The day I realized I was pricing my tree work all wrong

I spent 3 years bidding jobs by just guessing what I thought people would pay. Last spring I did a big oak removal for a lady in a nice part of town and charged $800. Her neighbor saw me working and asked for a quote on the same size tree, so I said $800 again. She laughed and told me her last guy charged $1800 for a job half that size. That's when it hit me I was leaving money on the table by not factoring in my actual costs and the market rate. Has anyone else had that moment where you realized your pricing was way off?

2 comments

2 Comments

verac404d ago

I mean that oak removal story is a major wake up call." "It's wild how easy it is to just guess instead of actually doing the math on costs." "Idk sometimes you just gotta get burned once to learn the right way to price things.

kellyg143d ago

You think it's really just about getting burned once though? I feel like people keep making the same pricing mistakes over and over again and never actually learn. Like how many times do you gotta get burned before you stop guessing and actually break down your time and materials? I get that some jobs are hard to quote because there's so many variables you can't predict, but oak removals are usually pretty straightforward if you just take the time to scope it properly. Maybe the real lesson is that you need a system for estimating instead of just winging it and hoping for the best.