Summary5 min read

Profits with Pajak – Ep. #475

Episode Title: Not Enough Work to Hire… But Too Busy to Grow
Host: John Pajak
Release Date: March 18, 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, John Pajak tackles a common pain point for small business owners in the green industry: being caught between not having enough consistent work to justify hiring but feeling too overwhelmed to keep growing solo. Pajak refers to this conundrum as "the messy middle of hiring," and he lays out practical, numbers-focused strategies to navigate this critical tipping point. The episode is loaded with actionable advice, personal anecdotes, and a candid look at the emotional traps business owners face during this stage of growth.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining the "Messy Middle" of Hiring

Tipping Point Realities:
Pajak explains the dangerous stage where business owners are too busy to continue alone but fear they lack enough steady work to hire.
Common Owner Responses:
- Waiting too long to hire and risking burnout
- Hiring too early and stressing about payroll
Core Message:
“The real issue isn’t hiring. It’s consistency of your production and your revenue. Because hiring is not based on how busy you feel. It’s based on whether your business can consistently produce enough money… to support another person.” (John Pajak, 02:18-02:40)

2. The Role of Numbers over Emotion

Know Your Numbers:
Pajak emphasizes separating emotion from decision-making:

“If you don’t know what your production rate and your break-even hourly cost is, you’re making a hiring decision based on emotion. And I’m going to tell you this from experience, emotion is expensive.” (John Pajak, 02:41-02:54)
Calculate True Cost:
Don’t just look at the wage—consider total cost to the business, including equipment, overhead, and desired profit.

3. Buy Back Your Time Before Hiring

Efficiency First:
- Optimize scheduling, routing, and systems before defaulting to hiring.
- Consider increasing prices to reduce workload and improve margins.
- Sometimes improved efficiency, not more labor, is the answer.
Quote:
"Sometimes the solution isn’t adding labor, a lot of times it’s improving the efficiency." (John Pajak, 03:28-03:34)

4. Phased Hiring and Seasonal Help

Part-Time or Seasonal Approach:
- Start with part-time help or hire for peak workloads to reduce risk.
- Use as an opportunity to test and refine training and systems before committing full-time.
“You start with part time help… what this is good for is it allows you to test your systems… you could train without all the pressure of, you know, you could actually walk them through the jobs and everything instead of just throwing them out to the wolves.” (John Pajak, 04:08-04:28)

5. Sell The Work Before You Hire

Build Revenue First:
- Start marketing to fill your schedule before bringing on an employee.
- Focus on ideal clients ("customer avatar"), efficient routing, and targeted marketing.
"The goal is simple. We’re going to create enough revenue to support the employee before they even start, not while they’re standing next to you waiting to be paid." (John Pajak, 05:34-05:46)

6. What Signals Readiness to Hire?

Consistently Turning Down Work:
- Fully booked weeks in advance? Having to delay jobs? That’s a sign you’re truly ready.
- Only then should you consider adding staff—with confidence, not desperation.
Understand Production Expectations:
- Employees may need to produce $75-100/hr in value, not just cover their wage.
“If your current work can’t support that, that just means you’re not ready yet. And that’s okay, because now you know what to aim for.” (John Pajak, 07:47–07:54)

7. Avoiding Common Hiring Pitfalls

Don’t Hire from Emotion or Urgency:
- Desperation hiring is a recipe for stress and financial trouble.
Minimize Inefficiency:
- Bad routing and excess travel ("windshield time") kills profitability.
"One of the worst feelings as an owner is when I’m sitting there, I’m writing paychecks out, and I go, man, they only got this much work done and they… worked this many hours. What happened?" (John Pajak, 09:40–09:50)

8. Action Steps for Owners

Track Your Numbers:
- Record your current production rate, revenue per week, job efficiency.
- Set a target revenue number that allows for a comfortable hire.
Improve Margins:
- Use pricing, marketing, and better routes to grow the business intentionally.
Stay Rational:
- Avoid making hiring decisions in "survival mode."

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Emotional Decision-Making:

“Emotion is expensive.” (02:50)
On Efficiency:

"Sometimes the solution isn’t adding labor, a lot of times it’s improving the efficiency." (03:28)
On Hiring Readiness:

"Here’s a signal that you are ready: when you are consistently turning work down." (08:00)
On Profit per Employee:

"That employee may need to produce 75 to $100 per hour minimum." (07:27)
Personal Reflection:

"I’ve walked that journey. I’ve stumbled, I’ve fallen, I’ve got back up, dusted myself off and kept moving forward." (08:49)
On Learning the Hard Way:

"Every time I made these decisions based solely on emotion, I really lost a lot of ground." (12:06)

Key Timestamps for Major Segments

01:31 – Episode welcome and description of the 'messy middle'
02:15–03:00 – Danger of emotional, not numbers-based hiring
03:45–05:30 – Efficiency gains before hiring; phased, part-time hiring approach
05:45–06:30 – Intentional marketing and 'selling before hiring'
07:12–08:59 – Calculating profitability and production per employee; identifying readiness signals
09:30–11:10 – Watch out for inefficiency; realistic look at wasted time and its impact
11:30–13:04 – Summation, encouragement, and next steps for listeners

Tone & Style

John Pajak’s delivery is direct, empathetic, and numbers-driven, with a conversational, mentor-like presence. He balances anecdotal wisdom from his own journey with tactical, actionable advice—stressing the importance of clear-headed, data-based decision-making for long-term business health.

Final Thoughts

This episode arms green industry business owners with practical frameworks to navigate the awkward phase between solo operation and expanding the team. Pajak’s advice boils down to: don’t let pressure or emotion dictate key growth decisions. Instead, slow down, run the numbers, streamline operations, and build demand before you hire.

“Just make sure that the numbers support your next move. Don’t let your emotions take over, okay?” (John Pajak, 12:39)

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Transcript5 lines

[00:00]
A
Imagine this. You're slammed, phones are ringing, work is piling up. You're working long days just trying to keep up and you're thinking, I need help. But then the next thought hits you and it's what if I don't have enough work to keep someone busy? And now you're stuck. You know, you're too busy to stay solo. You're not busy enough to hire. And this is one of the most dangerous stages in business. And today we're going to break it down.
[00:28]
B
Today's episode is brought to you by Yardbook, the All in one CRM for your lawn care business. And as an exclusive partner of this podcast, you can get started today and begin simplifying your business and maximizing your profits. Sign up now@yardbook.com the link is in. The show notes Time now for Profits with Paycheck, an essential podcast for you in the green industry who are looking to unlock the full potential of your business. Hosted by John Pajak, your certified financial coach, the show features in depth discussions with successful entrepreneurs, thought leaders and industry experts, providing practical advice and proven strategies on financial planning, operations, marketing and sales. Profits with PayJack has valuable insights and action steps that you can implement today for creating long term success. Now here's John Pajak.
[01:31]
A
Welcome to Profits with Pajak, the podcast where we talk about business strategies and financial insights for the green industry. I'm your host John Pajak and today we're going to be talking about a situation almost every owner faces at some point. You're on the edge of growth, but you're not quite there yet. So this is the stage that I like to call the messy middle of hiring. You've outgrown doing everything yourself, but you haven't built enough consistent revenue to to confidently support a full time employee. So what happens? Most owners do one or two things. They either wait too long to hire or they burn themselves out trying to do everything or they hire too early and now they're stressed trying to feed that payroll. And neither one is a good place to be. And the real issue isn't hiring. It's consistency of your production and your revenue. Because hiring is not based on how busy you feel. It's based on whether your business can consistently produce enough money, enough revenue to support another person. And this is where your numbers matter. If you don't know what your production rate and your break even hourly cost is, you're making a hiring decision based on emotion. And I'm going to tell you this from experience, emotion is expensive. So before you hire you have to ask yourself this question, what is my time actually worth inside the business? Because what you need to really start looking at is buying back your time first. Because if you're spending time on estimates and scheduling and phone calls and driving inefficient routes and fixing problems, you may not need an employee yet. You need to buy back your time. And that can mean better scheduling, better routing, better systems, raising your prices to reduce the workload. And sometimes the solution isn't adding labor, a lot of times it's improving the efficiency. So, you know, a lot of times you don't have to jump straight to a full time employee. One of the smartest moves is phased timing. And this is where you start with part time help. You can have say, a helper, you know, for specific days, bringing someone on during peak workload times. You know, some basically a, you know, something that's going to just come in knowing it's like a very seasonal part of your year. And it's like, we just need extra help during this time. Now what this is good for is it allows you to test your systems and you're, when you're training somebody, you could train without all the pressure of, you know, you could actually walk them through the jobs and everything instead of just throwing them out to the wolves. You can train people properly. And a lot of times when you do this, it helps you build consistency before you commit to a full time person on your payroll. And when you're doing this, you're not hiring a full time employee yet you're building towards one. And this is where most people miss the opportunity. If you know you're close to hiring, you need to start selling the work before you hire, not after. And this means going back to the drawing board. You're raising prices, you're tightening your ideal client profile, your customer avatar. And that's the fancy way of saying like, who are your people? The customers that are going to be buying your stuff? And then making sure that you're filling your schedule intentionally. Not just like, oh, you got a phone call and somebody that's halfway across town. It's like, no, you know, we're filling the schedule with, you know, very specific, you know, geography in mind, a demographic in mind, you know, something that's inside of the routes we're already servicing and you're marketing with a purpose. You're not just like, hey, we're a lawn care company and we're, we're out, we exist, call us. It's like, no, I want, you know, very specific. If you Know, let's just say, uh, we're going to do aeration and seating. Okay. We're going to be marketing that specifically talking about all the, the benefits of that particular service so that we're getting those clients. You know, this is going to help fill our schedule with intention, not just, yeah, we're going to add somebody and, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever, you know. No, we're being very intentional about it. The goal is simple. We're going to create enough revenue to support the employee before they even start, not while they're standing next to you waiting to be paid.
[06:31]
B
If you're ready to get your lawn care business running smoother, faster, and more profitably this year, it's time to check out Yardbook. Yardbook is the all in one software built specifically for lawn care professionals. From scheduling jobs and routing crews to invoicing customers and collecting payments, Yardbook helps you manage everything in one place, whether you're solo or scaling, failing fast. Over 20,000 lawn pros already trust Yardbook to run their business. And the best part, it's free. To get started, head to yardbook.com and create your free account today. Stop doing everything the hard way and start running your business like a pro. With yardbook profits with PayJack, listeners can
[07:12]
A
get the premium business subscription of yardbook free for 30 days when you use promo code PAYJACK. And this is why you need to know, what does one employee need to produce per hour to be profitable? You know, let's just say your labor cost is, you know, $20 an hour. That's their, their wage. The, you know, the money on the check. But for the business owner, it's, let's just say it, it's fully burdened. It's around like $30 per. Per hour. Well, then you add your equipment, your overhead, and your profit, and that employee may need to produce 75 to $100 per hour minimum. And if your current work can't support that, that just means you're not ready yet. And that's okay, because now you know what to aim for. So here's a signal that you are ready when you are consistently turning work down. If your schedule is booked full weeks out in advance, you know you can't complete work without delaying services. It's like, oh, we, you know, let's just say you're a mowing company and you also do some side work or whatever. Not, not, I don't want to say side work, but let's just say you take on small landscape projects if you're ha. If you're having to continually push out those projects. That's a very good signal that you are ready to add someone on. And especially when you have that pricing power where you, you, you know what your expenses are, you know what your profit margin is, you understand what your production rates are, and you, you know, when you can dominate your market with your pricing because you have it all figured out, that's exactly when hiring becomes a growth move. It's not a survival move move because that's what a lot of guys end up doing is. And I, I mean, trust me, I've been in those, I've walked that. I've walked that journey. I've stumbled, I've fallen, I've got back up, dusted myself off and kept moving forward. But, you know, when you're in, like, survival mode and you're like, man, I need somebody quick. And, you know, you hire somebody you're not ready for does more harm than good most of the time. So here's what I, I'm just going to suggest to you is if you're in that, at that tipping point, you're at that cusp of, you know, you're so busy, but, and you need help, but you might not have enough work to really bring somebody out full time. What I want you to do is I want you to track your current production rate. I want you to know exactly what you produce per hour right now. And then you need to, like, you have to, like, understand what revenue per week would comfortably support an employee. Write that number down, okay. And basically start working toward that number. You know, you do it through pricing, you do it through marketing, and you do it through efficiencies. Again, you're not going to hire somebody and then have an incredibly inefficient route where you, you know, you have to drive 15 minutes between stops. You know, if you want very efficient routes, you know, I understand some people are like, well, I, I don't live in an urban area or suburban area. I live out in the, you know, rural area. I understand that. And then, you know, he, but you, but you need to figure out where you can be more efficient to bring down windshield time to make it worth it. Because, you know, one of the worst feelings as an owner is when I'm sitting there, I'm writing paychecks out, and I go, man, they got, they only got this much work done and they, but they work this many hours. What happened? Well, you know, in the past, I have seen how, you know, the distance between jobs can really have a huge effect on how much time gets wasted every single day. And I know it's like, well, you know, that's a good. That's a good account. It's. It's a big lot. You know, a lot of guys go, oh, that's like two acres. And it's. Yeah, you know, I love those big lots. It's like, I get it. But, you know, if you go there and it takes you an hour to cut the lawn or maybe even longer than that, and it also takes you a half hour to drive out to that property and remember that you got to get back to civilization again to where your routes are. You know, that could be up to one whole hour of windshield time just getting out to that one account. And you know that. Let's just say it takes two hours to cut that property. That's three hours out of your day that, you know, you're not making money like you should be. There's a whole hour that needs to be picked up somewhere. So anyway, without. I really want to talk about it. I really want to kind of get into it, but I really need to be more focused right now about, you know, when you're hiring your first employee, it's not about how busy you feel. It's about whether your business can consistently support that decision. Because if you hire too early, you create a lot of pressure on yourself. If you wait too long, you're going to burn yourself out, and the goal is to move intentionally. So if you want help figuring out your numbers, your production rate, and when you actually are ready to hire, that's exactly what we work through inside my coaching group. And there's going to be a link in the show notes if you want to learn more. But I just want to say, you know, if you're in this messy middle of hiring people, there's a lot of hope, okay? This is not. Don't get despaired. Don't get all freaked out about it, okay? You're closer than you think. Just make. All you really have to do is track a few things and make sure that the numbers support your next move. Don't let your emotions take. Take over, okay? I've done that personally in the past, and every time I made these decisions based solely on emotion, I really lost a lot of ground. It ended up hurting me. I lost money and caused myself tons more stress. I'm pretty sure that my beard and my hair, whatever's left of my hair in my head, you know, there's a lot of gray streaks that are there just because of the stress. I put myself through, but as always, I just want to be here to support you and help guide you so that you are profitable at all times. So with that being said, God Bless. Keep pushing through and we'll catch you on the next one. Thank you once again for listening. If you've enjoyed the show, please leave a review and share it with fellow business owners. Your support means the world to me and helps keep the show going strong. I want to give a special shout out to our friends at Yardbook. Their continued support has been instrumental in bringing this podcast to you week after week. If you haven't checked them out yet, visit yardbook.com and see how they can give you the tools to streamline and manage your lawn care business. Also, don't forget to explore the resources and upcoming events that I've collected just for you in the show Notes. These are curated to help you stay ahead in your business with the latest tips, tools and networking opportunities. Whether it's a new tool, an insightful article, or an event you don't want to miss, I've got you covered. Until next time, keep pushing through and God bless. Sam.