Here’s the deal… a very long time ago someone decided that the relationship of effort to money would be that you expend effort before being paid. Pile on top of this probably the largest financial risk in any industry and you end up with a completely inverted financial relationship. One in which you are responsible for shouldering the costs for someone else’s home until you reach an acceptable level of completion where you are paid back, and take a small profit in recognition of this work.

The only way to consistently change this relationship and get the clients that you want is to charge for your estimating and pre-construction work. This is a job cost and not something that you should do for free.