Day in the Life

I am a general contractor, so what was my day like yesterday? It was long, about 11 hours, typical day of juggling assignments and tasks:

The day started out by updating my social media posts and Blog site, which I am now doing again today. I reviewed the past posting metrics and responded to responses, need to stay active and visible. After that I worked on finishing three estimates for sales calls I had taken over the past few days, the estimating was interrupted at several points to handle unexpected issues and follow-up emails.

· Accounting need an upgrade along with PM software, several glitches needed attending to must keep it all moving forward.

· Follow up emails to suppliers for material pricing

· Sent emails to several potential clients we had not heard back from regarding the progress of their project design and pricing.

· Landed a small job in response to a proposal completed.

· Dealt with a potential project, where the client has vacillated on hiring us, one day yes, the next no, we are on no right now.

· Answered some question from the job sites, fortunately they were minor issues today.

· Scheduled several follow up appointments for on ongoing and potential projects.

· Found out the start of a substantial project has been delayed another few weeks due to politics on the clients end.

· Started preliminary work on three more estimates that need to be completed.

All of this while I was preparing the estimates, which I did complete and will need to follow up on today. Once completed around 4:00, I checked the mail and dealt with a payment that was short the invoiced amount. Need to get some vendors paid. From there I met with a prior client on a warranty issues and received a request for additional work; add that to today’s list. Still need to find two emails that showed up on my phone and not on my desktop, really want to read those.

Day ended around 7:15 but I still made sure my phone was close by, just in case, couple of emails but nothing critical.

What I did NOT do as a contractor was order lumber, run by the lumber yard, nail anything together or pick up a shovel. Construction is a business that needs to be managed and I spent my entire day managing my business.