I thought the same thing. Even in California, with prevailing wage rates at $60 or more. Even those who can like Simplex and Siemens are at around $135 for travelers.
i agree with both of you.... and if you say
"I'm $200 an hour" they will choke and spit coffee all over their desk.
never use profanities like "$200 an hour" in front of someone who is paying you.
enter flat rate pricing. if i were bidding T&M, i'd be at $85 an hour,
and 15% markup on material. the same as most everyone else around
here would be doing work for.
now, if you do ellen's spreadsheet, and punch in the numbers, you end up with
what each billable hour you have to sell needs to bring in, to give you what you
want out of your business.
when i first did her biz plan, i had almost no expenses and overhead whatsoever.
as a one man band, with the hours i had available to sell, to make a decent living,
each of those hours had to bring in about $125. we usually can't sell 40 hours a week,
every week, so that number is what you need to factor in. it includes profit on material,
so a $2,400 residential service changeout ends up being two days of your life, when it's
all said and done.
when this topic has reared it's head on here in years past, the "nut" number for people
who shared it ran about $110 ~ $300, iirc.
btw, a lighting setup tech to program a system runs $1,800 ~ $2,500 a day. not a sparky,
just a guy with an ipad, a laptop, and a wifi hub.