Something different.. starting self employed

[Plumberswife0112]

Can I just say, thank you so much to everyone for taking the time to reply! I wasn’t expecting replies at all! The information provided is very useful and I’ll be putting it forward to my husband to use. Some stuff we do but May be things like staging payments etc is something we don’t and could work well for big jobs. Also turning down the crappy jobs that take about a month to pay! Honestly thank you
Although, I don’t wish this particular stress on people it’s nice to know we are not the only ones to have experienced this.

 

[Plumberswife0112]

I'm working on trying to get some decent separation between work and home and trying to spend some quality time completely away from work.
Divert to answer machine and put it all down over the weekend.

This is the biggest task to conquer eventually I think!

 

[Plumberswife0112]

Morning,
The scenario your husband is in, is very common, normally good tradesmen struggle with running a good business as it is a totally different set of skills. They just work more and more hours, it goes back to the 'work smarter, not harder'.
When I started up I was really lucky that a mate of my dad's was a business coach. He sat me down and went through everything, basically start with how much you want to earn, how many days you want to work and then you have an idea of what you're aiming for.
Most tradesmen are too cheap and worried about turning down work. I'd rather have a diary 75% full of well paid work than 100% of crappy jobs that just pay a day rate. The extra space in the diary is where you get all the other stuff done, quotes, stock, qualifications, sorting van etc.
If you do a quality job, with quality materials everyone benefits and the customers who can't see this are often not worth bothering with, and bad payers.
As always it's easier said than done, but hopefully you can pass some of this on. The main benefits of being self employed should be time with family, flexibility and no boss!

Well said!!! I completely agree with everything mentioned here! I did also point out that se should also have benefits and what’s the point if benefits can’t be reaped eventually!

 

[Plumberswife0112]

Also don’t let anything go past a 5k bill on start up

I never let a £70 service invoice slide before, purely on principle of the company thinking they could get away with small business owners doing there job “for free” no sirrrryy!