Is my first year as a solo HVAC business a success?
Revenue and profit margin alone don't give the whole picture when you aren't paying yourself for all hours worked. Not accounting for admin time and estimates makes it difficult to evaluate actual business performance.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
Is my first year as a solo HVAC business a success?
- 1Only paying yourself for direct billable labor hoursDid this help you?
- 2Guessing that the true profit margin is much lower without doing the exact mathDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“For a new solo operation. Am I doing okay on the start up?”source ↗
“I've just hit $200,000 in revenue, after subtracting all my expenses I'm sitting at a 38% profit margin. However that doesn't include what i pay myself.”source ↗
“I only pay myself for the labor hours I work, not for any of the admin or driving around for estimates. So i don't know what I'm doing right or wrong”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 14How to handle running a business completely by yourself
- 8Health insurance options for owner-only businesses
- 7How to manage money as a new 1099 contractor
- 7Are paid freelance job board communities actually worth it?
- 2How do you figure out what a business is actually worth?
- 2How to prioritize marketing tasks when you're a team of one