Editor’s Note: Yesterday, in Chapters 1 and 2 of “The Virtue of Laziness,” Mark set the scene…
You’re in search of a moneymaking system that’s feasible, flexible, and profitable. You take Mark’s advice and start a landscaping side business.
But it soon begins to wear on you. The only solution is to hire help… lose some of your profits along the way… but gain a great deal more…
Chapter 3: Enter Alberto, the Kid With the Smile
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From Mark Ford, founder, Palm Beach Research Group: In your landscaping side business, you’ve moved beyond what I call the “self-employment business” stage. You’re ready to hire, train, and manage employees. (In other words, you’re ready to make more money by working less.)
You know from one of my essays in the Extra Income Project that the quality of the person you hire is one of the most important factors in making your growing business successful.
Since you’re landscaping, you need someone willing to do manual labor eight to 10 hours per day. You also need someone pleasant to work with who will respect your clients.
You ask around at your 9-to-5 job. Sally in HR has a younger brother. You try him out, but he begins calling in with excuses after three Saturdays.
So you try Lou, the brother-in-law of the office receptionist. He sounds great on the phone but shows up an hour late on the first day reeking of booze.
You’ve run out of options at work. On a trip to Home Depot, you notice a dozen young Latino-looking men in the far corner. Your Spanish is terrible, but you take a chance.
Alberto, a kid with a wide smile, speaks decent English. He tells you the going rate is $10 per hour. You offer him $12, and he works hard all day—never losing that smile.
A month later, your little weekend landscaping business is grossing nearly $5,000 per month. You get $3,000, and $2,000 goes to Alberto and expenses.
You have a new car. You’ve moved into a nicer apartment. And you’re banking money for the future. But between manual work and managing Alberto, you have no time to enjoy your weekends.
“I want to work less because I’m smart, not lazy,” you say, looking at your tired reflection in the mirror. And then you make a pledge: By hell or high water, you’ll find a way to work no more than eight hours next weekend.
The next morning you wake up excited. You know just what to do…
Chapter 4: By Now, You’re Only “Sort of” Rich
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It’s breakfast when you put pencil to napkin to crunch some numbers. Starting your own landscaping business and working for yourself was lucrative. By “hiring” affluent customers and being efficient, you were making nearly $50 per hour.
Employing Alberto was a great idea, but it was more expensive than you’d thought. Accounting and taxes brought his hourly cost to your business up to $20. Still, you were netting $30 extra for every hour he worked.
Your idea was simple: Instead of working alongside Alberto, you’d hire a second employee to do your job. Instead of netting $3,000, you’d be making $2,000—but you’d have the weekend mostly free!
And what if you hired two more people?
You could start accepting new clients and covering more ground in the same span of hours. The numbers in your calculation start going up instead of down. Though you’d have some extra work at first: posting more fliers, making appointments…
You ask Alberto if he knows two people who are good, reliable workers. Two people like him.
“Yes,” he answers. “Pedro and Alex—my brothers.”
Nine months later, your weekend business is no longer a weekend business. You have three two-man crews, each working five days per week. Your gross revenue is approaching $45,000 per month. You’ve had to lease two trucks and three large mowers, and you’re renting a small warehouse to store the equipment. Alberto is now making $20 per hour and his brothers $15.
The good news is you’re personally netting over $100,000, which means you’re living well and banking serious dollars. You can see how, if this continues, you’ll be “sort of rich.”
The bad news is that running a growing business is more complicated than you imagined. There are bills to process, forms to file, legal and tax issues to deal with. Then there are problem employees and difficult customers.
Once again, you’re working too hard. But you have a solution… something you’ve been dying to do for a long time…
To be continued…