When you are about to approach a job estimate it is imperative that you have a understanding of what your material costs are, how long your labor will be, how much you want to charge per hour for your labor, how long does the client expect the specific job to take, have you partaken in a similar job before , and if you feel comfortable working for them. If you and the set client are on completely different pages when you are bidding a job, it usually will not end well. If you are doing it for what you feel is a discounted rate because you want to please that set customer, I have found that a large amount of your time will be spent resenting that customer and the time you spend working for them. The same is vice versa for the client who feels they are extremely overpaying you, they will spend large amounts of time complaining and resenting you for what they feel is an extreme overpriced job. It is much better for both parties that if you or the customer does not “meet in the middle” to satisfy the other at your own expense.
BoweryJE22
I never thought about this before. It makes sense financially why you wouldn’t want to be underpaid, but you bring up a good point with the emotional element. From experience, emotion often impacts the quality of the work you do. If both sides think the pay is fair, then both benefit and the final product is far better! Thinking about my sales, I could definitely be a bit firmer about setting a price both sides think is fair. Thank you for bringing this up, it’s a valuable lesson as both a buyer and a seller!