I'm with electure: unload the overhead.
More often than not, my customers are willing to be the second hand -- feeding wire into the hole and what not.
If it is anything serious...
I phone labor-unsteady or the competition labor-unready.
Anything to avoid the paperwork hell of a 1.2 man out-fit.
After that...
Use an administrative employer. You've got to do what ever it takes to keep headquarters overhead down, down, down.
For those who've never heard of it: an administrative employer is an outfit that is pure back-office. They handle all of the government submissions (taxes, etc.) and tack on a profit margin for themselves.
It is a VERY rare small shop that can compete with the automated efficiency of an administrative employer.
Operationally, it will be the EC -- that's you -- who hires and fires and calls all of the operational shots.
The AE only handles the back office.
Back in the day, my old boss related that shifting to an administrative employer saved him $ 100,000 per MONTH. Yeah, he had a large crew. Further, his W/C was crushing him. He should have gone out of business. Using an A/E allowed him to unload is W/C 'experience' (track record of horrific injuries and losses due to his management 'style') onto the naive administrative employer. That is, he went from a crushing -- business ending -- insurance rate to a normalized workman's comp rate by using someone else's experience ratio. Clever, no?
You need a mighty big crew/wife-slave to justify keeping the paperwork in-house.
The amount of forms that the government wants from a business are staggering and do not relent because you're a small guy on the make.
The goverment penalties for slipping up are unbounded.
The amount of time a small company has to commit to such rules is ALWAYS a choker: it's beyond belief.
And it only gets worse as time goes by.
For me, the worst aspect was maintaining the records dang near forever and ever. I didn't get into business to be a librarian or super clerk -- two totally different skill sets.
Paying cash under the table works right up until it don't: the fool gets hurt on the job. And do they ever.
Hence the number of players who think that they can get away with just calling an ambulance and thus duck the liability. NO WAY. The ambulance crew is going to require enough info to absolutely nail the employer to the wall.
That would be you.
Hence the reason why legal contracting is so expensive. The quote has to include the practically inevitable foul-ups and injuries that your 'help' will incur.
Last edited by Tesla; 06/15/09 09:59 AM.
