Hiring and owner-time sessions

Who this session is for

This session is for owners who still answer the first call of the morning, write every quote, chase every invoice and run the occasional service call themselves. It's particularly useful at two stages: around three to six technicians, when the owner becomes the bottleneck, and when a company has a good manager in mind but no clear plan for what they'd own.

The one-week time audit

Before the session, Ali asks you to log your working week in half-hour blocks, using four labels:

• Tools: hands-on work a technician could do
• Admin: dispatch, invoicing, ordering, chasing payments
• Selling: quotes, replacement consults, follow-ups
• Owner work: pricing, hiring, planning, key customer and supplier relationships

The pattern is usually obvious once it's on paper. An owner working 62 hours who spends 22 on admin and 14 on tools has about 36 hours a week that someone else could do. The question is which block to move first. The owner-time audit guide gives you the log sheet and the scoring method.

Costing the first hire

Ali then works out what the hire costs and what it should return. A simple example:

• Office coordinator at about $24 an hour, 40 hours a week, plus roughly 20% for payroll costs: about $60,000 a year
• Hours it frees from the owner: about 20 a week
• If those 20 hours go into replacement quotes, where the owner closes better than anyone, and that adds just one $9,000 job a month at a 35% gross margin, it returns about $37,800 a year in gross margin
• That covers more than half the cost on its own; faster invoicing, fewer missed calls and a second extra job some months are what close the gap

Your numbers will differ, and the session uses them, not these. Hourly rates vary by province and city, so Ali will tell you to check current local postings before you set a pay range.

What's included

• review of your one-week time log
• a recommended first hire, with the reasoning
• a cost and payback estimate built from your figures
• a list of tasks the new person owns from day one, and what stays with you
• a 90-day handover plan, with weekly check-ins you run yourself
• if useful, a short plan for the second hire, so the first one isn't a dead end

Timeline and how results are measured

The time log takes a week. The handover plan runs about 90 days after the person starts. Measure two things: the owner's hours in each category, logged again for one week at day 30 and day 90, and the business result you expected from the freed time, such as quotes sent or calls answered. If your admin hours haven't dropped by day 30, the handover isn't happening, and that's a conversation to have early.

Mistakes Ali sees most often

1. Hiring a person instead of a role. Decide the tasks and the 90-day goal first, then look for the person.
2. Keeping the old job anyway. Owners often hire a coordinator and then check every dispatch. Agree what you'll stop touching.
3. No written process. Even a one-page checklist for dispatch or invoicing halves the training time.
4. Hiring in the middle of peak season. If you can, hire a few weeks before the rush so training doesn't happen during it.
5. Spending the freed hours on the tools. The point is to move the owner up, into pricing, selling and planning.

What comes next

Once the owner's week is under control, owners often want to talk about the long term, which is the exit-thinking session. To compare session topics, go back to all sessions, or see how they're quoted on pricing. Then call, text or email Ali with your rough weekly hours and what fills them.