Join in if you are self-employed and work from home

TCM_3

Yum yum
In my tum!!!!!!

Oh they were soooooo good and i have made such a pig of myself!!!

cheekymonkey20

I know i only been in it 3 days, but speaking to the staff there its always the same 12 hour days.
I have said to the managers, right stopping for lunch but they werent having any of it. Plus they talk to their staff like !!!!.
I will probs do a lot better at the self employed buz if i spend all my time doing it. The firm are emailing me a list of contacts to fill up my diary with so that i can hit the ground running.

Horace

cheekymonkey - are they going to start paying you for working your lunchbreaks? You are entitled to a lunch break by law and on health & safety grounds. Give it a month and then quit because at least you will get some pay.

cheekymonkey20

i know.. i fainted after i posted that cuz of exhaustion... walking the streets for 12 hours a day without stopping is horirble.

Nelski

Hello everyone and thanks Wordsmith for a fab and very useful thread:j

I am Nelski and I am kinda self employed in that I have a Ltd co but it is only me that does the leg work so whilst strictly I am employed, I am employed by myself so that doesnt count - are you still keeping up:D

A little about me - I am a business coach which covers a miriad of things such as sales, motivation, leadership, NLP, presentation skills and the like. I go out to businesses to coach them in situ or work from either phone or email at home. Up until last year I had a very successful business with plenty of work flowing in mostly from the banks and other financial services companies :rolleyes: :rolleyes: lesson number one - dont put all your eggs in one market sector. Anyway I am getting by thanks to a very safety conscious attitude to keeping money in the bank just in case and some bits of pieces of work here and there. My business is 7 years old now :eek: it doesnt feel that long at all but it is. Anyway I have been licking my wounds a little too long now on how good things used to be and not really taking much positive action towards making them good again. New me as of today:D the irony of it I know what to do I just havnt been following much of my own advice.

I have a great book and DVD called The Secret which really pulls me up by the scruff of the neck and gets me back into what I know I do well and enjoy. I can highly recommend it for motivation and drive ( I have no affiliation at all just find it very useful) So today I went through all of that again and have set some new and interesting goals to go after.

Tomorrow I am having what I term a "Sales Attack" day where I will be spending at least 2 hours focusing on bringing some new business in.
Looking forward to reading how everyone else is getting on in the coming months and wishing everyone success.

Blimey I do go on sometimes:o :rotfl:

cheekymonkey20

Perfect someone to keep us motivated and to give us sales tips lol!

skintjenny

you fainted? thats awful? whats the job doing?
you have to demand lunch- as a previous poster said, its illegal for them not to provide it... but for now, get some food, get to bed and try to gather your energy for tomorrow.
perhaps it would help if you kept some oat bars or similar snacky thing in your pocket, then atleast you get something to eat during the day?

---

have been on my chamber of commerce business course all day and am feeling very scared, we have been doing about cash flow forecasts and all that but i really have no idea how i will predict how much i will earn? and am worried that i might not earn enough to live on at all... but my current job is unbearable and i have promised myself that i will hand in my notice on april 4th..!
help! ive been so positive the past few days but now im really struggling to know whether or not i will be able to support myself!

Horace

SkintJenny - I will come back to you in a mo. Just wanted to post this here for all those who are in business and maybe slightly skint.

Lidl will be having some business stuff in on Thursday 2nd April. I know that someone one here - I think it was Downshifter saying that they were looking for a printer/copier/scanner and there is one - here is the spec:

Photosmart C4480 All-in-One

Easily print, scan or copy using this all-in-one inkjet printer
Print photos without the need for a PC using the built-in colour display and memory card reader
Features include:
- HP thermal inkjet technology
- LCD colour display, size (cm): 3.8
- Card reader supports Memory Stick®, Memory Stick® Duo, Secure Digital/ MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital High Capacity Card, xD-Picture Card
- Hi-speed USB connection
Specifications:
Printer:
- Max. speed (ppm):
- Colour up to: 23
- B&W up to: 30
- Prints 10 x 15cm, A4 and panorama photos
- Borderless printing up to panorama, A4 and more
- Max. print resolution (dpi): 4800 x 1200
- Print feeder capacity: 100 sheets
Scanner:
- Optical resolution (dpi): 1200 x 2400
- Enhanced resolution (dpi): 19200
- Colour depth (bit): 48
Copier:
- Max. speed (cpm):
- Colour up to: 23
- B&W up to: 30
Image scaling: 50 - 400%
Includes 1 black & 1 colour cartridge and HP Photosmart Essential 2.5 software
Size (cm): 43.4 x 29 x 16.2
2 year manufacturer's warranty
Price per item

49.00*
Only available while stocks last

You can buy HP inkjet cartridges from https://www.7dayshop.com - they are cheaper than you can get in the shops plus you won't pay VAT on them (they will send out in lots of packages) and sometimes delivery is free. Back in January I spent £100 on cartridges which will hopefully last me a year.:j

So get yourselves down to Lidl on Thursday 2nd April:D

BlondeHeadOn

Been very busy the last couple of days so not been posting, although have been keeping up with the thread in between times. Still not managed to do any filing (!:o ), but at least all I have been doing has been paid work so I don't feel bad about that at all!

For those of you just starting up on the self-employed route, one of the most useful tips I ever heard was when I went on one of those Business Link courses just before I took the plunge:

One of the instructors told us that, if we were planning any sort of consultancy-type business, to assume that we would only probably have paid work for about 100 days of the year (the rest of the time would be other tasks, marketing, admin, down time, networking, hols etc.)

He then said to work out how much we would have to charge per day to be able to earn a living wage, assuming that we'd only get paid for 100 days per year.

Then we should check that the daily amount is competitive at the going rate for that type of business/service.

If it is, we'd probably be okay!

For some reason I found this really useful in working out my daily/hourly rate, and a good guideline for starting out.

Thought this might be helpful for someone else if you are starting out ......

Horace

skintjenny wrote: »

have been on my chamber of commerce business course all day and am feeling very scared, we have been doing about cash flow forecasts and all that but i really have no idea how i will predict how much i will earn? and am worried that i might not earn enough to live on at all... but my current job is unbearable and i have promised myself that i will hand in my notice on april 4th..!
help! ive been so positive the past few days but now im really struggling to know whether or not i will be able to support myself!

Cashflow forecasts are always scary and they are there to give you an idea really of what you hope to earn. When you do your business plan you need to work out what you need to survive and then include this in your cashflow forecast (if I remember rightly, I haven't looked at mine for a while:eek: ). I worked it out for mine that as long as my bills are paid I can get away with earning £11K a year which isnt a lot but I can survive on it.

I know that you current job is unbearable but see it as a means to an end and see if you can't stay there a little bit longer and set up as self employed at the same time, that way you do have a bit of a bolster there for you because you will at least be getting a regular salary.

If you saw my cashflow forecast and profit & loss account for 12 months you would laugh mainly because I have probably been over-adventurous with what I want to earn. According to my profit and loss account I will have made £23,888 profit after my drawings this year. I probably wont get that figure but it is something to aim for.

Ask them at the Chamber if they can provide you with a template for the cashflow forecast as well as the business plan - our tutor emailed them to us and we just jiggled them about to suit. Mine more recent cashflow forecast was done by my mentor at the Chamber because I had gotten confused and curfuddled and didnt do the sums properly but its all fixed now.

It is scary but then it is all for all people who have to do cashflow forecasts - I was told the other day that if I wanted a loan or whatever (not that I do as I can manage without) then I would have to provide 5 years' worth of cashflow projections:eek:

Try not to be too despondent - its scary and don't quit your job just yet.