How much does your boss make doing nothing?

>So how much do you pay your employees roughly, what does considerably mean?
I usually pay my people as subs.
I give them a flat $90/hour. I make my money by charging slightly more, but also by charging by the year and paying them by the hour. So for example when they're off for a government holiday I'm still getting paid for the work they didn't do....

I make a lot less than $1k/hour, but I still make a shitload of money doing essentially nothing. $1k per day is probably closer.

>the lazier you are, the richer you will become I bet.

Nigger logic like this is making 'mericans retarded.

a lot of rich people are lazy.
most lazy people aren't rich.

>subcontracting

Do you allow them considerable discretion or no? I only have a few subcontractor positions for very specialized things, and most of them are part time retirees that only handle the really bad stuff.

I try to give my employees a lot of wiggle room to make things work out as they see fit. However, that's because real estate, specifically property management, is such a goddam mess of exceptions that any rulebook that adequately covers everything is going to be so large it would need it's own damn postal code.

>Do you allow them considerable discretion or no?
not really.

they have to work according to my contract with the client, and janitorial contracts don't leave a lot to chance.

also not a lot of variation or surprises in janiting. Not a lot of responsibility either.

I should probably add,
the reason I pay them so much is because any one of my crew could open a business of their own and drive me under.

we work more as a confederation of small businesses than as an employer and his monkeys.

You're paying janitors $90/hour?

Yeah, fair enough.

Most of my PMs are omnipurpose handymen. It's a lot easier to just have them fix the floor seal on a leaky toilet, make a 3 sentence note about it in the database, maybe flag the tenant for suspicious breakages, and attach receipts for materials than to have a beurocratic shitfest. Cheaper, faster, and both tenants and employees are happier. Accountant tallies shit up, and minor errors get caught within a month when company credit cards get cross referenced with the database.

>we work more as a confederation of small businesses than as an employer and his monkeys.

Makes sense. Your cut is logistics, marketing, and negotiations. Most people fucking suck at that. If they're getting paid well for good work, most people won't want to put in the effort to go further.

Are you purely 'normal' janitorial work, or do you also do the fucked up rehab stuff? Fun stuff like cleaning up after a hoarder that died, then melted through the floorboards as she decomposed in a room full of soggy newspaper.

sometimes a lot more.
exactly, I handle sales and marketing. They suck at it, I rock at it.

we do crime scene clean ups, asbestos remediation, lead/mercury/cadmium clean up. Most of the money we make is actually off of environmental contracting in industry, not strictly janitorial work.

>we do crime scene clean ups, asbestos remediation, lead/mercury/cadmium clean up. Most of the money we make is actually off of environmental contracting in industry, not strictly janitorial work.

Was just about to ask why they're getting paid so much for low-skill work. That pretty much explains it. They're cleaning up some crazy shit, not wiping the floors of office buildings.

no, $90 is what I pay them for straight office cleaning.

the other stuff pays more than double that.

the reason I pay them that much is because that's about what their work is worth.

the other reasons they get paid so much are:
1. they work about 3 times faster than you.
2. any of them could open their own business.
3. I make my money off of volume rather than taking a larger percentage.
4. high pay means they don't fuck up often, cuts my management costs.

I guess employers like you are a rarity. The median pay for a janitor is barely above minimum wage.

Ever do pcb cleanup?

Almost got a commercial property at a foreclosure auction once. Was literally walking to my car to drive off and finalize the paperwork on it. Inspector called me, and he was having a panic attack. There had been a mixup, and my actual deep soil sample results had just come back. It was bad. PCBs all over the place. They'd demolished a warehouse on the site before putting in the current structure and flipped around most of the soil and clay. That warehouse was a storage site for transformers in the 60s, and it had partially burned down. Total brown site. Would have had to replace practically all of the soil in a ~3 acre area to a depth of at least 8 feet, and surface soil for several acres around that.

Lost a bit over 70 grand on that one since 'nobody knew', so I couldn't get my money back. Not the best week I've ever had, that's for sure, but I didn't have to tie off that entire LLC either.

Anytime a colleague gives me shit about how anal I am about thoroughly inspecting older units, and anything commercial, I throw a copy of that paperwork at them and tell them to blow me. If you want to go bankrupt, be my guest. Decon work is the express lane to that destination.

Nah, I've never done PCB stuff but I've done lead contaminated soils in similar situations. Jobs where we have to replace 4 feet of soil and place a liner under all the fresh.

remediation like that costs more than the land is worth. Only reason it gets done is by court order in most cases, or on the government's nickel.

I agree with you on due diligence. Though if you can get away with not knowing that's a lot cheaper.

not really that rare. You'll meet self-employed people all over the country cleaning homes and offices and making more than that. There's a pretty big difference between your high school janitor and what those guys do. Contractors in any field tend to make a lot of money.

>Working hard to get rich is a lie, the lazier you are, the richer you will become I bet.

Yeah, that's the ultra secret answer, congrats you found it! Just be lazy and money will come to you!

In a corporate setting, being the boss is really more of an "endgame". You have to bust your ass in the beginning until you reach that upper management position. At that point, feel free to slack off. Middle management has to do all the work and answer to you; your job is to put on a smile and talk to the owner and/or shareholders.

It's very possibly true that your boss doesn't do much, but don't disrespect him for it. He worked hard to get to that place and it is his due reward.

Can't get away with it. Not realistically if you don't have a lot of palms well greased. I'm not big enough to do that, and even if I was, the risks aren't worth it unless you heavily compartmentalize, which cripples your ability to move liquid cash around to different types of work, hurting the rest of the business.

Inspectors are going to cover their ass by reporting it to the state, and possibly feds, and I don't blame them. If they don't and I report it, they'll be in some real deep shit too. Can't cheat if you can't trust anyone, which is fine by me.

>remediation like that costs more than the land is worth. Only reason it gets done is by court order in most cases, or on the government's nickel.

Exactly. I'd most likely have been required to clean it up at my expense, and fighting it would have been harder than just folding that part of my company over and cutting my losses with some strategic defaults. I'd have survived, but it would have seriously sucked. These things aren't at all uncommon here. Lots of sites have been sitting abandoned for 20+ years, and the cities have only started foreclosing on them recently to free up space. There's a statue of limitations on back taxes, but even with that limit, the properties are so far underwater that the 'owners' can't sell or use them, so there's no real rush on the city's part.

Last I checked, there was some discussion about whether they would sue the electric company over it, but I don't see how they'd accomplish that. It's 100% the electric company's fault, but it's nearly been 60 years. Even a public defender 7 shots into Tuesday afternoon could get that case tossed. It's unwinnable. An actual law firm would murder them in court for even thinking of filing something so frivolous. Probably going to be some mutual dick sucking where the company agrees to help fund part of the cleanup, and gets to advertise how they are 'bringing a cleaner future to you today' or something equally nauseating.

What they do is have the EPA step in and declare a superfund site or similar.

then they can go after the people that polluted it clear back hundreds of years. That's what's going on in my area, and that's been my business's bread and butter.

You get some abandoned industrial mining site with all kinds of pollution on it, and they just run back through the years suing everyone that's owned it until they've got enough money to clean it up. That gets cleaned up, they move on the next site. I'd guess it's just a matter of time before they start doing that with every polluted spot in the nation. I imagine a day when the EPA rolls into town and forces people to remediate old junkyards and such. It's not a terrible time to be an environmental contractor.

High level management often has people who have an intuitive sense about where to move the company to take advantage of market conditions. Middle managers keep the day to day operations running, but they may not be able to see the forest for the trees. The people heading successful companies generally have some overreaching vision, and are more in tune with the way the market will move.

Just because a guy isn't 'working' a lot, doesn't mean he isn't providing critically important insight into the company. That's the thing that people stuck doing the grunt work, and failing their own startups don't get.

He already did his time, he did the work long enough to learn how to get the contracts order the right materials and train people to do the work

I'll admit to being a bit out of my depth on the topic, but the fact that the site was abandoned for ~30 years certainly complicates things. Chances are the city is going to be held partially responsible if the EPA ever gets involved because the city sat on it for so long. It's doubtful that there were any records of the city knowing about the contamination before I found out about it, and if there were, they've long since been destroyed. The guy that bought it in the 60s died in the 80s, and the company went insolvent a few years before that, so it's just the city, and the power company. Maybe the EPA will go after the power company, maybe not. The city sure as shit doesn't have the jurisdictional power to do it.

Regardless, my hands are clean, and I've been assured by 2 very reputable law firms that I'm untouchable. Someone might try in the next decade, but it won't go anywhere. Not that I have any intention of reminding anyone in town hall that I had even the most tangential of relations to that particular mess, mind you.

they'd undoubtedly go after the power company, not you. In my area they've gone after major mining companies, not individuals. Mostly because the companies have the money to do the cleanup.

when they run into a private owner that had a site and no other companies that polluted it still exist they get grants to pay me or someone like me to come in. I wouldn't worry about it at all if I were you. The land I live on is presumably contaminated with lead but I've never bothered to get it tested because then I'd have to remediate and/or tell the next buyer what's in the dirt. There's no law says I have to check it for residential property so I just don't. If I did find lead on my land it might raise a conflict of interest since I'm the only contractor in my area that cleans that sort of stuff up. I'd be gaming the system by making work for my own company and then setting the price for that work. Not that I care, I get myself and my family tested for lead annually. If there's pollution on my property we aren't eating it.

Have you ever considered dipping your fingers into real estate? As in specifically looking for federal money to clean up known bad sites and then flipping them to developers?

As a RE guy, I've looked into it from the other side of the equation, but the turn around times just haven't been worth tying up that amount of capital. There just isn't enough demand around me when there's lots of clean space available. As with everything, that probably varies tremendously by region.

No, my company legit makes more than the land is worth to clean it up, so doing that would cost me big.

I mean, say we have a lot worth $100k and I clean it up and charge the government or PRP $300k for the cleanup. They have to eat that cost and I gross the entire $300k.

but if I bought the same lot even for a buck, cleaned it up and sold it, I'd only make $100k. It's just not worth it. I make far more money far faster doing what I do now. Plus I don't have to pay taxes or insurance on land, or worry about it not selling or some other liability issue popping up.

no, what I do is where it's at for me. Like you and most business owners I see opportunities to make money around me all the time, but they don't pay as good as what I'm doing right now. Not that I actually do anything.

>looking for federal money to clean up known bad sites
I think that's the kicker.
because I'm a for-profit company they won't foot the bill. And again that would put me into conflict of interest and maybe fraud territory since I decide what to charge them.

My boss makes around $27k for 7 to 4 sitting in office.
After taxes I make about $29k thanks to working weekends at premium and getting about 20 hours of night differential.
Both boss and me do nothing all day lel (government work)

what agency? I work with people in the BOR making six figures to run a power plant. I also work with people in the Forest Service that have PhD's and make $24k.

>conflict of interest

All of real estate is a conflict of interest from one angle or another. The trick in situations like this is to come up with a proposal to appease multiple people at once. Common thing in my area is negotiating sizable property tax advantages to developments on decontaminated land. That alone can add millions in value to a development complex, and encourages bigger projects.

I'd say it's just an extension of what you are currently doing. If you find a developer to partner with who can pitch an idea, you can cut out a few middle men. It's very area specific in terms of money to be made, but it's something I'd recommend being sensitive to, even if you aren't actively involving yourself in it, just because you'll be ahead of the curve on expanding and/or relocating.

Market isn't good enough for it for me right now, but it very well could be in the next 15 years depending on how the next couple presidential cycles go. Most people aren't properly aware of it, so I might start snapping up some abandoned land in the next 5-10 years to sit on. Not too hard to financially isolate a new company with a timeline that long so things can't blow up in my face.

I'll certainly keep what you say in mind.

my local market is depressed because of being an EPA Superfund site, and that's not likely to change in the next 40 years.

the other problem we have in the west is that water rights are worth more than land, so developers are usually more interested in the drink than the dirt. Not to say development isn't happening or isn't making money, but I personally make more than any developer in my town does atm.

I'm in my 40's though, I'll probably just make as much as I can and sell out. Move to Hawaii. I'm not as young as I used to be, and I'm not really interested in making more money. My kids might be a different story though.

regarding politics and markets, I believe my area is in another real-estate bubble despite the pollution concerns. I'm waiting for it to collapse before I advise my oldest son to start buying property. Gentrification is going big here, but we probably don't have a real economy to support it. Same story everywhere, but someone will get rich buying the dip.

weird, my comment didn't bump the thread.
testing

I guess maybe I talk too much.....

West coast? Yeah there's a big bubble there. I've said in threads in the past that it's not purely a bubble, but there's definitely a bubble.

As to water rights, I'd never really put much thought into this living in an area with infinite water, but do you have any seriously contaminated rivers or streams? Relative of mine did a lot of environmental work in the Dakotas, and talked about metal harvesting in some rivers and streams where you could literally see the mercury rolling down the stream with the current. He bitched about some of the bureaucratic crap that made it hard for him to let otherwise profitable independents stake out claims (because apparently that's still a thing in the Northern Midwest) and clean up sites.

You weren't allowed to disturb river beds because all the shit in the sediment was harmful to the fish. Sensible legislation. Except for the part there weren't any fish in some of the creeks, and if you threw in some carp they'd be dead within a minute, because there was so much arsenic in the water. Someone 'disturbing' a mercury puddle really isn't hurting things when the situation is that bad.

Anyways, the point is, I have no idea how you'd apply that to your situation, and I could be dead wrong here, but I can totally see a project to decontaminate a small lake, or mining waste pond, and the streams coming out of it, being quite lucrative in Cali/Nevada/Arizona areas.

My boss hates his job, so he doesn't care that I sit around all day doing nothing.

Here, let's see if the thread is dead for everyone.