Journey 15 · Running a businessbuildinggrindingexpanding
Build Your Top Three Offers
“I say yes to everything and I'm not sure which jobs actually make me money.”
You become: Someone who sells three clear things at a price they can defend
Stop quoting every job from scratch. Find which work actually pays, turn the best three into named offers with real prices, and build the estimate template that sends them in four minutes.
Understand
Which of your jobs actually make money once you count everything.
Practice
Pricing from cost and capacity instead of from what the last guy charged.
Create
Three named, priced offers and an estimate template.
Evidence
A sent estimate that someone accepted at your new price.
Find out what pays
You almost certainly have a job type that loses money. Find it before you build offers around it.
- Understand1h 30m
List your last twenty jobs and what each really paid
Four columns: job type, what you invoiced, materials cost, and hours — including drive time, the supply-house run, the quoting visit and the follow-up call. Divide to get your real hourly on each. This is uncomfortable and it is the most valuable ninety minutes in this journey. Nearly everyone finds one job type they've been subsidising for years.
You’ll have:A twenty-row table with a real hourly figure per job.
- Understand45m
Work out the rate you actually need
Your billable hours are not your working hours. Quoting, driving, invoicing, chasing payment and buying materials are all unpaid, and 60% billable is a good year for a solo operator. Take what you need to earn, add overhead — insurance, licence, fuel, phone, software, vehicle, tools — divide by realistically billable hours, and you have the floor beneath which a job costs you money to accept.
You’ll have:A minimum hourly rate you can justify line by line.
- Understand30m
Find your break-even job count
How many jobs a month must you complete before you're earning rather than surviving? Enter your fixed monthly costs and your average job's margin. The number is usually smaller than people fear, and knowing it changes how a slow week feels — you stop panicking on day three and start counting.
You’ll have:The number of jobs per month that covers your fixed costs.
8 more actions · 6h 5m of work
The rest of this journey is one decision away.
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- Create45m
Pick the three, and name the one you're dropping
Make them buyable
A price list is not an offer. An offer says what they get, what it costs, and when it's done.
- Create1h 30m
Write each offer on one page
- Practice1h
Price each one from cost, not from the competition
- Create45m
Add a good-better-best tier to one of them
- Create1h
Build the estimate template
Test it on a real person
A price is only real once someone has said yes or no to it.
- Practice30m
Quote the next job at the new price
- Understand20m
Write down what happened
- Evidence15m
Bank the first one that lands
Tools this journey uses
Several actions above run straight through these. All free, no signup.
- MoneyWhat Should I Charge?Calculate your ideal freelance hourly and project rates.Open tool →
- TradesBreak-Even CalculatorHow many jobs a month before you're actually earning?Open tool →
- TradesJob Quote CalculatorPrice a job from what it actually costs you, not from a guess.Open tool →
- TradesMarkup vs MarginA 25% markup is a 20% margin. That gap is your profit.Open tool →
Need a finished document today instead?
A playbook is the short version — a handful of steps ending in an artifact, rather than a change in what you can do.