I find the opposite to be true.
The bigger projects I expect a certain amount of issues. But most of the larger projects come with a larger budget. Larger budget means better quality equipment that plays better together and is less prone to failure. You also expect a certain amount of headache/frustration and can bake that into your bid.

It is the little jobs where you compromise that prove to be problematic, frustrating and less profitable.

For $1,000 it is hard to handle getting kicked in the balls, for $100,000 the idea becomes more palatable.

I have been having all the same stresses and thoughts. About this field. I think about Just going to sell cars and only service my good customers on days off.

I got a call Friday night something wasn't working also. It got me really stressed.

I do think once you owned your own biz it is very hard to go back to being an employee.

Almost exactly 2 years ago today. I got a email from my boss. At 7pm Friday night. About not logging 30 mins of Programing to a time sheet. I said sorry and thought it over. He responded "unacceptable "

I stopped for dinner right off the highway in mass on my way to vt and let him know what I thought was unacceptable. I was promptly fired Monday morning. And have never looked back. I have been able to survive for 2 years on my own. As much as I stress I think about the friends that stayed working for that shop and how miserable they are. I think getting stressed is because you care.

I started my business in 1986 when I was 25, still going strong. We don't have any jerk clients. Why? Because we fired them. And I trust my two sales guys to walk away from any new prospect if they get a bad feeling.

Could we be a larger firm if we took on any and all customers? We did that at one time, in fact we had 35 employees a dozen years ago. Never again. Life is too short.

I'll respond to a client's email at 9, 10, 11pm, if I feel like it. Or I'll respond in the morning. Most know we have an emergency line as well.

That's why I never ventured up there!

Being born and raised in the Heartland,I wouldn't fit in.

I'm afraid that my normally calm attitude would give into a forced reaction and ruin both of our days........

I was going to say the same thing. I once had lunch with a customer I was doing a big retro for, a very wealthy guy, and I remember him saying, "a large job is easier to run than a small job". I'd think of that every time I shot myself in the foot trying to make some budget-based idea work.

Life is too short.

DING DING DING! Winner!

Lots of those northeast yankees move to Texas and bring that shit attitude with them... we try to weed them out if they can't be re-educated in proper human interaction.

Its bad up here. I've wanted to move out of the area for a while but the wife is hesitant due to family. After her mother passed (who she was really close to), she is more open to it. However we are just in the process of buying a new house now and she is not ready to make the move, so I doubt we will escape.

Ha, you only have to deal with the few that make their way down. Imagine how bad it is up here for those of us stuck up here.

I think it depends on what you clarify as a smaller job. To me, anything that is a one day in and out is a small job. Anything that requires a prewire and return trip or two or more days of work I classify as medium (even if it is not that big). I classify that based on the fact I always have to deal with other contractors, timelines that often are ever changing. Stuff like that. Even though the job itself is small, all the other BS that goes along with doing the job properly sometimes adds up to a lot of frustrations. At least around here it does. I just got a call yesterday from a client who wants stuff run for their detached office in their back yard. Walls are being closed today. Told them tough Sh1t.

I worked for someone after I had worked for myself and there were many things I liked, many that I didn't. They had used another company as their 'farm system' like a baseball team does and since they had worked together, it was very similar to a high school clique. One guy would go around puffing his chest and saying "Yeah, they sell the dream, I make it happen" and yet, he didn't know how to wire two pairs of butt kickers to the amp without making it puke and then, he blamed it on me. He took the whole time allotted for the CEDIA I installer test and looked like he was rode hard & put away wet. The others who had worked for the 'farm team' were a very political bunch and that was one of the worst things about the place. I liked the company's goals of being the most advanced in the area and one of the reasons I wanted to work there was to learn. When they decided to "let me go", one of the owners (being owned by a group is another thing I didn't like) slid a no-compete across the table and after I saw what it was, I looked at him and said "You do know I was in business for myself before I came here, right?" and he was pissed. It's not like they were doing anything proprietary but I think he/they thought I would go after their clients and I told him "That won't be an issue- I can get my own".

I'd like to find a place where management knows what's needed and doesn't try to tell people to do things they themselves don't understand and worse, how to do it. I worked for someone who told us we were using too much wire every time we returned from the job and after he did this enough times, I said "You forgot to include the vertical drops, didn't you?"- he just grunted because yes, he had forgotten and it added up to hundreds of feet of Munster cable, which I told him he should never have spec'd. On another job, he told us to daisy-chain the network cabling- we lit him up for that one.

Are you sure 'palatable' is the word you want to use?

Hahaha.

What I don't get is how you guys work thru the winter with the sub-freezing temps and snowy nonsense and all - if it gets below 40° here we don't usually roll unless it's an inside job... it's usually warmer by tomorrow.

No-compete after letting someone go? And he really thought he would get a signature? LOL