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Subcontractor bill format for Customer Support

hey guys in this video I'm going to tell you how to run a home service business remotely using subcontractors so this video is going to cover everything having to do with Outsourcing work to subcontractors for a home service business I'll cover everything from how to find subcontractors how to onboard them and then how to manage them on a day-to-day basis I do this in the junk removal space we operate in over 40 cities Nationwide and I run it all remotely using subcontractors in all those cities I'll also answer a lot of your frequently asked questions at the end things that maybe arise things that could go wrong so first off how does a business with subcontractors work so you have a home service business and rather than using employees and having all of your own equipment and Facilities you use subcontractors who are already in the field already have their own equipment you send them jobs that they go complete for you now there are a ton of examples of people doing this successfully from a guy doing it in landscaping and tree services home cleaning gutter cleaning mobile car detailing window cleaning the list goes on and on hopefully you can figure out pricing upfront ahead of time so you can take payments and booking online on your website and then that you can send the jobs out to your contractors essentially making an e-commerce store in the home service business making it extremely easy for your customers to book with you with upfront prices and a day that they can pick and schedule online now first before we start I wanted to note that contractors are a part of your team this is not a business where you're looking to cut corners and have subpar labor subpar work you can build an actual brand and provide actual quality service using subcontractors you just have to go about it the right way I've had many of the same contractors with me on my my team for years and that's because I look at our partnership as a long-term thing I always air on the side of giving them benefit of the doubt never trying to nickel and dime them I always pay them really well and we have a relationship built on trust and respect so I've had jobs where subcontractors went to grab a couch and the couch was gone and I still paid them full price for that pickup anyways so I'm not trying to make money on a single job I'm trying to build up locations with solid contractors who I can trust and build a brand with I have even helped some of my contract s with SEO marketing advice to help them build their own businesses so you look at your contractors as team members allies and remember your business cannot work and grow without them so let's jump in so first off how do you find contractors I'll walk you through a few different ways of finding contractors that include everything from some simple free ways to find your first contractor all the way up to paid scalable ways of finding lots of contractors once you're starting to grow and expand into new areas and new markets now there are a bunch of places you can find contractors for your business and each one has a slightly different approach so I went through essentially three different levels of finding contractors I'll explain each one of those levels and then after you understand how to find contractors I'll explain how to bet them how to get them set up in your system and how to send them jobs and manage them on the day-to-day so first up level one is the easiest method of finding contractors and it's a great way to maybe find your first local contractor now it may seem simple but just ask around to friends family Neighbors on your local Facebook group Next Door Group just ask if anyone so if you're in a cleaning business just ask your friends or family hey do you know of any good cleaners the referral from a friend or family or local Community page lets you know that these people likely already do good work now when you find these referrals stay away from recommendations of any big major businesses look for small self-owned operations these people likely aren't SEO or marketing experts and are looking for more work they are the ones who maybe don't charge as much and would really appreciate you sending jobs their way so level two if you've exhausted out in-person referral for friends family neighbors the next place to look and find contractors is on your local internet listing so this is places like next door Thumbtack Craigslist care.com ang.com even just Google business listings doing a search on Google and seeing Which business listings pop up so search through the list whatever platform you're on and pass over the big companies with a ton of reviews and go down to the ones who are less visible who are likely looking for more business these people are going to appreciate you reaching out to them and if they're on a place like Thumbtack they're paying for leads on there anyways so a lot of them are definitely looking for more business and you can reach out to them I'll show you exactly how to reach out to them I'm going to do one more level of finding contractors and then I'll tell you what to say to them once you find someone who's promising so then level three the next level is posting your jobs on ind.com looking for contractors now this is more sustainable it puts you in the driver's seat actively searching for contractors this is what I do with my junk removal business we have over 5,000 contractors in our database so if you're expanding quickly and need lots of workers you can put posts on indeed and you'll get quite a few people contact contacting you about those jobs you want to be aware that you won't have all the social proof that you have in places like thumb Tac or going off a referral from a friend so interviews and trial jobs are essential here to make sure they do good work and are up to your standards but you will still find people who slip through the cracks end up not working out you're playing a long-term game here with indeed and a numbers game here with indeed So eventually you'll find awesome workers that will become your star contractors in certain locations you just have to sort through a lot of them to find those people so now that you know where to look for contractors what happens when you find someone who's promising what do you do how do you reach out to them so you find a contractor who looks promising you want to reach out to them here's what you do message them or call them directly say something along the lines of hey we're a junk removal hauler in the area we're expanding quickly and we're looking for a few extra drivers to take on some jobs for us I saw your Thumbtack listing or I heard about you from a friend and just wanted to reach out and see if you're able or looking to take on any extra jobs for us just a heads up some people may be rude skeptical think you're trying to scam them in the beginning so I always try to include something like hey I'm the owner here's our website if you want to check it out feel free to email me or call me directly if you have any questions just be real and at a personalized touch whenever possible to let them know that you actually looked at them specifically you're not just sending out a generic email to a ton of people that you actually look at them specifically and you're serious about working with them maybe you can address something that's in their listing or something about their business that stood out they'll probably ask you about pricing right away so when it comes to how much you pay them I put like to put my prices close to to the big guys in the industry and pay my contractors 50% of that so if it's a $300 job I'll pay them 150 I take 150 now the amount you pay your contractors will vary by industry but for junk removal I like to shoot for 50% profit margins on each job you'll find that many small contractors have prices that are generally around 50% cheaper than the major companies anyways but I'm always upfront with the contractors about the price and I always air on the side of making everyone happy making them feel appreciated as I said this has led me to have many contractors on my team for over 5 years the fact that I've created a brand and have provided convenience by allowing the customers to book online with an upfront price and choose their day of service that they can easily book and schedule online and pay for all upfront makes my website very very competitive and appealing you don't want to be fighting for the lowest price those are generally the pickiest customers anyways and it ends up being erased to the bottom so 50% is what you want to shoot for so if it's a $300 job you pay out your contractor $150 you take $150 and you want to your prices not at the bottom up close to the big names in the industry or right under those and that'll generally leave you plenty of margin to be able to pay out contractors so once you find a contractor who's interested in the pricing structure fits and works for both of you I like to hop on a call with them um ask them a few simple questions so like how long have you been in the industry what areas do you cover how many jobs can you take on also be sure to encourage them to ask you questions about how the process works how they'll get paid which we will cover later in the video you want everything out in the open upfront so nothing comes out later that's a deal breaker you can tell a lot from this simple call so how do they respond are they excited to work with you are they motivated to take on extra work if everything feels good if your interview call goes well and you want to do a simple background check and there's a lot of places online that can you can do this on and then send them on a trial run so I always like to pay them for this trial run if it's a local contractor you can send them to a friend or a family member's house and see how they do if it's another territory where you don't know anybody you don't have any friends or family you can reach out to an existing customer customer or someone who books that you have a new worker doing some training and you'd offer them either a free or 50% discount on cleaning or hauling in exchange for their feedback on how that worker does this money spent upfront is going to help you weed out poor quality contractors and make sure you have people who are doing good work now we will cover how to deal with preventing contractors from stealing your customers later in this video but during this trial run you can also have the customer who's doing the review for you giving you the feedback you can have them ask the contractor how can book another job and see how the contractor responds do they cut you out or do they send the customer back to you to book anyone who tries to cut you out is probably not a good long-term Fed so if you found a contractor that has passed all the tests you're going to want to send them over a contract now this contract doesn't have to be anything crazy and it can evolve over time I've got a sample contract Down Below in the description that you can download and just kind of change out specific details on the type of business that you run and your pricing structure but this will cover the majority of things that you want to have in place with a contractor a few things I like to have in the contract are things like how your business operates the standards you expect from your workers and something to scare them away from trying to steal your clients for themselves saying that you'll take legal action if they should do anything like that try to cut you out and steal your clients now most good contractors won't want to steal One customer from you and risk all the rest of the jobs you're sending their way so it may happen on a rare occasion but as long as your business is growing and it's not a companywide problem I don't give it much attention it hasn't been a major issue in my business business again I'm focusing on the big picture and not sweating all the small stuff in the beginning this contract can and will expand over time but this is a good thing to just have in place in the beginning and don't sweat it too much in the beginning just get started start getting jobs and that contract can evolve over time so when you on board a contractor after you give them the contract you just want to get a W9 from them so that you can send them $199 for taxes whether they have an LLC or not is on them so once you fully onboard the contractor you can start sending them jobs but you get them set up in your system I use Zen Booker to send jobs out to contractors there's a lot of other options out there house call Pro jobber I just like the way Zen Booker functions but there are a lot of options out there if you do want to sign up for Zen Booker there's a 30-day free trial I am an affiliate of them now I've used them for years so that's not why I recommend them but I've just been sending so many people to them that I'm I'm an affiliate but I love Zen Booker if you're looking for something to manage your service business remotely zooker is great but there's are a lot of options out there whichever you choose a lot of them are going to function similarly so those softwares will have a really easy process to have you set up any contractors that you find in the system so that they can be sent jobs so now you have your contractors onboarded now I'm going to walk you through a standard job and how the day-to-day operations and management work with contractors when everything goes well and then I'll talk about what can go wrong and answer a lot of the frequently asked questions you guys have about how to deal with problems that occur so when everything goes well a booking comes in on our website or they call in and we book through the same software the customer is booked and paid online with an upfront price we accept the payment through our website the payment is authorized but isn't charged until the job is complete so that job after it's booked shows up on the back end of our software as I said we use Zen Booker a lot of other options out there but you'll see all the customer details on the back end we have set Service locations for all of our subcontractors so then when a job comes in we can either manually offer the jobs to a contractors in that area or it can automatically send out the jobs to contractors and Zen Booker lets you prioritize certain contractors over others so contractors that closer to the job or if you like one contractor maybe does better work than others you can prioritize that contractor and see if they accept it if they don't then someone it can be sent to the next contractor the contractors will get a notification on their phone via text or email which they can choose how they want to be notified whichever they prefer and they can accept the job now only certain details that you select can be shown to the contractors so before they accept the job they're not going to see the phone number and the address and the name of the customer so they just see the town the job's in and maybe just the details of the job so you can fully customize the details that your subcontractors see now leading up to the job and even after the job the contractor and the customers are all communicating with one Central person at our business who coordinates the driver's arrival questions customer questions appointment changes uh refunds cancellations anything like that this person's only job is coordinating the drivers and the customers and making sure all the logistics of the pickups or all the logistics of the cleanings go smoothly in the beginning that person can also be answering phones as well and this might be in the beginning I actually recommend that this is you in the beginning when you start so that you can learn all the ins and the outs of the business before you pass it off to somebody else on the day of the job the subcontractor can use the app well zoker has a branded app for our company but they can use the software and most of the softwares will let them with a single click press a button that says they're on their way the customer will be notified that they're on their way to the job so the contractor arrives does the job specified and then leaves if there are any unforeseen issues or changes either the contractor or the customer will call our coordinator or dispatch as we call them and they can deal with price changes refunds cancellations rescheduling complaints anything like that will go through that single dispatcher they've been coordinating and talking with the driver leading up to the job they've been talking to the customer leading up to the job so they have all the information on what's been going on and they can resolve those issues I will talk about a little bit later in the video how I deal with complaints and if things go wrong but upon leaving the contractor will Mark the job as complete the admin team can see the completed status and then charge the card upon marking it complete an email will also automatically be sent to the customer asking them about their experience and offering them to leave to leave a Google review a large percentage of customers will fill out this quick one question survey and it's a great way to get feedback on how that subcontractor is performing they can leave a one to a five-star review and you will quickly see which subcontractors are doing well and which are not performing so well so this feedback is a great way to kind of have a your hand on the pulse of how the jobs are going since you're not there so that's a perfect situation but what about all the other details here are the answers to the most common questions I get about contractors and what can go wrong so one of the biggest questions I get is how do you stop contractors from stealing your customers I've had many contractors with me for years and we have a great relationship because I prioritize them now I've never tried to skimp them or rip them off I see our relationship as a long-term thing so the good contractors who you keep are smart enough to understand that you are sending them lots of free work in general they don't want to steal one single customer and risk losing all the future jobs you send their way also this is what test jobs are for have the person who does the test job the reviewer ask them how your potential subcontractor can book another job with them if that subcontractor doesn't send the customer back to you to book and tries to cut you out and have them book directly with them that isn't going to be a good fit now if it's in a city where you don't know anybody you can just give an existing customer or client a free or a discounted job in exchange for their uh secret shopper style review of your team but what if someone does steal your customers from you and you find out what do you do just fire them and move on the same thing could happen with employees of a company as well employees take jobs on the side all the time it isn't just contractors but you don't want to spend too much time stewing over someone stealing one client from you just fire them and move on and that's what the trial jobs are for in the beginning to vet contractors and hopefully find the ones who are going to work out when they show up to a job what should they be wearing what if they're not wearing your gear most Home Service professionals who show up at your house or my house say a plumber lawn care worker gutter cleaner don't have their own branded cloes they're just wearing regular clothes and this is what you want your subcontractors to do is just wear regular everyday clothes and come in a regular everyday truck so I do send some of my junk removal team members t-shirt and a hat that they can wear this is usually people who have been with me for a while established contractors who I'm sending a lot of jobs too I'll send them something easy to put on for my jobs like a t-shirt or a hat and many of the ones who do a lot of jobs for me are happy to wear that branded gear makes them feel like more a part of the team but if they do have a huge branded truck insist on bringing their branded gear to your jobs then maybe you just don't hire that person anyways how much do contractors get paid and how do you pay them out so in general we pay contractors 50% of the job and we take 50% as I said before so if it's a $200 job pay the contractors 100 we'll take a 100 now this can vary slightly depending on the job and the location but this is a good number to shoot for and so we send our contractors payments in a variety of different ways today we mainly send them payment through Gusto which gets paid out every few days and it automatically does the onboarding the 1099s when I started out I just paid our contractors manually with things like venmo and zel and then just manually did 1099 for taxes which is definitely a great way to start the most important thing is just do you have quality contractors who are out there doing the work you can get the systems in place later but you can do it manually at the beginning just make sure you get a W9 at the beginning when you onboard them for taxes and you send them $199 at the end of the year for how much you actually sent them so what happens if the contractor doesn't show up what if the customer is mad and wants a refund what if they don't do good work this is the same thing as employees this is a long-term business for me I want people to be happy so I'll happily lose money on a job to keep people happy when anything goes wrong I'm quick to apologize take blame if it's our fault and refund the customer or make it right occasionally something will happen where a contractor will fall off the map and leave you hanging mostly this will happen with like a new contractor which is why vetting them is so important but people actually tend to be way more understanding when you're just upfront and honest about what happens so saying something like hey we have a new worker we just h D and it looks like he left us hanging this isn't typical of our company I'm so sorry I can either fully refund you right now or send someone else out there as soon as possible we have multiple contractors in each area so if one falls through we generally have a backup that we can send out but if you're just upfront and honest and try to make things right most people will be understanding and that's the same with really any business out there whether it's employees or contractors so how does insurance work what if the contractors break something so insurance is actually pretty simple so you'll get for yourself you'll get general liability insurance there's some really simple companies out there like next insurance I'm not an affiliate of them I just think they're really easy to use uh you just have to make sure that you select that you don't have any employees and you don't have any trucks because the subcontractors are not employees and they're using their own trucks so each of your contractors should have their own insurance and anything that happens on a job will default to their insurance your liability insurance is just to cover you for any major unforeseen issues that occur but anything that happens on the job is going to default to your subcontractor Insurance do contractors need to be licensed while I like my contractors all to at least have an LLC they don't have to they can operate and do jobs independently as themselves for example this is true with Uber Uber drivers are subcontractors and most Uber drivers do not have an LLC now obviously if your business or trade requires other specific licenses your contractor should have those but they don't need to have an LLC so when you onboard them you just need to get a W9 from them like I said before and send them a $199 for taxes whether they're an LLC or not is on them so I hope that was helpful and answered a lot of the questions you guys had about operating a service business remotely with contractors let me know if there's any other questions you have that you want to see in another video or any videos you want to see regarding this remote Home Service model that you'd like me to make I really appreciate you guys watching I hope you go out there and take some action like And subscribe if you haven't already and we'll see you in the next one