employee problems

[City climber]

Tree machine

you regard employees as a negative asset to your business. This severely limits you to the jobs you can do . When you have a large experienced crew there is no limit to what you can do.Productivity can be multiplied by the speed in which jobs are done, thus increasing profits.the only problem lies in finding good employees.You may have to go through 25 people to find 1 good one. sure beats working alone definately a lot safer.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

You don't have someone to help with tools, nothing is being done when you talk to the client, you cannot stop and talk to an interested neighbor till the job is done.

When i ran a crew I would talk to the client after i was done and tried to sell some more work on site. Say hi to the neighbors, maybe ask if they have any questions.

Sometimes you have to winnow a lot of chaff to find the right person for you, but it can be worth it.

 

[Tree Machine]

I knew I was going to get some flak for the solo work thing. We all do it from time to time, but I have gone far out of my way to prove, given the proper tool arsenal and advanced technique, that it CAN be done.

All points contrary to this are respected and taken as mostly true. I don't consider employees a negative asset to my business. I consider my peace, freedom and autonomy the most valuable asset. The lifestyle.

I've had employees. I've had apprentices. I've had volunteers. If you have employees, and they make you appreciably more than you would make by yourself, then you should have employees. I do not suggest anyone do 19 out of 20 jobs alone, as I do; it's real work, but I made it a point to aquire the highest-end tools available and become a model solo arborist, so it's my duty to work alone.

KM showed me some math that works. Here's some more of mine: If you had consistently knocked down $500 a day, alone, worked 4 days a week, worked 50 of the 52 weeks, you made a hundred grand. Alone (mostly anyway). That's too much money for me. I prefer to have at least two months vacation with Elizabeth, Sundays, and a day off whenever she says, "Hey, Boy..... Also, I get to work when I want to get to work, not when there's a guy standing outside my back door.

Do I choose just the jobs I can handle and pass up the others? Quite the opposite. I get ~20 calls a week and can only do about half those. I pass on the easier ones and take on the harder ones (better money, more technical excitement). I do all but the biggest takedowns alone. Its sometimes pretty amazing, but it can be done. If you'd like to start a Solo Arborist thread, I'd love to moderate it, but here we need to stay on track. This thread is about employees.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

Everyone knows you can do more than twice as much work with two guys, than one. Alone you are making $500 a day, in a market where you could make $1500 a day with a crew of two or three, more if you do high end work.
Why not hire somebody you enjoy to work with and pay them a good salary to entice them to do good work?
One last point, if you are turning down that much work, raise your prices.

 

[Tree Machine]

Employee problems vs assets

All points well-taken. Working alone in this industry, as I can tell, is a foreign concept, even though we have all done solo jobs here and there.

The title of this thread is 'employee problems', not 'how the Tree Machine manages to do solo work and WHY"

If I have no employees, I have no employee problems. I have other problems, like how to do this tree by myself? I ENJOY that last question. A technical tree is like a chess game, you work through the mental logistics, you prepare your stage. You're forced to be very prepared and very organized because there's nobody to pick up loose ends. Also, you're not allowed to fall or get hurt. Working alone, you work with much greater care and self vigilance. Things get triple-checked. You concentrate on where you're at, but you thinking two or three steps ahead.

Its a fun game and it pays well, or I should say, well enough. If I have a job over a thousand, I get a day helper and I have pizza delivered to the jobsite. We have fun, but when I have a groundie, I don't listen to XM radio on my Peltor headset, and I miss that.

 

[TREETX]

Whaduyaknow, Tom D and I were on to something with the Blanchard book. Check out pg 58 in the lastest TCI. Everyone in the service industy should read One Minute Manager and Raving Fans. Both are quick reads and cheap books.