The Huddle - Episode 92 - Easier Than You Think; Payroll

In this episode, Easier Than You Think; Payroll with expert Dana Canaday, we unmask the process of setting up and managing payroll for your employees. Many business owners are intimidated by the prospect, but we're here to talk about how it's simpler than it appears. With a multitude of payroll services available, the heavy lifting can be outsourced, or if you prefer, manageable DIY options exist. The initial setup is the hardest part and it can transitions to an almost hands-off system thereafter. Payroll companies can handle tax payments directly, leaving you to simply input employee wages. We will touch on the important distinction between W-2 and 1099, ensuring your staff are paid correctly and legally. Tune in to make payroll the least of your worries.

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The Huddle was created by Paul Stuart of Stuart & Associates and Go Carrera, alongside Jose and Daniel Gonzalez from Preferred Flooring. Aimed at helping you maintain forward progress in your flooring career, they cover topics from personal and business growth, to installation tips & tricks and everything in-between.

Want to be a guest on The Huddle? Email thehuddleforwardprogress@gmail.com today!

Create your FREE Installer profile at https://gocarrera.com and become part of the future of the industry TODAY!
GET TRAINED! Find a list of training dates here: https://gocarrera.com/resources/training/
https://www.preferredflooringmi.com
https://www.stuartandassociates.com

what's up team welcome to the Huddle your weekly Playbook where we strategize

not only on playing the game but changing it we're mastering the fundamentals of our craft to you know

making ourselves stand out in the marketplace we're here to help you be equipped with everything you need let's

band together and Forge a new Legacy and floring so with me today Mr Jose

Gonzalez Mr Daniel Gonzalez decided to uh run off on vacation this week so you

got him and I and uh a special guest Dana Canada with Stuart and Associates

our flooring company is here to discuss um you know today's topic which is you

know payroll and uh this kind of thing with subcontract community in in

particular so when Subs when you guys have uh you know we're trying to Break

Down The Walls of the fear of having employees and running your business correctly building up your uh

installation uh prowess with your team and not always uh you know a lot of Subs

sub to another sub and sub to another sub until uh the quality and money gets

diluted so Dana could you tell us a little bit about yourself a little bit about your history and and maybe what

you love about uh you know the uh commercial uh construction world yeah

sure my name is Dana caned and I have worked in the construction industry for

12 years now and for the large majority of that I have worked in

accounting um and so I have um in my experience set up new company hired

employees set up employees um paid taxes and um that sort of thing so I

definitely have some experience with today's topic so I appreciate you having me on thank you so

much for inviting me um and probably my favorite thing about working in

construction in general is just that it's very relationship based um you know

a lot of times in construction you're doing business with people because of a

relationship that you have and um relationships are important to me so I I

love that part about working in the industry awesome awesome well if you're

wondering about the Hat it was literally 80 degrees yesterday here in Witchita and then today it's like 30 so I my

equilibriums off it's probably not cold enough for a hat but uh something's messing with my brain and making me cold

so it's cold it's cold enough how's it up in Michigan is it crazy up there uh

yesterday was well low 40s rain mid 4S rain today is uh really not that much

better it's a little bit warmer the rain just makes it feel that much worse okay well our our swing is what threw me for

a loop it went from nice and pretty nice and 80 to cold overcast and and uh

not so today's today's topic is you know

payroll uh is easier than you think so if you guys are out there and you're

running your subcontracting crew your installation business and we're big proponents here on the Huddle about

running your business as a business charging accordingly and um you know the

the best way for you to succeed is to hire Talent develop that talent and get

them better and if you do want to grow your business uh when we first started

in the commercial flooring world we did not sub at all we have a lot of Subs now we also have ourly uh employees uh

installers as well we're always trying to increase that but it's it's um you

know it's up to the marketplace and the people that are out there yeah want to be hourly employee uh installers but

when I first started I didn't have any in fact we got up to about 15 or 16

hourly employees before I started hiring any subcontractors um so I encourage uh on

this huddle on this podcast uh we always encourage the subs to find good

long-term employees that you can help uh develop their skill they're going to be able to do more for you um and there's

ways um you know that you can hire people and it's it's not as scary you think

so the we'll we'll break it down first have Dana kind of just walk us through

what it's like when you when you bring on you know a new uh employee installer at the

company well one thing I do know for sure and I guess I I I do want to say

that I'm not necessarily an expert I just have some experience in this area so this is not like legal advice but um

you know you do have to have a uh company like tax ID number and um you do

have to be set up with um the state to be able to remit taxes before you can

hire someone um and that's really not that complicated it it's fairly simple um and

there are free resources that you can go to and numbers that you can call if you

are having trouble but but you know when you hire someone there's pretty much

like three basic documents that you have to have for every single uh

employee um one is a um W4 this is for

the IRS um and it tells what kind of money will be

withheld from that employee based on how how they're like if they're a single

person or a married person um and if they have any

exemptions or um um but that they the employee self-

elects that stuff right absolutely and there's information for the employee too

if they're not sure how to fill out the form um of how they should go about

doing that um and then in Kansas it's called a K4 so kind of like the W4 but

it's the Kansas version um and then the other form is an I9 and the

I9 basically is to verify that the person is legally um able to work within

the United States and so a lot of times uh in my experience we haven't I have

never hired anybody that was outside of the country that was like on a work visa

or anything like that so it you know for us uh citizens and you know they're

verifying that information by providing their social security card or their birth certificate or something like this

um and those those three documents are pretty much the main documents that you have to have on each

employee um and you would need those um you know when you were hiring that

person on and then you know from there basically you enter that information

into whatever operating system that you use um and we use uh Stewart and

Associates we use structure but there are you know a large uh variety of

products that people can use um if if I remember correctly I think Jose you said

you guys use QuickBooks um QuickBooks is a very uh very very userfriendly

product and it makes it really easy for you can go ahead and say it's entry level you don't you're not going to

embarrass me it's just um QuickBooks is a very

friendly product because it's word or uh excuse me Microsoft based product so you

know it's kind of like click and play it's I don't know it's pretty in in in

if you work and it's they have an online version that's super simple um I'm GNA

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Dana the the um these like operating

systems as you call them are really about you know keeping track of the employee uh that the employees you have

and your Sals and these kinds of things so we always encourage you guys to work uh as a business and you're going to

have to have a operating system of some sort or a really cool series of

spreadsheets whichever one you prefer but I would I would encourage you at I don't want to quote uh you know or or

we're not sponsored by QuickBooks or anything but it is probably the easiest most affordable system to use is uh

QuickBooks Online yeah and and that system also really helps you know uh

guide you how to enter that information because it it it knows those forms and

and what information needs to be entered so it just makes it very easy for you to

be able to set that up it's not very difficult and then a lot of times

without um you know job costing or you

know recording people's hours like the process of running payroll also can be very simple um especially QuickBooks I

mean um we we also use QuickBooks for one of our companies and it's basically

automated it with with the exception of changing the number of hours that people

work um the system automatically runs the payroll make sure it gets paid and

pays the taxes um and quick QuickBook offers that as a service and it makes it

very easy yeah so it'll automatically calculate and and pay the your payroll

taxes on your employees for you so it's not you get a system like that and it's

really seems pretty uh efficient way to uh you know onboard employees and track

their hour well enter their hours and get them paid easily on a weekly basis or monthly basis or whatever whatever

your pay schedule is one of the um I think things to clarify uh on the I9

is um we've had a lot of clients talk about um uh from go career side talk

about the government now as we all know there's a you know immigration situation

which I will not weigh in on on this podcast but I'll say you have a lot of

people that uh that are uh unable to verify that they're a US citizen or have

legal right to work in the United States that being said what's going on though

is the federal government themselves um we had a request from a a customer at go

carer to add in the

um some verification what do they call it proof of some requirements

verification requirements proof of residency yeah it was passed the I9 that

the federal government themselves are asking for so as as you can kind of see

um there's somewhat of of that issue but

the federal government elves want you to verify um so at the end of the day that

I9 there's other you know you don't have to necess you have to have a right to work in the United States and be here uh

in a legal Manner and that's about the the end of that requirement so I I I wanted to clarify that you don't have to

necessarily be a US citizen you just have to be legal to work uh in the United States so um what are what are

some of the problems that you ran into Jose with uh and and or seen with the

way that some subcontractors hire other 1099 guys or they hire somebody and they

they treat them like an employee really but they are paying them like a

1099 so um I can only speak for what I've seen and what we've went through

right and if I told when we started out we started out 100% uh classification or

class our employees properly or classifying individuals as employees let me let me rephrase that I would I would

be lying so um you don't know what you don't know right and um I think the not

understanding the the ramifications if if something were to happen legally how much trouble

you could be in that's that's the one thing that that we didn't know and as we started learning more we started like

oh okay so now I can be responsible for all of this I can be if someone gets H

if something happens they're not classified so they're everything's going to fall right on me um unless I have

that paper trail but they have to have all the right insurance requirements there's a there's a lot of things into

it if you're going to keep someone on as a 1099 um really having a 1099 person is

as complicated as having an employee really I mean you gotta have a work comp

uh you got to have insurance policy a W9 on them you got to have a uh they either

have to have their own work comp insurance or in some states you can wave that uh that requirement um if they're a

1099 but you still have all these documents you you need to legally have to operate as a business if you're going

to be sending somebody a$ 1099 at the end of the year so really the the from a

paperwork standpoint anyway it's not they're they're not that much it's not

harder to have an employee uh I think where it gets harder to have an employee

is you are responsible for them at this at that point at least for their development and them becoming a um you

know getting the proper training and doing you know performing their Duty as you um you know would like them to

so you you say you say that you know it it makes more responsibility but you

also have more control over what that person can do and what what it is that

you need them to do you know you can hold them to a quality standard you can hold them to a timeline or set certain

expectations that you couldn't necessarily for a sub right yeah that's a great point that that is that is a a

very valid point um and that is a that is one of the benefits to being or to

having employees versus always banking on using Subs is they're there for a job

if someone's coming in as an employee they're there because they want a career um a sub is there because it's

convenient at the time for the most part excuse me guys I'm still getting over my cold um but you sound great yeah

I know I bet I do the um the problems that we're running into

with with Subs versus employees is just that and it's I don't want to get too

far off track right but they they can go do whatever they want they can they can quit tomorrow and

and decide to go uh turn a wrench uh when you have an employee like Paul had

mentioned earlier is you can actually encourage them to learn more right you're in charge of that and and to to

talk about the how the ease of having how easy it is uh for an employee versus

a subcontractor it actually gets easier with employees because everything is

once they're entered into your system as an employee everything's pretty much automated all the changes are made from the office and then they go out instead

of the changes being made from the sub and then you're getting the trickle up effect that doesn't uh doesn't really

benefit you in some some scenarios but uh the well I going to jump in just real

quick I think one of the points in made that is so valid and important is uh

that the um the employee you can you can

require them to be there at a certain time whereas a sub you can only give them the schedule and the time you know

that you need to get done with it uh so one quick uh another word from an a

sponsor here is uh go Carrera we're we're sponsoring the Huddle and uh many

of you guys know I've I've talked about go career quite a bit on this uh so we're going to play a quick video uh

about the ease of getting your profile and one of the ways that you can and uh

increase your professionalism as a

[Music]

sub well we decided to sponsor our own with

the Huddle instead of go carera so you got to listen to our awesome intro music so uh that being said goer is really

meant to um give you the tools and and

uh you know the digital Tools in this Digital World to help you uh work

in um with efficiency um you know promote yourself as third party verified

promote your skills and uh you know land more work and increase your uh your

professionalism in the industry and hopefully uh earn some more money too so that being said back on the whole

payroll thing uh as I was saying like we can we when we schedule an employee to

go to a job site they go to the job site at the time that they're scheduled to be there um and well at least you hope and

most times that's true uh but but the the fact is is that you can require them

to be there there's tradeoffs in all of this but um you know one big the

probably the biggest thing for me is being able to to develop their skill set

um send them to trainings Norby one of our top installers here I speak about a lot of times because he is so talented

you know we've sent him I think to three or four different certification courses

um and that's made him better and we've earned business from protect all business because uh nor certified to do

it and Nora because he's certified to do it and so that that's a key Point as

well right I mean the the fact that you can make make it a requirement for them

to be on site at a certain time and uh it gives a better experience Elena had

just touched base on that too and I think that she was referring to subcontractors as far as um requiring trainings uh and offer

advancements right um You can do that with your subs hey you guys want to go get trained on this I got a project

coming up um but it requires a certified

or a qualified individual and you guys are already good at that we just need to get this label um and we have done that

as a subcontractor we have we've been fortunate to to meet a

lot of the the right people at the right time and we've gone and and taken training classes and certifications

because we had a job coming up and that was as a sub um not as an employee um

and that's because we we do want to increase our opportunities as well as

the the companies that we're doing work for right if they look good if they look

good they'll make me look better in the end because I'll get more work from them and um if they see that I'm doing my

best to make them look better then it's GNA be hard to to kind of break that that partnership yeah we haven't really

talked about this yet in the conversation I don't know if it's part of it but you know for for the person

who's doing the work um as an employee just like you were talking about Norby

you know that we we gave that training to Norby as an investment to him but

also for Norby it makes him more marketable and gives him a leg up on

others um because he has that kind of thing and and so you know it it probably

would make I don't want to speak for Norby but probably he wants to stay with someone who's going to continue to

invest in him and make him feel valued and that they're growing him um as an

employee so you know from the employee side it's nice to work for a company

that wants to investing you and when you are working as a subcontractor there's really no incentive to to invest in

someone that way right um because they the incentive is investing in yourself

that's the incentive um and you know it's it's it is it is a a very nice

compliment to have an employee invest their their time and their funds and believe that you're going to succeed in

something um that they are um putting forth the capital for but it's another

thing if you're doing it for yourself if you're doing it for yourself it's there's a lot more reward in doing

it for yourself at the end that it is the the stress of making sure that you are passing and completing these courses

for someone who is who is forking the bill right like oh I don't want to fail they believe in me I don't want to fail

but when you go do it for yourself there's there's a different mindset um for yourself in I think it's important

in both cases no doubt um there's obviously the a huge benefit from the

employee standpoint like you said Dana that you know company's willing to

invest in me yeah I might put a little extra you know gumption on the on the

training course and making sure that they are um uh they they would definitely want to pass if you sent them

so but you know Elena says you know it's motivation and I I have to agree with

that the fact is is that uh employees do like you for if you can invest in their

their skill set and they should make more money as they get that put that skill set into action and that's

typically how it goes if you're a sub and you want to go get trained that's what go career promotes like go if

everybody was an employee go career wouldn't be around but um the fact is is that we want we want all installers

whether you're a sub or a uh employee installer to desire to get better at

your craft uh it just is a nice benefit when that's paid for you as an employee

versus P yourself as a sub um so staying

on this kind of uh trajectory when we're talking about hiring one of the things

that we see as flooring companies who hire Subs is when you have employees and

you have the control of those employees so when when we tell you a job site's

you know open from 7:30 to 330 the guys that have employee

installers or employee install that work for them the sub companies that do that

they're more likely to be on time that's what we've seen they're more likely to be there when you're SK when they're

scheduled to be there um when you are always pushing the buck down 1099 down

the line that's where guys don't show up on time there everybody's an independent

and there's no it's like chaos and uh I think that's one of the things

that kind of plagues the industry is you know the sub hireing sub hireing a sub a

sub and and I can guarantee you if your GC knows it if you if you are working on

projects with General Contractors they are not going to like that that scenario so do to to to do this and listen to

some of the uh information Dana's given about like it's not that hard and you got a lot of paperwork either way you go

to be legally um uh classifying that individual as either a 1099 or a a W2

employee yeah and I I think that oh I'm so sorry go ahead no you're go you're good go ahead um I think that when you

hire Subs of Subs you know and sometimes of Subs um you know you you really run

into the risk of not being able to control the quality on the project because you don't really know what those

people down the line what their skill level is um and you know we've already

kind of talked about it but schedules are kind of a huge thing in construction because you really can um lose money on

a project if you're not performing your job on time so if you don't have the

ability to manage that schedule because you're hiring subs or Subs of Subs of

Subs um it it really creates uh liability um you know the further up

that you go and then you know just to add on to what you said to the sub of Subs that's that's uh the dilution of

what you of expectations right the reason that that a company is hiring a sub is because of uh they already have a

level of expectation that's been set by that individual and now they are uh

subbing that out to another one now communication goes haywire and like Paul

had said um the lack of structure right as far as

uh start time end time um and and I will say that being an employee before we

started preferred flooring was probably one of the best things that could happen because it did instill that structure

now granted when I started in the industry and Daniel too is um we still had structure with the gentleman that we

were working with um however is like once you're an employee though and you're like part of a team everybody is

punching that clock at a specific time in the morning and then you know and and progressing through their day like that

schedule is so important especially when you're working on Commercial projects where there's deadlines and they're

expecting you at you know 6:30 a 7: am or if you have a three-hour window to get some grinding done before they start

a surgery an an operation on an IR you know that that's where all that comes in as soon as you falter on that because of

a sub or sub of a sub that's going to dwindle that work away there there's

there's a level of trust there um that is hard to hard to break I

think things that I have seen too and I I've seen it happen a number of times is

that um you know Elena made a point that we can hold them to a standard as well as accountable but what I've found is

that sometimes the sub of a sub or sub of a sub of a sub those lower people

don't always get P paid Pro l so you know you might be able to hold them

accountable by withholding funds from them but I mean that can also be a risk

as you know being hired on as a subcontractor that you know if you don't

have the knowledge of who you're working for hopefully you get paid for the work

that you do you know well well let's let's be honest about that a sub of a sub of a sub isn't going to take too

kindly to you withholding some funds from them because chances are they need that to get to the next week it's

already got diluted so much by the time get down there yeah there's there's the

filtration system is in full effect at that point yeah and and you know and

that's the whole thing like everyone listening who's afraid of uh classifying employees and payroll

and all that I was there with you guys I was I was horribly Afraid by the

percentages that I had to invest back into the employees and the and the company in order to create that

structure when we first started scared like how am I gonna do it the thing was

is that once we got started and we got into the Rhythm it got easier and it

actually makes you look at your business a lot differently and you got requested more you got more business because you

were able to satisfy your client better and then your margins Go 100% like all of that stuff kind of happens you know

we make our uh typically most times make much better margins on our employee

installers and it's it's because those projects are are they want that service

they those projects want that guy that's going to be there at 6:30 and if you ask

a Norby or one of the other guys that are on our cruise to be there at 6:30

they're there at 6:30 most times and um so the communication level all that

stuff improves um let alone the fact that you you um they they have ownership

of the company they feel like they're they're representing the company better for you when they're out in the field

and so our our we have some really good Subs so I'm not saying anything bad about the the our sub community at all

but you know the the hourly employees always have our shirts on they always have you know it's our vans and our

things that are the tools are uh you know first quality tools out on job

sites so all that stuff leads to efficiency and better branding for your company and so there you go that

branding that's what I was going to add on to that too is is what you were just saying was the exposure that it creates

as well instead of showing up to a project with a Leonard skinnard shirt on or a buttweiser shirt they're showing up

uniformed and you know you and they become a a familiar

a familiar logo a familiar shirt familiar van um in in your area um yeah

and that that does help bring business as well um there's no shame in in in

advertising for yourself yeah but that's that's the

whole point like Dan to Dana Point earlier the the subs you know you you

just don't know what Subs are going to be Subs are going to be Subs at the end of the night yeah

uh but you don't know what there if if a sub is using another

sub you just don't know what and then they're you they have guys that are helping them that they're treating as

1099 guys too you don't know what you're getting that's was I think Dan is

pointed earlier you just don't know what you're getting where with your employee installers you absolutely do or if

you're using a good sub who has employee installers we can feel confident that

you know homberto or one of the guys are going to put Junior on the job and so we

know junior or we know whoever the the the employee of that guy is so you know

to me it's it's a huge benefit to having employee installers uh certainly when

like I said when I first started out I was a subcontractor for flooring companies so I was uh picking up labor

contracts from you know flooring companies like my like my company steart Associates are like preferred flooring

and I'd build relationships with those guys but my guys that worked for me were all employee installers they all worked

for me by the by the hour and there's some other ways to do that Across the Nation I know some people you can still

do W2 uh employee installer by piece work uh that gets real complicated and

takes takes a little bit more effort but you can control your cost to a to an extent um that's not real prevalent

around uh the Midwest here in in Kansas uh but I've heard some of those

structures uh you know on the uh more in the Southeast uh of the country Elena

has a question I'm putting up on the screen right now why are we subbing to a sub to a sub to a sub in the first place

that's a great question that is that is go go ahead Paul I I'll add to whatever you got because I have my my own Theory

as well well most of the time it's it I think it it's because the sub that we

hire uh has a guy that's working for him and instead of bringing him on as a W2

he pays him cash or pays him by check and then sends him a 1099 at the end of

the year if I think it would happen a lot less if you know if the IRS is

successful and this is not fearmongering this is just a fact you know early last year they hired another 80 some thousand

uh agents to go after this 1099 1099 1099 situation is one of their goals and

I think if you're treating an individual as a 1099

sub and you're doing it the right way it's no harder to have a W2 but there's

easier ways to shortcut and make it simpler to just pay somebody a check

each week and then send them a 10 1099 at the end of the year I don't think any

of it's being done probably correctly and the reason it's being done in my opinion in the first place is just out

of fear and ease and that's one of the reasons we're having this podcast is to try to kind of break down some of those

Fair uh you know those Scary Walls and and let you know that if you do both the

right way one's not that m not in my opinion any more

complicated yeah and I was going to try to add on to it but you you started out exactly where I was going to go with it

so um and and you're right it's the like the fear that I had that we had

when we were started was are we going to be able to afford it that was the fear

is are we gonna be able to afford it um and we didn't start out I like when I

started out we started out with Quick Books right um like just a cheap probably bootleg version um before we

want uh to QuickBooks online but when we want to classify our employees as

employes emplo es we went through um um I don't know if I should say their name

or not but we went through an employee management company who did the classification everything for us to make

it easier and then we started looking like we I say we Daniel S saying why are

we paying them this much money to do this all I gotta do is go click click click now that they understand it um and

we ended up parting ways and taking care of it because we're smaller though very few people don't have a lot of a paper

trail we didn't have benefit packages at that point like it was still Bare Bones um but that's well you bring up a good

point get a get a accountant like you can get smaller accounting firms they're

all over um we started off with a really small accounting firm that I used to

just go every week I drop off a packet of stuff you know and they just take

care of it for me that's old school that's old school now we just email it these nowadays we just email it guys now

you can now you can email it I probably should have not done that I justed myself yeah I used to send faxes

and Courier by Pony Express no the the um but having an accountant

on your team uh also is not near as scary or as expensive and when you do

that you also kind of short change your tax year uh preparation stuff because

they if you if they have access to your QuickBooks then they're kind of always up Tod dat about what you're doing and

and they can ask questions and have you get them stuff inner term uh to stay up

to date and make your tax you know uh processing uh portion of your business

more effective um the other question it looks like is

shouldn't we not have control over who's on our job uh or who uh is being put on

your job the answer is yeah I mean ultimately you have the the authority on

who's going to be on your side or not the problem is is that if you hired a sub and you don't know who they're

sending because they they use other subs or other 1099 people and you just don't

know you know how it is when you know a company you get to know their employees

you kind of know who who each person is if it's a consistent um uh if they have

consistent employment and that's less likely when that sub is then subbing to

another sub or subbing to another sub so yeah I I think the answer to your

question is yeah you do have control I mean we've we've removed people off of job sites because they were not either

they show up in shorts or something just because they know how to install click

lvt they get sent to a commercial project and they're ins short and t-shirt and tennis shoes and we're like

you can't be on this job you know um but that's kind of that's a lot of the

controls that uh you know Dana spoke about and you you touched on as well Jose is having control over uh what they

wear and how they present your company and uh all that to me is leads to better

clients and more profitability and a better company overall so I'm gonna do

something I'm G I'm going to change the word up from having control to um having expectations right because I don't want

to keep saying that and scare be like oh they just want to control me it's not that is that setting a level of

expectation and professionalism is what it what it amounts to um instead of instead of the control factor

it's structured to help build and if I build properly you're going to benefit

as well so let's let's all go all in on on the structure that we're creating

yeah I think that controls thing uh is spoken of a lot because that's how the

IRS um identifies whether or not if they were to come in and audit your company

uh are you exuding control over those 1099 uh individuals if you're exuding

controls in the way of what they wear outside of safety yeah yeah what they

wear if you are trying to control what time they show up to a job site and not

just giving them a scope of work if you are dictating the pricing to them and

not allowing them to set their own price on a job and if you are um uh not allowing

them the well there's a lot of other factors but the other part of control is

not allowing them to have control over their profitability which is dictating

hey we pay this amount and they have no way to move that amount and um you know

as one of our sponsors go career does is allows any subcontractor to then

negotiate the price offering so if a company posts a work order and that work

order is um uh viewed by a subcontractor

that sub can negotiate the price or negotiate the schedule those are important things that that remove that

control so that's where control came from I do like your explanation of saying like it's expectations and you

can expect them to be on the job side at a certain time yeah you can expect them to do a certain uh um level of quality

we we can all expect quality but you can have other expectations surrounding quality on how they perform that work

meaning um with Subs you're not always allowed to even tell them the exact technique you want them to use so anyway

that go ahead Dana I think the only other thing I'd like to point out about you know being in control of who we put

on our job is that we for the company that I work for at Stuart and Associates

we don't have enough employee installers to do all of the work that we have so

that's one reason and it also allows to be in markets that we don't have

employee installers or that it would be more complex to have an employee

installer um where we can hire a um a sub and we are already a

subcontractor to help get that job done so that would be just another reason why

I guess that you would sub work out yeah yeah you took a unique approach to that

I wasn't sure what uh the qu Elena's question was surrounding if that was from us subbing or if that was uh uh the

sub subbing again but that's a good point yeah you get workload and we're trying to um have a good we we don't

have enough employee installers as you said to do all of our work and um and

then you got work outside the marketplace so yeah that all makes sense all right well we're coming up on 45

minutes I want to uh Jing guys a quick uh second to maybe uh any closing

statements I want to thank you Dana for joining us today really appreciate your insights and uh yeah we get to the part

where where benefits come into play right like as an employee that you can you can find benefit packages and that's

a um that was one thing that when I went from working as a sub to a sub and

getting the employee benefit package that was huge um at the time and and well worth the transition um and then I

didn't have to worry about tracking anything and paying taxes and all it was all taken care of that is

a a relief um as far as the closing thoughts I do want to say like you're

just a small company and you get to plan and staying labor only and you do have buddies that you work with but they get

work from you um that's where and I talked to Dana about this too that's where the benefit to the to go Carrera

comes in right now all of a sudden it's just like push of a button boom boom boom all the documents got to be

uploaded every somebody else is taking care of that for you and it just expedites the the payment process to to

the the subs that are working with you you um and man that is the Easy Button

you guys that is the Easy Button I'm not going to lie why people in our area aren't catching on to that yet

ah I know will I know it will well I want to thank everybody my

only closing statement would be something that you said earlier Jose is that uh starting out as a employee

really set good precedence for you uh we've said this a hundred times on this podcast if we've said it once is if

you're a younger newer uh person to the flooring industry get a job as an

employee for a while it'll help you set those good work habits it'll help you set good um uh practicing good

techniques if you're working with a good company and um I would implore you to

start your career out as an employee installer and then if you gain that business Acumen throughout watching this

podcast I know you are then then you can start to uh set up a company that would

be a really good subcontractor to the world but start out as an employee that's how I started that's how I grew

my company that's how Jose and Daniel both did the did uh preferred flooring

and I think it's a good way to go so with that I'm GNA sign us off guys thank you so much Dana really appreciate your

insights and Jose thank you as always sir it's a pleasure so with that we're going to break the huddle

thank you everyone