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Roles of Office Staff - Managing Growth

7K views 65 replies 14 participants last post by  CSR 
#1 ·
I've been bouncing around the last couple years with doing most office work myself, to last year trying to hire someone that could handle taking calls, input some schedules, help with receipts, etc. But he wasn't experienced in any of this at that point, so I didn't save as much time/money as I thought. But I'm to the point where I can't wear all the hats anymore and keep things running smoothly. We are generating sales of about $350K-$400K/yr right now. We do landscape construction, fert/weed control, mowing (res and comm), and plowing in the winter. The saying "do one thing well" goes through my head a lot. I could sell off lawn care equipment and focus on landscape and weed control, but I now own all the lawn equipment (no payments, except for a 1-ton), so it's hard to sell it off (4 mowers, zero turn, trimmers, aeration, power rake, 3/4 ton truck, blowers) when the opportunity is there to make money off it. Personally I would rather keep the landscaping and weed control side of things, and if I had to sell lawn care, but I would rather keep all of it if I can.

If I keep the equipment, how do you utilize office staff and make it worth it? Or is it too soon to hire more help financially? What roles are they actually playing in the office? Do you hire an in house bookkeeper that is also a secretary? Should I take on the management of landscaping and they oversee the lawn care crews, scheduling, etc? Do they need to have experience or can you train them? What roles do you as the owner make sure to not delegate, or always delegate?

I've felt the effects of burnout and losing any motivation to keep things going as a result of losing traction because of the mundane and day to day tasks that keep me from actually growing, strategizing, and just simply having too much on my plate. If I can focus on leadership, numbers, strategies, etc. instead of emails and maintenance I could make some progress in cutting expenses, efficiency, marketing, and on and on. I know there is potential for growth if I manage things properly.

For those with the experience, I would love to know how you grew into hiring the extra help in the office and what that all looks like.
 
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#2 ·
Our receptionists/admin assistants/secretaries/whatever you want to call them handle calls, billing, small job scheduling, route prep, lead conversion, and customer service. Our office manager handles larger install scheduling, crew management, sod procurement, and higher level customer service (also fire putter outer). Our different division managers handle their own material procurement, customer service as needed, and scheduling on the micro level. There is some overlap and we're in a period of growth and reorganization, but the office staff is CRITICAL to our success. There is no way I could do my job if I had to take on even a portion of their work load.
 
#5 ·
Thanks for the replies.

At what point did you hire staff? Was it once you hit a certain number of employees or revenue? Or just once you felt you could't handle it anymore?

Another question, simply because of my inexperience thus far, how do you deal with such office staff getting sales and converting leads while they make an hourly wage? Have you ever had them say "I got you all these sales and help with leads, I want a cut of that." Do you give them a cut somehow or just say I'm paying you to do that?
 
#6 · (Edited)
Unless you want to burn the candle at both ends, you have to hire and delegate tasks to other people.

You have to factor in opportunity costs. It made sense for me to begin hiring others when I realized I spent far more time in an office not generating revenues or sales than out in the field generating new business or revenue.

It depends on where you live, but basic administrative assistants can be had for as low as 9 - 10 an hour. After taxes, workmans comp, etc, it comes out to like 15 an hour. Every hour that assistant is costing me 15 an hour I can generate 50 - 100 per hour, or end up landing new contracts. I come out way ahead by having an assistant.

You have to do a cost benefit analysis of everything you do. If you decide to free up some time to sip martinis instead of generate revenue or sales, it will not make financial sense to hire someone. You also have to determine what your stress levels and free time is worth to you.
 
#8 ·
Thanks for the replies.

At what point did you hire staff? Was it once you hit a certain number of employees or revenue? Or just once you felt you could't handle it anymore?

Another question, simply because of my inexperience thus far, how do you deal with such office staff getting sales and converting leads while they make an hourly wage? Have you ever had them say "I got you all these sales and help with leads, I want a cut of that." Do you give them a cut somehow or just say I'm paying you to do that?
My personal opinion says youre not ready for admin overhead at 350-400k per year.

What ive always found useful when i get overloaded is the list all the things i do. There are 2 columns, the me critical things and the monotonous things i should be offloading to my staff. Once you have that list, its a starting point to help you define and streamline those tasks (need to develop written processes if you haven't already) and it also helps shape the job description youre hiring or promoting someone into.
 
#9 ·
My personal opinion says youre not ready for admin overhead at 350-400k per year.
I agree. I started having assistance around the 700k mark. If you have the margins you can do it, but it will potentially slow you down a bit due to the added expense even with good margins. Good margins on 400k might be 40-60k. A "cheap" part time assistant will cost you 10-15k, which is a big part of your profit. And that's with "good" 10-15% margins.

How many dollars in revenue do you want to grow by next year? How much time will it require you to sell that much? Will having an assistant 20 hours per week truly free you up to get that business, or will it free you up to do more work with your crew? If it's option two, considering hiring another crewman and/or train one of your guys to be a foreman so that you're prepared to start another crew.

Growth comes EASY when you're small, so get ready for the growth. It will come your way without a ton of time/energy/money. It's a lot easier to grow by 30-40% when your smaller than when you're big. Just ask @Efficiency

Wait to bring in the extra overhead until you truly don't have time to do the other stuff.
 
#10 ·
If you asked me today, I would tell you growth will be the end of me. We got a single inch of snow. I was so close to telling off a property management company that gives us over 200k in snow work. My lawn care operations manager pointed out to me later that I am the problem with snow. Sometimes it takes a true friend to point out the issues in our way. Guess i need to hire a snow ops manager now.

Growing 40% on 300k is easy. Growing 40% on 2 million sucks. I got the t shirt
 
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#14 ·
Just curious if you could share
"You're the problem with snow management"
Could you elaborate a little
Some insight on what the problem is in you, that wouldn't exist in another person and...
If/when you hire a snow ops guy, what would be his role come green season?

I'm just curious , every owner thinks they're the best at everything
What's someone else ha d to offer you don't , besides more time?

I get bent about people that expect "black and wet" on a fixed seasonal price
 
#11 ·
We are going to finish the year around $625k this year. I just hired an office manager that started in October. I was doing all the phone calls and office work and finally reached my breaking point this year and felt it was time if we were going to continue to grow. I was spending most of my time on repetitive tasks which I could hire someone else to do. We are a fertilization/weed/pest control business so we service over a 1000 customers. Like efficiency said, lists all the tasks that you are doing that you think someone else could do. What Im finding, is that our new office manager is much better at these tasks and much more thorough than I was. Also look to technology to streamline some of those tasks. We implemented an online portal for our customers this year and it has streamlined accounts receiveables and cut down on account call in questions.
 
#22 ·
I have wondered about portals. How do those work? They can see there invoices and past transactions etc? What do you use for that? We currently use QBO and I don't think they have an option so see anything other than the invoices they've been sent.
 
#23 ·
Portals are a website linked to your company. Customers can log into it and pay their bills. The higher end portals allow users to order services, see pricing on anything your want, see payment history, even see technician notes from a service.

This "portal" is usually integrated with your software you use for your business. First thing I would look into is software. I dont think QBO is the best choice for a company your size. Get something more specialized for the service industry, or even more specialize for the green industry.

We are using Clip now, but are converting our system to Real Green as we speak.

ClipITC has a customer portal and really can do a lot of things. For the price, it's great. Real Green can do many more things but it comes with a cost. Efficiency can speak volumes about Real Green
 
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#25 ·
Portals are a website linked to your company. Customers can log into it and pay their bills. The higher end portals allow users to order services, see pricing on anything your want, see payment history, even see technician notes from a service.

This "portal" is usually integrated with your software you use for your business. First thing I would look into is software. I dont think QBO is the best choice for a company your size. Get something more specialized for the service industry, or even more specialize for the green industry.

We are using Clip now, but are converting our system to Real Green as we speak.

ClipITC has a customer portal and really can do a lot of things. For the price, it's great. Real Green can do many more things but it comes with a cost. Efficiency can speak volumes about Real Green
Clip looks pretty nice. I may venture out that way! Thanks for the tip. Real Green may be more than what I need right now? Did you find customers reluctant to make another profile on another website? Did it take time for them to all switch over?
 
#26 ·
What would you say about focusing on just one or maybe 2 of those, instead of all 3? "Do one thing good instead of 3 things 60%." I own everything except our tractor, so I feel like the opportunity is there if I can manage it right to make money on all 3 operations. I'm constantly torn between focusing on one area, or bringing help to take advantage of growing in each area.
Would you like to be the jack of all trades or the master of none? Youre in business so you need to make this decision based on financial information. What services are your highest profit, gross margin, ROE, etc? Thats how you decide where to focus - chase the numbers.
 
#28 ·
From our personal experience - it is vastly more difficult to grow three divisions at the same time when you're that size.
Yeah, I'm starting to see that. So, how would you advise someone who was trying to grow all 3? What problems did you see come to the surface the most? Or would you advise against it and just say "once one division is established then bring in another division and start from the ground up."?
 
#29 ·
I think @Efficiency would tell you to stick to lawn care and drop the others. Am I right?

In my opinion, it depends on you and who you have working.

My default advise would be to find what you can be exceptionally good at, and do that. Maybe your exceptionally good at managing 3 (almost) completely unrelated divisions and making them profitably grow. Maybe you're exceptionally good at design/build.

We offered design-build, lawn care, irrigation, and maintenance at one point when it was early on. We realized that we could be exceptionally good at maintenance and so we stuck to growing that and quit advertising everything else. We did do the other stuff, but just for our maintenance customers. Now that we have more capital we have been able to invest in experienced people (or training inexperienced people) to help grow lawn care and irrigation. For us, design build may come back eventually but it's very, very different from ongoing type services.

You need to listen to the following two audio books by Jim Collins this week if you really want some insight at this pivotal point in your company. Good to Great, and Great by Choice.
 
#31 ·
I see what you're saying. I do feel too spread out and diluted. I think I'll be trimming some limb's here soon. Only other option I see is to hire someone who's good at one or two of them that would manage those almost completely and can run it for me. I've got some thinking to do.

I will check out those audiobooks too, I've actually heard good things about "Good to Great" already. I've been listening to EntreLeadership as well, they have some good stuff. Thanks for the advice!
 
#33 ·
If you want to hire an expert in a specific discipline, what do you have to get and or keep them on board? If I was an expert at something, I would go reap the benefits of my experience on my own.

If you really want to break out of average and be an exemplary company, you need to choose just one thing and do a standard or metric crap ton of it. And do it really, really well. And be able to communicate your unique value proposition well. You have one, right?
 
#32 ·
Portals are a website linked to your company. Customers can log into it and pay their bills. The higher end portals allow users to order services, see pricing on anything your want, see payment history, even see technician notes from a service.

This "portal" is usually integrated with your software you use for your business. First thing I would look into is software. I dont think QBO is the best choice for a company your size. Get something more specialized for the service industry, or even more specialize for the green industry.

We are using Clip now, but are converting our system to Real Green as we speak.

ClipITC has a customer portal and really can do a lot of things. For the price, it's great. Real Green can do many more things but it comes with a cost. Efficiency can speak volumes about Real Green
Have you ever used Jobber? It's been mentioned on other threads here as well and some seem to like it.
 
#36 ·
I just don't have time. The new role would be prep, planning, and execution for snow ops and relationship development out of season.

And yes, wet and black on a tight seasonal number will be the end of that prop mgmt co's relationship with us. You want a pretreat? Pony up the dollhairs, its not covered as things stand now. You want us to scape an inch? Payme beech.
ok now i have stolen "payme beech", some how I'm hearing that said with a dominican/cuban accent.
 
#38 ·
I actually completely agree with you, T. I told my irrigation guy the other day that I was proud of some recent successes and strides he has made and that I felt like he has recently surpassed me in knowledge on his field and that is my whole goal.

What I really meant for the OP is that at his current size and what it seems what his goals are it is easy to just think “I’ll just find an expert to run and grow this division” when at that size it’s actually just about impossible to do that. At the 400k mark you most likely WILL need to be the best “employee” at whatever it is you’re doing and then get the other guys trained up. I doubt a person like you would be attracted to a 400k company. Eventually he will be able to bring someone like you on. Not yet though.
 
#39 ·
I actually completely agree with you, T. I told my irrigation guy the other day that I was proud of some recent successes and strides he has made and that I felt like he has recently surpassed me in knowledge on his field and that is my whole goal.

What I really meant for the OP is that at his current size and what it seems what his goals are it is easy to just think "I'll just find an expert to run and grow this division" when at that size it's actually just about impossible to do that. At the 400k mark you most likely WILL need to be the best "employee" at whatever it is you're doing and then get the other guys trained up. I doubt a person like you would be attracted to a 400k company. Eventually he will be able to bring someone like you on. Not yet though.
I learned a long time ago, there is always someone better.

Bigger, faster, smarter.
BUT.
they're usually one trick ponies.
If someone is THAT good at something (tennis player for example), then they probably aren't all that and several other things (soccer, baseball)

People only have so much time.
If you spend all your time in an excavator day in day out, chances are you're going to get pretty dang good at it.

I let those guys do those things.
No need for me to "get in there and show them how its done"
But if they're going to pull attitude with me, act like I need them, then Ill do it myself until I find a replacement, just because they're focused on something that makes them "better" than me , doesn't mean I "need" them.
Sure I can use them, glad to have them, but they aren't the jedi I was looking for.

Likewise, a good manager or owner needs to be a generalist.

Like on a baseball team,
The coach or manager is never going to be as good a pitcher as the guy they got starting.
but it doesn't mean he can't give him guidance so he can become better, because the manger understands the whole game, the big picture better than the pitcher ever will.
the manager isn't just concerned with the pitcher either, he's got nine guys and benchies too work on.
there;s no time for him to be the best pitcher, he leaves that up to the pitcher, but he knows enough to know, that the pitchers arm has become weak and he needs to bring in a relief.

on a larger team like football you have more coaches,
offense, defense, special teams.
The head coach is the head coach because he's the best at overall knowledge, instinct and strategy, but there are some REAL fine defensive and special teams coaches that are true experts in their field, they may never ever become head coaches and you may never know their names, but they're vital to the team an the head coach wouldn't have the success he does without them.

there are few people who will ever be as good wth a skid steer or a weed whacker as I am, but Ive got guys that run a dozer or a loader that are hands own better than I ever have the time to be.
Wish I could find someone (or a few someones) like that for lawns, but in alaska? thats a pipe dream, you're lucky if your new hire is aware lawns need to be cut every week.
 
#41 ·
That's good stuff @TPendagast @Efficiency @BrendonTW.

And I have definitely felt the need to be the best at everything, as though if I'm not I lose credibility with my team and then they feel like they're in charge or that I don't know what I'm doing. But I like the coach/trainer analogy, have the big picture. Makes perfect sense. Be OK they are better and let them know it.

I completely agree with the need to hire and TRAIN someone, instead of only thinking I need to look for an expert. I like that line of thinking, and it makes sense that if they are an expert, they're probably doing what we're doing already (if I can call myself an expert...).

I'll have you know, our federal government (Canada) is something else. I Currently have an employee (foreman), that because he makes LESS than me, he actually makes MORE than me...because of handouts based off his income. But because I make MORE than him, I don't get the same handouts, so I actually make LESS in the end. It hurts...I don't care he makes more, I care WHY/HOW he's making more.This really is a turning point for me. Some changes need to be made in some way. Too much work and risk and unless I can make more money it's not worth all the work involved, especially when the handout system up here is teaching me (and everyone else) to do less work and take less risk in order to make more money. Economics and management 101 right?! We will be in our local trade show for the first time this year too, so I'm hoping I can come back in a year and say we have made some good progress. More of this payup, not this :wall
 
#43 ·
Another way to think about "being in charge" but not being the "best" is the military.

Who's the best?
Well I can tell you its not the captain!
But he's in charge.

He assigns his best men to do what they are best at.
The best designated marksman or sniper.
The best rifle team,
The best commo geek.
Whatever they do.
Cap is too busy doing other crap to worry about picking off snipers.
Hes got "people" for that.

Let your people do their job.
Private snuffy is the best at cleaning the latrine, because he has lots of free time to learn to be good at that (largely because he cant do anything else)
But if you dont have pv1 snuff learning to be cpl tryhard, and the cpl isnt learning to be sgt blowhard, and the sgt isnt leanring to be 1sg knowsitall....what happens when someone quits, dies or moves on?

The best thing to do is EXACTLY what teams do (or the military)
decide what positions you need.
Fill them with the best candidates you can, and then practice practice practice, but dont forget those boys on the bench, they need a little field time in the bottom of the 7th ,when you know it wont affect the game.
Because if you never play your benchies, and the starter wants to play hardball negotiating for a new contract? then you REALLY do need him.

Remember youre in charge because the buck stops here, and you make all the hard decisions (not the mention the checks have your name on it, or they wont cash)
THAT's why you are in charge.
 
#55 ·
lol "low income" for canadians is less than 150k.
Thats because you all pay 9 bucks for a gallon of gas and a can am sled in your own country is more (by a considerable lead) there than it is here (cant figure that one out yet).

Its just wild inflation caused by over zealous tax in order to afford to give you "money back" when they shouldnt be taking it in the first place.

Dizzying.
 
#62 ·
Everyone else in Canada doesn't pay, it's just BC. They are supposedly getting rid of it, it used to be $150 a month. Which is why I complained about it. Other provinces include it in the general tax rate that everyone pays. People making $30,000 a year pay the same as someone with $1,000,000 income. Do you guys have something like that down (up) there?
 
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