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When I started in this business 20 years ago. My thoughts were that I could do this and still maintain my current employment. No way! Unless you want to remain  small. Back then I hired a guy and trained him to do it my way. I paid him 20% on every job. This worked out good for about 5 years. Then I brought on a second guy. His title was helper. I paid hime hourly. To this date I have the same set up on each truck. One commissioned and one hourly. The lead person doesn't lolly gag around due to his making money on work completed, which prevents the hourly guy from dragging his feet. Some things have changed.

Today, I have them sign a non-compete from day one. Commission is not paid on the total amount of the job. It is paid on the profit. By that, I mean taking ALL of your expenses to include chemicals, licensing, insurance, phone, advertising, etc. dividing it by 12 and coming up with a figure as to what it cost to operate monthly.
I them divide that by 26. Which on the average would be the number of days worked monthly. This will give me a cost of daily operation. Bottom line, is that I  take that percentage right off the top. For example, if we do a job for $600.00, I take 17% right off the top for expenses. So my commissioned guy is getting paid on $498.00. At 20% he makes $99.60. My paid helper starts at $8.50 hr.

A $600.00 job given the worst case scenerio of taking 5 hours to complete will cost me in labor $144.50 and $102.00 in expenses, my profit $ 353.50 after all expenses. Barring no major breakdowns. Although, most of that has been considered when establishing expenses or projected expenses.  


I have one crew that basically focuses on my maintenances which is a totally different animal.

Hope this will give you some insight.