Abit of advice

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Jamiewarner

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Hi guys, looking for some advice on how to a get your business going. Been self employed for nearly a year and looking for more work. What are the key things to do when starting your business? How long did it take you to be happy with the amount of work your getting? Do websites, social media work? Or does it just take time?
I'd be very grateful for any advice. Cheers.
 
You will never be happy with the amount of work you get, it's either too little or too much. It's a quiet time of year just now and we're just starting to pick back up after a pretty dreadful month. Websites and social media do work, its all about getting your business out there so folk know about you.
 
Website
Social Media
Local Advertising
Van Signage
Yell.com (and other free directory listing websites)
Business Cards
Talk talk and talk about your work, share photos on facebook constantly., its not your friends, but there friends who will go ...need a plasterer and your friends who have been seeing your pictures constgatly will go..oh blah blah does that, add him on facebook, twitter etc
 
Hi guys, looking for some advice on how to a get your business going. Been self employed for nearly a year and looking for more work. What are the key things to do when starting your business? How long did it take you to be happy with the amount of work your getting? Do websites, social media work? Or does it just take time?
I'd be very grateful for any advice. Cheers.
my business if fine at the mo mate thanks
 
The lads asking for decent advice and only trying to progress with his an alls he gets is smart arse answers
 
Leave a good and clean job as word of mouth will be your main way . Of the customers you have had if they are happy they have a full group of friends and family that may need a plasterer . If they are happy with you they will sing your praises if there not you wont last long . And then the list mike adams put up pritty much covers the rest !
 
the best way, and no one has mentioned it yet, is to get in with other trades. they will pass your card about, you pass there card about, everyone wins.
a recommendation from another trade usually works wonders.
 
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I just like most have a network of trades who I pass work to and they do the same, customers always ask do you know such a such...
 
Hi guys, looking for some advice on how to a get your business going. Been self employed for nearly a year and looking for more work. What are the key things to do when starting your business? How long did it take you to be happy with the amount of work your getting? Do websites, social media work? Or does it just take time?
I'd be very grateful for any advice. Cheers.


Hi Jamie,

Like the lads have already said here the fundamentals are crucial, do a good job every time, be professional clean tidy punctual etc hopefuly you are doing that already and have faith it will pay off in time. Good work follows good work.
A couple of pointers I hope will help.
.Networking: view everyone and anyone as a potential business lead, get used to talking to strangers and keep those business cards flowing.
Our business has changed in the past few years, there is more competition (good and bad) and people have more access to advertising; its not just yellow pages anymore, social media is swamped with people pushing their firms. You still have to be a part of this. Get @Danny to build you a website and work at it. Once you have a site there are dozens of things you can do online to get noticed. Ive talked about this on another thread but will quickly recap for you. Danny built me a site and advised that I get on twitter and other social media sources and get it noticed, I have a touch of OCD so I took it a bit far, I went on Twitter and spent hours everynight looking for people in my area and followed them on twitter or liked business pages through facebook via mine. Ive been doing this for a couple of weeks and had an awesome response, believe me do it right and its well worth doing.

I understand its a lot of money to fork out (although Danny gives a great deal at £350) so here is the old school route that got me started.
When I started out for myself I put a card in a corner shop window and a week later I got a little job out of it, after that I drove around looking for newsagents, shops anywhere that displayed cards. That was 13 years ago and even though Im established I still keep those shop window cards going. I got a call from one to plaster a porch for an elderly lady, she told her neighbour who was a qs for a large building firm that ended up spending a lot of money with us.
Get on a site like vista-print and make an order soon. Flyers, postcards and a mini-portfolio will not cost you much for a small order. If your not working get out and stick flyers through letterboxes. Get a shoe box and keep all of this under driver seat of your van, when your packing up stick a flyer through half a dozen houses nearby.
Just popped out to van and got my shoe box out

Sorry @Marshy My Tpf mug got in the shot
I am stacked out with work right now but I still put a flyer through the adjacent houses to where I worked today, old habits. Best of luck bud, hope this helps :)
 
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What's the book you have with the pics? Can you send me a link for them?


Sent from my iPhone using The Plasterers Forum
 
@Olican. If you kept busy and never had to look for work would you still have gone ahead with the website & networking etc?
 
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Hi Jamie,

Like the lads have already said here the fundamentals are crucial, do a good job every time, be professional clean tidy punctual etc hopefuly you are doing that already and have faith it will pay off in time. Good work follows good work.
A couple of pointers I hope will help.
.Networking: view everyone and anyone as a potential business lead, get used to talking to strangers and keep those business cards flowing.
Our business has changed in the past few years, there is more competition (good and bad) and people have more access to advertising; its not just yellow pages anymore, social media is swamped with people pushing their firms. You still have to be a part of this. Get @Danny to build you a website and work at it. Once you have a site there are dozens of things you can do online to get noticed. Ive talked about this on another thread but will quickly recap for you. Danny built me a site and advised that I get on twitter and other social media sources and get it noticed, I have a touch of OCD so I took it a bit far, I went on Twitter and spent hours everynight looking for people in my area and followed them on twitter or liked business pages through facebook via mine. Ive been doing this for a couple of weeks and had an awesome response, believe me do it right and its well worth doing.

I understand its a lot of money to fork out (although Danny gives a great deal at £350) so here is the old school route that got me started.
When I started out for myself I put a card in a corner shop window and a week later I got a little job out of it, after that I drove around looking for newsagents, shops anywhere that displayed cards. That was 13 years ago and even though Im established I still keep those shop window cards going. I got a call from one to plaster a porch for an elderly lady, she told her neighbour who was a qs for a large building firm that ended up spending a lot of money with us.
Get on a site like vista-print and make an order soon. Flyers, postcards and a mini-portfolio will not cost you much for a small order. If your not working get out and stick flyers through letterboxes. Get a shoe box and keep all of this under driver seat of your van, when your packing up stick a flyer through half a dozen houses nearby.
Just popped out to van and got my shoe box out

Sorry @Marshy My Tpf mug got in the shot
I am stacked out with work right now but I still put a flyer through the adjacent houses to where I worked today, old habits. Best of luck bud, hope this helps :)
Post of the week award (I think it's a mug) :RpS_thumbsup:
 
Hi Jamie,

Like the lads have already said here the fundamentals are crucial, do a good job every time, be professional clean tidy punctual etc hopefuly you are doing that already and have faith it will pay off in time. Good work follows good work.
A couple of pointers I hope will help.
.Networking: view everyone and anyone as a potential business lead, get used to talking to strangers and keep those business cards flowing.
Our business has changed in the past few years, there is more competition (good and bad) and people have more access to advertising; its not just yellow pages anymore, social media is swamped with people pushing their firms. You still have to be a part of this. Get @Danny to build you a website and work at it. Once you have a site there are dozens of things you can do online to get noticed. Ive talked about this on another thread but will quickly recap for you. Danny built me a site and advised that I get on twitter and other social media sources and get it noticed, I have a touch of OCD so I took it a bit far, I went on Twitter and spent hours everynight looking for people in my area and followed them on twitter or liked business pages through facebook via mine. Ive been doing this for a couple of weeks and had an awesome response, believe me do it right and its well worth doing.

I understand its a lot of money to fork out (although Danny gives a great deal at £350) so here is the old school route that got me started.
When I started out for myself I put a card in a corner shop window and a week later I got a little job out of it, after that I drove around looking for newsagents, shops anywhere that displayed cards. That was 13 years ago and even though Im established I still keep those shop window cards going. I got a call from one to plaster a porch for an elderly lady, she told her neighbour who was a qs for a large building firm that ended up spending a lot of money with us.
Get on a site like vista-print and make an order soon. Flyers, postcards and a mini-portfolio will not cost you much for a small order. If your not working get out and stick flyers through letterboxes. Get a shoe box and keep all of this under driver seat of your van, when your packing up stick a flyer through half a dozen houses nearby.
Just popped out to van and got my shoe box out

Sorry @Marshy My Tpf mug got in the shot
I am stacked out with work right now but I still put a flyer through the adjacent houses to where I worked today, old habits. Best of luck bud, hope this helps :)

Some brilliant advice there, some things I'm going to take on board too, love the portfolio.
 
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@Olican. If you kept busy and never had to look for work would you still have gone ahead with the website & networking etc?
100% I have maintained this practice even when I have had long runs of work. I ordered a website off Danny knowing I was booked up for most of the summer
 
Oli that is great advice and I will definitely be taking it on board. Jamie I am in the early stages off setting up my firm so if you go to @ianplastering or Grayson Plastering & Maintenance on fb you can see how I've put it together and I have had quite a few jobs from them. I put the maintenance on my fb page because people are more likely to ask about other things and I'm finding this a good way to build up a wide variety of tradesmen that are happy for the recommendation so are more inclined to do the same for me. If you have any social network pages put them up and I will like/follow and spread your name about a bit more.
 
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Hi Jamie,

Like the lads have already said here the fundamentals are crucial, do a good job every time, be professional clean tidy punctual etc hopefuly you are doing that already and have faith it will pay off in time. Good work follows good work.
A couple of pointers I hope will help.
.Networking: view everyone and anyone as a potential business lead, get used to talking to strangers and keep those business cards flowing.
Our business has changed in the past few years, there is more competition (good and bad) and people have more access to advertising; its not just yellow pages anymore, social media is swamped with people pushing their firms. You still have to be a part of this. Get @Danny to build you a website and work at it. Once you have a site there are dozens of things you can do online to get noticed. Ive talked about this on another thread but will quickly recap for you. Danny built me a site and advised that I get on twitter and other social media sources and get it noticed, I have a touch of OCD so I took it a bit far, I went on Twitter and spent hours everynight looking for people in my area and followed them on twitter or liked business pages through facebook via mine. Ive been doing this for a couple of weeks and had an awesome response, believe me do it right and its well worth doing.

I understand its a lot of money to fork out (although Danny gives a great deal at £350) so here is the old school route that got me started.
When I started out for myself I put a card in a corner shop window and a week later I got a little job out of it, after that I drove around looking for newsagents, shops anywhere that displayed cards. That was 13 years ago and even though Im established I still keep those shop window cards going. I got a call from one to plaster a porch for an elderly lady, she told her neighbour who was a qs for a large building firm that ended up spending a lot of money with us.
Get on a site like vista-print and make an order soon. Flyers, postcards and a mini-portfolio will not cost you much for a small order. If your not working get out and stick flyers through letterboxes. Get a shoe box and keep all of this under driver seat of your van, when your packing up stick a flyer through half a dozen houses nearby.
Just popped out to van and got my shoe box out

Sorry @Marshy My Tpf mug got in the shot
I am stacked out with work right now but I still put a flyer through the adjacent houses to where I worked today, old habits. Best of luck bud, hope this helps :)
nice one oli, and all the other lads who gave good advice,, its nice to see experienced spreads willing to help the newer spreads and to spend the time writing posts like @Olican,, i have only just seen the post jamie so theres not much i can add other than to wish you all the best for the future,, good luck jamie, hope all goes well and once again nice one oli
 
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Oli that is great advice and I will definitely be taking it on board. Jamie I am in the early stages off setting up my firm so if you go to @ianplastering or Grayson Plastering & Maintenance on fb you can see how I've put it together and I have had quite a few jobs from them. I put the maintenance on my fb page because people are more likely to ask about other things and I'm finding this a good way to build up a wide variety of tradesmen that are happy for the recommendation so are more inclined to do the same for me. If you have any social network pages put them up and I will like/follow and spread your name about a bit more.

Nice one Ian, gave your page a couple of likes from mine https://www.facebook.com/Rivieraplastering?ref=tn_tnmn:RpS_thumbup: A little tip with FB pages is to look for popular pages in your area (newspaper, football teams etc) and look through their followers, anyone with a business page give it a like from yours :RpS_thumbsup:
 
Did anyone mention getting a good tax agent so that you get squared away with HMRC? :RpS_biggrin:

Apart from that, speaking as a would be customer, word of mouth is certainly your biggest friend. I would always ask if anyone knows a good whatever tradesman.
@Olican is right on when he says always do a good job, be polite, punctual, honest (none of that sucking air in through teeth malarky) clean up... I had some decorating done and had a lady painter. What I did like was that she brought a flask with her, started at a reasonable time (for me), worked through and left at a reasonable time. I wouldn't have minded making her tea but in a way it was great not to have to keep thinking, wonder if she wants a cup of tea. Doesn't mean we didn't have a few chats...

For me, if I didn't get a recommendation, I'd look online. I want to see a website. My search criteria in google would be something like "plasterer in blahblah", so that's what you need to rank well for but if @Danny does it for you, he knows all that stuff.

Social media is great but you need to know the platforms that work for you... (I just went and liked your FB page Riviera!) Facebook Pages can like each other. Doesn't increase your page count sadly, but you can share each others content and like etc. That will definitely help.

I think twitter is a good place for you guys to be too. However, if you do it you need to be active on there, which can chew up time. There's plenty of help manuals out there to give good pointers, or I am sure people here already on these things will give advice on best usage.

I also think Pinterest could be good. It ranks well on Google and it allows you to show off your work.

Cross platforms using something like hootsuite. Sometimes not so personal but gets the job done.

It has to be easier for you all, working in a much more localised area - you can pinpoint useful advertising mediums, like those postcode books. get one job from that, pays for the advert. If money is tight, try your local church mags... really cheap (and you will find redemption!)

Good luck with it all!
 
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:RpS_lol: they are too valuable to sell Lee :RpS_thumbsup:
maybe you could take yours with you to the BG day out and maybe if marshy behaves himself you could let him hold it ( i would make sure you are both in a locked room or i could see him trying to do a runner with it ) :RpS_drool:
 
maybe you could take yours with you to the BG day out and maybe if marshy behaves himself you could let him hold it ( i would make sure you are both in a locked room or i could see him trying to do a runner with it ) :RpS_drool:
Are you still talking about mugs? :RpS_blushing:
 
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