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.

P.S.

8. Competition.... Do you find yourself being undercut by other
handymen/women and hence lose potential business to them?


On 12/03/2014 23:08, Stephen wrote:
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.

9. and How long from starting to being "self sufficient" with custom to
make a good living out of it?

On 12/03/2014 23:08, Stephen wrote:
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.

On Wed, 12 Mar 2014 23:08:09 +0000, Stephen wrote:

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.

Public Liabilty is if you drop a hammer on some ones head, it's not
Professional Imdemnity that backs up the quality of your work.

3. I presumably would need to charge far more than 120 quid gross daily
to cover van, tools, fuel, insurance,

So far so good.

VAT,

You don't have to be VAT registered until your turnover exceeds
something around £70,000/year.

corporation tax,

Only of you set up a seperate legal entity, such as a Ltd company.
You could be a sole trader but bear in mind if things go pear shaped
creditors can come directly after you.

accountant's fees,

Might be worth having one do your tax return but day to day book
keeping and reconcilaition is best done by you, it's a lot cheaper
and it's not difficult.

and to earn enough to cover for 6 weeks holiday per year

6 weeks holiday! Feck me can I have your job.

and say a couple of weeks sickness a year

Couple of weeks sick, good grief. Do I spot a sherking 9-5 wage
slave? Good on you for wanting to get out of the fur lined rut but it
ain't easy being self employed. Fail to turn up or be more than 10
mins late on a few jobs and the word will get around "unreliable".

As for sick take a look at Permenant Health Insurance, this coughs up
if you can't work due to injury or sickness. The one I have with the
Cirencester Friendly Society was very handy when I broke my ankle.
It's also not "money down the drain" as you buy units that have value
and you can cash them in when you don't need cover or pay outs. It's
not a lot but better than nothing.

... charging rate of £250 daily to customers once all these costs are
taken into account.

Wander over to TMH's web site I think his rates are there. I wouldn't
pay a handy man £250/day unless that is the whole day, all 24 hours
of it with only 3 hrs total for all breaks.

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?

I do see a 9-5 M-F wage slave. 7 working hours a day for just 5
days/week isn't working in my book. Working is 6 days/week 12hrs at
work plus travel each end of the work period.

7. Anything I have missed out with my thinking?

See if there are any free "starting up in business" courses available
from the local Chamber of Commerce, Business Link or WHY. The local
job center might be a good place to try and find out what is out
there. I did a 5 day course after being made redundant and going
freelance. Probably the most useful 5 day course I have ever been on.
It didn't go into great detail but covered all the basics well, the
various structures, basic accounts, VAT, the legal requirements of
these things etc etc.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Stephen wrote:


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?

Do everything! Church magazines adverts are good. Adverts in shop
windows, small ads in local papers. Latch onto a local charity that's
doing something for the disabled or whatever, and once you know the
local press will be interested go along and help. Apart from the
publicity you will make yourself known to a circle of people. At local
events (school sports days, church fayre, car boot, etc) go along and
park your signwritten van prominently near the car park's pedestrian
entrance. Become well known in the community. Put yourself about. Make
sure everyone round about knows you as that nice friendly chap who does
little jobs.


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.
You can't do much in the way of electrics without qualifications. Part P
and all that.
Public Liability is just for if you hurt someone. It isn't expensive.
You want to think about personal accident insurance as well.


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.

People have the view that handymen are cheap. You will earn far more if
you specialise in something. Before I retired I charged £400 per day
plus travel, or more, much more, for some types of work.
You won't be registered for VAT for a long while. But you have to pass
on the VAT on materials.
Do your own daily book keeping, but use a pro for the tax return.
All you need do is keep a careful and accurate record of every penny the
business spends and every penny it takes.
You shouldn't pay any tax for the first few years as you will be
offsetting the cost of tools, materials, vehicle, computer, stationery,
adverts, etc.
Don't claim a portion of your domestic costs against tax. Dangerous!


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?

Keep a record of your hours so you know you aren't fooling yourself. But
be flexible. If someone's desperate for help at 3am on the morning of
Christmas Day quote a price and get the job.


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?

A lot of people don't have a cheque book these days. Just don't ever let
anyone owe you a lot of money. Don't do jobs where that will happen. Not
worth it. Remember, it's the nice ones who turn nasty.


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?

It will always fluctuate. When it's slow keep your nerve, and catch up
on your own jobs, van repairs, wife and kid maintenance, etc.

Bill

On 12/03/2014 23:08, Stephen wrote:

Hi Medway Handyman,

I am sure Dave will be along shortly, but in the mean time...

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.

The key to success here is going to be your "pipeline" i.e. keeping the
job book full for a week or two in advance. That means constant input on
the promotion and marketing aspects of the business as well as actually
carrying out the primary work. Needless to say with time and reputation
this gets easier.

2. Public Liability insurance. is this cheap or expensive? do insurance

Depends on the type of work you undertake... you would need to talk to
some brokers / insurers to get an idea. As long as you avoid things like
groundwork and underpinning you ought not ring too many alarm bells for
the insurers.

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.

Again it depends on what services you are doing for the client. Minor
electrical works for a member of the public are unlikely to need proof
of competence (but make sure you really *are* actually competent),
whereas for a company they are likely to be more picky. If you wanted to
take on electrical work that is part P notifiable then you would need
some formal qualifications and membership of a trade body - even if its
only completing a basic domestic installers course. However companies
will frequently be prepared to pay for jobs that individuals may not -
like changing light bulbs. Minor plumbing jobs are likely to be fine,
but note that some do involve building regs compliance these days (e.g.
changing a hot water cylinder). Obviously commercial gas work is out if
you are not gas safe registered.

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

Its not compulsory to register for VAT until your turnover hits the
registration threshold (currently £79K). If you perceive that
individuals rather than other VAT registered companies are likely to be
your main clients then its to your advantage not to register until you
have to, since it keeps your prices 20% lower. Note that some also try
to limit their turnover by allowing the clients to supply materials.
(personally I am not convinced this is necessarily good practice since
it complicates the responsibilities and liabilities, and also removes a
profit stream from your business)

CT only kicks in for incorporated businesses, and is paid on profits
after expenses and salaries etc have been paid.

Find a good accountant who is prepared to show you what you need to do
to keep your own day to day accounts - its not black magic and much
cheaper if you can do the basics yourself.

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.

IIUC, TMH structures his prices to make carrying out lots of small jobs
economic. Many traders don't do this and hence tend to shy away from
small jobs, since they incur a level of unwanted overhead. You would
need to come up with a similar scheme if that is your anticipated kind
of job.

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?

If you are working for yourself you need to be flexible. You are trying
to make life for the client convenient - and that may mean making life
for you inconvenient! So especially in the early days you will have to
be prepared to work antisocial hours at least some of the time.

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?

I can see that being able to take card payments would be pretty useful
in this day and age, not only for the convenience of the customer, but
also as a way of reducing your exposure to bad debts etc.

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?

Again, pipeline. You want to be turning some work away (i.e. either the
jobs you really don't want, or more likely, the customers who give you a
bad feeling), but also not have great empty spells. You can adjust
pricing to achieve this to an extent.

7. Anything I have missed out with my thinking?

One observation I have made looking at many business startups is that
they often fail because they owner does not do enough of the stuff that
he/she does not like doing. In specialist activities, that tends to be
the non "core" activities of sales and marketing and general
administration. You need to find ways to get good at those activities,
and where possible find ways to subcontract some of them. e.g. getting
onto lettings agents lists of trusted handymen can be a valuable way of
getting someone else doing some of the marketing and promotion effort
for you.

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 12 Mar 2014, Stephen grunted:

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.

No doubt Dave will be along soon; but meanwhile I recall that when he was
in the same position as you a few years ago he started a very similar
thread which IIRC generated a lot of stuff which would be useful to you - I
expect it would turn up at
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/uk.d-i-y

--
David

Stephen wrote:
Hi Medway Handyman,
I was wondering if you might be willing to discuss your career as the
TMH.


The book's due out soon, apparently.

Owain

On 13/03/2014 08:06, wrote:
Stephen wrote:
Hi Medway Handyman,
I was wondering if you might be willing to discuss your career as the
TMH.


The book's due out soon, apparently.

Owain


It won't be soon! This writing lark is harder than you think :-)


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

On 13/03/2014 00:16, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Wed, 12 Mar 2014 23:08:09 +0000, Stephen wrote:

snip

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?

I do see a 9-5 M-F wage slave. 7 working hours a day for just 5
days/week isn't working in my book. Working is 6 days/week 12hrs at
work plus travel each end of the work period.


While I'm aware that many do work those hours, nobody should have to.
Unless it's an unfettered choice, where you're maybe feeding a vocation,
it'd be modern day slavery, IMO.

--
Cheers, Rob

On 13/03/2014 04:16, John Rumm wrote:
....
One observation I have made looking at many business startups is that
they often fail because they owner does not do enough of the stuff that
he/she does not like doing. ...

One often quoted figure is that one in three start up businesses will
fail in their first three years. Less often quoted is the fact that the
majority of these are financially sound when they close. A lot of people
simply find they don't like working for themselves.

Colin Bignell

On 12/03/2014 23:08, Stephen wrote:
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.

No problem.

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?

Long story!
More later!


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.

Cheap & easy to get.

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.

You won't get £250 a day. You can earn a decent mark up on materials
though.

Overheads are relatively low however.

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?

Mainly Mon/Fri now, odd Saturday. I rarely leave home before 8:30 or
get home later than 6:00. Quotes etc take a few hours some evenings.


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?

I've only had one bounced cheque ever. Bank transfer is very popular.
Don't have a card machine yet, but will be getting one.


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?

Fairly consistent. Jan/Feb are quiet, but I never have a day without
enough work. Most of the time I'm rushed.

7. Anything I have missed out with my thinking?

Regards

Stephen.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

On 12/03/2014 23:12, Stephen wrote:
P.S.

8. Competition.... Do you find yourself being undercut by other
handymen/women and hence lose potential business to them?

Yes occasionally. I'm happy to do so. Plenty of busy fools around.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

On 12/03/2014 23:13, Stephen wrote:
9. and How long from starting to being "self sufficient" with custom to
make a good living out of it?

Maybe a month.

--
Dave - The Medway Handyman www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

John Rumm wrote:

you would need to talk to some brokers / insurers to get an idea. As
long as you avoid things like groundwork and underpinning you ought
not ring too many alarm bells for the insurers.

Anything involving use of a blow-lamp, might raise their "hot-working"
eyebrows.

do you take cash only, or do you also have a mobile
phone based card machine to take payment?

I can see that being able to take card payments would be pretty useful
in this day and age, not only for the convenience of the customer, but
also as a way of reducing your exposure to bad debts etc.

Personally I'd be wary of putting my PIN direct into an app on someone's
smartphone, ISTR screwfix (and John Lewis?) sell various mobile-linked
card payment terminals, could be worth a look, depending on whether they
work just on a percentage, or a monthly fee plus a percentage.

On Thu, 13 Mar 2014 04:16:31 +0000, John Rumm wrote:

Find a good accountant who is prepared to show you what you need to do
to keep your own day to day accounts - its not black magic and much
cheaper if you can do the basics yourself.

It's really not brain surgery. Keep on top of it.

I found the way that worked for me was to have a "sacred" in-tray that
all invoices and statements went into, and a similarly "sacred"
whiteboard that all time got marked on. And be _regular_ in entering
stuff into your accounts software. Then let that do the hard work. And,
for longer projects, don't be afraid to invoice periodically.

The minute you start just shoving stuff into a shoebox and ignoring it
until the day before the VAT return is the minute you're going to start
loathing the very concept.

Adrian wrote
John Rumm wrote

Find a good accountant who is prepared to show you what you
need to do to keep your own day to day accounts - its not black
magic and much cheaper if you can do the basics yourself.

It's really not brain surgery. Keep on top of it.

I found the way that worked for me was to have a "sacred"
in-tray that all invoices and statements went into, and a
similarly "sacred" whiteboard that all time got marked on.

Makes more sense to use a smartphone for that now.

And be _regular_ in entering stuff into your accounts software.
Then let that do the hard work. And, for longer projects, don't
be afraid to invoice periodically.

The minute you start just shoving stuff into a shoebox and
ignoring it until the day before the VAT return is the minute
you're going to start loathing the very concept.

On 12/03/2014 23:08, Stephen wrote:
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.
....

You will find a lot of help about starting and running a business he

http://www.bgateway.com/

Have you considered what other alternatives might be open to you? This
site, and others like it, give a whole host of different businesses that
are up for sale.

http://uk.businessesforsale.com/

You might not actually want to buy one, but browsing through could give
you an idea of something else you might like to do. Some might even
allow you to work 9-5 and have six weeks' holiday a year, although the
latter is improbable if you work for yourself until you get really
successful and employ lots of people to make profits for you. However,
buying an existing business, even quite a small one, should mean that
you start off with an established customer base.

If you do decide to buy a business, look for a retirement sale. They are
usually the most reliable. Especially avoid those described as having
great development potential. If they had any, why hasn't the seller
developed the business, to increase its value, before putting it on the
market? There may be a good reason, but they are more usually businesses
where somebody has had a dabble and didn't like it.

Another option would be a franchise. There are even handyman franchises
about e.g.:

http://www.dialahubby.co.uk/

A franchise should give you a lot of support and a recognised brand
name. OTOH some people find them restrictive and, of course, you have to
pay for the franchise rights.

The advantages and disadvantages of a franchise are discussed he

http://blog.thecompanywarehouse.co.u...f-a-franchise/

Colin Bignell

On 12/03/2014 23:08, Stephen wrote:

7. Anything I have missed out with my thinking?


Keep your job,
pay extra into the pension,
retire early,
then become a part time handyman if you still think you need a change.

Stop trying to wind up the handymen, they still have to go out and work
for less than you are earning.

On 13/03/2014 08:06, wrote:
Stephen wrote:
Hi Medway Handyman,
I was wondering if you might be willing to discuss your career as the
TMH.


The book's due out soon, apparently.

Owain


What?
Is someone publishing the wiki?

On 13/03/2014 09:01, Nightjar wrote:


You might not actually want to buy one, but browsing through could give
you an idea of something else you might like to do. Some might even
allow you to work 9-5 and have six weeks' holiday a year, although the
latter is improbable if you work for yourself until you get really
successful and employ lots of people to make profits for you. However,
buying an existing business, even quite a small one, should mean that
you start off with an established customer base.

If you do decide to buy a business, look for a retirement sale. They are
usually the most reliable. Especially avoid those described as having
great development potential. If they had any, why hasn't the seller
developed the business, to increase its value, before putting it on the
market? There may be a good reason, but they are more usually businesses
where somebody has had a dabble and didn't like it.


There are some pretty nasty ways to get customers on the books to make a
business look viable, only to have the customers evaporate as soon as
its sold.

One of the milkmen around here came around offering half price for six
weeks, just before he sold it to a mug that thought he had a good round.

Just be sure the customers are real and want repeat business.

On 13/03/2014 03:43, Bill Wright wrote:

People have the view that handymen are cheap. You will earn far more if
you specialise in something. Before I retired I charged £400 per day
plus travel, or more, much more, for some types of work.

Bill, perhaps you could say what your specialisation was?

On 13/03/2014 10:52, GB wrote:
On 13/03/2014 03:43, Bill Wright wrote:

People have the view that handymen are cheap. You will earn far more if
you specialise in something. Before I retired I charged £400 per day
plus travel, or more, much more, for some types of work.

Bill, perhaps you could say what your specialisation was?




He has a few..

BBC critic and fixing aerials are the well known ones.

On 13/03/2014 09:32, dennis@home wrote:
On 12/03/2014 23:08, Stephen wrote:

7. Anything I have missed out with my thinking?


Keep your job,

Not such a bad idea.
Keep the day job and offer services Sat. , Sunday and evenings.
Build up a range of clients, let word of mouth start working (and the
convenience of a weekend trader for customers)

Stash the cash in an account as a buffer for the point at which there is
too much work for weekend/evening hours, then take whatever holiday
entitlement is left all at once (4 weeks or whatever) and hand in notice
before end of holidays. (though the company should by rights only pay
for the proportional amount of holiday i.e. 1 day/xx days worked in the
current holiday year)

If there isn't enough work to take up the whole of the weekend after 6
months then forget it.

Still got the job and never left in the twighlight zone of no
employee-job and not enough personal work to cover out goings.

And be versatile.


--
http://www.gymratz.co.uk
Making gym equipment in the UK since 1999

On 13/03/2014 08:21, RJH wrote:
On 13/03/2014 00:16, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Wed, 12 Mar 2014 23:08:09 +0000, Stephen wrote:

snip

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?

I do see a 9-5 M-F wage slave. 7 working hours a day for just 5
days/week isn't working in my book. Working is 6 days/week 12hrs at
work plus travel each end of the work period.


While I'm aware that many do work those hours, nobody should have to.
Unless it's an unfettered choice, where you're maybe feeding a vocation,
it'd be modern day slavery, IMO.

Where you get to be both slave and slave driver ;-)

Having said that, there are things you are prepared to endure for your
own business that you would not dream of entertaining as an employee of
another.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
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|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 13/03/2014 10:52, GB wrote:
On 13/03/2014 03:43, Bill Wright wrote:

People have the view that handymen are cheap. You will earn far more if
you specialise in something. Before I retired I charged £400 per day
plus travel, or more, much more, for some types of work.

Bill, perhaps you could say what your specialisation was?

Usenet legend, raconteur, curmudgeon, TV Aerials erected*:

http://www.wrightsaerials.tv/

* with apologies to Terry Pratchett for the Casanunder homage

http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/ind...iamo_Casanunda


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Thu, 13 Mar 2014 03:43:43 +0000, Bill Wright wrote:

You want to think about personal accident insurance as well.

Sneaky feeling that is not the same as the Permenant Health Insurance
that I mentioned earlier. A decent Independant Financial Advisor
would know, in fact getting proper financial advice might be a Good
Idea anyway. How do mortgage companies take to some one switching
from wage slave to self employed?

Don't claim a portion of your domestic costs against tax. Dangerous!

A single small amount of "Use of home as Office" against tax will go
unnoticed. What you don't want to do is trying to put 5% or whatever
of the household bills against tax or dedicate a room as your office.
It can become subject to Business Rates and there could be a "change
of use" implications.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Nightjar wrote:

On 13/03/2014 04:16, John Rumm wrote:
...
One observation I have made looking at many business startups is that
they often fail because they owner does not do enough of the stuff that
he/she does not like doing. ...

One often quoted figure is that one in three start up businesses will
fail in their first three years.

And many of those are restarurants...

The recent BBC TV series "Restaurant Man" was interesting, in the way it
showed a bunch of people trying to set up restaurants. Many of them had
scraped together £20k or more of family money and then frittered it away.

Few did any marketing of their new business, and precious little testing of
their services (eg how they'd actually run the restaurant, who'd do what,
what the dishes on the menu would be, what they cost to produce etc) until
prompted to by the mentor. Some didn't even try some of this stuff until a
day or two before they opened, leaving no time to fix any of the problems.

Most of the lessons he drummed into people were really just common-sense,
and it was appalling how few had it - all the ineptness couldn't just have
been a result of devious editing of the footage.

--
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

Email sent to my from-address will be deleted. Instead, please reply
to replacing "aaa" by "284".

On 13/03/2014 11:37, John Rumm wrote:
On 13/03/2014 10:52, GB wrote:
On 13/03/2014 03:43, Bill Wright wrote:

People have the view that handymen are cheap. You will earn far more if
you specialise in something. Before I retired I charged £400 per day
plus travel, or more, much more, for some types of work.

Bill, perhaps you could say what your specialisation was?

Usenet legend, raconteur, curmudgeon, TV Aerials erected*:

http://www.wrightsaerials.tv/

I'm scared of heights - or more precisely of falling from heights - so
Bill is most welcome to his specialisation.





* with apologies to Terry Pratchett for the Casanunder homage

http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/ind...iamo_Casanunda

On 13/03/2014 12:29, Huge wrote:
On 2014-03-13, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 13 Mar 2014 03:43:43 +0000, Bill Wright wrote:

You want to think about personal accident insurance as well.

Sneaky feeling that is not the same as the Permenant Health Insurance
that I mentioned earlier. A decent Independant Financial Advisor
would know, in fact getting proper financial advice might be a Good
Idea anyway. How do mortgage companies take to some one switching
from wage slave to self employed?

Don't claim a portion of your domestic costs against tax. Dangerous!

A single small amount of "Use of home as Office" against tax will go
unnoticed. What you don't want to do is trying to put 5% or whatever
of the household bills against tax or dedicate a room as your office.
It can become subject to Business Rates and there could be a "change
of use" implications.

It used to be the case that the Revenue (now HMRC) didn't talk to the local
council ratings people so it was quite safe to claim "Use of home as office".
I did it for years.

Its still a routine deduction made by accountants for directors of Ltd
companies working from home (at least partially). So long as the space
used is not wholly and exclusively used for business, then business
rates / change of use ought not be an issue.

Disclaimer; I haven't been self-employed for over 20 years.



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 13/03/2014 11:12, www.GymRatZ.co.uk wrote:
On 13/03/2014 09:32, dennis@home wrote:
On 12/03/2014 23:08, Stephen wrote:

7. Anything I have missed out with my thinking?


Keep your job,

Not such a bad idea.
Keep the day job and offer services Sat. , Sunday and evenings.
Build up a range of clients, let word of mouth start working (and the
convenience of a weekend trader for customers)

Stash the cash in an account as a buffer for the point at which there is
too much work for weekend/evening hours, then take whatever holiday
entitlement is left all at once (4 weeks or whatever) and hand in notice
before end of holidays. (though the company should by rights only pay
for the proportional amount of holiday i.e. 1 day/xx days worked in the
current holiday year)

If there isn't enough work to take up the whole of the weekend after 6
months then forget it.

Still got the job and never left in the twighlight zone of no
employee-job and not enough personal work to cover out goings.

And be versatile.



+1 (with a vengeance)

On 13/03/14 12:05, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts wrote:
Nightjar wrote:

On 13/03/2014 04:16, John Rumm wrote:
...
One observation I have made looking at many business startups is that
they often fail because they owner does not do enough of the stuff that
he/she does not like doing. ...

One often quoted figure is that one in three start up businesses will
fail in their first three years.

And many of those are restarurants...

The recent BBC TV series "Restaurant Man" was interesting, in the way it
showed a bunch of people trying to set up restaurants. Many of them had
scraped together £20k or more of family money and then frittered it away.

Few did any marketing of their new business, and precious little testing of
their services (eg how they'd actually run the restaurant, who'd do what,
what the dishes on the menu would be, what they cost to produce etc) until
prompted to by the mentor. Some didn't even try some of this stuff until a
day or two before they opened, leaving no time to fix any of the problems.

Most of the lessons he drummed into people were really just common-sense,
and it was appalling how few had it - all the ineptness couldn't just have
been a result of devious editing of the footage.


I watched some of the Gordon Ramsay programmes about failing
restaurants. Several things I noticed that seemed to fly in the face of
the obvious:


1) If having a launch party after changing everything, including the
menu and staff roles, for gawd's sake run with the new setup on the
quiet a few days before you have a launch with 150% normal covers which
is hard enough to cope with anyway, let alone on the first night of a
new setup with no practise!


2) Do not appoint several "managers" with no organisational skills and
who have no specific pre defined roles wandering around aimlessly (seems
to be a common problem, not just with restaurants!).

3) Have a process for everything that is reasonably likely, including
especially the core business - eg: making sure customers are tended to
within set times, that orders are processed in order and there are
checks to ensure things are not overlooked.

If it goes wrong, get the staff together the next afternoon and check
and if necessary change the process and make sure everyone knows how it
works. If the process is fine, address staff training.


4) Try market testing your food (and even eating it yourself - you'd be
surprised how many chefs were turning out crap they hadn't even tasted).


Worse was when Ramsay sorted them out and they ran better for awhile.
Then you check the web for what happened after the programme aired and
you find out 3/4 of them failed and closed up, often (according to
commentators) going back to their original mistakes.


I really wonder sometimes how people can be so bloody dozy. This isn't
about circumstances being against them (though everyone faces an element
of that) - it really was about things directly under their control.

GB wrote:
On 13/03/2014 03:43, Bill Wright wrote:

People have the view that handymen are cheap. You will earn far more if
you specialise in something. Before I retired I charged £400 per day
plus travel, or more, much more, for some types of work.

Bill, perhaps you could say what your specialisation was?


Communal TV systems.

Bill

dennis@home wrote:
On 13/03/2014 10:52, GB wrote:
On 13/03/2014 03:43, Bill Wright wrote:

People have the view that handymen are cheap. You will earn far more if
you specialise in something. Before I retired I charged £400 per day
plus travel, or more, much more, for some types of work.

Bill, perhaps you could say what your specialisation was?




He has a few..

BBC critic and fixing aerials are the well known ones.

Ignore him, he's a pillock.

Bill

Dave Liquorice wrote:

Don't claim a portion of your domestic costs against tax. Dangerous!

A single small amount of "Use of home as Office" against tax will go
unnoticed. What you don't want to do is trying to put 5% or whatever
of the household bills against tax or dedicate a room as your office.
It can become subject to Business Rates and there could be a "change
of use" implications.


If you claim say 20% of your domestic costs against tax, when you sell
up HMRC will want 20% of the difference between what you bought the
house for and what you got when you seld it.

Bill

John Rumm wrote:

Depends on the type of work you undertake... you would need to talk to
some brokers / insurers to get an idea. As long as you avoid things like
groundwork and underpinning you ought not ring too many alarm bells for
the insurers.

They don't like welding and blow torch use.

Bill

Its not compulsory to register for VAT until your turnover hits the
registration threshold (currently £79K). If you perceive that
individuals rather than other VAT registered companies are likely to be
your main clients then its to your advantage not to register until you
have to, since it keeps your prices 20% lower.
No it keeps your prices 20% less 20% of the costs of goods and services
cheaper. You can't reclaim the VAT if you aren't registered.
There are schemes that suit low turnover firms that are a sort of
halfway house. Ask HMRC.


Note that some also try
to limit their turnover by allowing the clients to supply materials.
(personally I am not convinced this is necessarily good practice since
it complicates the responsibilities and liabilities, and also removes a
profit stream from your business)
It's a ****e idea, unless the goods are dodgy.


One observation I have made looking at many business startups is that
they often fail because they owner does not do enough of the stuff that
he/she does not like doing. In specialist activities, that tends to be
the non "core" activities of sales and marketing and general
administration. You need to find ways to get good at those activities,
and where possible find ways to subcontract some of them. e.g. getting
onto lettings agents lists of trusted handymen can be a valuable way of
getting someone else doing some of the marketing and promotion effort
for you.
Yes. You have to bite the bullet. And take the long view. By the way
I've recently been doing some fliers (I'm a graphic designer now it
appears!) for a firm. They put the fliers in the foyers of estate
agents, and pay the agent a fee for every contact. It seems to work.

Bill

Adrian wrote:

I found the way that worked for me was to have a "sacred" in-tray that
all invoices and statements went into, and a similarly "sacred"
whiteboard that all time got marked on. And be _regular_ in entering
stuff into your accounts software.

Yes, deffo. Agree stage payments in advance.

Bill

stuart noble wrote:

And be versatile.



+1 (with a vengeance)

Yes. Always have rubber johnnies and KY jelly in the van. And a bag to
pull over her head if she's a minger.

Bill

On 13/03/2014 14:16, Bill Wright wrote:
Dave Liquorice wrote:

Don't claim a portion of your domestic costs against tax. Dangerous!

A single small amount of "Use of home as Office" against tax will go
unnoticed. What you don't want to do is trying to put 5% or whatever
of the household bills against tax or dedicate a room as your office.
It can become subject to Business Rates and there could be a "change
of use" implications.


If you claim say 20% of your domestic costs against tax, when you sell
up HMRC will want 20% of the difference between what you bought the
house for and what you got when you seld it.

Of course it pays to rent!

Unfortunately the law says an expense must be wholly and exclusively for
business.

A second land line would be ok, and most IT equipment.

On 13/03/2014 09:46, dennis@home wrote:
On 13/03/2014 09:01, Nightjar wrote:


You might not actually want to buy one, but browsing through could give
you an idea of something else you might like to do. Some might even
allow you to work 9-5 and have six weeks' holiday a year, although the
latter is improbable if you work for yourself until you get really
successful and employ lots of people to make profits for you. However,
buying an existing business, even quite a small one, should mean that
you start off with an established customer base.

If you do decide to buy a business, look for a retirement sale. They are
usually the most reliable. Especially avoid those described as having
great development potential. If they had any, why hasn't the seller
developed the business, to increase its value, before putting it on the
market? There may be a good reason, but they are more usually businesses
where somebody has had a dabble and didn't like it.


There are some pretty nasty ways to get customers on the books to make a
business look viable, only to have the customers evaporate as soon as
its sold.

One of the milkmen around here came around offering half price for six
weeks, just before he sold it to a mug that thought he had a good round.

Just be sure the customers are real and want repeat business.

I would be dubious of anybody who couldn't produce at least three years'
accounts. Five would be better.

Colin Bignell