Budget Wars - A New Hope (with apologies to George Lucas)

Bobarella

PurpleFairy26 wrote: »

Yeah to bob :T:j:T:j:T:j amazingness :T

Thank you PF

Drawingaline

Wow you have been busy! I have not been about for a while and have missed loads. Really hoping you rate bill is good news.

Bobarella

Drawingaline wrote: »

Wow you have been busy! I have not been about for a while and have missed loads. Really hoping you rate bill is good news.

Thank you, nice to see you too.

System

Hi Bob,

Haven't read your diary for ages, so just caught up with it.

Well done on being debt neutral, hope work continues to come your way so you can be debt free completely.

The sun always makes you feel better, I think London is having some warm days , which sadly up north we aren't having .
Have a good Friday :rotfl:

Bobarella

Cumbria_lass wrote: »

Hi Bob,

Haven't read your diary for ages, so just caught up with it.

Well done on being debt neutral, hope work continues to come your way so you can be debt free completely.

The sun always makes you feel better, I think London is having some warm days , which sadly up north we aren't having .
Have a good Friday :rotfl:

Thank you. Yes it's warm here this week which is nice. You too.

JWPopps

Oh gosh Bob I'm on tenterhooks on your behalf!!!

Bobarella

Afternoon Everyone

Hummmm well. Sort of an update but nowhere near as concrete as I'd like. I tried to log onto my local council website and check my bill had been amended. It hadn't. So I phoned the Business Rates team. They sounded surprised I would even except my bill to have been amended yet and said that they don't receive schedules for weeks after amendments are made. So I then went back to the agent who had been dealing with my revaluation. His answer? They'd knocked £600 off my rateable value.
That doesn't equate to £600 being knocked off my amount to pay. All of that is very complicated. Essentially you have your total figure. Say £14750 in my case. They then apply various other figures to it to get to what you are expected to pay. If they are saying there is less property than before for trading out of then yes it will push my bill down, but by pence not £££s.

So I emailed the council again and said ok, when can I have my new bill and also enquired why my small business relief was so small. Compared to another business who were quite openly discussing it on Twitter recently I am still faced with a huge bill while they were saying they only have to find a couple of grand.

Basically if I have to find the almost £400 a month they've made my rates now still, it's going to be a killer.

I as yet don't know how I will pay my rent for April let alone £400 on top of that.

I've had a couple of enquiries today, but nothing exciting. For a lot of work they will add around £90 each to my bottom line, once I pay the £10 I lose per enquiry to the website that I get the enquiry through. I need to be taking much bigger bookings than I am. Which I have worked flat out on over the last 2 weeks and other than making a few new links nothing is coming back.

It's so frustrating. I feel like there is a layer between me and reaching my customers that I just can't break through. It doesn't help that the premises is off the beaten track so in terms of getting more target customers from just window based advertising that's not very hopeful.
Whatever I do has to be electronic in communication.

Ah well.

One of the main things that is hard in this situation is I can't just have a rest and a break and try again. It is all consuming. I either keep up with the bills or I give up. There is no in between.

One of the things I did last week was email all the companies the venue is listed with for filming work just to check if that is what I should be doing in case work was coming in and I wasn't being contacted but nope they all politely confirmed ' don't call us well call you' so it makes life very frustrating.

I have been feeling literally exhausted in the last few days. From feeling like I'm on 24/7. I'm awake till midnight and gone reading, searching, trying to find business. Then up again at 6.
I can't shake the feeling that there MUST be something I could do more of/better/ work harder at. But so far my efforts are just falling flat.

I have added £75 to my bottom line this week. For all my hard work.

Pray for a miracle folks, I think I need one.

Bob

Treadingonplaymobil

Oh Bob, I really feel for you. I've been in exactly your shoes before, unable to decide whether I need to continue to invest time and money in the business or whether I'm just throwing good money after bad. I had the decision Inadvertently postponed by getting pregnant. When I went back to work I found the business ran much smoother and money came more easily, BUT a huge amount of our debt is from paying business expenses during the 18 months when I scarcely worked (horrific morning sickness + velcro third baby), so I can't honestly say it was unconditionally good in the end.

In short, I have no sensible advice to offer. Do you have a hard limit in mind for how much money you're prepared to sink before you abandon it? I think that's probably a first step, and if you can limp on until the summer (assuming that there are likely to be more events? I have no idea if your business is seasonal) that might be worth doing.

kirtsypoos

Oh Bob, I wish there was something I could add to pep you up but I have no idea about marketing etc, especially for a business such as yours.

I just know it seems so unfair that you are working your backside off everyday and getting no help from the government.

Only you know what your next plan of action can be, but I hope that whatever you decide allows you to get some proper rest - mulling everything over must be exhausting.

Sanchsoot49

Will PM you about the mystery shopping Bob

Looks like PM wont go through .... if you are still interested message me !