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Bill,
<p>It's a personal decision, and what you are doing regarding extended
hours seems to be right for you. Will those extended hours always
enable you to satisfy the demand? My opinion has been that at some
point a good technician may become <i>over</i>-entended if there's no limit
anywhere. If a person can say, "I'm sorry, but I just can't do it,
because I'm already working 80 hours per week," then the same thing can
be said after 70, or 55 or 40 hours. But there's no need to worry
about where the upper limit is until you get there.
<p>I'm there. Every time a prospective customer calls at a time when
I have a two-month waiting list, I hate to disappoint them, but it's the
only way I can remain faithful to my current customers. This is the
case about nine months of the year. I do a lot of thinking about
how I can cut back, and I'm making slight progress.
<p>I have tracked how my gross sales and net income have done since I went
fulltime in 1992. It varies a lot. The biggest net income increase
was 1994, up 31% over 1993. I was still advertising then. The
worst was a small decline in 2000, down 2.3% from 1999, but that was because
1999 was an outsized increase over 1998 at 20.5%.
<p>I am not looking for big increases at this point anymore. 3%-6%
is about right. According to the last PTG survey, my income is already
in the top 20%, maybe even in the top 10%. If I am successful at
decreasing my workload a little, I may have a slight decrease in 2003,
but that's okay.
<p>As I said at the outset, it's a personal decision. Basically,
I like my job, but I'm not in love with it, so that is a factor that affects
my decisions. I want some time for other pursuits (which I see you
also have).
<p>Regards,
<br>Clyde Hollinger, RPT
<p>SidewaysWell1713@aol.com wrote:
<blockquote TYPE=CITE><font face="Arial"><font size=-1>The only thing I
can do to satisfy this demand is to work extended hours. <snip></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font size=-1>Needless to say this will make for
a better year than any previous, I've never had a year where I earned less
than the year before, (even if the increase was modest) but this year is
by far the best.</font></font></blockquote>
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