Stumpshot
General Purpose
How's business for you lately? Year over year, our summer was perhaps 20% slower and maybe 15% lower billing. We attributed that to a conscious choice to focusing on the hometown (Lawrence, KS) and constricting our usual 50 mile radius for the spring/summer -- maybe one Kansas City-area day per week. It's been nice working in the local area closer to home with a bit less driving time (but sometimes not more than 10-15 min less), but we've had to fight the established local market and get our name out there and set our pricing more aggressively to get the local jobs. But now we've widened our Home Advisor radius back up to at least 30 miles to include Topeka and a lot of the Kansas side of the KC metro. But overall things feel slow and work feels tight. Last year we really didn't slow down till the end of October/early November. But even then, we worked 4 days a week through the winter -- consistently enough work to keep busy. But this year, our work queue is not very far out -- it feels as if things have already slowed way down even now in the first part of September.