Hi Medway Handyman,

I was wondering if you might be willing to discuss your career as the
TMH. The reason I ask is that I am thinking about a career change. I am
thinking about setting up my own handyman business. rest assured its no
where near Medway so no competition for you personally.

I am currently employed as an employee and I am paid £120 daily gross,
with full holiday pay, full sick pay if needed and a pension scheme that
the employer pays into as well as myself. I obviously do not need to
worry about paying business costs out of that gross pay.

I have a number of thoughts that you might want to comment on.

I fully understand if you decline to answer some of my thoughts on the
grounds of commercial confidentiality and so I won't push further on
these points.

1. When you started, how did you build up your clientele? did you
advertise, leaflet houses or did you manage to build up by word of mouth?

2. Public Liability insurance. is this cheap or expensive? do insurance
comapnies require proof of your technical competence? my experience is
self taught so I have no formal qualifications in tiling, plumbing,
electrics etc but I am more than capable of undertaking the work.

3. I presumably would need to charge far more than 120 quid gross daily
to cover van, tools, fuel, insurance, VAT, corporation tax, accountant's
fees, and to earn enough to cover for 6 weeks holiday per year and say
a couple of weeks sickness a year to be in the same financial position
that I am currently in. I reckon that I would be looking at a charging
rate of £250 daily to customers once all these costs are taken into account.

4. can you get away with working Office hours or do you find yourself
working till 10pm at night or on saturdays and/or Sundays too?

5. Bad payers... do you take cash only, or do you also have a mobile
phone based card machine to take payment? Or are you happy to accept
cheques and chase them up if they bounce? What percentage of customers
do you end up writing off due to non-payment?

6. Is your workload fairly constant throughout the year or do you find
you have quiet periods of no work and hence no income or do you have
periods where you have to turn work away?

7. Anything I have missed out with my thinking?

Regards

Stephen.