Re: crossroads
In today's economy I would be very hesitant to take on new employees. With additional employees your expenses increase a great deal, while productivity increases very little. Two men cannot do double the work of one man, yet the expense more than doubles. Because the economy is good, at least in this area, most good workers are already working, so you will probably need to steal an employee from one of your competitors, unless you can afford to take a young inexperienced worker and train them. While you don't mind not working for a week as long as at the end of the year you have made a good salary, your hourly employee is going to want to work and get paid for a regular schedule. If you need to work a little late to finish a job so that you don't need to return the next day, that is fine; but your employee is going to expect overtime for those hours. Either stay a small one-man shop or be prepared to go big. The medium sized contractors are getting squeezed out. They are too big to do the little jobs and service work, and not big enough to do the big commercial jobs. Been there, done that, don't want to go back.
I worked for a year with no salary, cleaned out my savings, and my employees never missed a paycheck. In return they spent evenings and weekends doing "side jobs". Hard to be a nice guy when your own employees are your biggest competition.
Just my opinion, for what it is worth.
