What Features Would Be Helpful for Dealing with Subcontractors on Your Team?
Subcontractors can be a powerful way to grow your service business—but managing them smoothly takes the right tools. From scheduling to paperwork to payments, things can get complicated fast if you're relying on spreadsheets or text threads. Here are a few key ideas to kick off the conversation: Insurance Certificate Tracking + Expiration Reminders Making sure your subcontractors are insured is a no-brainer—but keeping track of their certificates and renewal dates can be a hassle. A built-in feature that stores insurance docs and sends automatic reminders before they expire would help keep your business protected and organized. Built-in Payment Processing for Subcontractors Paying subs quickly and clearly is essential for maintaining good relationships. Imagine being able to approve their invoices and process payments right through Jobber—no more chasing emails or juggling payment apps. Subcontractor Availability Scheduling Knowing when your subs are available is half the battle. A shared calendar where subcontractors can input their availability would make job assignment way easier and help avoid scheduling conflicts before they happen. What would you like to see added to help manage subcontractors better? Drop your ideas in the comments—👇Upsides and downsides of hiring a summer helper?
I am thinking about hiring someone to help me in the busy season and the idea of a high school kid as a summer job sounds like a promising idea. I wouldn't have to pay them a crazy salary, they are like sponges with information and they are typically more physically full of energy. I wouldn't be able to send them on their own, but they could help me get a few more jobs done in a day. I am wondering if anyone has tried this and what would be the pros and cons of doing it?Promoting from within - is someone who is primarily money driven, a good candidate for management?
So here's the situation - I've hired two different operations managers and had to let them go for various reasons. The reason I was seeking outside the company was for a fresh outlook and a new way of doing things. Although I think there were things I could have done in the hiring process to sniff these bad candidates out, I'm now feeling like I should be promoting from within with someone already familiar with our systems and company culture. The obvious choice would seem to be the guy who's been here the longest. He's the site super on all our bigger jobs and everyone recognizes him as the most senior person, the person they call if they have a technical related question. I offered him the position (which is a healthy base salary plus incentive bonuses for gross profit, customer satisfaction, and clearly outlined administrative task goals) and he's very hung up on the money. Objectively, it's more money overall than he earned last year plus the bonuses but the weekly base is lower than if he worked in the field that week. He earned roughly $82k in the field (working roughly 80% of the available hours we COULD have worked him, because of slow weeks), this is a base of $88k with incentive bonuses that should definitely take this north of a size figure position. People should obviously care about the money they earn but he's basically super worried about the guarantee of money instead of the opportunity to earn a lot more with the bonuses. I tried encouraging him that this is something he can do but he keeps going back to the guaranteed money. I definitely want this position on performance pay so a high flat salary is off the table. My concern is he will be a few weeks in, working harder than he did before, getting paid less in the immediate term, and will not be giving it his all. He doesn't view this as a good offer. Question is - if someone isn't excited at an opportunity like this, should I take the offer off the table? Or is there a different way I could be thinking about this?
Delegation & Hiring for a Maintenance-Heavy Landscaping Company Trying to Scale
I’ve been looking into accountability charts and delegation after listening to the Jobber podcast where they talked about this, but I’m not sure where to begin. Right now I’m still heavily involved in day-to-day residential maintenance landscaping operations—quoting, scheduling, managing crews, and even some marketing—which makes it hard to step back and focus on growing into larger/higher earning project work beyond maintenance. For those who’ve gone through this at a similar stage, what responsibilities did you delegate first—and to whom? Also, what was your first key hire that really helped free up your time to focus on growth? Any practical guidance would be great.Transitioning from Landscape Maintenance to Higher Earning / Project Work
For those who started in maintenance, how did you transition into larger projects like hardscaping and design? Did you train your existing crew or build a separate team? I’m trying to figure out the best path forward without disrupting our current operations. Any advice from those who’ve made that shift would be really helpful.What are dealbreakers for keeping someone around?
We had a situation where we had a manager that was really good with clients, but was always 5-10 minutes late to appointments, and he struggled with using jobber (frustrating because jobber is so easy). So he was good face to face and the actual management of jobs but those two things he just couldn't grasp. Sooo I let him go after trying to work with him on it. Too harsh? I felt like you could be the smoothest person ever but if you can't do the basics, it was going to lead to trouble down the road. I'd love to hear your opinions on different things you won't compromise on outside of the obvious ones (drinking on the job, being unprofessional etc).How do you balance kindness and strict standards as a business owner?
My personal values are very important to me as a business owner. Being a person of faith I care deeply about people. For years I have struggled to find this balance between kindness and compassion and strict standards. For those of you that have hearts for people and want to be kind and compassionate...how do you help your team rise to the occasion without having to seem heartless and only care about the bottom line?When to hire a General Manager?
I am a painting company. Have any of you hired a general manager and stepped away from the day to day operations of your business? How did you go about it? Was there a revenue metric you aimed for? Break it down for me in detail? Did it help you grow and go to the next level? How did you find your general manager? What did you set as the pay/salary? Bonus structure?
