Contractors ask us all the time “How do I find reliable employees?”

“Where should I post my job ad?” and “What should my job ad say?”.

This is the first of a six part series that is going to pass along the biggest lessons I’ve learned since meeting the millionaire contractor who changed my life back in 2017.

By the end of this series, all your questions about growing your business, finding reliable employees and getting 20 hours back a week will be answered.

Diving in:

How to find reliable employees

“No company can succeed without great people. Your business is only as good as the people you surround yourself with.”

Says Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks.

Mark is spot on.

The difference-maker between 6, 7 and 8 figures is how good your team is.

The most successful contracting businesses aren’t usually the ones who are delivering the highest quality work; any guy with a truck and tools can do that. They’re usually the ones that know how to get people OTHER THAN THE OWNER to deliver high quality work.

I discovered that if I wanted my business to be more successful, I needed to focus on hiring people I could count on.

It was the only way I would be able to get off the tools.

Before I share the tactics behind building a rockstar team (which I’ll do in another blog) let’s lay down some fundamentals…

How do you know if you’re ready to hire someone in your contracting business?

Too many contractors hire crews before they are ready.

Even if you found a rockstar - if your business isn’t ready for it, they’ll end up quitting or worse, you might run out of work to keep them busy.

So how do you know you’re ready?

You’ve perfected your estimating skills. Jobs are never underquoted. You know exactly how long every job will take you and exactly how much you should be spending on materials. If you don’t have this nailed down, it’s really easy for you to lose all your profits by slow employees.

You’ve got a steady flow of too much work. If you’re struggling to book work, hiring more people won’t help - it will just make you run out of work faster. You need to feel confident finding work on demand. If you aren’t, you won’t be confident in your hiring process.

You have work already booked at least 2 months in advance. There should be a waitlist to work with you.

Remember - hiring is hard. Just like if you give a customer a quote, they might not go with you - you might hire an employee that doesn’t work out. That’s okay. It’s part of the process.

How do you get GREAT people to join your trades business?

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric said:

“Great leaders are willing to sacrifice popularity for the well-being of the organization”

One of the reasons this is so difficult in many companies is because business leaders are continually telling their employees, “We are a family.”

But a high-talent work environment is not a family.

On a pro basketball team, the players have great relationships. These players are really close. They support one another. They celebrate together, console one another and know each other’s plays so well they can move as one without speaking.

But they are not a family.

The coach swaps and trades players in and out throughout the year in order to make sure they always have the best player in every position.

Like the basketball coach, it’s your job to put the best people you can find on the team.

That means taking people off the team who aren’t the best people you can find.

Great people want to be with other great people.

There’s a reason Lebron went to Miami in 2010 - to play with other all star players.

The fastest way to get rid of someone great, is to stick them with someone below average.

That leads us to the next question…

How do you know when it’s time to fire someone in your contracting business?

The key to keeping good people is to get rid of bad people.

I don’t mean that they are actually bad humans, just that they aren’t good at their job.

It’s important to recognize that you are doing the person a disservice by keeping them if they aren’t good at their job. It stops them from finding something they can excel at and you’re just delaying the inevitable.

There is never a “good time” to let someone go.

Two simple questions to ask yourself if you’re considering letting someone go is:

1. If this person applied to work for me today, would I hire them again given how things are going?

2. Would I pay $5,000 to hire them again

If the answer to either of those questions is NO then you should let them go.

It’s as simple as that.

Next blog, I want to get ultra tactical – I’m going to get really specific and walk you step-by-step through the process of recruiting rockstars.

From writing the job post, through where to post it down to how to run the interview.

The blog will be called: “Your new hiring playbook”.