Bespoke work vs bread and butter

[sancho57]

Excellent advice. I did the same in my trade (IT). Personal branding is very important. I built my brand by getting active on forums, spending a few hours per day. Maybe you could become active on a DIY forum/mailing list, or a forum that covers interior design/home decoration. Yes, you give advice for free, but when something gets too complex for the DIY guy/girl, it's important that the feel confident in asking you to complete the job, you, the nice craftsman who apparently knows his craft so well.

My hourly rate was very competing for a couple of years, and I got all sorts of crappy jobs. Then I started to raise my rate, within 1 year it was 3 times the rate used to be. Guess what, I got even more requests, now from high end customers, and I was able to pick out the really challenging gigs that would look nice on my CV.

Best, Karel

My mentor Mr. P (RIP) when i was whining to him about some customers who were nit picking the heck out of my work gave me one (of many) bit of advice, He said raise your price. The more you charge the less you run into those type of folks.

I did, and he was right. He was very expensive and busy year round.

Great thread BTW

 

[irishroey]

Great thread Gol
I felt myself in this situation a lot of the time this year and as the year went on it got very disheartening at times going out working a very hard shift and walking away with a less then average day rate
For the last few months I have started to raise prices,one builder in particular that I work a lot for had me first fixing and second fixing on a daily rate reduced down to the bone,a few months ago I told him I had to raise prices and start pricing work and that I wasn't interested on day work any more, he was fine and from then on I have been only second fixing and doing finish work on a price that i am happy with and so is he, he now has two other carpenters who are first fixing and doing all the donkey work on a daily rate reduced way down and they are working like anything for it,

Another thing happened recently that I would of not done this time last year, a friend who I have met through work over the last few years passed on a job to myself as he was emigrating to canada and wouldn't have time to carry it out, I went and gave a estimate of €3250 to the man of the house and he seemed happy and I felt he would go ahead with it, turned out that the lad didn't go to canada in the end as it fell through at the last minute,
Following week I get a phone call off the say that the man of the house contacted him and asked if he could do the job but at a reduced price, my friend rang me and asked if we would do it together,I wasn't keen at all at this stage and told him if he was badly stuck I wouldn't leave him like that and would help for a day or two but that I wasn't really interested and told him that the price was very keen and not to reduce it if he does do it,
Following week he starts the job for €2800 which I thought was crazy, I couldn't help him so he had a friend of his help,
Following week they are still there and he called one day to say he has learnt a big lesson
He was way under priced and ended up handing over more money to his friend who was only there as a helper then he got himself and I was delighted I had said no,
Sometimes you are better off being busy then being a busy fool!!

 

[Tinker]

I had a "friend" call me to give him a price to do a foundation for an addition he was going to build.  I had never worked for the man before, but knew he was trying to get his own business going.  I gave him a price and told him i could work it into my schedule as soon as he was ready to start.  A couple of weeks later, i happened to drive past the job site and the wood was already going onto the foundation.  I just figured he found a cheaper price and said nothing. 

A few months later, He called for another price; which I gladly gave him.  For that job, i happened to be working on the same road and eventually, i saw him working on the foundation himself.  I said nothing, but thru grapevine, i found he had done the previous foundation as well.  He obviously did not know how to estimate the masonry and was using my estimates so he could get the work.  i had helped other friends with their estimating in the past, but they were upfront that they wanted to do the work themselves.  I was always glad to help out young guys trying to start out.  i had had my mentors when i was starting.  we had always been honest in our dealings and worked together straight up.  This guy was just using me.  I said nothing.

A while later, he called again for a price for a bigger foundation.  i guess he was expanding his operation.  I "gladly" gave him a price once more.  This time, i gave a very "low ball" figure barely more than the materials would cost him.  Months later, he saw me at a local diner and lit into me about how low my "estimate" had been.  He "...lost his shirt on the job..."  He must have been doing the same thing with some of the other subs as well.  It was the last job he did in the area as he moved away before the job was done.  I eventually found out he owed too many suppliers money and left a step or two ahead of the law. 
Tinker

 

[GOL]

I hoping the new year here in Ireland will change things for the Irish economy and improve the  way things are  even though things have improved rapidly since the middle of the year . Here's hoping to building things up more and expanding the business  and also  making more furniture and jobs that keep the bills payed but also make something for the future .

 

[Eli]

Whatever you do, don't take a job just to stay busy, and don't be embarrassed or not bold enough to ask for what the job is worth. It's easy to use the excuse that there's a recession on and people can only afford so much, but if you do good work and charge a fair price with profit, stick to your guns, you'll float up to the top of the market. No matter how many people you think don't have enough money to afford your services, there are plenty of people with money that need good quality service. There are plenty of crappy tradesmen out there to handle the clients you leave behind when you move up, so don't worry about them, they'll get what they pay for. Take yourself seriously and charge what you are worth, and clients will take you seriously as well.

 

[jmbfestool]

Whatever you do, don't take a job just to stay busy, and don't be embarrassed or not bold enough to ask for what the job is worth. It's easy to use the excuse that there's a recession on and people can only afford so much, but if you do good work and charge a fair price with profit, stick to your guns, you'll float up to the top of the market. No matter how many people you think don't have enough money to afford your services, there are plenty of people with money that need good quality service. There are plenty of crappy tradesmen out there to handle the clients you leave behind when you move up, so don't worry about them, they'll get what they pay for. Take yourself seriously and charge what you are worth, and clients will take you seriously as well.

+1

 

[Tinker]

I had been doing all of the masonry for over 20 years for a certain builder.  One year, as biz opened up in early spring, we had bid three jobs in a row and lost to the same builder.  That builder had recently moved into the local area and he was killing everybody.  We got another job to bid and my builder knew there would be only two bids, ours and the guy who had already beaten us for three previous projects.  My builder told me i had to cut my bid as he was running short of work having only a couple of small alterations ahead.

I told him, "Look, that guy has lowballed three jobs already.  The guys at my mason supply are already asking questions about him.  i think he is in over his head.  Go ahead and bid your regular way and add 10% or 15% to your bid.  i think you will do just fine."  we discussed a little more and my guy did some checking around and came back to me with "I am taking your advice.  I hope you are right." 

We not only got that job, but before we finished, the other builder had left town, never to be seen again.  We ended up with two of the jobs we had lost and at the price we had bid.  I never bid to "beat' the other guy.  That type of bidding can bring a lot of problems.  Bid the job as you see it.  Let the other guy take the beating from low balling.  I told earlier, of a job I got because the competition low balled a chimney and i ended up rebuilding much of it because the owners lost a lot of sheetrock and delaminated plyscord.  I fixed the problem at my repair pricing (much higher than original bid had been due to tearing down all of the exposed outside chimney) and ended up with more work from same owner as well as work for several of his friends and later, landscaping work for several of the same people. 

The above responders who have advised bidding high enough for an honest profit are right on. Low balling creates a lot of headaches for everybody involved.
Tinker

 

[greg mann]

These issues are not isolated to "the trades". Where I work, we often compete against other companies that want to steal business from us. Our present competition has even used the tactic of telling our largest customer that within his ten year plan he intends on buying us. It is clearly a ploy to make it look like he is more dynamic, efficient, etc., and that we are in decline. Thing is, one of his prior customers is now placing their most important new program in 20 years with us, as well as a huge amount of existing work that is being re-sourced here in the US. Why? Because he is not capable of giving them the quality they need. In the end, he may take some work from us, he actually has, but our shared customers can now compare what they get from each of us for relatively the same money.

It may seem that the lowest bidder sets the market price, whether they can actually succeed at delivering on it or not, and for a while they will. Sometimes you just have to outlive those guys and wait for things to come back around. Other times you have to do what seems counter-intuitive. We just raised prices on a program, somethiing we hadn't done for years, many years. The customer is not happy but we were not making anywhere near enough for the investment involved. We had taken on the work when we were very slow, after a lower bidder was failing on the program and needed to be replaced. We had let the buyers talk us down too far, essentially to the price they were paying for failed work. We didn't fail, but we provided quality work for 5 years at too low a price. I recently re-evaluated the whole program to come up with proper pricing and then, just for grins, pulled our original quotes when we had lost the job ten years earlier to the lower bid. My revised prices were within 2% of my originals! Trouble is, I now have an unhappy customer that won't appreciate that his work is now priced right. I need for him to shop it around for a while so he will realize that he is paying the right price. If he does decide to move the work to someone cheaper I think he will find out that we were priced right and we may wind up getting it back. At least I won't be running it too cheaply. How much better it would have been if we had just stuck to our price in the beginning. There really was no one else for them to go to at that time and they would have finally accepted the right price.

 

[Tinker]

I have an old snow plow customer (100 this year) who has hired me to take care of her driveway four times.
She has only fired me three times.

I have been back and forth with her for nearly 60 years (not bad for being only 39)
the first time I plowed her driveway, a friend of mine had been doing the job, but he kept getting into problems with the drifting sno piling up.
He kept calling me to help him out.  finally, he just quit doing it for her.
she called me direct and told me the other guy had quit doing the plowing for her, so i, after calling him to confirm, started doing the job.
His problem with the driveway was that he kept piling snow to the windward side and it would drift in deeper everytime the wind blew from north or West and inbetween.  I was able to avod heavy drifts by being careful which way i piled the snow, but eventually, she decided I was too expensive and got somebody else.  Eventually, i got called to do the job the new guy kept messing up.  And the cycle began again, only my price went up.  Eventually, i got fired again and hired again and fired and rehired.  each time i was rehired, i raised my price.  the last time she hired me was maybe 25 years ago.  I have raised my price a couple of times since to keep up with equipment costs, fuel and wages.  I don't think that if she fires me again, she will have enough time to rehire me. (She is heir to a large auto company. maybe she will leave me a new truck in her will  :)
Tinker

 

[kmdwoodwork]

Whatever you do, don't take a job just to stay busy, and don't be embarrassed or not bold enough to ask for what the job is worth. It's easy to use the excuse that there's a recession on and people can only afford so much, but if you do good work and charge a fair price with profit, stick to your guns, you'll float up to the top of the market. No matter how many people you think don't have enough money to afford your services, there are plenty of people with money that need good quality service. There are plenty of crappy tradesmen out there to handle the clients you leave behind when you move up, so don't worry about them, they'll get what they pay for. Take yourself seriously and charge what you are worth, and clients will take you seriously as well.

Great advice, i could not have said it better.