wait till you price the job according to how long it takes you to do it. You send out a mechanic and apprentice to do the work and it takes them 50% longer. Then when you yell at them, you get a dumb look and a blank stare. So you fire them, and spend the time and resources to hire someone else. You go through this same scene 10 times in a year, then just get frustrated and fed up with the help available. It's vicious.
Now imagine doing all your work T&M - you get a good little group of customers. They like you. You do good work, you work efficiently, no problems.
Now you send out your mechanic (because you did so good, you got so busy, you had to hire help) and he takes 50% more time than you and doesn't do quite as nice a job. All of a sudden the customer (who you have worked with for 2-3 yrs with no problems) is calling and complaining about your rates, your charging too much, etc.
Once you hire employees its a different world. There are some guys on here who haven't figured out how to run employees, but they will tell you how to do it. There are other guys on here who run employees everyday. They are easy to figure out who's who. If you intend on growing and having employees, I'd pay attention to the guys who run'em. Not the one's who don't. (caveat -there are a couple of guys who post here, who currently don't run employees-have no intention to ever run employees again - but spent years running more guys than most of us ever will- macmikeman comes to mind- he knows a thing or two about running men, and knows he no longer wants to deal with it.)
