Grumpy, you aren't doing anything wrong, that is not what I am saying, however you are fixating and getting caught up in a microscopic theory of my reply instead of understanding the big concept. I have never operated on what would be considered traditional business methods in anything I have done. When I was young just like yourself I read and learned all that I could just like you are doing, then I met real sucessfull businessmen and quickly learned that there were many ways to reach a goal, I also found that being successful once didn't guarantee anybody would be where they were 5 years later, in fact the only guys I ever knew who were consistantly successful were the guys who knew nothing about business (in the traditional book sense) but they were great marketers, advertisers, salesman or self-promoters, with those skills they could be dumped into a pile of crap and within a short time come out rich.
You have to know your numbers in order to determine your business model, but a projected budget means
nothing. Don't confuse a projected budget and everything else you have said in your last post, because they have nothing to do with one another.
The best thing you said was:
By your logic, I don't need to make 866 on each and every job, assuming most jobs are one day, all I have to do is give one customer a job for cost and then charge the next customer $1734 to break even.
which is exactly correct(except you would want to charge more than 1734, because you need to make some money). Your daily nut is meaningless each day. It is based on a projection, everything in that projection, individually is a projection. Figure out what your costs are and where your profit margin is and sell the hell out of your product and the rest will take care of itself.
Long ago we had a budget based on sales of $20,000 in January, we ended up doing $95,000 in January, stupid ass budget was shot within the 1st 30 days of the year.
Saving for upcoming expenses is a huge part of budgeting.
That's how suckers do business. Keeping a big cash reserve is the secret and reacting proactively to your market and taking advantage of it whenever you can is a guarantee for wads of cash in your pocket.
No two of your customers will pay the same for similiar work? That's interesting. If I have two houses next to each other built at the same time, by the same builder and they are identicle these customers are getting the same price, assuming the customers have the work done before I have any price increases from my suppliers or give my crews a raise.
Tha's why you will probably never see me build two houses next to each other. I told you before I don't have any desire to work as a sub to a GC, not because I dislike the terms of a contract, but because I like being as close to the customer as I can, which results in being able to control my profits. :Thumbs: