[jwholden]

Well, it has happened.

I am in the thick of things and have reached that point every year when I end up chasing so many new leads that I don't get to estimate the jobs I met for an initial consultation. I have decided not to schedule any new appointments the next two weeks until I draft two larger job estimates and present my proposal.

It seems every year around this time of the year that the wave crashes on me. I am working long days and go home to return calls and do office work. Clients suddenly find the estimates I sent and want to ask a few questions before sending a deposit or a few of the plants I installed last year died and they want me to come 'check them out'. A lot of busy work.

I need to make a mental note to myself not to go for broke with estimates early in the season, for the phone will continue to ring in May as well.

[Stonehenge]

One interesting thing for me this year, after relinquishing most all of the jobsite work (other than 2X daily site visits and some time to teach on a jobsite), is that I'm in the odd position of being totally caught up on designs and estimates. This has never happened for me. I was actually freakin' out a little this week - every year up to this one, at this point in the year, I'd have between 12 and 20 designs/estimates that I'd be working on, and would inevitably fail to provide a timely bid on several of them, ticking the people off. But this week, about Tuesday, I was putting the last of the designs I needed to create on the drafting table, and was now worried about generating more leads. It's not that I haven't been cranking out the bids - if things go my way, in the next two weeks I'll have sold the total volume of biz we did last year. It's great having all the potential biz out there waiting to come in, but also very weird being caught up right now.

More leads have come in, and I'll have about a half-dozen bids/estimates to work on this weekend.

[chesie]

Jeff-

You have made a jump that I would love to. It seems so hard to pull away from the jobsite to "work on the biz instead of in it". This is a problem I am dealing with presently and I think it will be sometime before I am able to make that jump. Read " get up the nerve".

I know it can only be for the best. You da man.

[Paul]

It's only taken him 3 years of prodding and arm twisting to get him there!

[chesie]

Well let me ask you guys(& ladies) a question then. How and when did you determine when it was time to step back into the office and away from the field? I probably know the the answer to the question.....but i need to hear from others in the field.

[Paul]

My first question is, how much work are you losing by not completing estimates?

My next question is how old do you want to be and still manning a shovel?

Question 3 is can you train some one to lead crews out in the field?

Are you ready to give that up?

[chesie]

LOL!

Someone is starting to sound like my wife. All very valid points.

[scl]

Paul hit it on the head. I, too, have been wrestling with this and am slowly easing this way. The other day i left my 2 part-timers doing a job to meet with at 3 potential lawn install clients. Got back and they had their work almost completed. Didn't hurt a bit.LOL When your knees hurt every time you get up from doing wall base or pavers, you miss client appointments because you just have to get this last area done, etc... I think thats when.

[BJR]

How many staff in the field do you think you need to have before you can leave the manual labour to concentrate on the management side full time?

I have always worked on having 6. 2 crews of 3 with 2 leading hands.

[Stonehenge]

And that's about where we'll be in another month. Chesie, to answer you question, for me it was pretty simple. When I worked with the numbers, it became painfully obvious that unless I started turning over the manual labor to the guys, I would never reach the revenue goals I had for the company, and never hit the salary goals I had for myself. Never. Ever. So I either had to do it, or be satisfied knowing I'd never make much money, and my body would be wrecked in a few years (...it'll probably still be wrecked in a few years...)

Yeah, it did take a few years to get here, probably longer than some others who've done the same. But one of the biggest issues was finding a few good men to turn over control to. There've been lots of little issues on this path, too - compensation packages, me re-learning how to be a good manager, taking the time to do that, allowing time for someone to develop, all that stuff.