And Chris, feel free to email me if you have any questions about EstiMate too.

Math has always given me a brain freeze. One factor to keep in mind is the number of employees to determine shop rates. For example if a one man shop is trying to keep a $2000 month shop mortgage, His shop rate will be substantially higher than 3 employees dividing thier portion of that same $2000.

Apply this theory to all aspects of overhead, and it will surprise you that the bigger shops can maintain while dropping thier prices....they make up for it in volumn. Ever wonder why walmart and target are putting walgreens and K-mart out of business selling the same stuff?

Geez cam, after the breakdown on that sign it is easy to see where you could have gotten more $.

I believe there is a "break even" mentality in many trades, ours included. I also believe it will always exsist. Daves original post sufaces at every gathering of sign people I have attended. Why is that? I dunno.

In the perfect world, there would be one solution. Quotes would be sent to .esti-mate.com and would come back to you already completed with a huge hourly rate. This way we would ALL have Corvettes parked at our summer homes in Beverly Hills.

[ February 12, 2002: Message edited by: Mikes Mischeif ]

Ever wonder why so many small shops have to work so many hours to make ends meet? If you have calculated your hourly rate based on a typical 40 hour work week, you'll find yourself working 60-80 hours to bill those 40 hours.

Add up all the time you spend on non-production. Things like phone calls, talking to people, running around town and other administration stuff you can't bill for. In a typical one person shop, this can easily add up to 16 hours a week or more! You may want to think about these unpaid hours when calculating your shop rate.

Another question? Did you calculate your wage into all of this? Do you even know what you need to make in order to maintain yourself and/or your family? Sit down and take a honest, detailed look at what you have to make a year and put that at the top of your shop expenses.

Looking back over our 25 years running a small shop, I have discovered that we generally end up keeping 1/3 of the gross sales. We've shared this with friends in the business and it seems to be pretty accurate. Using this formula, a shop owner who wants to take home $50,000 needs to do 3x that...or $150,000 in sales.