Bid, build, invoice
You sell one awarded project
You spend money to win the job before you make money doing it. Every bid has a cost, most bids lose, and the winners have to carry the losers. Margin dies in three places: the estimate you did too fast, the change nobody wrote down, and the last 10 percent of the job that takes 30 percent of the time.
- Your ceiling
- Crew weeks. You can only build so much at once, and the schedule punishes overselling harder than underselling.
- Biggest leak
- Free estimating for tire-kickers — Qualify before you measure: budget range, decision maker, timeline. A detailed bid for someone still 'getting ideas' is unpaid design work.