I take my cash up front, and I will work as long as it takes to complete the work.
I know you have seen the TV shows where people “flip” condos and houses for a profit. Someone buys a building that is in bad shape, they renovate it, and then resell it weeks later for a huge profit. It’s the sort of thing that makes for great TV, but is much more difficult in real life. Some of these places need tens of thousands of dollars worth of upgrades, and even then may not sell for as much as you want them to. Like anything else, flipping houses is a gamble. I don’t buy houses, but I work as a private HVAC tech for several local people who do. The amount of work I get varied depending on the season, but I always make sure to get paid in advance for my HVAC work. A lot of these people are cash-strapped, and will offer other things in lieu of payment, but I always say that an HVAC tech doesn’t work for free! I have a very reasonable set of prices that I offer, depending on the size of the HVAC system I’m working on. I take my cash up front, and I will work as long as it takes to complete the work. This is HVAC contract work, it is not an hourly wage. When a client pays me, they can rest assured I will deliver top flight HVAC work done in a short period of time. This is all off-the-books work, strictly for cash, so that it doesn’t interfere with my main job working for the local HVAC contractor.