The Profit Builder Unscripted

Is hiring worth the cost?

• Vicki Suiter

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“I’m slammed with work, drowning in paperwork, and stretched way too thin… but hiring help feels impossible. I just can’t afford it right now.”

But what if you’re wrong?

In this episode, I dive into a common but costly belief contractors hold onto—one that keeps them stuck, overwhelmed, and ultimately costs them far more money than they realize.

If you’ve ever thought:

  • “It’s faster if I just do it myself.”
  • “Hiring someone will just add more stress.”
  • “I can’t afford the extra expense.”

…then this conversation might just challenge everything you believe about hiring—and open up an entirely new path forward.

Stop running yourself ragged. Click play and discover the shift that changed the game for Dan—and can for you too.

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If you've ever found yourself struggling with having to do a lot of administrative things in your business and thinking that you can't afford to hire somebody else to do that, you want to make sure to listen to this episode because we're going to talk about the really bigger issue, is lost opportunity cost. Hi, I'm Vicki Suiter I'm your host and welcome back to the Profit Builder Unscripted.

Sometimes what I notice is that we can be penny wise and pound foolish about how we run our business. And what do I mean by that? What I mean is sometimes we make decisions based on, don't think I can afford it or that'll cost too much money. Instead of looking at what is the lost opportunity cost. And what do I mean by lost opportunity cost? Well, let me just share a story with you.

I was meeting with my client, Dan, this past week and he was telling me about how much he was working and how exhausted he was and about how he's having to deal with all this minutiae detail of sending out contracts, getting subcontracts signed, submitting change orders to clients, like chasing kind of after some of the details of what needs to happen just to keep projects running. 

And I said, so I said, let's just talk about this for a minute. said, how come you don't wanna hire somebody to do that job? And he said, well, I just don't think I can afford it. And I said, well, let's just figure this out for a minute. I said, is it that you can't afford it? Really? I said, let's just calculate what is the cost. So we first figured out like, what would this person be doing? And we sat down and he gave me a whole list of things. And essentially it was the job of a project coordinator.

It was somebody who would make sure that the subcontractors had insurance and that the contracts would be signed and that they were sent out and change orders were sent to clients and, and, know, they came back signed and like the insurance was collected, like all the like sort of mechanical things around the paperwork side of managing contracts, change orders, subcontract, you know, contracts, client contracts and then also doing some other administrative things. And I said, well, said, based on my experience, I said, and we can do a little bit of research, which we did, and we figured out that the cost of that person with all the burden for it was about $40,000 a year. I said, so, Dan, let me ask you this question. I said, if this cost you $40,000 a year, how much time is it going to save you?

And so he kind of went through and started calculating like how much time does he spend every day or in a week doing those things? And he, and he kind of came up with ads, probably about 10, maybe 15 hours a week. I said, okay, great. I said, so if you had 10 or 15 hours a week, more time, I said, how many of those would you just not work? Like you just need to work less hours. And he said somewhere about five, maybe, maybe some weeks, 10. I said, okay, great.

So somewhere between five and 10 extra hours a week that somebody else would be doing these things and you would be taking a little more time off. You wouldn't be working these crazy hours, but you have some more time in your day. What would you do with the time that you had? And he said, well, I'd probably be doing more business development and I'd probably be doing more marketing and I'd probably be reaching out to previous clients and I said, so you'd be actually generating more sales than is that right? And he was like, yeah. And I go, so do you think that you could make more money out there? Do you think you could make more than $40,000 a year in additional revenue if you were to spend the extra time five, maybe 10 hours a week doing marketing or business development or even going to job sites. this is the other thing we talked about. 

Like what if you spent more time making sure that projects came in on time, on budget as promised? What if you spent that time actually working on the schedule, meeting with the clients, staying in front of production on jobs? I said, do you think that you could make more money than whatever you would spend on an administrative person? And he was like, oh yeah, I get your point. And you know, I, share this story with you because I, know, Dan's not the first person I've ever had this conversation with. And you know what? I've had to grapple with this in my own business too, because there's times when I have been like, I don't want to spend the money to, you know, to have my team do more work or have a sub hire somebody else to do the work because, you know, that means like I can do it. But what's the lost opportunity cost when we as leaders and business owners are the one doing work that somebody else at a much lower price could actually be doing, what's the opportunity of us having someone else do it and us being able to focus on those things that really provide a higher rate of return? 

And as I think about this topic, I think that sometimes we, as I say, kind of get focused on we're penny wise and pound foolish in not realizing that investing in our business sometimes really is so critical to us being able to grow our business. It's critical for us to be able to be focusing our time on the right things that are making us money as opposed to just saving us money. And that's really like my invitation to you is to take a look and see, is there a place in your business where you're focusing more on not spending money and maybe losing out on an opportunity to be able to make more money?

if you were to spend more time marketing, doing business development. Or in the case of Dan, the other thing that he realized is if he was spending more time making sure that there were really solid schedules on his projects, that projects would go more smoothly, that they wouldn't take as long, that they would then be more profitable, which would more than make up for that $40,000 of investment of hiring somebody else.

Now, please don't hear me, don't assume that what I mean is, hey, when you have breakdowns, go hire more people, because that's a whole nother conversation altogether, right? Like, it's not just hiring people for the sake of hiring people, but it's looking at where are you as a leader spending time doing things that somebody else at a lower price could be doing and provide the opportunity to be able to generate more profits on the bottom line, more revenue on the top line, right? So I would love your thoughts about this. Feel free to pop me a note below in the chat and let me know what your thoughts are. And if you have some strategy that you've employed that or some area in your business that you've done this and you've really seen a great return. All right.

Thank you for being part of this community. appreciate it and I look forward to seeing you next time on the Profit Builder Unscripted.


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Vicki Suiter

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