[start2finish]

No offense taken here, I love what I do and the only reason I spend time on these forums is to hear other people's ideas and resond to criticisim. I greatly respect Bill's post I have read many of them and he has made his business and clients play by his rules. I don't have the game mastered as well as he. I have a builder that hires a design only firm here in town to draw all his plans. I spend more time substituting and changing the plan to fit his budget, than I would have if I did the job from begininng. I have done hundreds of take offs from plans and hundreds or installs following a plan, in the beginning it was for another company for the last 6 years for my company.
I had even tried using a respected designer to refer the clients to and then bid the plan. the SOB was referring another company to bid the designs and never I wasn't getting a chance to even see the plans. It took 3 or 4 clients to finally have one tell me what was happenning. I guess the first couple figured I was an idiot not to have known who I was dealing with. I would love to find someone who does nothing but design and farm out the work getting the plan prior to the customer reviewing it with my proposal for installation attached. If there are any changes then I would ammend my proposal to affect the changes. Our market is call 10 guys to come give a "free estimate" convincing the customer to lock in a drawing and purchase it to bid it out is the only time we have been paid for a drawing and as mentioned before if we get to design we usually get to install. The problem is Saturdays seem to be estimate days and Sundays are billing and accounting days. Monday-Friday is equipment maintainance and production. My family gets the 30-60 minutes I am awake each evening before passing out in the recliner trying to catch a weather forcast. Don't get me wrong I LOVE MY WORK!!! I also love my family. Balancing my time and juggling the customers and opinions and selling are taking too much of my time. What I need is a parent company to estimate, design, bill, collect, and send me money monthly. YEA RIGHT!