First, you underpaid yourself. The first is through your salary - for the service you provide your business. The second way is through a return on your investment - the interest on the money you loaned the business to get it started. The third is the profit that comes from running the business. Contractors spend a lot of time on everything but profitability, Dougherty said.
Contractors are good at calculating material and labor costs.
They'll spend hours figuring out how much material will be needed, when in actuality if they're off by two percent, it doesn't matter all that much. When it comes to overhead, they just throw a number into the equation. Dougherty points out to contractors he counsels and to attendees at seminars he conducts that you need to change your thinking if you want to get and stay profitable. An example of that might be about the importance of training. The better trained your painters are, the more productive they will be, obviously.