Your seventy-hour week is a pricing problem

Quick answer: If you're working sixty-plus hours a week year-round, you're probably underpriced and saying yes to work you should turn down. Fix the price first. Then set hours for the phone and the paperwork, and protect one full day as if a customer were paying for it.

It's 7:40 on a Thursday in May. You're in the bleachers at your son's Little League game, typing a bathroom estimate into your phone because the customer wants it "tonight if possible." He hits a double. You look up for the second half of it.

Most self-employed guys think that scene is a discipline problem. They figure the fix is getting up earlier or downloading another app. It isn't. It's what happens when the only way to make the money you need is to take every job, answer every call and turn every quote around the same day. That's a price problem wearing a time costume.

Run the math on your own week

This is a labeled example with round numbers. They aren't your numbers.

A painter bills $50 an hour and puts in 60 billable hours a week. That's $3,000 gross. He raises his rate to $65 on new work. Some customers balk, and he loses enough jobs to drop to 46 billable hours.

46 × $65 = $2,990.

That's the same money with fourteen hours back. It's two long evenings and most of a Saturday, every week. He also spends less on gas, rollers and wear on the truck, because he's doing less work to earn it.

If your rate already feels high, read why $45 an hour is a pay cut when it's your own truck before you decide it is. Most guys price against the paycheck they left. They should be pricing against what the truck, the insurance and the unpaid admin hours actually cost.

The annoying part is that the first customers you lose are often the nice ones who just don't have the budget. That stings. It's still the right trade. Your family is already paying for every underpriced hour, and they pay in time with you.

Raise it on the next quote, not the current customer

Don't send everybody a letter announcing a new rate. Put the new number on the next estimate that goes out, and the one after that.

Existing customers keep the old rate until the current job wraps. Tell them plainly before the next one: "My rate's going up in March. Wanted you to hear it from me first." Good customers respect that. Some will thank you for the warning.

Then watch your close rate. If you're winning nearly every bid, you're leaving money on the table. Losing a few is the sign the price is finally in the right neighborhood. If you start losing most of them, you either overshot or you're quoting the wrong kind of customer. Pull back a little and look at where your leads come from.

Close the shop at a time you pick

A storefront has a sign on the door. Your business is a phone in your pocket, so it's open whenever you're awake. Changing that takes a deliberate decision.

• Get a separate business number. A second line or a VoIP number rings through during your hours and goes to voicemail after.
• Record a voicemail that states your hours. "You've reached Dale's Painting. I take calls seven to five, Monday through Friday. Leave your name and address and I'll call you back next business day." Customers hear that as organized. They don't hear it as rude.
• Schedule your phone's do-not-disturb so business texts go quiet at 6 p.m.
• Decide what counts as an emergency before it happens. For a plumber, a burst pipe is an emergency. A slow drip under the sink can wait until morning.

The first two weeks feel like you're losing work. Mostly you aren't. A customer who'd walk over a callback at 7:30 the next morning was going to fight you on the invoice too.

Estimates are eating your evenings

Look at where the kitchen-table hours actually go. For most one-man shops it's quotes first, then invoices, then chasing money. None of it's billable, and all of it happens after dinner.

Batch it. Pick two estimate windows a week, say Tuesday and Thursday from 3 to 5, and book site visits only into those slots. Write the quote in the truck that same afternoon, before you drive home, while the measurements are still fresh. Send the invoice from the customer's driveway the day the job wraps. A plain template you reuse beats a pretty one you keep fussing over.

Some tradesmen charge for estimates on bigger jobs and credit the fee back if the customer books. You'll lose the tire-kickers. That's the whole idea.

Leave the jobsite better than you found it

This one sounds unrelated. It isn't.

Sweep before you go. Haul your own trash. Wipe the fingerprints off the light switch you didn't even touch. Leave the house cleaner than it was when you pulled up, including the parts that were messy before you got there.

Customers remember that longer than they remember your price. They call you back and they tell their neighbors. Referral work closes faster, argues less and needs fewer estimates for strangers. Every job that comes from a happy customer is an evening you didn't spend quoting someone who was never going to hire you. If you haven't tapped that yet, start with the people who already paid you.

Guard one day as if it pays

Choose the day off first. Then schedule work around it.

Most guys do it backwards. They fill the week and call whatever's left "off," and nothing's ever left.

Sunday is the easy pick because plenty of customers don't expect you then anyway. Some guys take Saturday and work a half day Sunday. Which day doesn't matter. What matters is that your wife knows it, your kids know it, and customers hear "I'm booked that day" with no explanation attached. You are booked. With them.

This is where serving your family and having a backbone meet. You work hard so they're provided for. Then you stop, so they actually get you. A man who's never home isn't providing more. He's only providing money.

When the long weeks are the right call

Some stretches really do call for long weeks, so don't read this as permission to coast.

In year one, while you're building a customer list, you'll work a lot. If you're a roofer or a landscaper, the season is where you earn the winter. Sixty hours in July is the job, and your January was decided back in July for a reason.

The test is whether the long weeks have an end date. A busy season ends. A permanent sixty-hour week is the business telling you something's broken.

If you've raised your prices, tightened your hours and you still can't keep up, that's good news. It means the next move is another pair of hands, not more of yours. Read up on hiring your first helper before you do it, because the paperwork trips up a lot of guys.

Next May, the bathroom estimate can wait until Tuesday at three. Your son's double won't happen twice.