Did you ever wonder about starting up in your own business?
I spent years and years in sales management until one day I realised that I was still acting like a dub, my reps were my congregation, I was the presiding minister. Time to quit!
My hobby had always been carpentry, could I use my skill to make a living? A friend told me that there was a growing market in the plastic cladding business or PVCu as we refer to it here. Timber shiplap, windows and fascias are inevitably of poor quality in the UK, maybe replacing them with maintenance free PVCu would bring in some income. The problem was, I had a severe shortage of cash to start the ball rolling.
Wait a mo, why did I need any cash at all? Lets say I get my first customer, say I charge him £800 to replace his fascias and gutters. OK, Mister Customer, the work will cost £800. You want to go ahead? Great! Can you give me a deposit of £400 and pay me the balance on the day that I complete the work? Now I have the money to buy materials without borrowing or opening an account. I have also made it clears to the customer that he must pay me immediately upon completion. Genuine customers are happy to pay something up front.
So, lets say you have a skill to offer, how do you get the business? Well, you need to let people know that you are open for business. Here’s how I got all my business for the first 7 years at a cost of just £10 per week.
Ever Sunday morning, around 7am, I would head for a market or car-boot sale (Do you call them garage sales across the pond?) I would pay my £5 traders fee and set up a pasting table, on which I would place leaflets and samples. Also I had a sign that read: “Ask me for a free no obligation quotation” that was highly visible. The first time that I attended a market, I booked 8 appointments and got 4 orders, which gave me 3 weeks work. This method of obtaining business will work for all trades, plus most of your customers are private buyers who are a lot quicker at settling their accounts than most businesses. 4 hours marketing for 8 enquiries at a cost of £5 in total has to be good!
Next method is advertising, but forget the big ads, they cost a fortune. Best way is to place a LINEAGE ad in a freebie paper amongst the ads for bric-a-brac or household items. This costs about another fiver, here’s what my ad reads every week:
“Maintenance free cladding, guttering, windows. Local reliable man, lowest prices. Free quotation. Phone 01**********, anytime, anyday.
Now that ad gives me about 3-4 enquiries each week, some people even cut the ad out and pin it to their notice board for future use. Also I now get a consistent stream of repeat and recommended business.
My purpose in this post is simply to demonstrate that going into business does not require great skills or money even. What I would dearly love to hear now is some ideas from others here who have been successful in making up for the lack of schooling that they received due to their being brought up as JW’s.
Englishman.
..... fanaticism masquerading beneath a cloak of reasoned logic.