is to get them to the next stage of their career, whether it be through management tracks, giving them more training, getting more skills, audible programs, podcasts, books, training them about finances. My goal is to get them above minimum wage, like above entry level. I want them to move into something else and ideally I grow the business to where they can move up with the business and become an estimator or general manager or start their own location or do something inside the business or a crew leader or manager. That's ideal. Right from day one I'm going to make it very clear if they want to move on to something else, that's fine. I just want them to be better off when they leave. And by having that level of trust usually means if they're going to move on, they'll do it in a acrimonious or harmonious way and not try to tear me down. And I have people that have worked for me locally in my very first locations market that now are managers of my competition. And yeah, I probably poured into them and gave them skills and resources and training that they're now using it my competitors. But that's fine because I can point to all of my current team members that are entry level and say, hey, look, look. So and so they were used to work here. Oh yeah. And they started their location and these three or four people, they went down to this state and they started their location and moved over here and they started their location. All of this is proving to my frontline team members that this is not a dead end job. And when I say that I want to get to you to the next level of your career, you'll actually believe me because I enforce and I encourage people even if they have to move away from my business to get to the next stage of their career. You know, I like to take ownership and I can only control what I can control. And those are the things I have decided to live by. Go to mikeannies.com I ask your question there and they'll give you some really good feedback. Submit your financial statements, your profit and loss statements. It'll break it down. It'll put in the 4L framework. Do a turnaround on your own business without me having to show up. Go to mikeannies.comai.