starting a handyman busines

markyyyyyy

Hi i currently work as a sports therapist but i really enjoy DIY work and get stuck in to a lot around my house.
Work has been a bit slow the last year, and i am thinking of setting up a handyman business to  provide a further income stream- with the aim of developing over the future as i'm conscious my hands won't cope with sports therapy into retirement!
Has anyone on here recently set up a 'handyman' business? What advice are you able to offer me? What are the most common jobs i would do?
I live in Yorkshire
Do you get customers to purchase materials? I'm conscious i won't have time to constantly visit trade merchants alongside my sports therapy
Thanks

Paula_Smith

I have a friend who has slowly built up a business over the last 15 years. Most of his work comes from word of mouth and tend to vary from painting and decorating to minor repairs and plumbing. He steers clear of electrics as he is not qualified.

Browntoa

Friend of mine does it 

Assembly of flat pack furniture change taps 
Fence panel replacement (if posts are sound ) 
Basic gardening like grass cutting and weeding.
Putting up shelving and flat screen TV .

He also does painting and decorating , general maintenance , electrics  , kitchen refurbishment , tiling etc but tends to have agreements with others who have the expertise so he's managing the job  , doing what he can and passing on the rest

tacpot12

Handyman can be a good job, but there seem to be two major issues with making it pay: 

• people don't value the work because they think "I could do that - if I had time"
• people don't understand that the time you spend travelling to them and to collect materials has to be paid for, as do the overheads of running a business, e.g. running a small van and having insurance.

Lots of people want to pay £10 an hour, but expect a professional result and some warranty if things go wrong. Both are reasonable expectations, but not for £10/hr!  And as a Handyman, you potentially need a wider range of skills, tools and knowledge than a specialist, but these can be built up over time. (It is a good rule of thumb that if you are going to buy a tool it has to be paid for by one or two jobs, no more!). 

Many handyman seem to manage these issues by having a minimum call-out charge of perhaps £40-60 and also by pricing for the job and not by the hour. 

It is also quite a physical job. I do a lot of repairs at home, at the two rental properties I own and at my parents, so I know that even quite small jobs can involve moving a lot of tools into and out of the job site.

I think there is potential to have a good business, but you need to manage the finances quite strictly and be capable of turning down work (and customers) who are never going to be profitable. 

markyyyyyy

thanks for your replies. Sounds like it's something that will definitely get me some business coming in.
Do your friends do this on a full time basis? 

Ganga

Went for a job on a local building site as they were looking for a handyman , they asked could I make tea ? yes I replied, can you drive a forklift truck ? how big is  your kettle I replied !! 

Doozergirl

The only thing I would say about people buying their own materials is that you learn quite quickly about the cheap tat the people buy that they then expect you to fix when it goes wrong, as if it's your problem to deal with.   There is a grey area between the quality of a fitting and how it was fitted!  

 If you know me then you'll know that I have  bigger than a handyman service but it's the little things that can become incredibly unprofitable and give the sleepless nights.  The frustration of not having supplied the thing in the first place is unbearable. After one cheap chinese tap with LED lights that change colour and probably cost our business about £1,000 to get running properly, we learned.  

You will learn over time what is decent quality and hopefully want to use that, not the stuff that people who have no idea want to put in. 

tacpot12

Good advice from Doozergirl! Only supply quality items; your reputation will depend on the work you do AND the quality of the items you supply. For this reason you should also be careful to only do work that is well within your capabilities. You will get customers who want you to do something that you have never done before; be very careful about taking such jobs as they will expect a professional result even if you try to tell them it is outside of your experience. Some people will push you to take the job because they know it will be difficult to find anyone to do the work, so they say they will be happy if you try, but I can guarantee they will not be happy if the job is not done to a high standard. Be especially careful if expensive materials are involved.  

tacpot12

You also need to have insurance that covers you for public liability (you drop a hammer on a passer-while putting up a hanging basket), errors you might make in your work (e.g. mis-assembling an Ikea Wardrobe that then collapses and injures someone), damage you do to someone's home and property (e.g. dropping a hammer on a tiled floor or Ming vase), and for product liability damage if you build something from raw materials and the thing you have built fails in service. You need to read around the subject of insurance carefully to understand the large range of risks that can be insured against, before deciding what insurance you need. Remember that as a sole trader you are personally liable for the work you do, so insurance is as must.

ElephantBoy57

markyyyyyy said:

Hi i currently work as a sports therapist but i really enjoy DIY work and get stuck in to a lot around my house.
i'm conscious my hands won't cope with sports therapy into retirement!

I get twinges of arthritis, which could develop in the years to come, I am 58 now. But I wouldnt be thinking about DIY in the future.

Murmansk

Oddly enough I moved from Yorkshire to a seaside town in Wales to be a handyman about three years ago. Until the virus struck, I'm now earning more than I did in my office job in Yorkshire and earning it in fewer hours.
Most of my customers find me online so I've not used many of the 5,000 flyers I had printed!
So you need a website - and you need to know about "Google my Business" which is a little-known bit of Google that, once you've registered your business with them, can mean that your website features at the top of search results at no cost.

It helps if you call yourself Xtown Handyman rather than ABC Handyman Services because your site will come up in searches more readily if you include the town name and the word handyman in the title of the business.