M
mc497
Hi everyone,
I'm sitting here at my computer AGAIN, with nothing more to do than think about whether I made the right move or not to go self employed about 11 months ago.
To put it bluntly I last worked about 3 weeks ago and even then the job only made me around £300, iv got a little plastering job to do tommorow and friday, and a guy is phoning me to arrange a start date to start tiling his bathroom, hopefully that will be next week. Generally speaking though the whole experience has been pretty dire..!
I fully understand that it takes a long time to establish a well known and trusted business, and I knew that it would be slow for the first year or two, but I can honestly say that I had no idea that it would be this bad.
I have tried all of the usual advertising tricks, I paid for an ad in my local rag which ran for three nights for three weeks, and I didn't get one single call.
Ive printed in the region of 5000 flyers and delivered them all, I did get some work from the flyers, generally speaking I would get one to two calls from each leaflet run I did, but in the general run of things this still doesn't make up regular work. I have my cards in practically every tile suppliers in the Cardiff area, but again I think I can only think of three maybe four times someone has run saying that they picked up my card in so and so shop.
Every morning I take my kids to school in my van which is signed up nice and bold and clearly and then I drive around the area for about an hour trying to get noticed. The other saturday I made up flask of coffee and a packed lunch and did a tour of all the tiling suppliers, parking up near the entrance and staying there for a while so customers might see me as they came in and out.
I go and walk around tiling stores where my card is so maybe the staff in some of them will get to recognise me, and in some of them they have, but still no work.
On the plastering side of things, (im a plasterer as well) things are only slightly better.
Thing is plasterers are ten a penny around my way, I read in disbelief at government figures saying that ie 7000 more plasterers needed in the uk by such and such date, I can honestly say that I cant see a shortage, but everyone else disagrees with me.
Seriously though from what I can see is plastering is now a dead trade, and drylining etc etc is slowly taking over, with the only plastering skill needed any more being skimming. As for the tiling side of things, I still think that alot of people dont regard it as a real skill, for instance practically everyone I see going into the tiling shops seem to be doing it themselves. Also you think every general builder or handyman or whatever all do their own tiling.
This really infuriates me, I started tiling seriously about a year ago , and I have fallen in love with this game, I was quite ignorant about tiling myself before going on a training course and then taking on a few jobs for real. After that I realised how involved and varied tiling can be, and that not just any DIYer can do this.
If i think back to an earlier post I made I stated that it take a long time to become a competent tile fixer, and I stand by that, Im not the finished article yet I know this. Basically, I seem to be getting one job every say two to three weeks, If these jobs were £700-800 a go then I wouldn't really be worried, but their not, in reality its more like £200-300 a go if Im lucky. I dont know what the situation for tradesmen is like in your areas, but in my local yellow pages there are 4 pages of tilers, 6 pages of plasterers, 9 pages of decorators, 23 pages of builders, 16pages of electricians and 18 pages of plumbers. ( I know its a bit sad to sit here counting but like I said at the start Im just sitting here with nothing to do again....!)
I hope NOBODY else is going through what Im going through at the moment, but is anybody else finding things slow...?
will thing pick up...?
is anyone out there strugglin...?
Should I be contacting the nearest call centre for any jobs...?
I'm sitting here at my computer AGAIN, with nothing more to do than think about whether I made the right move or not to go self employed about 11 months ago.
To put it bluntly I last worked about 3 weeks ago and even then the job only made me around £300, iv got a little plastering job to do tommorow and friday, and a guy is phoning me to arrange a start date to start tiling his bathroom, hopefully that will be next week. Generally speaking though the whole experience has been pretty dire..!
I fully understand that it takes a long time to establish a well known and trusted business, and I knew that it would be slow for the first year or two, but I can honestly say that I had no idea that it would be this bad.
I have tried all of the usual advertising tricks, I paid for an ad in my local rag which ran for three nights for three weeks, and I didn't get one single call.
Ive printed in the region of 5000 flyers and delivered them all, I did get some work from the flyers, generally speaking I would get one to two calls from each leaflet run I did, but in the general run of things this still doesn't make up regular work. I have my cards in practically every tile suppliers in the Cardiff area, but again I think I can only think of three maybe four times someone has run saying that they picked up my card in so and so shop.
Every morning I take my kids to school in my van which is signed up nice and bold and clearly and then I drive around the area for about an hour trying to get noticed. The other saturday I made up flask of coffee and a packed lunch and did a tour of all the tiling suppliers, parking up near the entrance and staying there for a while so customers might see me as they came in and out.
I go and walk around tiling stores where my card is so maybe the staff in some of them will get to recognise me, and in some of them they have, but still no work.
On the plastering side of things, (im a plasterer as well) things are only slightly better.
Thing is plasterers are ten a penny around my way, I read in disbelief at government figures saying that ie 7000 more plasterers needed in the uk by such and such date, I can honestly say that I cant see a shortage, but everyone else disagrees with me.
Seriously though from what I can see is plastering is now a dead trade, and drylining etc etc is slowly taking over, with the only plastering skill needed any more being skimming. As for the tiling side of things, I still think that alot of people dont regard it as a real skill, for instance practically everyone I see going into the tiling shops seem to be doing it themselves. Also you think every general builder or handyman or whatever all do their own tiling.
This really infuriates me, I started tiling seriously about a year ago , and I have fallen in love with this game, I was quite ignorant about tiling myself before going on a training course and then taking on a few jobs for real. After that I realised how involved and varied tiling can be, and that not just any DIYer can do this.
If i think back to an earlier post I made I stated that it take a long time to become a competent tile fixer, and I stand by that, Im not the finished article yet I know this. Basically, I seem to be getting one job every say two to three weeks, If these jobs were £700-800 a go then I wouldn't really be worried, but their not, in reality its more like £200-300 a go if Im lucky. I dont know what the situation for tradesmen is like in your areas, but in my local yellow pages there are 4 pages of tilers, 6 pages of plasterers, 9 pages of decorators, 23 pages of builders, 16pages of electricians and 18 pages of plumbers. ( I know its a bit sad to sit here counting but like I said at the start Im just sitting here with nothing to do again....!)
I hope NOBODY else is going through what Im going through at the moment, but is anybody else finding things slow...?
will thing pick up...?
is anyone out there strugglin...?
Should I be contacting the nearest call centre for any jobs...?
