The Hidden Cost of Quoting "Gut Feel" Jobs

The client walks you through the kitchen.

"We want to knock out this wall," they say, waving a hand vaguely at a load-bearing partition. "And maybe add an island here. Oh, and new cabinets."

You look around. You've done fifty kitchens like this. You squint, do some mental math, and say:

"I can probably do it for about $25,000."

They shake your hand. You feel good. You just closed a deal in ten minutes.

Fast forward three weeks.

You opened the wall and found rotted studs. The "standard" cabinets they wanted are backordered, so you had to go with the premium line to stay on schedule. Your drywall guy raised his rates last month, and you forgot.

You finish the job. The client is happy. You sit down to do the math.

Cost: $23,800. Revenue: $25,000. Profit: $1,200.

For three weeks of work, you made $400 a week.

The "Expert Curse"

The problem isn't that you don't know your trade. The problem is that you know it too well.

When you've been in the game for years, you develop a "sixth sense" for pricing. You think you can look at a job and just know what it costs.

But that sixth sense often ignores the boring, invisible inflation that creeps into every line item.

Materials are up 8% this year. Did you adjust your mental baseline? Fuel is up. Insurance is up.

Your "gut feel" is anchored in prices from two years ago.

Data Doesn't Lie

The only way to quote safely is to stop guessing and start looking at history.

If you tracked your last five kitchen remodels, you'd see a pattern:

• Kitchen A: Quoted $22k, Cost $24k.
• Kitchen B: Quoted $25k, Cost $26k.
• Kitchen C: Quoted $28k, Cost $21k (A win!).

Without this data, you remember Kitchen C. You tell yourself, "Yeah, I usually make good margins." You conveniently forget A and B.

But if you had those numbers in front of you before you quoted the new job, the conversation would change.

"I can do it for $25,000" becomes "Based on the last three jobs like this, we're looking at between $28,000 and $30,000 depending on what we find in that wall."

How to Build Your Database

You don't need a complex algorithm. You just need to record the truth.

1. Log every expense. Not just the big lumber runs. The screws, the sandpaper, the gas.
2. Tag it to the job. Don't let it sit in a "General Expenses" pile.
3. Review the autopsy. When a job is done, look at the final number.

It hurts to look at the losers. It really does. But that pain is useful. It's the tuition you pay to stop making the same mistake.

Stop guessing.

Next time you're standing in a client's kitchen, resist the urge to give a number on the spot.

Tell them you'll run the numbers and get back to them. Go to your truck. Pull up your history.

Quote with confidence, not with your gut.

Quorum makes this painless by automatically building that history for you, one receipt at a time.