I'm self employed earning £300 a week...

Rtj123

I'm a self employed gardener and on average I earn around £300 per week. I'm trying to build up a bigger clientele but at £300 per week I only work average 3/ 4 hours a day so.i have room to earn more. I'm struggling to build it.up at the moment especially gaining regular customers. 

My question is really, should I give up? Is £300 a week pathetic? 
I have 23k in savings, I'm 30 years old and I'm feeling a bit of a failure.

Any help or advice would be great thankyou 

Jeremy535897

Your current earnings are less than half the average wage, yet you have built up £23,000 in savings, so it doesn't sound as if you actually need to earn any more, so long as you are content with your current lifestyle. Are you?

There is no point judging yourself as a failure. I suspect a lot of people would be very happy to work 3 or 4 hours a day if it provided them with sufficient money for their needs.

If you want more, you have two obvious options:

• get more business. Actively market yourself with flyers, seek recommendations, consider branching out into window cleaning, car cleaning etc
• get a job with more prospects, depending on your skill set

MalMonroe

Rtj123 said:

I'm a self employed gardener and on average I earn around £300 per week. I'm trying to build up a bigger clientele but at £300 per week I only work average 3/ 4 hours a day so.i have room to earn more. I'm struggling to build it.up at the moment especially gaining regular customers. 

My question is really, should I give up? Is £300 a week pathetic? 
I have 23k in savings, I'm 30 years old and I'm feeling a bit of a failure.

Any help or advice would be great thankyou 

Well you aren't working full time and you say you're trying to build up your business so I don't think that's pathetic at all. As you say, you DO have the capacity to earn more. Don't forget that we are coming out of a very bad time for all businesses and you may need to have a bit of patience in order to sign up more customers. Sounds like you're not doing bad at the moment, though.

There's absolutely no need for you to be feeling a failure at all, especially as you have managed to save a nice little nest egg. I think you're onto a winner.

Presumably you are registered as self employed and paying the appropriate tax, NI, etc? 

You're only 30, though and if you want to change career paths, there's nothing stopping you. There's a lot of info on the internet and you are in a good position right now, having that £23k behind you.

Good luck!     

Savvy_Sue

Can I just ask how long you've been doing this? It takes a while to build up a clientele - I think my gardener mostly works on personal recommendation. 

I think they work most days, but not in December, January and February, so do build in some 'down time'. 

Rtj123

MalMonroe said:

Rtj123 said:

I'm a self employed gardener and on average I earn around £300 per week. I'm trying to build up a bigger clientele but at £300 per week I only work average 3/ 4 hours a day so.i have room to earn more. I'm struggling to build it.up at the moment especially gaining regular customers. 

My question is really, should I give up? Is £300 a week pathetic? 
I have 23k in savings, I'm 30 years old and I'm feeling a bit of a failure.

Any help or advice would be great thankyou 

Well you aren't working full time and you say you're trying to build up your business so I don't think that's pathetic at all. As you say, you DO have the capacity to earn more. Don't forget that we are coming out of a very bad time for all businesses and you may need to have a bit of patience in order to sign up more customers. Sounds like you're not doing bad at the moment, though.

There's absolutely no need for you to be feeling a failure at all, especially as you have managed to save a nice little nest egg. I think you're onto a winner.

Presumably you are registered as self employed and paying the appropriate tax, NI, etc? 

You're only 30, though and if you want to change career paths, there's nothing stopping you. There's a lot of info on the internet and you are in a good position right now, having that £23k behind you.

Good luck!     

Thank you. Yes I’m registered as a sole trader, have all my own equipment etc. I’m advertising on FB every day in local groups, have an ad in the local monthly magazine and have a Facebook page. I do have 23k saved (plus a little for everyday ‘emergencies’) and also have an asset of the value of 17k. 

I really struggle at the moment to get regular customers.

Rtj123

@Savvy_Sue

i have been doing it for around 3 years. I’m out pretty much every week day just not full days. 

Thanks everyone for your replies so far  

Savvy_Sue

I'd suggest that if you let existing customers know you've got capacity, they'll tell friends.

Also if you have an active local FB or Next Door community, mine is often asking for someone to do gardening.

Places to advertise: local library and community / church magazines. You probably won't see immediate results but if it's not too pricey persevere for a few months. 

jimpwarsop

Get some A5 leaflets printed and after completing a job, leaflet the surrounding houses.

Or print them yourself.

Mistral001

Actually what you are earning is not bad for 3 or 4 hours a day.  However, you are probably competing with part-timers, such as people who have retired early and are running a hobby business or people who just like working part time and will be happy with £300 a week for 3 or 4 hours a day.

There are always going to be slack periods in this type of work, especially in winter, so just increasing the number of customers will probably cause problems during the busy season.  Have you tried to do other work connected with gardening, such as tree surgeon work or path cleaning so that you can get more work in the winter and also work that you can charge more for?

lincroft1710

Savvy_Sue said:

Also if you have an active local FB or Next Door community, mine is often asking for someone to do gardening.

There's barely a week goes by without someone on my Next Door community wanting a gardener

[Deleted User]

OP, you asked this question back in October, you're not going to get any different answers this time around, sorry to sound blunt but you're just not.