Next Level Pros - The First 5 People Every Trades Business Must Hire

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

Join our Facebook Group:   / 1bmudi9htk  Most business owners hire because they’re exhausted. The ones who scale hire because the math says it’s time.In this video, you’ll learn the five critical hires every growing business needs — and the exact order to make them so you can scale without blowing your budget.Chris Lee breaks down the same hiring sequence he uses with hundreds of home-service and trades owners to help them buy back their time, build real teams, and remove themselves from day-to-day chaos. These five seats exist in every company from $0 to $100M, and once you understand them, you’ll know exactly where to start — and what’s been holding you back.You’ll also learn the math behind smart hiring: how to calculate your fixed costs, your gross margin per job, your true break-even point, and how to know with certainty whether you can afford a new hire. No emotion. No guessing. Just clarity.If you’ve completed the Impact Audit or watched our Impact Quadrant breakdown, this video is the natural next step. By the end, you’ll know how to move from “I need help” to building a team that runs the business with you — not because of you.CONNECT WITH ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA!TEXT ME: 509-905-4109INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/chrisleeqb/...FACEBOOK:   / chrisleeqb  TIKTOK:   / chrisleeqb  SPONSORSPartner Spotlight: 1SEO Digital Agency: At Next Level Pros, we teach you the best ways HOW to market your business. If you want additional hands-on help executing, we trust 1SEO, our marketing partner. They implement SEO, PPC, Google Local Services Ads, and high-performance websites that turn stronger operations into booked jobs. Learn more or book a consult: https://1seo.com/next-level-pros/

Most business owners hire because they're tired. Real business owners hire because the math says it's time. If you've done the impact audit, you already know where your time is leaking. Now, I'm going to show you exactly who to hire to fix it and when to make those hires without blowing the budget. I've helped hundreds of home service and trades business owners build teams that scale past the owner. And every one of them needed to fill the same five seats in almost the same exact order. When you do this right, your business stops depending on your personal effort, and starts running on structure by the end of this video you're going to know exactly one the five

critical hires every business needs two the order which you should hire them in and three how to know when you can actually afford them using math not emotion to start off these are the five essential roles that need to exist in every single growing company from zero to a hundred million dollars you're going to repeat the sequence over and over as you scale number one the admin or executive assistant. This is your first hire. This one buys back your time. Their job is very simple. Take every single quadrant one activity, low energy, low value task off your plate. If you did the impact audit, you already know exactly what this person is going to do. If not, go ahead and watch our impact audit and impact quadrant videos. That is going to make writing this role's job

description that much easier. So this person is going to be taking care of things like emails, scheduling, paperwork billing, ordering materials, all the busy work that keeps you away from those high value activities. Having an admin assistant will give you leverage by freeing up the hours that drain you and don't move the business forward. Number two is the salesperson. Once the admin work is off your plate, the next seat is to get off sales. This person's sole focus is going to be driving top line revenue. Their job is not helping with sales. Their job is sales. That includes outreach, quoting, follow-ups, and closing. If you're the only one that's bringing in revenue, you don't own a business, you own a job.

Hiring your very first salesperson doubles your capacity overnight. Number three is the operations and fulfillment lead. This is the person who makes sure that what you sell actually gets delivered at the standard that you promise. They oversee the crews, manage the logistics, handle job quality, and protect the customer experience. When fulfillment still lives in your head, you're going to be the bottom. Hiring this seat lets you scale delivery without sacrificing quality. Number four is going to be the marketing specialist. Marketing is the oxygen of your business.

It's what feeds sales, but you don't outsource your brain. You only outsource execution. By the time you hire for this seat, you should already understand your exact marketing strategy. Your messaging, your lead sources, your budget, and your conversion numbers. Then this person is going to run the plays that you've already proven. already proven. Their job, get qualified leads consistently. Last but not least, the manager. The fifth seat is the one that creates the most freedom. Managers hold people accountable,

protect standards, and improve processes. You'll eventually have more than one, a sales manager, an ops manager, but it's all going to start with one person who can lead others and carry your standards forward. That's the difference between having people and leading an organization. Now that you know the five people that you need to bring into the business. Hey guys, it's Chris. If you're finding value in what you're hearing, go ahead and like and subscribe. That way people just like you can find this content for free here on YouTube. Now, let's go back in the show.

Let's talk about timing because getting this wrong is what kills most businesses. Before you hire anyone, you need to run this test. One, you need to know your fixed costs. We call this your nut. your fixed costs or the nut are what you pay every single month no matter what rent software base salaries vehicles insurance etc next you need to understand your gross margin per job now what we teach is a 60% gross margin gross margin is how much you keep from each job after the direct costs are covered that means your labor and your cost of good

or materials. So if you were to sell a $1,000 job and your materials were $300 and your direct labor was $100, you're going to subtract those out, you're going to get a $600 gross margin or a 60% gross margin per job. Then we're going to calculate break-even. Now, in order to calculate break-even, what we're going to look at is your fixed costs, say they are $6,000. month, you're going to take every gross job of 600. You're going to know that you need 10 jobs to break even. After that, everything is profit. So job number 11 is $600 in profit. Job number 12 is $1,200. Job number 13 is $1,800. Then you're going to check the math before you hire. So let's say you're doing 20 jobs a month and you know that you're break even.

is 10 jobs a month. That means that you are now 10 jobs or $6,000. That's 10 times 600 above break even. So can you afford a $2,000 a month admin? Yes, the math says you can. If the higher you're considering costs $2,000 a month, the math says you can afford it. But here is the real test. Will that person either one, free up your time to produce more or two, directly increase production or efficiency themselves. If that's a yes, hire them. If not, you need to wait. Most owners hire based strictly on emotion.

They say, I'm drowning and I just need help. The problem is when you hire out of a panic, you get relief, but not results. All you end up doing is adding payroll, not performance. The best owners hire from clarity. They know exactly what the roles, the exact responsibilities, how success will be measured before anyone signs an offer. That's the difference between hiring people and building a team.