Don't hire family. I know people do it all the time. It can work out. It can be a total disaster. And if it's a disaster, it's going to be a big problem. Hiring part-time, I hear that a lot, makes no sense to me because tell me when the phone's going to ring. Okay, so you've got to part-time somebody in the office. You don't know when the phone's going to ring. So you're ultimately getting dragged back into the business. I think you've got to get to a certain size, depends on

your average ticket, depends on the industry. You've got to get to a certain size where you're

quite comfortable. You're not going to be able to handle it and you can delegate to a full-time

person or a company like ours. It's going to take a lot of time. I think there's value

in owner operators for the first year or so answering the phone, taking the tough phone calls,

doing the outreach. You know, I did that. I used to own my own service business. I think there's

a lot of value in that. You learn your product better, learn your customers better, and then you

can train people

better. I think there's a lot of value for owners doing that themselves for a period of time.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs

and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in

business.

Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Welcome back to the Home Service expert.

I'm Tommy Mellow today is a buddy of mine, Charlie Belker, and he's an expert in entrepreneurship,

home service management leadership. He's based out of St. Louis. His company that he's the partner

and co-founder in is free to grow. And that was 2019 it was founded. Before that he was the co-founder

of RFP testing. And then he also was at HBM Holdings Corporate Development Associates. He's a co-founder of Free to Grow, a company that provides back office support, service-based companies, allowing the owners and operators to focus on their customers and growing their

businesses.

Free to Grow offers its customers the service of a full-time office manager at half of what it

cost to hire someone full-time and provides team support with its cross-trained staff.

How you doing today, brother?

...