When to hire, and what it unlocks

A sole trader is only fifty to sixty five per cent billable, and that is not a discipline problem. Picking up parts, driving between jobs, quoting, answering the phone and doing the admin all consume the day without earning a dollar, and no amount of working harder converts those hours into billable ones. That is the ceiling, and it is structural.

It also produces the feast and famine cycle. Busy on the tools means quoting and follow-up stop, and because the effect is delayed by weeks, the quiet patch arrives long after the cause and looks like bad luck. Hiring is what breaks the loop, which is why the advice here is to hire before it feels comfortable rather than after.

The lessons model the economics rather than asserting them. What a new hire has to bill to cover wages, superannuation, vehicle and running costs, which comes to roughly ten thousand dollars a month and less billable time than owners expect. Why spreading fixed costs across two people instead of one lowers your cost per billable hour rather than raising it. When a non-billable admin hire pays for itself through the efficiency it gives back to the billable team. And what each of the first three hires actually releases: the tradesperson frees you from the tools, the admin person frees the tradies, and the third frees you from the operational load that filled the space the first one made.