Wish me luck

Re: Wish me luck

HI Ralph
Are you coming to the mtg at the end of Feb ?

Re: Wish me luck

been working on my own here for 9 months its not easy but just stick at it get your name out advertising ,try letting agents uk whitegoods is a good place to get known .i find yell.com get a lot of work from that just stick with it and youll be okay.

Re: Wish me luck

Good luck. He is some advice I’ve found useful.

First and foremost it’s about running a business and learning how to bring work to you.If you can’t run a business, comparing it to being employed and doing a few fiddles on the side which frankly is no more than a hobby that makes a bit of money, there two very different entities.

There is nothing wrong with making a bit of cash on the side, but don’t make the mistake of trying to scale up something that won’t scale up.

I was given this bit of advice that has always stuck with me:

This is a real story about Hippies and loaves of bread (yes, true!). Many years ago, a bunch of friends decided to bake some fresh bread and sell it door to door in a nearby ‘posh’ neighborhood. They baked half a dozen or so loaves and went out and sold every one. Flushed with the success of their brush with capitalism, they went out and purchased a load of flour and other ingredients. Working overnight, they produced several dozen loaves. Out they went, and just as their market testing had predicted, they sold six loaves.

If half of your potential clients don’t even slightly wince at your prices, then you are not charging enough.

Expect a few inquiries each week where the person on the phone goes quiet after giving them a rough quote. Clients that always want discounts and always query prices are frequently the ones that are not worth the trouble of supporting. Be wary of the small business mindset that says that every customer is precious – no, some are a pain in the rear and should be dropped.

Too many small businesses are afraid of putting their prices up (yes, even in the current climate) for fear of losing clients.

Think of this example: You run a business that buys widgets for £6 and sells them for £8. 100 customers makes you a profit of £200. Let’s say you decide to compete on price and reduce your prices to £7? Now you need 200 customers to still make that £200. Doubling your customer base is not easy. Instead of this, let’s say you up your prices to £9. You now only need 66 customers to make £200. In other words, a third of your customer base can leave and you still make the same amount.

Remaining customers can benefit from the better service you can give them and you have more time to spend on marketing and other activities beneficial to the business. If you just lose 20{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of customers through the price rise then you can bet they were mostly the high maintenance ones that caused the most hassle, paid late, and kept asking for extra discounts. Aim to deliver premium products and service at premium prices.

I wish you well, just remember repairing appliances will now become a smaller part of your working life.

Re: Wish me luck

Ralph wrote: my hard drive has been making some warning clicking noises
Backing it all up while I can

Oh, that’s funny. I bought my present PC s/h over a year ago and it’s always done that. Got another one ready anyway and going to swap over when I get a quiet moment. Which I won’t get I suppose until I turn this clicky old PC off!
Mike.