After many years of doing this Iƒ??m about done

That depends. How much are you willing to pay me to take it over?

???Ÿ

?ÿ

?ÿ

Raise your fees. Obviously you're worth it.

@pls

and reduce your hours.

get a locum in for two weeks to learn the job. Then go on holiday for four weeks - Hawaii, Bali - where ever takes your fancy.

when you get back, if you go back, no more than a four day week!

?ÿ

Raise your fees to however high it takes to get your work to a reasonable level and then work less and pick your clients carefully.?ÿ

Where in Colorado? I moved here in September 2019. Busy here. Iƒ??d say Raise the rates. That will help

It's called burnout.?ÿ If you can afford to do it, simply take on no more work until after you have cleared out your current project list.?ÿ Then take a couple weeks off before doing any work.

That sounds easy, but, it is tough to keep saying "NO".

I send callers to a couple of other sources routinely.?ÿ If I had accepted every opportunity since January 1, it would be January 1 of next year before the last one on my list would be done.?ÿ That's my list as of today if I had agreed to do them all.?ÿ One call alone would have filled up three months by itself.?ÿ I simply do not take on such projects anymore.

Iƒ??ve raised my fees, a lot. Nearly doubled in the last 18 months. But the phone keeps ringing and requests for proposals are unmanageable, let alone getting the work done once the proposal comes back signed.

Iƒ??ve got over four weeks of Backlog, and Iƒ??m turning down work every day, a lot of it. Iƒ??ve got a couple of full time employees and tried to bring on new. But thereƒ??s no one available.?ÿ

Is your business located in Creede, Crested Butte or maybe a place as big as Glenwood Springs??ÿ

@pls I do completely feel your pain. ?ÿNearly every word you say here is true for me too. ?ÿI am solo. ?ÿDoubled, Tripled, megaquadrupled fees in past 6-12-18 months. ?ÿGetting very good advice here too. ?ÿIt is very hard to say ƒ??no.ƒ? ?ÿMy current backlog is 4-6 months. ?ÿYes, months.

Just doing the best I can do.

And I can only do one thing at a time.

Work for more ƒ??meƒ? time, less for more money, if that makes any sense.

@brad-ott?ÿ

lmao.?ÿ same boat here.?ÿ backlog keeps getting longer, fees keep getting higher.?ÿ offering top dollar for qualified help, only getting nosebleed applicants.?ÿ headhunters calling and emailing more than ever, people wanna buy my house, my rent houses, the company, the company i bought came with 3 trucks and so i just sold my two "old" trucks back to dealers for more than i paid for them.

hahahahaha- i have no idea what's going on.?ÿ wake up at 3 a.m. every night like clockwork with "oh hell, that's what i forgot to get to today."

whatever- at some point sooner than we'll want we could all just as easily be sitting around cooking dinner on a fire built out of lath, so i'll take it.?ÿ it's a nutty ride, i'm just glad it's happening now instead of when i was 10 or 20 years younger.?ÿ

@flyin-solo yes lmao, well said, brother.

Same here, I just chatted with one of the title people I work with. She sent me an email concerning a job we are both working on. The email was timed at 9:40pm. She said she got to the office at 4:30am in the morning.?ÿ

The work is flowing in like a river. Low interest rates, people fleeing from the lockdown states to where their children can go to school. It's a madhouse.

On top of the normal work.

I will not do any construction work or even proposals/bids beyond staking subdivisions we designed and hopefully those get sent off to someone else. I'm trying to phase myself out of some other types of work. I have an engineer working in the office on a contract basis, I can give him all the work he can stand.

Saying no is important, if you can chose your best clients, keep them and let the others go.?ÿ

Seems like a good time to start a survey business. ?ÿEverywhere. ?ÿLots of them. ?ÿWhen will this come crashing to a sudden halt? ?ÿNever? ?ÿJinx.

Part of the under-promise-over-deliver managing expectations game I play in my own mind is this:

When the phone starts ringing off the hook with twenty calls from people wanting a proposal from me, and ten of them make it through my sifting process of (1) leave me a voice mail, then (2) send me an email with details, then (3) wait a month for a written proposal that will shock you in terms of estimated fees, non-refundable retainer fees, and estimated turn around timeframes; knowing full well I likely wonƒ??t be working for nine or ten of those, then I realize I have just spent all day dealing with those folks and I have done zero productive work for ongoing projects.

So I try to slow it all down.

Manage my own expectations.

I try to spend one or two hours a day on something productive. ?ÿWhere in the past those might have been six or seven hours.

I try to complete one invoice-able job per week. ?ÿWhere in the past those might have been five or so.?ÿ

One or two years ago this workload backlog suddenly went from weeks to months. ?ÿIt has been a painful, disappointing, stressful, and lucrative adjustment.

I am feeling better at the moment. ?ÿThe phone has stopped ringing for a day or two.

@pls?ÿ

Ping me.?ÿ I'm looking.

I was in the same boat...until about a month ago when I decided "enough is enough". I have put off retirement for about 3 years. Last month I set the date of 12/31/2021. Now if I can just survive the next 6 months!

@brad-ott

?ÿ

DONT TEMPT FATE!!!!!

I enjoy reading these simply because it's become the norm in the surveying industry for about as long as I've been witness to it. I've been in it for 15 years but only an LS for this past year. I got hired at a tiny private firm where the owner is doing just what was suggested by others: hire someone to handle the work and start taking time off! He hasn't taken that much time off but I know he wants to, and he's getting more comfortable with the idea of it as I take on more of the incoming RFPs and handling the work itself.?ÿ

Even from my own standpoint, I've learned not to pay any attention to half of the calls coming in for a survey. Oh, you're a realtor? Sure, I'll call back when I get to it ???? Your neighbor sucks and you want to show him he put his fence in the wrong place? Yeah... call this other surveyor, he loves doing that crap ???? You just sold your house to buy a landlocked 40 acre parcel, you have dreams of developing it but, oh yeah, you spent all the proceeds from your house on the land... but you know you'll make tons if you subdivide and sell some! Sure.

It's the legitimate ones I struggle with. Clients I've known for years who work at the bigger firms like I used to work at. I can give them a $40k proposal for loads of relatively simple utility mapping and they won't think twice about it, but I wonder if my recently-graduated drafters even know the difference between storm and sanitary sewers. That's one I have to really think about.

Like so many have suggested, we have to say no to everything until we can handle it, and only do the projects that have a clear path to the finish line. I'm not one to offer advice, but I sure appreciate reading replies from folk who have experienced the same thing I'm seeing and learning now.

This is also great grist for the career mill for new and up and coming surveying students.

This stuff ain't taught in class. ???? ?ÿ