Note: I started writing this a while back; however, I am just now getting around to publishing it.
Though I have made a little bit of money, the last fourteen days have been fairly slow. Thankfully, the fence job was large enough to push my past 14 day earnings into a livable range. However, with out the fence job, things would have been depressingly slow.
I am not worried, but I do get antsy. I like to go from one job to another without down time in between. In reality, I should be thankful. Up until now, I am at least averaging what I would be making if I was still working at Atwoods (a farm and garden store I worked at). At Atwoods I made $8.50 and hour and I worked 32.5 hours per week (When I started out I was working 43-45 hours per week; however, do to slow business, my hours were cut way back.). So, as long as I earn at least $276.25 (32.5 x $8.50), I can feel confident that I did the right thing in quiting.
I recently printed off another 2oo fliers. However, do to the heat, I have not passed very many out. Trying to get your name out with fliers is a lot of time consuming work. Because of this, I decided to test the waters by advertising in our local paper. I can get a 28 day ad for $80. Three days a week the ad will appear as a 21/2"x 11/2" ad in the "service directory." And for the other four days it will appears as a typical line ad. If I just break even on the ad I'll be happy. But hopefully it will have good enough results to really get things started.
On Tuesday, July 13th, I was getting ready to walk out the door to pass out fliers when the phone rang. It was a potential customer who owned a publishing company. They had several boxes of journals and other paper materials that they needed to have disposed. The lady I talked to said that she thought it would be one pickup load worth or stuff. Since I could dispose of the paper for free at our recycle center, and because I figured I could do it in less than a hour, I said that I could do it for $35. However, as I later arrived at the storage center and met the ladies husband, I discovered it was going to be several pickup loads. I didn't know how the man would feel paying $35 per load for several loads, but he thought nothing of it. He just appeared glad to have found someone available to help him. In total I hauled three loads. Since then the man has asked me to give him a quote for installing some gutters on his office. Also, he has mentioned that he hopes to take advantage of my service while I am not too busy. He seems to think that it won't be long until I have more work then I can handle. Since this man really hasn't seen the quality of my work, I am pretty sure that his belief that I will soon busy is not based on my work quality but rather his belief that there is a strong demand for the type of service that I offer.
Last 14 day totals = $675 ($485 fence job, $50 mowing (two lawns), $105 moving boxes and$35 for yard work)
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