..remember working 63 straight days one time..
Feast before Famine with public-review sites like Yelp, Google, and others also have cycles. Eventually each advertiser's volume will peak, until getting competitor attention.
Any contractor is vulnerable to regulatory entrapment; invitations to demonstrate fraud & lawless conduct with under reported payroll, workers-comp., license limits, Building-Permit requirements, and invitations to license-board stings, especially if not Licensed in a State with license-board enforcement. Competitors will report you to enforcement agencies weather you violate the law or not.
When my public-reviews peaked, so did invitations to violate License law, by working beyond my scope. Refusing to bite kept me out of jail, so what followed was unusual Public-Reviews hating on my business. Trying to get advertisers to remove defamation not originating from customers was a full-time job, and peaked my emotional involvement, and frustration. Until the advertiser demanded an exponential increase in fees from ~$100. to $1000. a Month.
After refusing to pay, and seeking justice in small-claims against one defamatory dirt bag, the advertiser blocked my business page with a Warning Banner, stating my business was an enemy of free speech. What was once a my best advertising source suddenly dropped to Zero, but work volume from other sources were in different stages of similar cycles.
Many repeat customers stopped calling, others waited to see me before asking what happened on Yelp.com. After telling the truth, some never called back. It was a double-edged sword, since delinquent clients --who threatened bad reviews on Yelp-- were shown the Yelp Warning Banner that proved they couldn't hurt me any worse, but could own me $10,000 with damages in California small claims court.
Some competitors figure out when to ring my phone to interrogate me about license law in front of their previous clients, before I can place them on hold. It works, since some of those clients never called back. Sometimes strange interrogations by phone occur just before clients offer me to work beyond my scope, followed by a bad review on Yelp.com complaining that I hung up after they asked about my license.
Yelp.com does find bad reviews in violation of policy, but after letting some nasty reviews stick me real good, they didn't need the Warning Banner any more, and eventually removed it. What seems certain, is all good things will come to an end, so will work exclusively from one client, or advertising source.
After 10 years of refusing work that voids property-insurance claims, Nirvana arrives in other ways. While working with a prior client, invoiced ~4 years ago, I could not remember them; not their face, their voice, their property, nor their neighborhood. But, they seemed to remember my name with amazing clarity and trust, as if we were the best of buds. Felling like a celebrity that earned it was a flattering experience.
.
