Greetings, and thanks for this wonderful forum.....My situation is this. My first year aprentice is a fireman and works for me two out of three days. We do mostly small jobs, say 6-8 hours or less, and alot of service calls since my knees and back are not what they used to be.
My aprentice is also my son-inlaw I pay him $20 per billable hour as I'm trying to encourage him to become a journeyman and become a business partner as I slow down a bit, and by paying him per billable hour I'm trying to give all of his proceeds to him, and at the same time not assume much financial risk of any dead time between jobs. This is his first year and he's really catching on, as he's a pretty smart cookie. We do a lot of code discussion while riding from job to job and he's learning fast.
So...Average local rates for our area is $60 (Journeyman) and up to $40 (for 2-3yr aprentice). While a select few shops get $65, we try to stay with $60 for journeyman rates.
My situation is this, when I charge for both of us on these smaller jobs, I keeping thinking "I could have done the job myself at a much lower cost to the customer". When I hand them the bill (charging for both of us) I get this shocker look. So, I tried everything from $90, $85, $75 for both of us and I cant seem to find the niche. My "son in law" does a good job at being productive and staying on a billable task, but it always comes up with a really big bill for the customer and I'm pretty tender about that, (maybe too much). He's not near as fast as I am but he's learning.
I'm 50 and only work around 20-25 billable hours per week, and I'm just trying to maintain a equivalant, to around, $50 per hour after overhead for myself after paying overhead and taxes.
Any suggestions would be apreciated, Also forgot to mention, that I'm charging 20% markup on materials. So, am I doing it right, or do I need to change something?
Thanks .....Mule
My aprentice is also my son-inlaw I pay him $20 per billable hour as I'm trying to encourage him to become a journeyman and become a business partner as I slow down a bit, and by paying him per billable hour I'm trying to give all of his proceeds to him, and at the same time not assume much financial risk of any dead time between jobs. This is his first year and he's really catching on, as he's a pretty smart cookie. We do a lot of code discussion while riding from job to job and he's learning fast.
So...Average local rates for our area is $60 (Journeyman) and up to $40 (for 2-3yr aprentice). While a select few shops get $65, we try to stay with $60 for journeyman rates.
My situation is this, when I charge for both of us on these smaller jobs, I keeping thinking "I could have done the job myself at a much lower cost to the customer". When I hand them the bill (charging for both of us) I get this shocker look. So, I tried everything from $90, $85, $75 for both of us and I cant seem to find the niche. My "son in law" does a good job at being productive and staying on a billable task, but it always comes up with a really big bill for the customer and I'm pretty tender about that, (maybe too much). He's not near as fast as I am but he's learning.
I'm 50 and only work around 20-25 billable hours per week, and I'm just trying to maintain a equivalant, to around, $50 per hour after overhead for myself after paying overhead and taxes.
Any suggestions would be apreciated, Also forgot to mention, that I'm charging 20% markup on materials. So, am I doing it right, or do I need to change something?
Thanks .....Mule