Giving new meaning to "Labor" Day

Say it with me: "I will never underbid again. Repeat: I will never underbid again."

Considering that I do a good amount of business without even advertising, I should never be ruled by that fear that if I charge too much, I'll lose customers. And yet, I choked twice last week. TWICE.

I'm getting sloppy, too, and that's a problem I'll have to nip in the bud, wherever a "bud" is.

The good news: lessons have been learned. (You mean, "learned again," right?--Subconscious) Shut up, Subconscious. When the actual day-to-day work of this business become routine, I tend to be less vigilant. I tend NOT to ask important questions such as "Is this an apartment building with long hallways and long elevator rides?" I stop asking about the weight and dimensions of key furniture pieces. I don't ask about narrow stairwells. Instead, I get a list of things to move and an address, glance at it, and give a quote. When I show up, it turns out that "dresser" means gargantuan antique piece of crap that's three quarters of the way to dust, and "8th floor" means "the freight elevator is broken and they don't let you use the other elevators for moving."

Lessons learned, but not without pain.

On Saturday morning, a relatively quick and simple job (two hours at the most, I thought) turned into five. What really sucked about that one is that I brought help along on a flat-rate quote that was, come on, admit it, WAY to low. Fortunately the guy was generous and voluntarily upped my fee, THEN tipped both me and my colleague. Still, after I paid my guy, we both walked away with about the same amount. I'm all for paying my guys well, and I'm glad S. made out well, but the way it works is this:

The CEO makes more money.

Sheesh. I should have taken some business classes.

The second move was planned and implemented in Hell. The customer, while a nice guy, didn't exactly clarify the scope and scale of the move. "I have lots of books," he said, and a "lot of crap." The key words here are "lots," "books," and "crap." I should have immediately sized on them and dug deeper. But I didn't because I actually believed him when he said "A couple of hours, tops."

Well, in moving customer land, "A couple of hours" means "SEVEN." Also, "crap" means furniture older than our country--back when they made it out of iron so it'll last longer. Oh yeah, and when you ship things from Europe, they put your books in wooden crates.

I managed to up the fee on that one, too, but it was still far below the threshold of what I call "worth it."

I left my house at 8:00 AM Saturday morning. I returned at 10:00 PM. Total take home pay: Just under $400.

Shameful. Embarassing. A teachable moment.

On Monday I spent the whole day moving my own crap which, I'm proud to say, is largely a one-man job. Nonetheless, I woke up yesterday morning and couldn't quite outrun the weekend. I'm getting pretty strong doing this side job, but yesterday I was stiff all over, in a foul mood, and under-rested. It was our first night in the new place, and I'd been looking forward to seeing the sunrise from the sixth floor. Hah! When the sun crested the trees it filled our room, particularly our bed area, with a white nuclear fire.

Oh yeah, and it was our anniversary.

After nine hours of trying to write proposals for which I couldn't find the words, my mood might best be described as "I'll kill you."

So, when I had a simple moving gig that evening, I was not into it. The only thing I wanted to do was sit on the couch, watch the TV (and I mean that quite literally--not "watch the shows on TV"--because it's going to be a week before the cable is hooked up), and drink a gallon of gin.

On the drive home after my day job, all these things crashed down on me, and I found msyelf unable to fend off the Doubts. You know what I'm talking about. Everyone has a great idea, or several, and for a brief, light moment, you know that you've had A Bright Idea. It's perfect--no one else has ever had the same idea. You can clearly see all the steps to take or obstacles to overcome. You. Will. Do. This.

And then you start to Doubt. You have a lot of phone calls to make. You question whether people will want what you propose to offer. God forbid someone should play devil's advocate...

And the idea dies. It's lifeless corpse collapses onto the pile of other idea corpses in an open, mass grave.

That's where I was with the business last night. Driving home, detesting my day job, I Doubted my dream. (Yes, starting a moving company is an odd, pedestrian sort of dream, I suppose, but it's all I got at the moment...) I knew, just KNEW, that I wouldn't be able to overcome the regulatory hurdles. I knew that I'd reach the fee ceiling long before I turned this into a really profitable business. I knew that my truck was going to break down the day I quit my day job. I knew...

I knew a whole lot of things that I have absolutely no proof for. I wasn't being rational. I was in a really, really bad mood.

But a funny thing happened on the job. At the shop where I was picking up a load of bikes for delivery, one of the employees asked me for my card. He'd just bought a foreclosure house, you see, and he was going to need to transport a lot of supplies in the future and could he have a card?

The teenage kid saw my truck signs and said "Hey, that's a really good idea..."

In fact, the person who contracted me said the business was a "fantastic idea."

While unloading the customer's bikes in her parking lot, a woman walked by and asked for a card. "This is a really handy service you provide," she said.

And this morning, a passer-by said she'd seen my cards in the apartment building and had checked out my Web site. "Good idea," she said.

My wife called a little bit ago. "I'm so sorry," she said, "but I missed two calls on the business phone..."

This morning the sun didn't burn and I found no evidence of a mass idea grave. Things are rolling inexorably toward some conclusion that I can't help but think, one way or another, will be a blessing.

Yes, I know, the whiplash is killing me, too. Pass the Ben Gay.