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Taking Tellus design at a loss to control the timeline

I gave away design early because permitting was the bottleneck I could not predict.

In the early days at Tellus I made a decision that looked wrong on paper. We did design work at a loss, and sometimes for free, because I could not predict when any project would win approval. Permitting was the black box that wrecked every schedule I built, and I concluded the cure was to own the front end of it.

With design in our hands, we set the pace of approval. With that under control, we started selling plan expediting as its own service line. What I gave away created what I charged for later.

I think about this whenever someone asks if it is smart to absorb margin on one part of a job. I say yes when that part is the bottleneck no one else controls. The choke point is worth more than the margin you give up to hold it, because once you understand it better than anyone in the market, it becomes the thing you can sell.

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