Diary of a serial entrepreneur

property.advert

CKhalvashi wrote: »

There is a company in the area that I live, made up of Romanian nationals, that has grown to quite a size, including letting agency contracts, brand new vans, specialist divisions (carpets, cars) etc.

I've no idea what their turnover is, but to all be living in reasonably sized accomodation can't be too bad, however I'd suggest they're charging a little more than £10/hr.

It obviously takes time to build a company like this (CH shows they've been Ltd since 2005), however there's plenty of work there is you look for it.

CK

But they will be living in squalor (or luxury compared to what Ceausescu left them with), many multiples to a property, possibly owing money for transportation and indebtedness in the UK and back home and willing to work outside the minimum wage regulations which can be exploited if housing, food, transportation etc. are taken in to account.

So they undercut UK workers because they are operating at the edge or outside the law.

Charging £10 per hour, which is VAT inclusive, so a net of £8.33 and a minimum wage of £6.08 and employer's NI of £0.84, the company makes only £1.41 per hour before company expenses ?

That is mathematically not possible.

CKhalvashi

Horace wrote: »

I would be inclined to ditch the 1&1 website and hosting and get yourself a wordpress website and get hosting elsewhere. I know that I pay £14.99 a month for my hosting for my website which is on the first page of Google (due to having internal links and being fully Search Engine Optimised - work done by me not by others as I discovered it was quite easy to do after being given some guidance).

Or even better, ditch the online advertising full stop, except on localised sites such as yell.com

I've just put in 'taxi in (insert town)' and we've come up second.
I've also just put 'cafe in (insert town)' and we've come up first, both through yell.com on google.

We're paying around £10/month for each of them, and having a separate office means that you don't get the calls personally at 2am from someone wanting something.

Consider a £10 PAYG mobile for the same reason.

Horace wrote: »

Start going to a few business networking events - find relatively low cost ones (ones that don't charge mega bucks for an annual membership and then weekly fees on top of that). You need to start talking to people, have flyers, have business cards and keep your business cards on you at all times because you never know who you will meet and you may be asked for a business card. Always offer your business card if you are not asked for one too.

Also, speak to your local chamber of commerce about membership; I'm on three now; two local and one for Russian business owners in Europe (even though I'm not Russian.

We pay £600/year for three, so budget between £15 and £20 a month.

Horace wrote: »

Be a bit more realistic with your pricing - charging £11 for a hard job is nonsense you should be charging a lot more than that. Don't be afraid to go and price a job and offer a written quotation that way either party knows what is expected of them. Do more research what are your competitors charging (pretend to be a client and ring them up don't whatever you do say that you're a cleaning company as they won't tell you).

Even get them round to quote a job; you're not in a game that you can phone the company round the corner and go 'got xyz job,, can you give me a guide?'.

£20 to £25 an hour seems realistic in this neck of the woods. Perhaps £5 more in London, £5 less elsewhere.

Horace wrote: »

Why not visit a few letting agencies and leave your details with them - start building relationships with people via networking as mentioned earlier in my post. People buy from people. What do you do that is different to your competitors?

Not just letting agencies. Order several coffees in a cafe over the space of a month, then ask if you can leave a pack of cards in there (we charge £1 for a coffee, £2 is more common).

Book a few taxis into town, and ask if you can leave cards in the office.

If I'm getting regular work out of a customer, I'm happy for them to advertise their own businesses on my premesis. It's a win-win situation.

Horace wrote: »

As for working a 30hr week, when you work for yourself you will work longer hours and work 7 days a week.

This could be considered a lifestyle business for the poster; I know that I once was. Yes, you can build up a good business from this, but if you do want to work part-time, this is the way to do it.

CK

CKhalvashi

property.advert wrote: »

But they will be living in squalor (or luxury compared to what Ceausescu left them with), many multiples to a property, possibly owing money for transportation and indebtedness in the UK and back home and willing to work outside the minimum wage regulations which can be exploited if housing, food, transportation etc. are taken in to account.

So they undercut UK workers because they are operating at the edge or outside the law.

Charging £10 per hour, which is VAT inclusive, so a net of £8.33 and a minimum wage of £6.08 and employer's NI of £0.84, the company makes only £1.41 per hour before company expenses ?

That is mathematically not possible.

The point that I was making here was that I believe it's one large partnership.

5 bed house; £2000 a month, plus £1000/month in bills is £600/month per person. On a 30h working week at £15/hour (as I said, I don't know what they're charging, but always see the cars/vans flying around), taking £3 an hour expenses, is £1200/month.

After speaking to a neighbour yesterday about their carpet cleaning expenses, they're going to about £40 + VAT/hour, so that would offset aspects of £15 to £20/hour.

CK

paulwf

property.advert wrote: »

Charging £10 per hour, which is VAT inclusive, so a net of £8.33 and a minimum wage of £6.08 and employer's NI of £0.84, the company makes only £1.41 per hour before company expenses ?

I've no idea about this specific case but a lot of these types of companies rely on all their workers being self employed then just passing a percentage on to the parent company. That keeps everything below the VAT threshold and can bypass minimum wage, holiday pay and sick pay requirements.

CKhalvashi

paulwf wrote: »

I've no idea about this specific case but a lot of these types of companies rely on all their workers being self employed then just passing a percentage on to the parent company. That keeps everything below the VAT threshold and can bypass minimum wage, holiday pay and sick pay requirements.

That's the thing though, we'll never know the true extent of how genuinely self-employed these workers are.

All of our taxi drivers are legally self-employed, however about half the fleet has a car provided by us on a 50/50 basis. As far as HMRC are concerned, it comes down to who buys the fuel.

The drivers with their own cars pay us £100/week, and are by far more self-employed than their counterparts.

CK

TheSandman

I've been looking at starting some form of business and I'd appreciate if you could answer some questions for me;

1) What sort of knowledge do you need for running companies?

I'm unsure if it's best now to educate myself in business/accountancy through college/uni/self-teaching or just get experience in a full time role within the potential industry ie. hotel worker before running a hotel. I've no doubt both would be ideal but could an educated person run almost anything?

2) Any business areas you'd avoid or recommend? I've heard pubs, nightclubs and shops can easily be black holes.

3) What is your experience of the taxi company? Good, bad, ugly?





I'm planning on 'getting my eye in' so to speak with maybe a gardening, cleaning business - graft but relatively straightforward.

Then got a shortlist of logging, removals, taxis - still a relatively straightforward 'service' but a more complex business with overheads, staff etc

A couple of 'blue sky ideas' that if I ever manage to raise the finance hold true Forbes-like potential but enough day-dreaming for now.

plzhelpmesave!

Hi great thread!
My DH is setting up a new business at the moment which Im helping him with.
I am also setting up my own business in the next few weeks (a small franchise that has huge potential)
AND I have an interview tomorrow morning at 8am for some work through a company Ive worked with in the past - would be 2 days a week @ up to £150 per day


Exhausted thinking about it all - but have decided to take OP's attitude and devote the next 12-24 months to establishing and growing ideas that are viable business opportunities and making them work.

Driver is to pay off debts & mortgage (around £100k) within 3 years - so will be MF in my 40th year! born in Jan so technically have until dec 31st 2015 :-)

Willing to work hard, buy in & pay for expertise in my weak areas (finance, IT) and ready to sell my socks off! Will be following up on all my ideas this time rounds & going for everything whole heartedly - wish me luck!

paddyrg

TheSandman and PlzHelpMeSave - you may be better off starting your own threads as the OP doesn't seem to be around to illuminate you with his words of wisdom, whereas there are plenty of other very experienced and good people in here who will probably never find your posts buried down in somebody else's thread.

CKhalvashi

TheSandman wrote: »

I've been looking at starting some form of business and I'd appreciate if you could answer some questions for me;

1) What sort of knowledge do you need for running companies?

I'm unsure if it's best now to educate myself in business/accountancy through college/uni/self-teaching or just get experience in a full time role within the potential industry ie. hotel worker before running a hotel. I've no doubt both would be ideal but could an educated person run almost anything?

2) Any business areas you'd avoid or recommend? I've heard pubs, nightclubs and shops can easily be black holes.

3) What is your experience of the taxi company? Good, bad, ugly?





I'm planning on 'getting my eye in' so to speak with maybe a gardening, cleaning business - graft but relatively straightforward.

Then got a shortlist of logging, removals, taxis - still a relatively straightforward 'service' but a more complex business with overheads, staff etc

A couple of 'blue sky ideas' that if I ever manage to raise the finance hold true Forbes-like potential but enough day-dreaming for now.

Hey Sandman and sorry it's taken this long to reply to you.

Whilst there are no specific qualifications required to run a business, something that you could find useful is some experience in the industry you're thinking of working in at some point. Business courses are usually brilliant when it comes to the theory of running a company, however something that many people find when thu actually start working for themselves is that you either can or can't do it well.

I never planned to work for myself, and certainly not to grow a company to this size, however it proves that it can be done. I was quite happy back in the day as a teacher.

We've got a specialist bar in London, which is one of the few to cater for the Russian community, so we've found that there's a decent living to be earned here, however I'd generally stay away from anything to do with food, drink a retail without buying a company already operating.

The taxi game is ugly for many companies at the moment. One thing that we have found is that the new contractors for the airport are too pricey, with the general attitude of many to go into he next town by train and get a taxi from there. We operate the rank in question, so things are brilliant for that as far as that is concerned. Local work is dwindling, however. T would also be worth blog that whilst we're rubbing just above break even at the moment (I bought the company as an administration buyout), the company took on too many drivers and most of the debt racked up by £1m of cars on 50% without the work. We've got some drivers that lease the cars from us now, and others that are on a 50/50 basis. It's about even for both the drivers and us, with the cars on £600-700/wk t/o. A taxi office can cost £150k a year to run, with just one controller on at any one time. Ours costs over £200k a year!

Rees no one business I'd recommend for anyone, as skills can be put over a range of backgrounds, however please let me know how you get on.

CK

CKhalvashi

plzhelpmesave! wrote: »

Hi great thread!
My DH is setting up a new business at the moment which Im helping him with.
I am also setting up my own business in the next few weeks (a small franchise that has huge potential)
AND I have an interview tomorrow morning at 8am for some work through a company Ive worked with in the past - would be 2 days a week @ up to £150 per day


Exhausted thinking about it all - but have decided to take OP's attitude and devote the next 12-24 months to establishing and growing ideas that are viable business opportunities and making them work.

Driver is to pay off debts & mortgage (around £100k) within 3 years - so will be MF in my 40th year! born in Jan so technically have until dec 31st 2015 :-)

Willing to work hard, buy in & pay for expertise in my weak areas (finance, IT) and ready to sell my socks off! Will be following up on all my ideas this time rounds & going for everything whole heartedly - wish me luck!

Making a business work does require dedication, as something that I would not advise, from experience, is running two start-ups at once, as everything will require your full attention in the early days.

An interesting point that you mention is a franchise with huge potential. Something to be wary of anything with 'huge potential is that there is a risk of not being able to recruit quickly enough or actually take time off from the business at all or some time. Be very wary of anything that offers guaranteed growth with something like this, as this is often where terms and conditions strongly govern that growth.

If you're lOoking to expand quickly, then it's going to be a case of getting the word of mouth around quickly and ensuring that everything is up o scratch. Something that I've told my drivers is that the cas should be cleaned as often as they think I wouldn't want to be in it as a taxi. Same with anything that you're using for work.

Best of luck!

CK