The worst time you can hire a sub is when you need one. Hey, welcome back to the show. On this episode, we're going to be talking about all things subcontractors. So even if you're not a general contractor, you're a specialty, there may be a time where you need to use a subcontractor for parts of the project. And so we're going to cover on this episode, like when you should use subcontractors, how to find them, how to vet them. and then also what you need from them and what they need from you. So let's dig right into this. So when should you use a subcontractor? Even if you're a specialty contractor, let's say you are an electrician and that's all you do. Great. You're not going to need a sub very often, but what if you come across a project where, you know, you got to bust out some concrete because of, for whatever reason, you may need to have a concrete sub. Right. And you may need to have somebody, even if you're like, Oh, customer, you know, I don't do that part. You're going to have to find somebody, you know, to do the concrete part of it. Wouldn't it be better for you to have a recommendation, even if you're not going to run it through your business and carry the liability and mark it up and all that stuff. Wouldn't it be better to have a relationship with someone that you guys know how to work together with that you could refer to the client? I mean, the answer for me is yes. Right now I would personally like to do. bring it to, you know, run it through my business, have a little bit of markup on there to make some money, but also so that I can control the process. Because let's be honest here, nobody does things the same way. Some people are super flaky. Other people, you know, they just... You don't even know how they have a license. I mean, it's just, it's all over the board, right? Everyone struggles with this problem. And the reason I'm recording this podcast is because yesterday on the profit accelerator, we had a question came about subs. And then even today, the guys in the profit club are talking about subs. And one of my guys had to fire their tile sub because, you know, they're, they're doing a crappy job and it's really hurting their reputation as well as hurting the project. because now things got to be redone. And so it is a problem in the industry. You know, I've had my fair share of bad subs. And so we're going to cover that, you know, that's what we're talking about. And, you know, when you use a sub, even if you're a specialty, the example that I just gave, it's better to control that. It's better to have relationships with that person because you don't know what they're going to do, what they're not going to do. If you are like a general contractor and you use 100% subs, obviously this applies to you, but maybe you're like a remodeler or something and you only sub out some things. When I did remodeling, I would sub out the electrical, I would sub out the plumbing, and usually I would sub out the painting depending on the scope, the size. Sometimes I would sub out the drywall. hanging and finishing. So it just kind of depends, but having those people in my back pocket and being able to use them when needed made my life much easier. There's reasons, there's lots of reasons why you might want to use a sub. Now, one of those reasons is to be really to actually be more efficient in your business, in your, in your projects. We, we would do a lot of things ourselves and, you know, sometimes. we would do things that we weren't licensed to do. And I don't mean crazy things. I mean, pretty, very basic, simple things, but technically our license didn't allow it to happen right now in Indiana and in my city, like it's one of the most, you know, restricted and craziest laws and, you know, restrictions on what you have to have. It's absolutely insane what you have to have. So for example, plumbing, I'm talking about light plumbing, you know what I mean? Like setting a toilet, like, Let's be honest. It's not that difficult to set a toilet. It really isn't. Can you mess it up? Sure. But is it difficult? No. And so many times, you know, if we're doing like a partial project or maybe we're doing a flooring, like all we were doing as part of a project was replacing a floor in a bathroom or something. And we need to yank the toilet to lay the floor. Like I wouldn't call a plumber to do that. We would just do it ourselves. Right. And so those things kind of lend into doing some of that work yourself. Not saying it's right. Not saying you should do it. But let's be honest, we've all done some of those things. I've done plenty of jobs. I didn't pull permits on. Doesn't mean I did crappy work. It just means I didn't pull permits. Right. Again, we've done some of these things. And what I learned on one particular job, we were doing a basement remodel and there were just some minor plumbing things that came up again, nothing major, minor stuff. Like we're not running drain lines. We're not running supply lines and things like that. But maybe we just got to extend. a line, like extend the supply line, you know, two inches. And we just got to put a coupling on there and extend it little kind of like little things like that. We're doing this basement. We had a few different plumbing issues. And after that job was over and I've talked about this before,25 trips to the store. And this was like, you know, one hour round way, a round trip to the store was one hour,25 trips,25 hours wasted. And I look at the receipts and at least a third of them were getting plumbing things. Because what would happen is, oh, we just need to have a, you know, a coupler. That's it. We go to the store, we get a coupler, we come back, we try to put it on and realize like, oh, that's not all we need. We need something else because we're not a plumber. And so we don't have all the plumbing materials that we need. And so then we got to go back to the store, you know, go back to the store, sometimes two or three times in one day to get one, you know, one fitting or one thing. And after that, I was like, this is stupid. We're not going to do any plumbing whatsoever. From now on, we're just going to sub it out. And then once I found the plumber, that's what I did. And it made my life easier. Right. And so like, that's one reason is to be more efficient in what you do. Sometimes we think that the more we do on a project, the more revenue we're going to keep in house. Therefore we're going to make more money. But in reality, if you're not good at it, it's actually costing you money. It's actually costing you money. So my plumber, even though he caught, you know, on an hourly basis, he was three times per hour. What I was paying my employees from an efficiency standpoint, he was way faster and way better. And so like, even though he was costing me more money, it was actually saving me more money in the long run. So from an efficiency standpoint, that's one reason you would sub out. And this has nothing to do with like, you know, just the mechanicals, just plumbing, electrical, heating and air. That's what you got to sub out. It could be anything. It could be stuff that you do. You know, maybe you're a carpenter by trade. That doesn't mean you can't sub out carpentry work, right? So like from an efficiency standpoint, if it makes sense, have someone, a subcontractor that can do that stuff. you know, specialty, like one of my clients, Chris, that was on the episode a few weeks ago, he's an electrician. He knows how to do electrical work. And when he came in and he was out there doing electrical work, I was like, Chris, you can't, you can't do both. Like you can't be the electrician and try to run your business. And so he found electrical companies that he could sub to, right? It doesn't mean that he never, ever, ever does stuff. If all we're doing is like, you know, if he's swapping out a, you know, a light fixture, a light switch, I mean, doesn't mean he can't do that. But from a project management, a project organizing perspective, he's not the electrician on the job. He's not saying, okay, I will do the electrical on this job. He's looking for subcontractors that can do that, right? And then if he has to fill in here and there, that's okay. But he's not the one doing it, even though he's able to do that, even though he's licensed to do it. I think he's licensed. I could be wrong. But anyways, he's an electrician by trade. So even if you are a specialty, Doesn't mean you can't use someone else because again, for most owners, we're not trying to be on the tools. We're trying to get off the tools. So you may, you know, and you may not be able to find an employee who can do that. And maybe you don't need, maybe as an electrician, you're only doing four jobs a month and it's only, you know, five days a month worth of electrical work. Well, you don't need an in-house electrician to do that. And you don't need to be the one doing it because that's five less days a month that you can work on your business. And so that's when you might want to use a specialty or, you know, sub out that specialty. Another reason why you might want to use a sub is simply for scaling. If you're trying to scale your business, going the true GC route or you're a hundred percent subs, that's going to be easier to do. If you're a roofing contractor and you want to build sales teams, I know that's where all the rave is. What's the word? The rave, I guess, where everybody wants to go build sales teams and then they sub out all of the work, right? You can do that if you're trying to scale and use a sub-only model or even as an augment. You may have two or three in-house crews, but you still want to do more. Well, then you can augment that with subs. One of my good friends has a riffing company and he has like two in-house crews. But then he subs out, you know, he has three or four sub crews. So he puts his in-house crews on the real tricky, hard stuff and the regular cookie cutter stuff he throws to his subs, right? And that way he can control quality and offer multiple solutions for his clients. So that's another reason as far as scaling. So let's talk about how you find them because this is usually the most elusive part of finding subs. And more importantly, when they screw up, like, cause when they screw up, it screws you up. Right. And then you have to deal with that. So here's some ways you can find subs. The first and easiest is to ask other contractors. If you have friends that are general contractors, especially like home builders. And this is where I found my plumber. I called my buddy, Chris, who owns the roofing company. He also builds spec homes. I said, Chris, who do you use for plumbing? He says, I use this guy. I said, great. So I called him, built a relationship, started using them. He was my plumber. So other GCs who are using them and have a long history with them is probably going to be a good bet because I can say, oh, what do you like about him? What's he suck at? What's the thing you wish he could fix? Like I can ask those questions and he could tell me like, oh, he does great work. But just so you know, like he's not going to call you back for two days. It doesn't matter. You won't have any problems. The work could be spotless, but he's just, you know, he won't call you back for two days if you call him. Okay, now I know, like, am I willing to deal with that or no, right? But I can get that information from other GCs. Vendors, vendors are a good place. Whenever I started subbing out tile work, because I did most of the tile myself, but once I started subbing out the tile work and I was looking for tile subs, I went to my vendor, our local tile supplier, and I said, hey, who are some tile subs that you can recommend? They had a sheet. He whips out a sheet out of the file folder and says, here, here's a list of like 20 names of tile subs that, you know, we recommend. So that's a good source, but you go one step further. You're like, okay, well, which ones would you hire for your job, for your house? Well, I would, you know, I would probably hire these two guys. I'd call these two guys first. Because they deal with these people behind the scenes. And so they're seeing the raw side of the contractor, subcontractor, not the front-facing, exaggerated lying side of the contractor to your face. And so they know if that sub is always coming back and having to get more material because things are broken or they have to redo stuff or they missed things in their estimate, they see that. they can see that this sub is not organized. They can see that this sub makes mistakes. They get the complaints from customers potentially that are using those subs because they would also sell to the public. And so if the public came in and said, hey, we want to retile our floor, who's in tile subs? They give them that same list. And if that sub doesn't do well, that person's going to go back to the vendor and be like, hey, this sub you gave me sucks. I would probably take them off the list, right? They're going to get some of that feedback. So vendors can be a really good source for finding subs as well as vetting them. Because again, they're going to see the raw side when they come in and they complain about the GC they're working for. If they come in and complain about customers all the time, they're always complaining. That may not be somebody you want to work with, right? And so they're going to see that side of them. So vendors is a good source. Your network, just your network. You can, let's say I'm looking for an electrician. I can post on my Facebook page. Hey, I'm looking for a good electrical contractor that can help us with our projects. Who is one that you've used in the past and recommend? And if I get three or four recommendations, great. If I see a pattern where I get 15,20 recommendations and there's one company that's recommended four or five times, that's a pretty good indicator that they might be a good source. Right. And so I can call them, reach out to them, see if they're taking on any more subcontractor, you know, subcontract work or not. I called lots of plumbers when I was looking that, you know, were recommended by someone else and I call them up and they're like, well, I mean, we're, we're pretty busy. You know what I mean? We can, I'll take a look at what you got, but I can't guarantee you that we're going to get to anytime soon. Well, that's not who I'm looking for. I'm looking for somebody who wants our work. Right. So you can check that whenever you talk to them. And also, like I said, through. your network, and people that recommend you. It's really not that hard to find subcontractors. The hard part is vetting them. That is the hard part. And so let's talk about vetting them. The absolute best thing you can do for quality is visiting their job sites. Now, that's not always possible. You can't always visit, you know, if someone's doing tile work for another GC, that GC may not want you on their job site looking at that tile work. If they're working for a retail for a customer, the customer may not want you just stopping by, you know, a random person stopping by and checking that out. So it can be a little bit more challenging, you know, for seeing their work in person. But if you can, that's going to be your best bet. That's going to be what you start with. The next best thing is going to be asking for pictures, but not just finished pictures. Work in progress pictures. Now, they may not have this because not everybody does work in progress. But what I want to see is the before, the during, and the after. Why? Because anybody can go online and steal pictures and say it's their work. Anybody. If they have work in progress pics, there's a pretty good chance that they're doing the work. Right? I mean, I guess. potentially they can go on a job site or whatever, somehow come across pictures. I don't know, but if they have work in progress picks, then that's usually a good indicator that they're doing this work. And with a picture, yeah, you're not going to see all the detail, but what you can definitely see is when stuff looks jacked up. You can tell when stuff looks jacked up. I've seen contractors post Facebook ads of like a bathroom remodel and, you know, tile, the tile in the shower that they did. And On the Facebook ad picture itself, I can see, you know, uneven grout lines. I can see problems in the tile. Now I have a trained eye. The average person just sees, Ooh, pretty picture. And they don't see that, but I can see it. You know what I mean? I can see that. And so like, you have to be able to look at that. And so if you have pictures, you'll be able to tell like, okay, this looks like crap. You know what I mean? Now they have closeups of like really, you know, really intricate, you know, joints or mosaics or whatever, where you have really tough cuts and really hard angles and transitions and stuff like that. You can see some of that in a picture, right? That'll come through like the, it basically shows what they're capable of. If all I see, if I say, Hey, send me over some pictures and you know, do you do showers too? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We do showers. Great. Can you send me over some pictures? And I always send over is five finished pictures of floors. and no showers, that's not good enough. I'm like, hey, I want to see some showers. Oh, I don't have any pics of showers. Red flag, right? I mean, again, it doesn't mean that they can't do it. It just means that that's not what most people do. Most people are proud of their work and they take pictures, if not just to show their wife or spouse, you know, look what I did, right? Or even for their own photo album so they can go back and look at how awesome they are. Like most people. are going to take pictures of their work. So when you don't have pictures, at least a few, that's usually an indicator that they haven't actually done what they say they can do, right? They may just have only done tile floors and they think because they've done tile that they're capable of doing showers, but that's not the same as actually doing showers. Make sense? So we got to check that. Look for red flags in communication because if they don't communicate well with you, then they're probably not going to communicate well with the customer and they're not going to communicate well with you during the project. So, you know, how we do anything is how we do everything is the same. And so like, if they're like, Oh, well, when we talk to the customer, I'll make sure that, you know, we, I communicate well, but with you, I, you know, I just kind of keep it brief. That's not good enough. Like, cause you're going to default to your, your highest level of training. So if you're only as good as, you know, what you normally act at, and then you think you're going to raise the bar whenever you're talking to a customer, that's usually not good enough. It just usually doesn't work. So you have to really, you know, check for communication, red flags. Also do just do some research, like literally go online and research the company and then behind it, put scam or reviews. If you go on Google and you search for, you know, Brad's tile, my town. reviews, it's going to pull up anything that has reviews about that company. If there's any kind of scams, you can check for a lawsuit, right? Brad's tile town lawsuit. You can go and check the, your local records, your court records and see if there's been any lawsuits filed against that company. That's all public knowledge. So like literally just a little bit of research on your own, some due diligence, you can find out a lot of this information. Most of the time we don't do it because we're lazy. And we're lazy because we're too busy. Like, I don't have time for that. I just got to find a sub. The worst time you can hire a sub is when you need one. Let me say that again. The worst time you can hire a sub is when you need one because you're looking to solve a problem and that's a solution. And so you see it as a way out of this problem, not as this is a long-term relationship that I want to build with this person and then, you know, do a lot of projects together. Those are the ones where you get in trouble and then you have a bad taste and then the job's over and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, and then you got to go back and fix it and all that crap. So try to find your subs now when you don't need them than when you do need them. Also, I like to have two or three subs of the same trade in my pocket, my back pocket. Now I may only use one of them 99% of the time, but having the other two as backups. that I vetted can be helpful in times whenever I need that. Because what happens if you get really busy and you got like four projects going at once and you know, you got to have a plumber around the same time, you may need to bring in a second plumber to do one or two of those jobs. Right. And now you can't rely on the other one, or you're going to have to delay for a week or two until they get done with the other project. So it's not a bad idea to have, to be able to go two or three deep in your sub list to solve problems. Also, You can have different subs to match different requirements.
