I am in complete agreement. In fact, that is something that is slowing down my progress. I'm even having a hard time finding people willing to let me do it for free. People are reluctant to spend the time with me. They want me to do it by myself.
I did an inventory of my own place and afterwards I wasn't sure if I'd taken too many pictures or not enough. I found that even I didn't know the value of many of the items. Do I list my hair accessories? I have a lot. Each might only be worth $2 US. But the total value appears to be around $60 US.
Would it be productive if I did an inventory on my own, just taking pictures, noting serial numbers, and then had a sit-down with the client to assign values?
Hopefully I don't come across sounding like a jerk here but this is serious. If we, as "new field" service providers (who will be automatically under the microscope), don't come off as being very professional to the public that is paying for our services, we are in for some major problems & a short lived business.
The tendency is to just jump in there and start getting business going. "I'll figure it out along the way.", we say to ourselves. Do you think that a doctor or lawyer thinks about their profession in the same way? Of course not. Because they realize that they have to learn how to do the work that they do before they do it. I'm not saying that we have to get an advanced degree before we launch our businesses but we had darn well better be over educated about the home inventory profession before we offer our services (not as we offer them) to the general public.
