A tough choice to be made

[gasmanrob]

So things haven't exactly been Rosie lately, infact I'd go as far to say it's been pretty shambolic and a complete disaster.

the mrs would very much like me to knock it on the head and get myself paye. Well actually most of my family do. There are a few good positions going locally with a start in September. If I interviewed I'd probably get a start as someone I know less experienced knowledgeable and qualified then I has a start. It's 32k start then 37 if you take up unsociable hours plus add ones like call outs etc, 11p per mile private use on the van private health care buy in after a year and above all else NO PAPERWORK OR INVOICING!!!

how ever I really want this to work out when it's good it's great but as we all know it's not always good. Personally if it was just me I'd grit my teeth and throw all I have into it. But I can't keep putting the family through it in order to satisfy my own ambitions. Equally I don't want to resent the family for making me give up on it.

there's no one to talk to about it thought, the mrs has already said her bit, outlaws can mind their own, and as for my mum were not exactly on the best talking terms at the minute. So here I am talking to you chaps, I'm not asking for the magic answer, I'm just looking for people to discuss it with.

cheers
rob

 

[kris]

Well rob only u know how you feel and how your business is doing . I personally would say do what makes YOU happy takin into consideration the other half. No paperwork does sound like a blessin. No runin around till late at night pricing and chasin debts. Hows your business doin at mo?

 

[Leo21]

Stick at it Rob, you've obviously got the nouse and experience. It takes a while to get straight, I couldn't work for any one now. They probably wouldn't have me anyway.
The other thing is the so called stability, I know loads of people who have to chop and change. Loss of contracts, change of bosses, the new bosses moving the goal posts. As in more work less money etc etc. Your just as secure on your own.

 

[kris]

I wouldnt work for anyone as too used to being own boss but everyones different. How long have u been on your own?? I took good while to gather traction but once word of mouth starts travelling its amazing how it can implode and b4 you know it your strugllin to keep up with work load.. its the paperwork i hate and recently ive been lookin for a part time secratery to help lighten load..

 

[gasmanrob]

I left BG 2 years ago, was there 6 years partly as a contractor then into a direct employee role. Before that I'd been a contractor at various company's.

its been tough because I was chasing a lot of late payments which in the mean time ment using my savings to pay off accounts until I recouped the money. Then last month had a letter through the door a company I do work for has gone into administration and I'm on a list of people owed money and have to wait my turn to see if I get anything. I have work everyday and make at least day rate on my bad days. But people not paying on time has had a snowball effect on everything. I've implemented the if payment isn't made with x days now and want to ride the storm. Think I'm going to sit down with the wife and suggest I give it another 3 months and re asses come the colder months.

 

[Alex Pelton]

first two years are always the hardest. stick with it till the winter months are past.

from what you have said, you have not much experience in demanding money. Once I have the job secured I always bring up payment terms before the job starts (as in you pay as soon as I have finished, or if big jobs stage payments)

Don't be shy about asking for your money!

Cash or cheque is fine (hand out give me the money) or bank transfer I'll wait while you do it just to make sure you have the correct details.

I also bring up payment again the day before completion.

Stick with it you sound like a fairly smart guy.

 

[Destroyer2813]

I remember reading you where trying to concentrate on gas side and dropping the wet works can u not incorporate it again and stay s/e

 

[Riley]

I know where you're coming from Rob. I was working with two local guys so I didn't have to do anything apart from turn up and knuckle down. This started to go more and more in their favour time, travel and most importantly money wise. So we had an amicable split. I still call on them for big jobs and vice versa. The most important thing to me now is that I'm the master of my own destiny. I'm just coming up to 2 years solo now and it has been one hell of a struggle. My mrs has put up with a lot but I think deep down she still backs the solo venture. We sat down about 6 months ago when things were tight and we discussed whether we could live like it. As long as important bills were being paid we agreed to give it to the end of the year. All of a sudden things picked up, I had a bit of money in the bank (discovering the likes of Williams helped massively). Ultimately we're still living month to month but we're coping and not getting in debt. I have to be honest I can't see myself working for anyone else as I've worked really really hard to make a go of this. I guess what will be will be but I do feel like I'm finally starting to turn a corner I've got in with a really good sparky (they do exist!!) and we bounce a lot of refit/refurb work off each other. Touch wood I've not had many people with payment issues yet but I guess it's only a matter of time these days. Good luck mate and chin up

 

[kris]

I dont want to put a dampner on your spirits but not much chance when liquidators are involved, i lost near 6g when a construction company went bust beginning of year, and its heart breakin as i was wantin a new van at the time and had to save again, the only folk that come out of it with assets sold usually are liquidators hmrc and the bank,

 

[chris watkins]

Who is your client base Rob ?

 

[SimonG]

Difficult times Rob, I had two years of the wife telling me to get a 'proper job' when I started on my own. But that was over 9 years ago now.

I put a plan in place with the wife and told her to get off my back until the plan had ran its course. It can be hard enough as it is without added pressures from home.

Put something in place and agree it with your wife. Be stronger about payment, people wouldnt go into the supermarket and leave without paying. Cash flow is king, when the money is flowing and you are not having to chase payments life is a lot easier.

You say there are options for employment in September, personaly, having worked for myself I couldnt work for anybody else. Just remember its easy going into being employed, but if you find its not for you then its a mountain to climb again going self employed, start up costs, building customer base etc

Good luck with it all.

 

[townfanjon]

Rob I can't say much more than the rest of the lads , as ever , there's super advice.

I am also one who would say stick it out for a bit longer. IMO the job is defiantly getting better, what I mean by that is there is a lot more confidence around, every tradesman I know is busy and getting busier.

Hang on in there pal

 

[Ray Stafford]

Hi Rob

Not much that I can add to the advice above, since I have never had to make that choice.

One observation though, having watched self-employed plumbers businesses for nearly 3 decades. The businesses where the wife was involved in the actual running of the business have often been the most successful and most likely to grow. Obviously there are horses for courses, but is there any chance of involving GasWomanRob more? I don't mean on the tools, but in the admin side maybe? At the moment, she may see the business as "the other woman" - something taking up your time and attention. If its clearly causing you worry and anxiety, naturally she will seek to protect you from that.

If she can get closer to it, she might understand it more?

And Kris was right, as an unsecured creditor, don't expect a penny from the administrators. Any value there will disappear in their charges, and to the secured creditors. Write it off and move on, don't throw good time after bad money. In the unlikely event that you do get a cheque in the future, it will be bunce.

 

[mountainman]

Been through it all mate.
I'm now PAYE, not as much dosh as SE during the good times, but no bad debts to lose sleep and property over.
I should have done this year's ago!

 

[lame plumber]

I'm finding it very quiet at present, not helped by several jobs going west, not to other companies b ut the customers not able to get their acts together! So this last month has been my worst for several years, several k down on last year to date, but stick in there as it all goes up n down in cycles, your not the only one. Me I'm off to Poole to college and to learn to be a proper manager for 5 days, I treat RNLI training as a holiday, brilliant food and some laughs with others of a similar ilk and they pay me to go win win.

 

[hammers4spanner]

Working on the cards for most companies is carp however sometimes needs must

 

[mountainman]

Working on the cards for most companies is carp however sometimes needs must

I've got a month off soon and getting paid for the privilege, not that carp imo.

 

[iain85]

Sorry for the thread drift but is billy king not working for you? Last I heard he was going over to work for you?

 

[Destroyer2813]

Judging by Facebook billys been.working with dannypipe

 

[iain85]

Ah, I'm sure he said a chap called rob from the forum,. Must be my old age memory loss rearing it's ugly head again.

 

[turnpin]

Hi Rob Saw a post from Dannypipe on here a rew days ago saying he was busy and killy bing was helping out I dont think you are far from him why not send him a PM to see if you can help each other out .....regards Turnpin😛unk:

 

[Ray Stafford]

Coming back to the OP for a moment, another suggestion is to spend some time working ON your business, rather than IN your business.

When you first go SE, most people quite rightly snap up every job that comes along, being desperate for work. Thats fine when you first start up, and probably the only way to survive. However, there is a danger that it becomes a habit, and your "business" actually ends up just servicing whatever work comes your way. Thats what I mean by working IN your business.

The tricky part is stepping back and working ON the business. Asking questions like:

What sort of work am I best at?
What sort of work do I enjoy most?
What sort of work is most profitable?
What sort of customer type is best/most enjoyable/most profitable?
How can I change my business so that I get more of this good/enjoyable/profitable work, and less of the other stuff

You can't change everything overnight, but you absolutely have to have business objectives and plans, and you absolutely have to do something different if you want things to change.

Einstein reckoned "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing year after year and expecting different results"

It took me 14 years and a whole lot of stress to learn that simple business fact. I can't honestly say that everything has been easy since accepting it, but at least there has been progress.

One of the best suggestions I ever heard was that you should imagine that you are wheelchair bound, and no longer able to work yourself. However, you hire a plumber who by sheer chance happens to have exactly the same skills and experience that you have. Your job, from your wheelchair, is to direct the business, do the marketing, and make the highest possible amount of money from directing your "employee".

Just a thought.

 

[hammers4spanner]

I've got a month off soon and getting paid for the privilege, not that carp imo.

Very true however I had a month off and come back to a over large pay packet

 

[gasmanrob]

Sorry chaps been out for the evening.

Yes billy did come along on a few and I'd gladly have him back doing more. And going back to an older post yes I have phased out plumbing, but not all plumbing. It is the bathrooms and wet rooms that gave me the most head ache and caused me the most grief. I'll keep small plumbing jobs as they are often my most profitable jobs. At one point I cleared rays Gillingham branch out of fluid master over the course of a week.

I've sat and had a chat with the wife and she has agreed to lay off a bit and see if I can turn things around. She has tried to take on some of the office work but with two under 2's that nap at different times of the day she just doesn't have the time to dedicate to it. However one of her friends is looking for extra cash so will get her in on 2 half days.

My good reliable bread and butter comes from an insurance company a letting agent and corgi.

originally I was traveling all over for the insurance work and it took up too much time so I put them in touch with billy for the Maidstone stuff and Danny pipe for the TN postcode stuff, that's helped cut my fuel bill and given me some extra time to claw away at the stuff closer to home. Corgi is easy and pays promptly same goes for the letting agent. That's my core work now I've dropped the wet rooms etc as it never paid on time, and kept me away from the gas.

for me breakdowns are king! That's where I'm heading. That's the goal. I'm not just good I'm M & S good. Component testing and loom faults. Weird and wonderfull un explained phenomenons are where I shine. Off the back of that the boiler installs and upgrades.

My push product wise is best of British. People love abit of home grown support the economy jazz. So far it sells well.

Getting a lot of support from baxi too, finance for boilers, approved installer and a new installer scheme coming from them very soon once the 3 new boilers have been launched. Followed by a decent tv campaign on sky.

like I say getting the work in the door touch wood has been easy. Getting money from certain sectors has not.

Also me and the wife are cut from very different cloths. She is steady and stable don't want to rock the boat. Where as I joined the industry with every intention of running my own. I want to sit back in years to come and say I built that. I'm not interested in being massive but I am set on being known as the best and untouchable on quality and service. Too many times as a youngster I was told I'd never amount to anything and my company name known as the best there is, is me sticking 2 fingers up at the system! That's my determination. But equally it's not fair to make the family suffer for my ambitions.

things made harder are it's not just me and mine I need to look out for. My mum.. Since dad passed I've been helping out with her bills. Nothing major just top ups and treat your selfs. But promised the old man I'd make sure everyone was ok and looked after. A promise I will NOT go back on.

 

[GasmanxxxR1]

A bit off the point rob i know but corgi have contacted me several times recently offering work. Im more of an installs kind of guy. Do they do much installation work?

Cheers

 

[gasmanrob]

Far and few. Infact ziltch. It is asked in the contract but I am yet to hear of anyone doing any. Mainly call outs

 

[Ermintrude]

I'm getting fed up with being self employed as such but that's mostly because the good times are very good and the bad times sting a bit. It's difficult but being PAYE is defo 100% easier when you have family. Why not keep your business ticking over but go PAYE? Your kids are only here once. When they are grown up you will 'hopefully' have less responsibility and can afford the ups and downs of self employment?

 

[village idiot]

For all those who said Erm was out there somewhere milking cows in a field, well, look, look, he is here.

Back to gasmanrob, I would say stick with it. But truely, only you can make that decision. You know better where it hurts. Personally, I could never work for anyone, ever again. Besides, I doubt they will have me for long. I will blarb my mouth so loud they will be in a hurry to ''kick me to touch''.
Hope you can get back to good relations with your mom. She needs you now more as her other half has moved on. Don't leave it too late. I know with age they can be a pain sometimes to reason with, but you only have one mom

 

[kris]

I know you say youve turned your back on bathrooms n wetrooms and thats great but it might be better to keep all in the fold until your that busy that you could afford to put them on back burner. On the other hand if there givin you nothin but hassle your maybe right. Ill unblock wcs all day as long as we get paid for our labour.

 

[Leo21]

If your good at breakdowns rob, you need private customers to make real money. And that means advertising.

 

[Deleted member 32524]

What annoys me is the fact that just about every customer that seems to be tight. If you work out what you need to be turning over a week to get 32k it is pretty high. That level of turnover takes time. I made no money 1st 2 yrs and a small profit in the 3rd and have kept growing steadily since. It is hard, really hard nearly been bust several times.

It is still hard but, it is getting easier as I have a decent amount of referrals, recommendations and repeat business from older customers but I still need to run ads to keep busy. I reckon that you need about 3-5 different ads out there to keep the phone ringing with any consistency.

 

[PlumbersMate]

I love discussions like this it really helps to see the real pros and cons of working for yourself. I haven't got half the experience of most on here but I will give my 2ps worth.

I was SE for about 2-3 years, wasn't easy but I loved it and between subbing to one or two and my own work I was always busy enough to live ok, wasn't rich, but always had enough to cover bills etc and some weeks I earned ridiculous money. I then by chance applied for a paye job local to me and got it. I thought give it a go see what happens. It was working for Dyno Plumbing doing the BG Homecare contracts. At first I loved it, company van, holiday pay, van full of stock, diesel card etc.
Then as some have already mentioned, the goalposts were moved. Going on call was the only way to make any 'real money' and so I would do it usually at least twice a week, usually a weekday and a Saturday. You used to only get paid if you actually completed any jobs, so there was no extra wage if you didn't get called out. This was fine as Saturdays you'd usually get 10 calls minimum, and you'd get £30 per completed job so could earn some good dough. They then realised (I think) that some of us were earning bit too much, so they then said that they were considering changing call out so instead if getting paid per job, you'd get an extra days flat rate regardless of whether you got called out or not. This for me was when I started to question it all.
sadly after that I got ill, had 3 ops in the space of 2 months. On my last op I was signed off for 1 month, after about 10 days I went to my parking space and the work van had gone, thinking it's been stoked I phoned into office, and they said oh no the boss and workshop monkey had come and taken it, without so much as a word to me, basically saying that they didn't want me using it while I was off sick (I hadn't used it once, I was sofa bound) this really put my back up not least because I had about 2k worth of my own tools etc inside it. This made me worry so I phoned boss and said can I come to work following Monday (this being the Thursday) he said he would get a local lad to pick me up and bring me in on the Monday. So he did, and I was in office sorting paperwork etc when I got called into boss office with the head supervised woman, and was told that while I was signed off I wasn't making the business any money and they needed my van so they were cancelling my contract!

i was disgusted, I'm pretty sure what they did was illegal, especially as was still signed off for another 2 weeks. I felt ashamed though, haven't been sacked before and it wasn't a nice feeling. So they arranged for my tools to be loaded onto another van and workshop monkey gave me a lift home, even stood in my lounge and made me take off my uniform so they could take it back!

Sorry to be so long winded but guess what I'm trying to say is there's no loyalty these days even if you're paye, I genuinely worked my nuts off for them and I never said no to covering call out or just doing one more job for us or going to help out someone else etc. I was doing average 4-5k worth of work every week, as we had to document this on our paperwork etc, and I didn't even get a thank you, just thrown to the lions after having operations on my head ffs!
now I've been SE since. Subbing to a bloke who's local to me, and has a very good reputation amongst my plumbing friends who've known him for a few years basically they call him the oracle, he knows everything about plumbing/heating apparently lol but forgetting all that the thing I love is he's very patient with me, doesn't care about timescale etc long as I can walk away from a job saying I'm proud of that. It has to be neat and it has to be right, no corners cut, that's pretty much his motto. And above all, he says THANK YOU!
all the best with what you do Rob but if you want my honest answer mate, stick with what you're doing. You sound like you're the dogs danglers at breakdowns etc,don't let someone who knows fark all make money off the back of that and then drop you like hot potato if he doesn't need you.,use that knowledge to make your own money, build your own business and build a future befitting of your wife and 2 nippers, you know it'll work out.

 

[MOSSEP]

Ive run a business now for 13 years and its never got any easier. Every progression Ive made, be it employing extra staff to give me more free time or increasing prices to get more free time has resulted in less free time! I have admin staff ad still have to do large amounts of paperwork. I can't see it ever getting easier, you can either accept it or not.

Im really lucky that my wife doesn't nag one bit. It must be tuff for her but I only have saturday off work (but its still constantly on my mind) every other bit of time is spent at work or doing paper work.

If you've got an opportunity to earn good money going PAYE don't discount it, running a business (I don't mean subbing for builders) isn't for everyone and thats nothing to be ashamed of.

 

[MOSSEP]

Oh, and if you don't want your bathroom and wet room jobs, send them my way and I will sort you out ;-)

 

[IDCHAPPY]

Stick with it mate, we are just over the 3 year mark now and apart from the occasional quiet spell it's picked up.
Last week was a PITA but uit can't all be a smooth ride 🙂