Holiday Hiatus

Ever notice how an unbearable demand for political correctness and sensitivity has been rammed down the throat of our society?

Well I am here to tell you that it is my personal belief that people of today need to re-grow the thick skin of their predecessors.

I am personally of the belief that a person is of free will to believe and practice anything they want as long as it does not bring harm to anyone and as long as they keep it to themselves and refrain from trying to ram into others brains.

I have an immense amount of respect for a person’s individual beliefs and their personal space.

Therefore I want to wish the following:

Happy Holidays

Happy Hanukah

Have a Crazy Kwanzaa

Rock on, with the Pagan’s Yule celebration

and any others that I have missed because at times I am culturally challenged.

Now for my personal favorite, Merry Christmas!!

Let's all give it up once again for the Surfing Santa.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

End of Year

It seems to be the basic consensus that the cash flow slows during the month of December.

For many years now it has been quite the opposite for my company but for the last week little has been happening.

I have a bunch of estimates out there that have been confirmed, we are just waiting on a go.

So I have taken this time to drop back and clean up my year. I started with the books. The books is the essential part of any business and tells the true story. I have reconciled everything from accounts to credit lines etc. QB has been sent to the CPA and now I am awaiting changes and year end strategy advise.

I have moped up little things on jobs, gotten a bunch of filing done, archived jobs, fixed some red lines and other little things like that.

I have an awesome girl doing some revisions to my website which are long over due. I am really excited about this as the site is dated and has not been updated in 5 years. I still have people listed that have been gone for a long time.

I bought some cheap website software and did an updated layout along with hyper links and other goodies to create a more professional, informative and user friendly site and then handed it off to the pro. If anyone needs a good website person let me know.

In a nut shell I have been doing everything that I have been complacent about all year and it feels good.

I even have my Christmas shopping done. Usually I am one of those bleary eyed men running around on Christmas Eve.

I am thankful for the down times as well as the busy times. Although the revenue suffers a little all that other stuff is done and I can let it pile up again. Besides the plate is now fully clear for a charge.

As a business owner even when the GPS is sitting there I am always busy and that's a good thing.

Hosed

Today I lost a job and I have to tell you that I got temporarily angry about.

I lose jobs all the time for various reasons and over the last couple of years it is all about cost. Clients could care less about good work, reputation and loyalty and that's okay. They'll be back.

In the case of today however I almost nuked out.

I bid a project recently that requires an ALTA and a re-plat. This project is 4 lots, 1 with a big custom home on 1 lot.

In 2006 my company did a topo on the 4 lots and later on staked the house so I was able to give a really good price for the ALTA.

I bid this project at $1800 for the ALTA and $2500 for the plat. These are very good prices and some may consider them to low, which I actually do but I have sharpened my pencil like everyone else.

I am a huge believer in the follow up call. I start with a call the next day or even the same to make sure that the contract was received and then I call every 48 hours for a status until I get an answer. PR is important and people will remember how eager one is to work for them.

I did my diligent Monday follow up today and my client told me that I had been beat so bad the he would have been embarrassed to call and ask if I could match. He was having a very hard time understanding how the guy could do it for these prices but his client went with it.

The other surveyor bid it as such, $1000 for an ALTA on 4 lots that he has never been to and $1200 for the plat.

To this I say "hey genius" you could have bid it 1.5 times and still got it. You totally screwed yourself and created more long term damage to surveying.

Guys like you are the reason that surveying is having such a hard time becoming the profession that most want it to be.

My cost was cheap, but this is ridiculous. Based on how long it would take me to do this job I figured this person will actually pay out of his own pocket before this is done.

I hope you are a follower of this blog and are actually brave enough to leave a comment.

Until there is a basic price structure in place and we are all working on quality and service and reputation as opposed to cost, surveying will never be a profession. We have to start acting like pros and start realizing the importance of getting paid a professional rate.

People that run on a fear factor and do jobs for super cheap are killing us and have zero regard for the overall big picture. They do sub-par work and continue to give us a bad name.

I know that they will one day weed themselves out, but right now it is hard to swallow. Sometimes anyway.

So I'll just move on to the next project which will most likely be better. Usually when a door closes another one opens and things turn out great.