Hire the office, not the person.
The honest version: hiring is right for some contractors and wrong for others. Here is how to tell which one you are.
The case for hiring an office manager
A hire is yours permanently, they know your jobs, and nobody else's work comes through them. If you have steady volume, a well-run office and time to train, a good hire compounds for years.
One salary and payroll burden for one person's capacity. When it is busy they are the bottleneck. When it is quiet you are carrying the cost. When they leave, they take the knowledge with them — training is not written down anywhere you can find it.
The case for a run desk
A named project manager and a trained crew behind them, with the process already built. Somebody chases the items whether or not they feel like it that day, and if one person leaves the desk does not stop.
You are renting capacity rather than owning a person. Some contractors decide they would rather own it long term, and that is a fair position. We are a fit for desks that are already underwater.
If you want the office to become a permanent internal function, hire. If the desk is what is limiting the business right now and you do not want to spend six months building it, we are the shorter road.
How we compare on the work itself
- Named project manager on your account, not a shared inbox.
- Draws out inside two days, with waivers attached.
- Change orders approved before the work proceeds, not after.
- California deadlines tracked — preliminary notice, twenty-day notices, Title 24.
- Your customer informed without you making the call.
Questions contractors ask
Which one is cheaper?
Cheaper depends on what you are counting. A hire is a wage and a permanent commitment; we are capacity you can stop. If the thing you are counting is your own evenings, the arithmetic changes completely.
Can I use both?
Often that is the right answer. Several contractors keep a bookkeeper and hand us the billing and compliance, because those are the parts that get stuck.
What if neither fits?
We will say so. If the honest answer is that you should hire, we will tell you that and you can come back when the desk outgrows the hire.
Tell us what you run
Tell us what you are running and what it is costing you to keep up. We will tell you plainly whether we are a fit.
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