well guys i am throwing the towel in

[Orange Hill]

You are on the right track.Cut back,quit dragging home every saw you see and CHARGE MORE.When I got sick and tired of the horse business I raised my training rate to a dollar a minute,that's right $60.00 an hour,I still got people to take me up on it because they knew it was worth it.Now my rate is $2.00/minute and no takers...so far.You work cheap you get cheap work and cheap customers.As far as being a good old boy and helping people out,some folks there just ain't enough help for.

Funny how the cheapest customers that you have to cajole to get paid are the biggest complainers and always want free help. I agree that you are charging too little. Some people see a cheap service rate and think you have sub par service, double your rate. Keep track of your good customers and relaunch when you start missing the work or just turn it into a side job where you only have to deal with people you like and charge what your time is worth and not what you think is a kind rate.

I blame the government shut down.

 

[Trx250r180]

how many hours do you have into fixing the fixer uppers ?3-4 ?that's about 5 bucks an hour business wise , get a grinder ,5 bucks to sharpen a 16-20 inch bar chain 8 bucks for 28-32 ish ,you would be amazed how many people cant sharpen a chain and will bring them to you start with the chain sharpening maybe and be selective on what repairs you make ,if a new 40cc saw is 100-150 bucks ,it's maybe not worth fixing 600 to 1000 dollar saw is a different story ,if can repair it for half of what it's worth new ,may be able to make a buck

 

[Modifiedmark]

I get 3 per chain,, other local shops are 8-10 per

It should be $8 or more to do one. They way they bring em in all full of oil combined with dirt and cutters so dull the ends are folded over to where you need to run them round the grinder 3 times to get the cutters back to usable. Then you have to take the rakers down because you had to take the cutters down so far.

They then ##### because they only have half of there chain left. LOL.

You have been doing them for $3 and undercutting real business that have been charging a fair price to begin with. You need a good swift kick in the butt to wake you up.

 

[nmurph]

Scott, I understand your thinking, but if it is going to be a business, then it needs to be operated as one. There is nothing wrong with trading work for goods, after all, that is what we all do for a paycheck. I think you need to raise you rates some. Maybe you need to go to $35/hr. That still gives you a big advantage over the big shops and increases your hourly rate by 75%. You could lose 40% of you hourly business and still make just as much money. If I were you, I would raise my rate to $30/hr, see how it affects business, and then adjust it again in a couple of months.

How busy are you staying? If you keep work in you shop, then you can probably afford to charge more. I used to price my work at $30/hr for local stuff. It got so that I couldn't get everything done, so I raised my rates. If they can't afford me, then let them take it elsewhere. I don't proclaim to be the cheapest, but I do promise to do it right- no short cuts.

 

[old-cat]

Charge hourly rate, HIGH, price negotiable. That way if they're hurting for $$$ you can be a help to them. If your service is high quality, people who can afford it, GLADLY pay it.
I continually have people paying me MORE than what I ask!

 

[angelo c]

I get 3 per chain,, other local shops are 8-10 per

Scotts prices should reflect what Scott needs to make to earn his living...not "what the other guys are getting"

some customers prefer a "Bentley" and some prefer a "Mini"....the market will support products and services that are the best perceived "VALUES" not necessarily the cheapest around.

 

[svk]

Personally I think your business is a gem that is undiscovered meaning that you were either not marketing enough or marketing in the wrong areas.

A portion of the OPE user population wishes to have all service done by a dealer with "certified" techs (we know this can be a joke). Anything outside of this is unacceptable to them

​

. This is not your target market.

The other portion would prefer to have their service done by a local Joe that they know, trust, and feel confident in their abilities; i.e. YOU. The second benefit is that they can avoid the high pressure sales that sometimes comes with working with a dealer who wants to charge you to fix your item AND sell you as many high profit margin parts as they can (obviously not all dealers are like this). The fact that you are working for a very fair (perhaps too low) rate is even better. If I didn't do my own repairs, I would be looking for someone like you.

There's lots of people out there with a 10-15 year old piece of OPE that isn't worth spending $80 an hour on but is worth fixing...you just need to become the guy they think of. Good advertising and word of mouth will do it for you.

A few ways to build it back up:

Good business cards (cheap)
Internet ads (free)
Flyers (cheap)
Print ads (cheap if you do it right)
Signage at your shop (if you can) along with a bunch of OPE in front
Ask your network for referrals​

As with most businesses, it is going to be famine until it is feast.​

 

[half_full]

many people will form an opinion instantly (hmmm, $20. why so cheap) but it can take years to build a reputation.
Too many people think throw away when an item is cheap to replace.
Keep at it and word of mouth will spread and grow your business.

 

[dl5205]

I get 3 per chain,, other local shops are 8-10 per

$6-$7 per would still be a bargain (in your market). You are probably doing a better job than the guys @ $8-$10 per, so you're "worth" $11. If you are going to QUIT Something, Quit selling yourself short.

 

[Warped5]

Scott, here's another thought ... Have you tried to market your saw repairs and sharpening to any tree services in your area? So long as they don't bury you with machines and expect unrealistic turnaround times, that would be a good revenue source.

 

[dl5205]

shops here are charging 80 per hour and won't even touch a lot fo stuff,, me I charged 20 per hour and worked on any brand,,,,, in a nut shell I am going back to making it a hobby and not a business,,, this is really depressing,,,,,,, I feel like a big failure,,,

In Your market, your hourly rate should be $50/ hr. If you are working on junk stuff for someone who can't afford better, you can adjust downward if need be. That guy can tell his buddies "Doofus fixed my Wawl Thangie in only Ten Minutes!".

 

[dl5205]

My wife and I owned a small business (Not a small Engine shop) in a small town for 15 of the last 16 years. Before that, I worked for the previous owners for 5 years. Twenty years under the same roof for me.

One of the most important things my boss taught me came one day after I had marked something WAY down, just to make the sale. He said, "Anyone can Give this siht away, We're Here To Make Money!".

 

[john_bud]

08f150,

You do sound down in the dumps. Not sure why. You plainly ENJOY working on small engines and chainsaws in particular. You obviously have some talent / skill at working on them. Now you are say you are disappointed about not getting more financial reward in your "business", I hear that. But you also stated that there isn't much free $$$ floating around in your neck of the woods and you don't want to burden the guys that come to you for help. That's commendable! But you also said that the other repair shops are charging 4x more than you are and not budging on that rate. So there is a demand for that service.

I guess it boils down (in my teeny mind) to what YOU get more enjoyment from. Helping people and getting near zip financial reward or running a business as a For Profit operation and getting a greater financial reward. Just because you choose to be more of a helper than an entrepreneur does not make you a "failure"! Heck, in many people's eyes it makes you successful. Not all success is measured with a bank book!


I hope you realize your dreams!

 

[hardpan]

Maybe you can do both, help and profit. Advertise your rate at $35/hour and charge that except when you feel the need to "help" someone and they get an undocumented break. Nobody has a stop watch on you. That job went smooth and easy. Lose that avatar and anything else that sends a nonsense message.

 

[tolman_paul]

The thing that kills most small businesses is lack of business skills. You can be the worlds best mechanic with all the tools on hand, but what you really need to be succesful as a business is the business skills. Yup, none of that stuff is interensting perse, but that is what makes you the money.

A couple of suggestions. You are charging way too little for your shop rate. That rate isn't just to pay you for the time it takes to do the job, it also covers the time you spend on overhead, ordering parts, tools, etc. A custom knifemaker recomended taking the amount of money you want to be paid for shop time and multiplying it by four and that is your shop rate. That may seem a bit much, but as an engineer with almost no overhead or significant equipment costs the typical aproach is to have a billing rate double what you want to be paid. If you want to make $20/hr, then you should be charging at least $50-60/hr shop rate.

The other killer of the small shop is effeciency. If you're bouncing around from project to project you're wasting a bunch of time that could be profitable. If you sharpen chains, don't sharpen one per day. Wait until you have enough on hand to spend at least a 1/2 day if not a whole day just doing chains. The same with other tasks such as carb rebuilds.

If a customer wants a job done quickly, i.e. while they wait or overnight, charge them a premium. Sure it's customer service, but disrupting what you're normally doing is costing you money by making you inneficient.

 

[tazman]

08f150

I live in a smal town but at certain times there is fair amount of traffic. One guy I see has set up a mobile knife sharpening business in the local grocery store parking lot (I assume he got permission first). He is there about once a month. Probably rotates to other similiar locations and spends only one day there as well. After seeing him for awhile, people will ask when he will be back and they schedule their trip to their grocery store to coincide with getting their knives sharpened while they shop! I do not know if you could go mobile but this guy seems to do a good business with customers coming to a central location close to them. It's all about the convenience.

Good luck to you and I hope also that you do not give up!!!

 

[MindFork]

Lots of good ideas in this thread. Take them to heart and act on them. Raise your rate, charge at least $5 for a chain sharpening, get in with some tree services.

My local small shop is $5 / chain, and his shop rate is $40. He's been at that rate for at least 10 years, and gets tons of business. He sharpens chains for tree services, and does a lot of chains every day. That's where you want to be.

 

[shootingarts]

Advertise a higher price, can always charge less

People don't trust cheap. Advertise a higher shop rate, maybe 45-50 dollars an hour. You can always charge less and price things out by the job when somebody brings something you want to fix to help out somebody that can't afford the higher rate. My body shop on a side road had a six month waiting list to get in the gate and the second highest rates in the area, higher than the new car dealers. Only a one man shop in a backyard owned by an old master charged more. A friend did excellent work and had a shop on the four lane in the middle of town. He charged one-third to one-half what I did and only did a tiny fraction of the business! "Too cheap, he can't be any good."

Same thing when my brother and I worked on computer networks. We had an hourly rate over twice the price of many computer tech companies. We came in as the pro's from Dover and did the work fast enough that our customers soon discovered we were cheaper than the lower rate people plus we actually fixed the problems, something there was no guarantee of when the other companies came in and left them with big bills.

I think you see the pattern in my post and in the thread. Charge more, do good quality work, discount when and if you want to. Anytime somebody told me that so and so would do a job cheaper or sell something cheaper my reply was always that they knew what they and their stuff was worth. You are unintentionally representing yourself as the jackleg with vastly too low pricing. People that would gladly pay you forty-five an hour are scared to let you work on their stuff at twenty an hour.

Hu

 

[Walt41]

There is no such thing as "no overhead" everything from the lights to light your shop to the time standing in front of your bench has a cost factor.

 

[o8f150]

ok let me respond to everyone,,, yes,,yes,,no,,yes,,no,,yes,,yes:msp_biggrin::msp_biggrin::msp_biggrin::msp_biggrin: there is only 3=4 tree services around here and those guys might have 1-2 guys working for them,,,,, I am lucky to have 2 saws a week in the shop for anything and 99% of them are poulan wild things,,, I have very few decent saws or even weed eaters come through,,,, 1 out of 10 is decent quality wise,,, except for the big cutters and theres only a few I get all of the low grade home owner saws,,,, so that should say something for what people can afford,,, I did pick up an independent cutter the other day,, I have his business now,,, the best saw he has is a 455 rancher,,, I agree guys about raising the prices,,, I really think i need to do that,,, this is something I love to do but I wish it was a lot busier,,, I have tried running adds,,, got business cards,,,, and done posts every place I can think of,,,,, I guess people would prefer to pay the 80 an hour