Contractor Cuts
Join the ProStruct360 team on the Contractor Cuts podcast as we delve into the ins and outs of building and sustaining a thriving contracting business. Gain valuable insights and actionable tips from our experts who have successfully grown their own contracting company from the ground up.
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Contractor Cuts
Finding and Managing the Perfect Subcontractors
We explore the controversial world of managing subcontractors effectively, revealing how the right payment structure and relationship management can dramatically improve your contracting business's profitability and operations.
• Avoiding the pitfalls of the traditional daily/hourly labor model for subcontractors
• Why a work order system that ties payment to completed work rather than time spent creates fairer partnerships
• The difference between general crews (kept busy 5 days/week) and specialized vendor crews (shared resources)
• How to structure your general subcontractor crews for maximum efficiency
• Techniques for finding, interviewing, and onboarding the right subcontractors
• Setting clear expectations about roles—execution vs customer management
• Using a ranking system to identify subcontractors' true strengths and weaknesses
• Preparing subcontractors to make more money while doing less administrative work
• The importance of building long-term partnerships with quality-focused vendors
Visit prostruct360.com to schedule a call with us if you have questions about managing subcontractors or growing your contracting business. Our calendar is available on the website under "Contact Us."
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Welcome to Contractor Cuts, where we cover the good, the bad and the ugly of growing a successful contracting company.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Contractor Cuts. My name is Clark Turner, I'm James McConnell. Thanks for joining us. All right. So today we are talking about subcontractors. This is the most boring episode that has the most controversy. Uh, I have set up, thank you, I'm invested. We?
Speaker 2:uh every time I talk subcontractors, if we post it online, we get like tons of millions of views arguing about what a sub should and shouldn't be. Subcontractors are all over the board, different and our opinion of how to hire them, how to run them and how to do it, I believe, is the best way to do it. That's why it's our opinion but is often pushed back on. So this is the way we do it, this is what we like, this is what we don't like. This is how we deal with subs. Don't like. This is how we deal with subs.
Speaker 2:We are anti-day labor, hourly labor, subs. A lot of guys starting off run that way because it's like hey, my buddy, you want to come work for me, I'll pay you per day, and then it just kind of grows and multiplies with that as your style and I am so anti-pay guys per day to come work for you as a sub, and we'll get into that in a second. So we're going to talk about finding and managing the perfect subcontractors and kind of defining some of that and then how we do it. I'd like to hear a little bit about how you've done it. We haven't chatted about subs very much recently, so I'd love to hear your opinions. Thank you, I hope they're the right opinions.
Speaker 1:I do too. I know you're big on that.
Speaker 2:I'm big on you being right, not wrong. What type of subs should you use? So, talking about vendors versus subs, how do we use subs? What type of subs we use? Like I started off saying, all of our subs have work orders where the amount of money that they're getting is tied Simple name for capital. Thank you. Sorry, for the people don't understand money, they only understand capital. The work order has a certain set amount of capital, thank you. Tied to the amount of work that we're expecting that subcontractor to complete, right, the amount of work that we're expecting that subcontractor to complete, right.
Speaker 2:This is how we manage subs to where there is not an abuse of them or an abuse of us. I've said it before, but with subcontractors, when you're paying them hourly or daily, if I'm paying you $250 a day, $800 a day, I don't care what your price point is. You are only getting a certain amount of work out of them that day. A really good sub is giving you a lot of work. A really crappy sub is giving you not a lot of work. If I'm paying everybody across the board 400 bucks a day, the really good sub gets abused by me. I'm taking advantage. He's giving me 800 bucks worth of work and I'm paying 400. I took advantage of him uh, you know to make money that day is there anyone you'd like to apologize to while you have this platform?
Speaker 2:No, because I don't run jobs this way. James, are you looking for an apology? All right, so that's that's if you're, if it's really good. A lot of times when you're running daily or hourly guys, they're not good, so they're taking advantage of you. You're paying them 400 bucks for that day and you're getting about 200 bucks worth of work out of them. So it's very difficult to, day in and day out, pay guys 400 bucks for that day and to get exactly $400 of value out of them. That's the fair way to do it. I'm paying you your value.
Speaker 2:So by doing it, the work order system, the way that we do it, I'm paying you $6,000 to do this demo and this framing. That's what you're in charge of. Six grand, can you get it done? The way we price it and the way we coach our guys on building up estimates? Start here, right, it's saying okay, I think that crew of three guys can frame that in four days. I pay three guys $1,500. The main guy's taking more money. He's bringing some helpers with them. Four times $1,500, that's $6,000. So I need to pay them $6,000 to do this job. That's how, if you're getting started writing estimates, that's how you do it. That's how you price out labor. And then you go from there and say, okay, if I'm charging 6,000 for this, what's my markup? I need to be at 35% profit, so I'm going to mark that up and that's what I'm charging my customer Now understanding what you can pay your crews, how much to pay them, all that takes conversations with them, helping them understand how you're pricing things, and say, okay, so what do you need per day?
Speaker 2:How are we going to do this? I want to keep you busy five days a week, every single week, week over week. How can I do that? What makes sense for you? What if we were around a thousand bucks a day? And so, once we get that buy-in from them and that conversation with the sub and how we do that, we then can start building out our jobs around the pricing that we've pre-negotiated.
Speaker 2:Now, even though I've negotiated a daily rate for that sub, that doesn't mean I'm paying them a daily rate for the work they're doing, right? So, 1,500 a day. It should take you four days. That's $6,000. Because of that, I'm giving you $6,000 to complete this work. Now, if it takes you two days, good for you. You worked your butt off. You're getting $6,000. You're getting $6,000, you got paid $3,000 a day. If it takes you two weeks, I'm sorry. You got $6,000 for two weeks of work. Your value is in your speed and if you get it done quickly you'll get another job coming.
Speaker 2:And so we start ramping guys up to where they can make a lot of money with us if they're good, quick, efficient and they don't have go back work. Speaking of go back work, they're standing behind that work. So if there's something on that $6,000 job that goes wrong next week, hey, before you start that next job for me, I need you to go back and fix that at cost. I'm not paying anything extra. We agreed $6,000 to do that work, including the warranty that we agreed upon on our subcontractor agreement. So that's kind of an overview of how we run subs the perfect type of sub. The way we like to see them being used is I want to bid pricing work order system and if there's any changes and they want more money or I try to negotiate out of not doing something and dropping the price, I'm going to change it on my in ProStrux 360 and send them a new work order with the new updated price. Anything I missed on that on how we pay subs and manage them on that side, no Cool.
Speaker 2:So, that being said, the structure of subs is we've got our general crews. Now this is if you're a general contractor and if you're a tradesman, listen to this. This is how we structure. Try to make more money with us. What we do as a GC is I've got my general crews that I'm paying, trying to keep them busy five days a week. They're doing kind of a little. You know jack of all trades can handle a little bit of everything. I'm going to have three to four per project manager of those type of crews. They're going to be my go-to guys and my project manager owns those crews.
Speaker 2:Then we've got what we call our vendors or our invoicing vendors, our shared crews. Stuff like cleaners, electrician, plumber, cabinets, flooring yeah, that's good. Roofers, guys that are one-off that I can't keep busy five days a week. That's kind of a shared list within the company that we all use. Those aren't our general. Those guys, a lot of times, are going to have precept pricing. They're going to go out and bid jobs.
Speaker 2:Like an electrician, I'll have an addition. I'll say, okay, hey, I'm budgeting 10 grand for electrical, I'm sending my electrician out there. He puts a quote together and he's at 11.5. How do we get there? What did I miss? Help me understand that. I'm changing it on the customer during our revision phase of the estimating. I'm running through this real fast, trying to get to the good stuff. That being said, the general cruise.
Speaker 2:I'm generating the numbers and saying this is how much I got for you On majority of those vendors. I'm saying, hey, this is what I think it should cost. Go out and take a look at it and let's have a conversation about what it actually is. Some vendors, like flooring, for instance, we have preset pricing. We know exactly per square foot for the LVP. We've got three different levels good, better, best. These are the different prices. I know exactly all my costs If I send them a work order for that square footage, for that thing, and I captured everything that it's needed. That's how much I'm paying.
Speaker 2:That's where we want to get with those vendors, but sometimes, especially electricians and plumbers, hvac guys, they got to go out and get their eyes on it and they are the experts on. Hey, actually we need to run here. We need to change this, we need a subpanel, because this one's not going to work. All the stuff that I couldn't capture on the initial estimate. So that's okay for them to go out and bid those and look at those as long as I'm doing that pre-construction, so I can do a revision on my estimate to capture that extra money. All that being said, let's talk about our general crews, the guys that I build estimates for. I'm running four to five days a week. I'm trying to fill their schedules. I'm working in partnership with them. Today we're talking about mainly how we manage those guys, how we price those jobs, how we pay them all that stuff.
Speaker 1:That was a good overview. It's great, good, great overview, thanks.
Speaker 2:All right, so talk to me, james. What do you like? Like when we're talking about those general crews, what do you like when you're interviewing and finding a new crew?
Speaker 1:What are your red flags in finding and interviewing those crews when we're trying to bring on more vendors and subs? Red flags for me are when I'm engaging with a new crew and I'm like what is? What is your cost per linear foot on something? And they're like I don't, I, it's always job cost, it's always job dependent. I'm like I get that. I get that. I need to put together legitimate estimates for clients before you're ever on site.
Speaker 2:I don't want to waste your time.
Speaker 1:Saves your time, saves our time, help us pre-qualify and when we so, when we get on site and our numbers don't change very much from our first preliminary estimate to our site estimate, that's a really good omen for us and we're probably going to land that job. And if you can help me understand your pricing, that makes you part of that process when guys are still reluctant, after me doing my best to explain and I'll. You know I don't always do the best job, but I want it to work. You know I always want it to work. I always want more guys able to come in. So when we were growing, we're not feeling the pain because we've already got the guy in the stable ready to go on the slot. Um, so if I can't communicate with them and get them to understand my goals, it's not going to work. Yeah, and even if we can get them to execute on one or two jobs for the price we want, the price we want to have an issues day one, we're not going to get anywhere.
Speaker 1:And when, when we do run into an issue and this is the, this is the issue you'll, you'll, this will. You've heard this before, even after the one hour, uh, conversation about how we pay and onboarding and all that. Well, we got our check this week, but it was only for 1500. I need 3000. We talked about that. I know that you would like $3,000 every week to pay your guys, but based on what we talked about and the work that you did complete, there is not. I've already paid you 80% of what is owed and I don't think you're there. I think you're actually at 60%. So I'm I'm over my skis on what you've done so far and that's not going to work. So the same guy that won't meet you and help you understand your pricing is the same guy that's not actually going to list. They want the job, they want the fruit, they want the bowl of fruit, but they're not willing to actually play by the rules that you guys talked about. They're like they won't hold me to that.
Speaker 2:Well, if I pay you three grand, what's going to get you to come back next week to finish, because that's all the money I owe you left I got nothing. What happens if you bail? Who am I going to hire? So I think one thing that you're saying to clue people in on in the software you can go line item by line item and mark it a percent complete. It could be 100% complete, pay the whole line. If I've got a $10,000 paint line and I mark at 50% complete, it creates a bill for $5,000. Very simplistic, very easy to use, to where I can complete 17 line items for this crew at different percentages.
Speaker 2:So we walk the job on Monday. Look around okay, the paint, we're at 50%. Framing's done, demo's done. I'm going to make there's a hundred percent. Flooring hasn't started. He's not doing the flooring, though. What is he doing? Oh, the trim. The trim isn't started either. We're not going to do Whatever it is. You can mark line by line the different percentages and at the end of it you hit save and it says all right, you're cutting him a check for $8,400 this week and it goes into your vendor payments page. And the way we do it is you do the payment. So our PMs do that on site and then James sits down and says okay, 8,400 for this crew. That makes sense. We invoice that check, I'm going to send them their money and you go in and drop money into their bank account.
Speaker 2:It's not a little elf, like a little elf, you're like a little Santa elf. That being said, it's not a negotiation on site as to how much they're getting Now. If they think, if they say, hey, I need 10 grand this week and you know our project managers walk the site, he's marking stuff off. He's like, hey, just so you know, I'm at 8400. Help me understand where you're coming up with 10 grand. We'll have those type of conversations, but we're not. We're not giving people money that they want. We're giving them payment for what they did Right.
Speaker 2:And so I've said plenty of times, probably on this podcast before, when a crew is like, hey, I need a 10 grand this week to pay all my guys, and I say, well, I've got 8,400. They say, well, I need 10 grand. I got rent due and I got these guys I promised money to. I say, well, saturday and Sunday, when you took off, did you know you needed 10 grand? Did you know what had to get done? Like, this isn't my problem and I want to help you, but like, you're making your problems my problems and I can't invoice, for I got my own problem, I don't need my problems and your problems.
Speaker 2:But I can't invoice the customer for more money than what's been done, and so you know. You tell the crew that and say I can't ask for more money so I don't have money to pay you. I can pay you for what you've completed because that's what I can ask for from the customer. And having that conversation clearly with them, helping them understand that's our pay structure, you're only getting paid, and so once you get them trained in that mode and teach them how to make money with you, I'll tell you. Monday nights they work deep into the night trying to get everything done. So Tuesdays we can get them paid.
Speaker 1:But this is one of the reasons, and we'll talk about that. Like, how do you grow your subs? Yeah, the reason that that dude's coming to you asking you for 10 is because he's paying his guys daily Yep and he owes them that money. Yep Versus hey guys, this is our project, this is you know, and it makes sense. When you're a sub and you've got a rotating cast of characters, you can't really work contract with them.
Speaker 2:And the way I coach tradesmen and guys that are subs for companies. It's great to have daily and hourly guys as labor help if you're the labor lead, but if you're a labor lead, you need to be on site making sure, snapping every single guy into shape, making sure that he's getting the jobs done. As GCs we're not there eight hours a day, five days a week. We're checking in two to three times a week getting guys started, solving problems, coming to the final walkthrough. So I can't be responsible for the amount of time you take for your lunch. If I'm hiring a sub, he should be there all day, every day, making sure the guys that he brings with them aren't taking two hours for lunch, aren't getting there at 10 and leaving at two, but they're getting there. When I get there we're taking the same lunch. We're getting the work done. Those guys I'm like yeah, you pay your labor. If you're a trade or you're that style of a company setup where you're on site, that's an hourly and daily labor setup. I'm talking about general contractors, though, to where we don't want to do it that way, but exactly to your point, coaching our subs, building them into really good companies, because if they are efficient and they're making money. They're making us money Right, and so I think that's great. I think it's a how do we get our subs efficient? I remember my, remember my first sub I ever had one. I talk about them often on here.
Speaker 2:Um, when I would walk jobs as a project manager with him, we would do a lot of flips. We were doing at one point, 30 flips a month. Just me running as a as as a one man show for some REITs and investor companies that were fixing and flipping homes you from 5,000 to 35,000, 40,000 for a fix and flip to put a renter in it. I'd show up to the job site with Juan. He'd have four guys with him and it looked like roaches in the house. Four guys would just go in there and just start all over the house patching walls because they know, are we doing a full paint? Cool, we'll get started on that. So me and juan start the walk at 8 am.
Speaker 2:By the time we finish walking, talking scope, looking at pricing, doing all that stuff, 8, 45, they're priming because they've already patched all the holes, they've already prepped all the walls and he's got his crew running so efficiently that they're in and out painting a full interior of a house in a day and a half. They're doing all the like. We're in a house Monday and we're turning the keys over on a $30,000 renovation by Thursday or Friday. Because he's learned how to get his crews and his guys to efficiently get done. So he was in and out of houses every single week, running two to three houses in a week, making really good money for himself. Because we worked together on getting him efficient, making him understand this is how you make money.
Speaker 2:One of the big things you got to teach your subs. This is how you don't go back work. Let me show you how we exit and what I expect out of you, because if you don't have to come back, you can make more money on the next job. If you got to come back three times because you didn't check the light bulbs when you're putting all the light fixtures in, you did it like all the stupid you. You washed your brush out in the front yard. You're like all of those things that I need you to go back and fix. Go buy a bundle of of uh you know mulch to pour over where you wash your brush out.
Speaker 1:One of your guys accidentally upper decked the toilet.
Speaker 2:Accidentally. I need you to go back out and fix that right. And so helping him understand that and working with him on getting his guys efficient allowed him to make a lot more money. And when we had that system in place the partnership to where I'm doing some of the work, he's doing the other work and we're both making money on it that's where the real money was made in the company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, making money on it. That's where the real money was made in the company. Yeah, and to your point, when you're talking about what are good subs, what are bad subs, when you and your sub both see the value that each other bring to the relationship, that's gold. Figure that relationship out and it might mean at some point this guy doesn't do a lot of work with you unless you have really high end stuff because they've they've aged out that they're too good for what your level. But that opens up an opportunity for you Like what do you, what do you need? So when we get this job coming in I know, I know the guy that I want to use.
Speaker 1:The question is can I bid this and afford him? Yes, like it is worth, it is. That is the best money spent is when you are like I want to afford this crew because they make my life easier. We're going to make less profit on this job, but having a job is it's everything you can market off that job. You've got cash flow off that job. You've got crews that are working, that you're providing work for. That's good for business.
Speaker 2:So I would even say I'm not making less profit on the job Day. One estimate is a lower profit point but I'm able to do more jobs because I'm not having to babysit and be on site every single day. I'm having more impact on my customers's experience to where they're wanting to use us again and referring to us other people, and I'm not having to do go back work. I'm not having to to to really kind of arm wrestle daily with the crew for pay, like all of that stuff, and it runs smoothly. I don't need to make 40%. I don't need to make that big dollar I do. If I'm having to babysit and I'm spending 50% of my day on this job, then I need to make 40% on it. But if I can literally make a phone call, meet the crew, get the work done and get out of there, I can make 25%, 22% and still be killing it because I'm now doing seven jobs at once instead of two jobs at once. So, yeah, I think there's. It feels like well, this other crew is cheaper, so I'm just going to go with them. No, no, no, no, they're less priced because the rest of that money I'm going to have to spend my time on, yeah, and so understanding that with your crews, I think is really good. Last thing I want to cover is onboarding subs, bringing them in and having this conversation Number one thing. Here's a cool way to start testing subs and understanding them when we're sitting down.
Speaker 2:I want you to have a subcontractor packet. You got your agreement that we're working through what we're talking about, everything we're going to sign. I want you to have a work order printed out so they can see what your work orders look like and explain that to them. And then we have another document that is a timeline of a job and it shows how crews can make money working for us and it talks through. You know it's a $5,000 paint job. I'm paying you three. I'm keeping two just so you know this is what you're getting paid for. This is all the stuff you're paying me for. You're paying me two grand to manage the whole thing. You show up and do the work right and we kind of lay out how they can make more money with us, even though they're charging us less than what they charge a homeowner, and the work that they don't have to do to land the job, manage a job, fund the job, deal with the customer. We're doing all that for them. So we lay that out on this document that we share with them.
Speaker 2:But one of the other pieces of paper I've used in the past is I've got 15 to 20 different things that a crew can do Sheetrock, paint, trim, flooring, electrical plumbing, roofing, everything that is kind of traded out that maybe a general crew can do. And I'm saying, okay, there's 15 items on this. I want you to list one through 15. On, if I had 15 work orders here that all paid the same, which one would you do first and which one would you do second and which one would you do third? Maybe the 15th one you love doing sheetrock but it just takes you forever and you can't make money doing it.
Speaker 2:Great. I want to know that because if I've got a lot of work going on and if I've got you who's really good at trim work and I've got crew B that's really good at siding and you're not not good at citing and I got two work orders, I want to know how I can make you the most money. So what work can you get knocked out without go back? And what they're doing is telling on themselves of what they're good at and what they're bad at. So I now have a list day one of here are the top five, six, seven, eight things that they're going to kill, and here are the bottom five, six, seven things that I'm not going to make money on. That is going to be a problem. It's a great way to, because if you say, hey, what can you do, what can you not do, oh, I can do everything.
Speaker 1:I can do it all. What I did was I took your list and I did something pretty clever I made them all number ones. See, we've literally yes, because I can do it all.
Speaker 2:That was it, Okay. Well, until we get clarity on this, I can't hire you this is great.
Speaker 1:This is a great meeting. We'll call you. You're a liar, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we went on board with them and then we've said before well, I'm not going to go too deep into the insurance side, but we require our subs to carry the same insurance that we have. We want to be double covered to where our insurance is as cheap as possible. They're covering their job sites. We've got an umbrella policy over it. We also allow for I think $200,000 or $300,000 a year of uninsured sub work that we're paying for, because then we can bring on crews and say, hey, listen, don't get insurance, we require it. But if you don't have it, let's test out on a couple of jobs. And after two, three, four weeks, If you want to keep working for us, I need you to spend a couple grand on some insurance to get going. And so it allows them to get a taste of what working with us is like. And if they're not a good fit for us, great, they didn't go and waste that money. If they're a great fit, they see it and they say, hey, I'm willing to do that, Help me figure that out. And so we'll say, heck, next paycheck we'll take that. And why don't you give that straight to the insurance company. And then we help them on board, get set up, build their company, get their insurance in place and really work well as a sub for us.
Speaker 2:I think the last thing I always say in an interview with the sub is if you enjoy talking with the customer, dreaming about the project, you know that side of the job. We aren't a good fit. If you want to show up, get work done, go home and get paid, we're a killer fit for you. We are in charge. Our company deals with the customer, does the planning, does the design, picks out the materials, does all of the work to where. Then we pass it to our subs to show up, execute the work order and go to the next job. So if you're a sub that likes to do all of that other stuff, great. We're just not a good fit. You shouldn't work for us.
Speaker 2:If you want a work order to where, instead of spending two weeks on a job site dealing with a customer ordering materials, collecting money, doing final check and trying to pick up the final invoice, If you want to do that, don't work for us. If you want to take that job and get it done in three days because you're doing the labor on it and that's it, we're a good fit. Now you're going to get paid less because you're just doing the three days, not the two weeks worth of work. But if you want to do that, I'll line up three, four, five jobs in a row that will make you three, four, five times that money in the same amount of time period. And if they're a good fit, they're going to say that's what I want, let's do that.
Speaker 2:If they're a bad fit, they're like well, you know, we'll see. I like the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're like okay, well, you meet with the customer, You're going to want to deal with them. We're probably not a good fit, Like you're trying to do my job and you walk in the door.
Speaker 1:He's like I wouldn't do that. I would.
Speaker 2:I would do this Like buddy this is the third meeting.
Speaker 2:Those cabinets they just put in aren't even level. Bro, shut up, we're not done with it. Yeah, so I mean, what's ending this, James? What is? When you meet a new vendor, I'd have to say Jesus. Oh man, that's great. All right, thanks for listening. When you meet a new vendor, what is it that you're like these guys are going to work. Like when you're doing an onboarding with a new vendor which side note of bringing on a new vendor is not I got to find someone for tomorrow and I interview one guy and he starts Bringing on vendors is a lifetime, day in and day out. We want to find eight to end up hiring two to end up being with one, an eight to end up hiring two to end up being with one. That being said, when you're talking to vendors, when you run into a guy over at Sherwin Williams and he's and you're looking for a painter, what are you, what clicks in your brain? Like these guys are going to work? What? What's the differentiator for you? Um?
Speaker 1:we've kind of talked about it a little bit, but like I'll, I'll, I'll bait guys a little bit with when I'm meeting new vendors and subs and like what are you good at or what's your? You know what's your focus. When they know what their focus is, I'm like awesome, yeah, Awesome, because I know that, because you're, you know what your focus is. I know that you're not going to get into a situation and not make money. Yeah, like, the guys that have decided to put themselves into a certain area are specializing in that area and they know what they need to make. You know to make this happen. Yeah, you know to make this happen.
Speaker 1:And so when I find somebody that knows their, knows their purpose, knows what they are going to be spending their time getting good at and understanding, I want to find ways to partner with that person. So, again, it might be something like they're going to be too expensive for our everyday run of the mill type of project, but when we land this you know this $2 million house that wants to do it at an ADU. I know that there's going to be a budget there. I need somebody that's really good, somebody that's really knowledgeable, that's going to pick up after themselves that the client can have a conversation with them without having a conversation with them. They know how to just yeah, we're doing this, yep. No, it's a great day.
Speaker 2:Why don't you call Jay? Oh, that's a good question.
Speaker 1:Call your project manager, like those guys are the ones that I'm looking to work with. Yeah, the other thing is when, when there is a price sheet, so some, some companies like your flooring company, they'll have a price sheet. So some, some companies like your flooring company, they'll have a price sheet that's really detailed out, that they know exactly. This is, uh, you know, a level two lvt is this many mils? It's this much for per bag for floor prep. It's this much for demo of tile. It's this much for uh for subfloor. If we need to put in, it's this much, they uh for subfloor. If we need to put in, it's this much. They have it all broken down. That's phenomenal. I'll take that.
Speaker 2:I'll there'll be 20% more expensive than chucking a truck and pay every penny of that yeah.
Speaker 1:You're, you're going to get and they're going to warranty their stuff Cause they're going off volume. They're going off of.
Speaker 2:They want to earn your business, they want to be a partner with you. Yeah, and so when?
Speaker 1:you've got that, um, that's a really good omen. And there's a lot of guys that don't do that. There's a lot of companies that you'd be surprised that don't have that. Well, we'll just come out and estimate it, which is great. That's what the homeowner wants.
Speaker 1:Somebody just to come out and tell me what it is what our project manager does, but I want to work with you long term, and in order for that to happen, I need to have a semblance of understanding your pricing now, if guys come in to push back a little bit, guys come in without that put together.
Speaker 2:They're not formally in the like built this company that's got this. Like that's okay. Yeah, what you're saying is that's a clue of like, oh, these guys get it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, that's where you want to lean in, but there's there's plenty of guys that come in that you uh young and hungry.
Speaker 2:Young and hungry they want to be.
Speaker 1:they want to be the jack of all trades, and that's good. That's like you want guys that can fill that role, but not, uh, that's not where that guy should stay. Yeah, you know, it's your job as project manager really to identify. What does this person excel at, if they're? If they excel at like timelines uh, great, that's somebody that oh, let's earmark that person. That would be a good foreman.
Speaker 1:If we ever get to a point where we want to just hire a foreman for you know two projects. This guy's always on his timelines. He's always making sure that he's getting the most out of the guys that are working under him Awesome. But there's a guy, jaime, years and years ago we were doing a project and it went south. It went south pretty hard and there he was hiring guys and they weren't following through and I remember being like I think we just need to hit pause and maybe, you know, you get some more time under your belt Cause I was young too. Uh, he ended up being one of our best crews. You know, we waited two years, got back with him and he had learned some more. I just I couldn't teach him.
Speaker 1:I couldn't teach him the things that he needed, but I did know that it wasn't working out between the two of us. Then, two years later, he comes back and he was killing it.
Speaker 2:He learned he learned from his mistakes and made up for it, so I think that's great, all right. Well, thanks for listening. If you want more conversation about this, go to pro truck three 60.com. We'd love to talk to you about subs how to handle them how We'd love to talk to you about subs, how to handle them, how to manage them anything you need to talk about in growing your company. If you just got a question of what you should do, I'd love to have a phone call. Go to ProStruck360.com. Go to the contact us, sign up. My calendar is on there so you could sign up on the website to have a phone call. I'd love to talk with you personally. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next week, thank you.
