Now, sitting in this booth with my crew—Alec excluded, as he’s back finishing up his thing in Jersey—eating pizza, I’m seriously considering dissolving the company.
“I don’t know what to tell you, boss,” Ian says, “but if things don’t turn around, and I hate to say this, but, you know, we need income.”
“I know,” I answer. “I’d hate to see that happen, but I’m not blind to reality, either.”
“Well, it’s been fun,” the newest new guy says and gets up from the table. He drops a few bucks to cover his portion of the meal and walks away.
None of us try to stop him.
“Even if we could get something small, just enough to get by, maybe that would be enough to keep things going until we can find something better,” Ian says.
“I’ve made some appointments and placed some bids,” I tell him, “but everyone’s shooting low these days. Just yesterday, I underbid a project by about twenty percent and the guy just looked at me like I was asking him to pay me in gold bullion.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” Ian says. “Maybe we’re bidding too low and people aren’t taking us seriously. I get that other guys are bidding low, too, but a lot of people won’t hire a crew that’s underbidding. They think it’s a sign that we don’t know what we’re doing.”
“What do you think, José?” I ask.
“I know of a job,” he says, “but it’s not going to pay like we’re used to.”
I sit up a little straighter in my seat.
“What is it?” I ask.
“My cousin’s redoing his bathroom, countertops and cabinets, mostly, and he asked if I could help. He offered to pay, but it’s not enough for all of us.”
“How much?” Ian asks.
“He said five hundred, plus the cost of materials,” José answers. “It’s a one, maybe two day job with all of us, but I don’t know if it’d be worth it to bring everyone in for it. It’s a small bathroom, I don’t even think all of us would fit in there at the same time.”
“Well,” Ian says, turning to me, “it’s something.”
“Yeah,” I answer and take a drink of water. “It’s something.”
“I can give him a call if you want,” José says. “If you think it’s worth our time.”
“If nothing else,” I tell him, smiling, “we’ll be helping out your cousin. As far as I can see it, there’s no reason to turn it down while we’ve got nothing else going on.”
José nods and gets up from his seat, pulling the phone from his pocket.
“Have you talked to Lou?” Ian asks.
“No,” I answer. “I’m not exactly his favorite person right now.”
“He just got on with a crew that’s doing the new bank building on 42nd,” Ian says. “Maybe it’s time for us to start jumping on the larger jobs.”
“It takes a bigger crew than what we’ve got, though,” I tell him. “I can’t afford to pay a bigger crew until we get a bigger job, and we can’t get a bigger job until we’ve got a bigger crew.”
“Not necessarily,” Ian says, leaning over the table toward me. “Maybe it’s like one of those ‘if you build it, they will come,’ things. We place a bid on a bigger project and when we get it, we can hire on a few more hands.”
“It’s a risk, though,” I tell him. “I’ve done that sort of thing before, but if we’re talking about jobs the size of what Lou’s doing, that’s going to be a lot of guys who are either new to the business or new to us. Either way, it’s going to slow us way down and if we take too long on a job like that, word’s going to spread that we can’t get shit done. Even if we finish up strong, that’s going to put us in a bad position when it comes to the next job.”
“We’ve got to do something,” Ian says. “We’re already down to family members, and I think we both know that’s a pretty fucked position to be in.”
“I know,” I tell him. “Let me think about it.”
He shrugs and leans back.
José comes back to the table with a look of disappointment.
“What happened?” I ask.
“He got someone else,” José answers. “He said that he could do it for cheaper if he used a couple of guys from his neighborhood.”
We just lost out on a micro job for a family member of one of my crew.
I think it’s safe to say that we’re fucked.
“Ian, tell José what you just told me,” I say.
“I was just telling the boss,” Ian says, “that if we were to take on a bigger job, we could bid low enough to get it and just hire a bigger crew.”
“We’d have to find a way to manage a lot of people that we’ve never worked with before, though,” José says. “We get a crew that’s even triple the size of what we’ve got now, and we’re going to end up spending all our time making sure they’re doing everything right. It’ll slow us down. We’ve got to do it more gradually.”
“We’re out of options,” Ian retorts. “As far as I can see it, we either go all in on something big—and do it right quick—or we’re gonna be standing in the unemployment line this time next week.”
“What if we start over?” I ask.
“That’s what I’m telling you,” Ian says. “If we don’t do this thing right, we’re going to end up back at square one.”
“No, we’re already there,” I tell him. “Now that Joe’s gone—”
“Marcus,” Ian corrects.
“Damn, I’ve really got to get better at remembering names,” I laugh. Leaning forward, I ask, “Who do we have right now? We’ve got the three of us and Alec. We’ve all been doing this for a long time, and we all know how we like to get a job done. We can move forward with a project even if I’m not there. What if we start a different kind of company?”
“What do you mean?” José asks.
“José,” I start. “You know just as much—all right, probably more—about this business than I do. You’re great when it comes to hands-on work, but you’re also a hell of a leader and you can always get the guys motivated. Ian,” I go on, turning to my only other employee at the table, “we mostly use you for carpentry and general construction, but you’ve got a background in electrical work, too.”
“Yeah?” Ian asks. “So?”
“So,” I continue, “Alec is—okay, Alec’s kind of worthless when it comes to doing any actual work, but he’s great at schmoozing clients. Do you remember that remodel last year when he got the client to give us each a ten thousand dollar bonus?” I ask.
“Good times,” Ian says wistfully. “But what does that have to do with where we are now?”
“Don’t you get it?” I ask. “We need to stop looking at ourselves as just guys on a crew and start looking at what we can all bring to the table. Why don’t we hire a whole new crew, but instead of trying to direct things worker to worker with only me and sometimes José taking the role of foreman, what if we all oversee a particular part of the job and let the new guys focus on doing the work. That way, we’re out of each other’s way. We can still make sure they’re doing things our way, but as foreman to worker.”
“How is that different from what I was telling you?” Ian asks.
“The difference between a crew and a company is the quality of the leadership. I’ve done the best I can, but it’s not enough for me to be the only guy. I’m saying that if we break this thing up into four divisions—okay, three. I really don’t want Alec doing more than sweet-talking his way into jobs for us. But three divisions. I hang onto the business end of things: purchasing, payroll, all that stuff. José, you would be foreman over the carpenters and general construction. Ian, you could head up electricians and maybe bring in a couple of guys to take care of plumbing work.”
“Where’s the money coming from?” José asks. “We would have to land something big and I don’t know if Ian and I have the experience to head up whole divisions of the labor.”
“You do, though,” I tell him. “When either of you speak, the whole crew listens. You know what you’re talking about and you know how to help get the best out of everyone around you. Maybe it’s harder to see from where you are most of the time because we’ve been holding onto such a small crew for so long, but I know I can see it.”