Stan: Very good. Good. So let's talk about the difference between an independent contractor and an employee. Especially within the construction industry, it's real easy to confuse these two things. Especially, if you start to use somebody on a regular basis, you have to be very careful. Now, the IRS is awesome enough to give us a 20 factor checklist. Something that you can look up on your own, on the internet. Here's the form. I'm actually gonna use to go down that Jeff was nice enough to print off before we started this. They also have a second set of forms, which gives you links, which gives you consequences, which gives you a more thorough outline. But today, we're gonna talk about this 20 point checklist. We're gonna go down, what we consider, the most important points of this checklist. What do you find, Jeff, are the things that contractors make the biggest mistake on when they hire a subcontractor?

Jeff: As far as classification?

Stan: Yes.

Jeff: Yeah. Well, I mean a lot of...

Stan: See, there you go.

Jeff Law: I'll have to know.

Stan: All right, today is going to be one of the most informative sessions for all of you guys that have questions about hiring your first employee, and what it means to be a subcontractor versus an employer, which is something that typically happens within the landscaping and construction industry. I have Jeff Law with Law Tax & Financial here with me today. Jeff is the expert, I'm not the expert. I have the same questions that you guys have. I have 30 years experience hiring people and going back and forth with the IRS on different matters, I never seem to win though. First off, let's go over the question of; you're just a brand new contractor coming out Jeff, and you're going to hire your first person. What do you do right out of the gate? What's the first things?

Jeff Law: Well, once you have that person when you're ready to put somebody to work, you're going to want to determine whether they're an employee or a...

This video may sound counterintuitive, but what I'm going to tell you is extremely effective. Especially if you're just getting started in landscaping. You start trying to develop business contacts. Work with your competition. And I'm going to give you some exact examples that I want you to follow. Don't view your competition as competition. They're a source of projects. They're a source of job leave. Let me use my company as an example. We've been established for 30 years. We've been around a long time. We have more work coming in than we can ever handle. I need, and I mean I need good company.  I need to know I can feel comfortable when giving a job to another company. We must know that the customer is in good hands.

Good Companies are Hard to Find

Those are few and far between. There are not a lot of people I can do that with. Why do you think I give away? Because now that person owes me a favor. What happens when somebody owes you a favor? They want to repay it. What kind...