Episode Details

You can have every crew working, every truck rolling, and invoices going out the door, and still watch money leave the account for five months straight. Charlie ran into exactly that this year, and the only reason he caught it early was that his labor numbers were sitting on his phone instead of buried in the office.

Kosta and Charlie get into what a losing stretch actually looks like from inside a commercial plumbing company: rain-delayed underground work, engineers stopping crews mid-shift, remobilizing six guys for the third time, and the labor budget burning down before 10% of the job is finished. Charlie also covers why he went back to laying out jobs himself, how he manages 25 to 30 guys who all handle stress differently, the employee everyone knew should have been gone months earlier, and the point where a bad client costs you more than they pay you.

If job costing is something you plan to get to eventually, this is the episode that explains what it costs to keep putting it off. Jobtable tracks every dollar against the job it belongs to, so you can pull up a project on your phone and know where you stand in about ten seconds. 👉 Learn more at https://www.jobtable.com

New episodes every week. Subscribe so you don't miss one.

00:00 – Intro and a review from a Vancouver contractor
04:52 – Five months of losing money while staying busy
07:11 – Why the owner went back to laying out jobs himself
09:52 – The job costing red flags that caught it early
17:20 – Logging receipts to a job in seconds with AI
19:07 – Burnout, stress thresholds, and how owners cope
35:07 – The employee they couldn't afford to fire
40:12 – When it's time to fire a client