Price for the business you want

When you're hungry, you quote low to win the job. It feels like progress. Then you're busy, broke, and resentful, doing $100K of work for $70K of pay, and too buried in the cheap work to chase the good work.

Cheap quotes are a trap because they buy you the wrong kind of busy. Every underpriced job crowds out a properly priced one, burns your crew, and trains your market to expect a discount.

What your price actually has to cover

Your price isn't your cost plus a little. It's:

• Direct cost: labor, materials, subs
• Overhead: the truck, the insurance, the software, the time you spend not swinging a hammer
• Profit: the reason the business exists
• Buffer: everything that goes wrong, because on real jobs something always does

If a number covers only the first line, you didn't price the job. You bought it.

Here's the gut check I trust: if a quote scares you a little at your real number, that's usually the right number. If a quote feels comfortable, you probably left the overhead or the buffer out.

Run the autopsy

Take your last completed job and add up what it actually cost you: hours, materials, callbacks, the headaches that pulled you off other work. Compare that to what you charged.

Did you make real profit, or did you buy yourself a job?

Do that honestly for three jobs and your pricing conversation with yourself changes permanently. You stop asking "what will win the bid" and start asking "what does this work cost the business I'm trying to build."

Price for the business you want, not the one you're escaping.