Stanley,

I know how things can be... I think we live in a different kind of area here with all of the people who "work" (work meaning sit around and drink coffee and spend their day on their new hobby which is micro managing you and "learning" about home theater) for a certain big M word company.

When I worked at Good Guys I had to take whatever project a salesman sent and I dealt with some of the worst scum on the planet. Now as my own guy I do walk when I feel ANYTHING in my gut that says I should. The latest one was a guy a builder called me about with a 75k budget. Seemed like a cool project except for the clusterf--k wiring job I'd have to fix. Then out comes the invoice for 71K of equipment from his "friend" in LA who told him to find a local integrator. I couldn't leave fast enough although i did say if he wanted to return it all and talk about gear we could meet again.

Stanley is not the owner... the owner has a large enterprise to feed and may feel that walking anyone is not worth it. Maybe he needs to get the owner back in the field for a few days to "reconnect" him to the real world. It does seem that you end up with way too many of these and reading between the lines it is obvious that you probably A. promise too much B. give too much away

When you drive 65 miles somewhere there should be a bill.

I suffer from the same malady. You want to please so you take on almost impossible tasks (like the Super Bowl Fiasco) knowing that if ALL goes PERFECT you can get it done. Then you gte stuck in traffic, get a flat or spend three more hours than you thought you would dealing with the calls from old clients that you got in too far with too. Then you get to the job and realize you're missing a few inevitable parts and now you're really f'd.

I know Stanley... and I can say firsthand that he's a heck of a nice guy... too nice to say "F--K NO!" once in a while.

Hey Stanley... your 120db theater sound cool. How bout we blow off a few clients for a six pack and a concert video some day.

Yeah, Miami is a bad market. Started out selling car audio in Coral Gables in 1979. By 1981, was mananging the store and put up with sorts of BS. Then the Marilito boatlift happened and a couple of weeks later, get held up at gunpoint by one of those scum. I was so freaked out, couldn't leave fast enough. Wouldn't even visit that place anymore, even though I have lots of family still down there.
Out here in Colorado, life is soooooooooo much more laid back.

I am sure that Stanley is a hell of a nice guy. All I am saying, is trust your gut and if the customer gives you bad vibes, Run, don't walk.
Maybe a change of venue is needed Stanley, If you are interested, send me an email.

I have had to deal with MANY of these people, both on side jobs and at work. Our sales staff (while they have gotten better) will sell to ANYONE with a pulse. All they see is $$, regardless of if the client is self absorbed, arrogant or is a "expert" because their brother in law hooked up his own HTIB.

One ongoing project. Client (a friend of my dads) calls me asking advice about the typical plasma above fireplace-5.1 install. Starts asking about blose, plasmas on the internet etc..... His budget doesn't allow for him to shop at my place of business so I give him some helpful suggestions on where to get decent retail deals on gear and what to buy.

He totally ignores me and buys a bose system and a samsung plasma. Asks me to come meet with him and his cabinet guy. Here is where I should have run screaming....

Like a fool, I go and meet with client and cabinet guy at his house. Cabinet guy is a GC so he is going to handle power as well. I give him needed dimensions, outlet locations and suggest using a max in wall surge protected outlet for his plasma. Tell them to leave the walls open after power and cabinet rough in and I will come in a prewire.

Show up on job, cabinet is finished and in place (built in). GC went and bought his own outlet (non surge) and installed it. All drywall repair finished and repainted... Cabinet is MUCH smaller then I had suggested and gear is going to be a tight fit.

Slice and dice, pull speaker leads, interconnects, (splice friggin bose speaker wire, ugh) catv feed etc.. Client asks me to order a cantilever mount for his tv. If he had gone with the tv I suggested, I would have had the mount in stock. Since he didn't listen, the mount for his model# display is on back order. Now I get a call every day asking "when is my mount going to be here and when I are you going to finish this job".

Crappiest part, I am not making any $ on this. He did my dad a huge favor a few years ago. Since I owe my dad a favor, I am taking care of this to repay the client for my dad.... It has consumed two full weekends so far between meeting with him, ordering parts and wiring.

have them deliver an appliance to your house and hold-out on paying!

Yeah... I used to be the worlds mellowest guy.. but with the shift over to "commodity mentality" for a lot of our stuff... now the dirt-bags are coming out of the woodwork all of the sudden --- and I know a lot, and it took me years to learn it... I just don't like giving it away for nuthin'.
I was watching the Acadamy Awards program the other night and there was that song: "Life on the Street Ain't Easy for the Pimp"... Well, it ain't ewasy for the CI guy either!!!!

This website is my therapy... Like an alcholic going to A.A. meetings... And there is a wealth of excellent info here... I feel bad that I haven't been posting more technical-posts... and just bitchin' ... But yeah, there is a common thread with my recent problem clients... (I LET THEM GET THAT WAY)... by not having enough structure, and procedures laid out for them to sign off on... So--- I'll try that. I've been doing this stuff for eons, and I used to only get a real "ringer" of a client every year or so... But, I think lately I've been giving them an inch (please no "angry inch" jokes!), and they WILL take a mile!!!
Thanks for all the feedback... I'll go crawl back in my cave, throw the phone out the window, turn off the lights and crank some early Sex Pistols!!

I appreciate that... I've just been trying to rebuild a company in that was in crisis by taking on as much work as possible... And under pressure from the owner to get the numbers up...(the same old story ya know)...
The owner just bought a new plane, and I gotta help pay for it!
But yeah, gotta draw the line with the new wave of consumers... especially up here in the N.W. --- all they seem to do is spend all day on the internet shopping and all that stuff.

BigPapa... Heres' the deal...
Kind of like a necessary evil. 5 years ago out here, well maybe 10... getting good projects was like shooting fish in a barrel. We could all pick and choose our clients / projects. Any moron who hung out a custom install sign was rolling regardless of his ethics, knowledge and quality of work & service etc.. It was a feeding frenzy. Clients sought us out. There were just a handful of good CI outfits and we were all booked out 6 months, and price wasn't an issue - seriously - it was quality, and these guys all wanted their pals to know they went with the most prestigious install company... it was more like "I just want it... Can you guys do it"? Can you do a bigger better deal than than what you did for my pal at work???
But now there is so much agressive competition up here... and a lot of the CI companies have taken on young retired Micros%$t millionaires for investors that pour tons of money into these companies, and really don't have to worry about their return on investments... It gives them something to do, and they have cash to pee away.
A few years ago, most of us up here looked down our noses at doing under $25 - $30,000 jobs... The area was FAT with a ton of Dot Com & M-Soft millionaires... and a few Billionaires... A lot of my buddies ended up working full time, traveling the globe... maintaining these guys systems in Europe and all over. Then a bunch of those guys got absorbed by these guys when they started building their 225 to 400 foot yachts, and buying Boeing jets andf outfitting them.
We had to concentrate on the BIG jobs... some of the residential projects were like 3 to 5 year projects, and it was not uncommon to see jobs in the $500,000 + ranges. Theaters alone... some ran over $1,000,000 --- they would have companies that designed and built science fiction movie sets come in and do like an "Alien" or "Star Wars" Theater... Guys would meet at the watering holes at the end of the day, and instead of bragging about the total cost of a PROJECT they landed... they would brag about the size of the DESIGN RETAINERS they were getting!!! There were tons of them. This one small area just east of Seattle has the highest density of multi millionares in the country... So everybody and their brother started doing Theaters and distributed A/V stuff.The security guys, sparkys, car audio dudes, ex retail guys, and a cast of others.
Some of these companies are BIG and very well financed... But now the big jobs are thinning out, yet there are a zillion installers out here agressively low-balling bids, and a lot of hacks too. But they are diluting the market-share big time. There is no money in the production (Plat) homes, unless you have LARGE crews of $10 an hour wire pullers.
So, I've got to Pimp my wares a lot harder than used to be the case... Also, now that the market for $60K projectors and $20K plasmas is but a memory, we are all having to re-evaluate our business plans, and adjust...
It is virtually impossible to get in with builders, unless you are also a sparky... So (and I apologise for the length of this post), but nowadays, we have to more often bite the bullet, and take on less than desirable clients and projects. I know it'll even out some, but a lot of us guys are trying to make the adjustment back to working with very cost-sensitive clients and now internet shoppers. The roaring nineties are over for us, and man they really were roaring! The challenge now is to try and stick out from the crowd, yet still be competetive price wise. There are actually a lot of companies that do really nice work,and zillions of one or two man shows with decent workmanship... The joke now is "Ya mean we actually have to look for business now?"... So it's just a fact of life these days, we gotta work smarter & harder and accept the reality that it's really nice to capture a $25,000 job... Whereas, the Design Retainers used to be double that amount for some of us. It's probably the same story down south in Silicon Valley and the Bay area... one of the areas' really high-end retail / custom shops developed an (unfair) reputation for being really snooty and cold. They were forced to, as they were so slammed with thes huge deals... unless you drove up in a new F-50 Ferrari or Porshe twin turbo... you might get ignored... NOW you can drive up in a rusted out 79 Buick Station Wagon and they'll treat you like a king! So yeah, there is still a lot of work because of the technology becoming so affordable... it's just that a lot of us became very ineffecient because of the onslaught of instant prosperity - when M-soft's stock created tens of thousands of Multi Millionaires literally over night when their stock went public... And then a lot of those guys went out and started Dot-Coms... It was crazy. But that was then - this is now... So we're learning to become lean and mean... and if Elmer and Sophie want us to go take a look at putting a dual stereo speaker in their double-wide trailer... we have to figure out a way to do it, and make a few $$$. It's all good though, cause if we learn from it... when the next wave hits we'll be all that better prepared. I KNOW a lot of the outfits around here got really lax, laid-back and pissed money away, because they always knew another big cash-flow job was around the corner... But not these days! I hope it is better for you on the island!
It's survival of the fittest... natural selection... a lot of these guys will go away, and the better companies will get stronger and more street-smart... I know there are a lot of unbelievable jobs over in your part of the country, but there are probably a lot more guys fighting for the work too, although I hope that isn't the case for your sake!

Stan,

Thanks for the long post. We're all aware of what happened in Redmond and Beyond, and it's nice to hear it from someone who actually lived it, get the perspective.

I'm at the upswing right now in my locale. Although the driving dynamics are a little different, there is a lot of money flowing through here right now. I don't know if it's as/will be as fleeting as your experience, but there will be a time sooner or later where it will get lean again. I worked through two recessions in the Bay Area; I've noticed that recessions are healthy, they clean out the hacks and trunk slammers. All those hacks and trunk slammers return when good times return. But, I have to try harder in those recessions also, lest I become fat and lazy. Also, Hawaii is known for it's extreme swings, so every upswing and downswing is extreme.

So, your post is acknowledged and will be heeded. I know that I won't we so golden at sometime in the future and I might have to scrounge for some work. I'm starting to wonder if some guy reading my posts about how wonderful Hawaii is will be the guy who lowballs me and causes me to lose a job in 5 or 10 years. But thats a risk I have to take.

I know you're in an oversaturated market, plus the demand dynamic shifted dramatically in a relativlely short time. That's just a tough deal to have to live through, but it's life in a dynamic economy. But as an industry, across this country, I still believe that our craft, our profession, will come of age over the next 5 to 10 years. Cheaper and more powerful systems (that actually work without bugs) will be feasable for installation into homes affordable to median tax brackets. It's the $20 to $50K jobs that will dominate industry.

I hope you can make it through your lean time to the other side, after your business model is retooled. You'll do alright brah. Why don't you just refer the jerk customer to one of the hacks? You might kill two birds with one stone, plus put a competitor out of business.

Maybe you just need a change of scenery Stan? Wanna come work on some monster homes?

Yep it's like that line from DYLAN's Like a Rolling Stone...

..Once Upon a Time you dressed so Fine. Flipped the Bums a Dime in Your Prime -- Didn't You?
Now Ya don't talk so loud, now ya don't act so proud... Thinking about having to Scrounge for your next Meal.... How does it Feel????" LOL!!!!

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This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George drops his date off at midnight and she invites him up for coffee...

I was employed there at the time, so that wouldn't have flown.

I did get to witness them going out of business a couple of years later.

First let me apologize to Ernie for bringing up a post not entirely current... But I happened across this tonight and it sort of pissed me off.

But Fred... your comment that a good salesperson is a PITA to most installers kinda strikes a nerve there pal!
It can work both ways... a lot of installers and "propeller head" techs can be a PITA also...
Keep in mind that without the sales guy out there pulling in work, the installers who consider them PITA's wouldn't be working.
I've been both, and yes, while ther are some stupid salesguys - there are also good ones, and most of the good ones were at one time installers themselves.
It kills me when installers sit around bitching about the sales guys sometimes... Give me some specifics... Is it because the sales person might put a little pressure on them to speed things up, work more professionally (tarps booties), not show up at work with massive hangovers...
Are you stereotyping all sales guys in the business?
Just curious...