Seven Reasons Why You Should Quit Contracting
I've been a licensed general building contractor for over
20 years now and have been working in the construction business since
1978. I don't know how many times I've thought about quitting, but
haven't yet.
1. You're tired of working for abusive clients. I don't know how many
people I've actually worked for that have emotional and mental problems.
Some of them were pretty abusive people.
2. Nobody pays you on time anymore. If you're a contractor who works for
other contractors, you know what I'm talking about. I had to quit
working for one contractor, because they wanted to start paying me every
90 days. It just doesn't make any sense.
3. Workers compensation rates are going through the roof. I had to quit
using workers in 2002, because I was paying over 50% of my payroll to
the workers compensation insurance company.
4. You're tired of going to estimates. There was a time when I got nine
out of every 10 jobs that I went to look at and now it seems like I get
about four out of every 10 jobs.
5. You're tired of people telling you that you're ripping them off. I
couldn't even afford medical insurance for the longest time, when I
first started working as a contractor.
6. You can't find good help. I probably had over a hundred people
working for me at one time and out of those people, there were less than
10 of them that knew what they were doing.
7. If you do find someone that knows what they're doing, they either
quit or want more money. Life's not fair all of the time, but it isn't a
reason to quit either.
There might be seven reasons why you should quit contracting, but there
are at least a hundred reasons why you should stay in the construction
business. Don't let things like this get you down.