Oh you chaps, thanks for tuning in to Trial Talk again. I hope you're all doing good. I hope you're all well.
I had a message this morning, a Facebook message from a member of the Trial Talk Facebook group and he's said that he's just read the blog Name Your Price.
Which is a blog that I put together based around pricing up your plastering jobs if you're new to self-employment or if you're self-employed and it's an area that you struggle with a little bit.
I put that blog post together and you can find that at the top of the Trial Talk plastering group on Facebook in files. It's all downloadable, everything's free on the group.
Yeah and he basically said look I've read your blog, I've read Name Your Price. I love it and basically I've been trying to implement some of these ideas around pricing and he's figured out quite quick that it's been going in way too cheap.
It's been going in at £120 per day which for a self-employed plasterer is no good. It's too cheap.
I know it depends on areas, location and all the rest of it, I understand that.
But £120 a day, I don't care where you live, that's too cheap for any part of the UK.
Listen, I think we all know now, £200 minimum now guys, if you're self-employed, £200 minimum.
All your overhead, the fact that you've got no pension, the fact that you've got no holiday pay, no sick pay.
I could go on for hours about this, the true cost of self-employment, but I'm not going to ramble on about that.
I want to talk about what this lad has said on the message.
He's messaged me saying look, his prices are getting rejected.
He's trying to creep up from £120 and he's trying to creep up incrementally.
He wants to jump from £120 to £160, which is what I've said, look, go incremental.
With the goal, we've just started, so give it a year, get yourself some customers, get your marketing sorted and all the rest of it.
Get your systems in place and baby steps and we'll get to that £200 marker and then we'll build on that and see where we can go from there.
And he said his prices are getting rejected.
He said my prices are wrong.
What can I say about that?
Your prices aren't wrong, OK?
What it is, you've got the wrong customer.
Customers aren't for you.
Listen, when you're self-employed, you need to be targeting customers that earn more than you.
If your customers aren't earning more than you and what you can earn in a year, then they're the wrong customers.
Your customers need to be the sort of people that when you put your price in, OK, they say, yeah, absolutely fine, no problem.
When can you start?
They don't want to be the sort of customers that say, oh, I weren't expecting it to be that much.
Can you do it cheaper?
Can we talk about the price?
Yeah, it's way over my budget.
Can you do it cheaper?
They're not the sort of customers you want, OK?
Because if your customer's earning, and I don't want to come across as snooty and snubby or I'm not trying to suggest that you shouldn't help people out that are on a low income again or do jobs for people that fall outside of this category.
But as a general overview, if you want to be earning the sort of money in your blustering business that can pay your mortgage and feed your kids and, you know, take you on a nice holiday once a year and eventually maybe twice a year.
Maybe you want to put a little bit of money in your pension pot.
Maybe you want to invest, take on an apprentice.
You can't do that on 120 a day.
You'll struggle to do it on 160 a day.
You might just do it on 200 a day, but you'll find that even that will be tight.
So if you want to create a nice lifestyle for yourself, and let's face it, if you're crafting your balls off every day and you're working twice the amount of hours that an employee is going to work, OK?
Because when they finish work and go home and are watching Love Island, you're going to be sending emails and you're going to be on the phone and you're going to be worrying about your jobs and you're going to be dealing with cancellations and alterations and all the rest of it and putting out fires in your business.
It's all on you.
The book stops with you.
If you're going to be willing to do that and you're going to be willing to do the push-ups and willing to do the press-ups in your business while others relax, that needs to come at a price.
You can't charge out 120 a day.
OK, you can get your prices up.
Let's boost them to 160 and then let's focus on trying to get it up above 160.
It's a two-way street.
You can't put your prices up without putting your value up.
If you're used to selling yourself at 120, you're going to have customers that are willing to pay 120 at no more.
That's who you've attracted into your business through your pricing and through your marketing.
So it's about switching things up.
We're going to re-market ourselves and position ourselves differently in the market so that we attract customers that are looking...
They're not looking for cheap.
They're not looking for a cheap job.
They're looking for a proper job.
They're looking for a quality job.
They're looking for a tradesman that they can trust and rely on and leaving their property while they go out to work and not be thinking, is my home safe?
You know, who are these people?
They're looking for something else.
OK, these are the clients that you need to be attracting into your business.
And you do that by becoming excellent at what you do.
You do that by becoming trustworthy, reliable, clean and turning out high-quality classroom work.
You do that by turning up when you say you're going to turn up.
You're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up.
You're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up.
You're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up.
You're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to
If you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going to turn up when you're going
What can you sustain in your business and how much do you need to pay your bills, your mortgage, feed your kids and bank some for your future and not be living hand to mouth and struggling on your own?
One day you might need a labourer. One day you might need some help. I mean you might be young and fit and strong now. You might have a lot of stamina and be throwing boards up and doing everything on your own. Boarding ceilings, skimming up, packing off, bagging it up, skipping it, mixing up your own gear and doing it all. But I did all this. I did it all in my 20s. But you'll get fed up with that eventually.
One day you might wake up and say I need a hand and you need the capital there, the working capital. You need that there in your business to be able to say here's the money I've allocated for a member of staff. Here's the money I've allocated for my insurance increases that's going to happen when I do take on a member of staff. Here's the money that I've set aside to pay for their uniforms, their holiday pay, their tools and possibly another van.
The list goes on. You can't put yourself out at £120 a day and expect your business to grow on that money. It's not going to grow. You're going to be burning yourself out. You're going to be chasing your tail.
And you'll have money one week and no money the next. That's what will happen. It's unsustainable. And if your customers are rejecting your prices at £160, change your customer. Don't change your price. Become a business that is so fucking good that your phone burns out because people keep ringing you up.
Because they want you to come and work for them. That's where you need to be. Think about that. Read the blog post again. This video isn't about being a greedy piggy and going out there and ripping people off and trying to put a bigger price in as you can.
It's about thinking of the next 20 years, the next 30 years, your body, your pension, your kids, your future. What age are you going to be able to retire at?
Because you're not going to be able to retire at £120 a day. You'll never be able to retire. You'll be working until you're dead.
Don't feel pressured by cheap customers to lower down your day rate. Remember that when you're putting your price in, you don't need to disclose how much you're making per day. It's none of their business what you're making per day.
Your price is going to include waste disposal, sheeting up, materials, all your other bits of overhead and your labour.
If your customer asks you to break that price down, tell them that you don't do price breakdowns. The price is the price. It's a fixed price.
You don't go into a barber shop and say to the barber, can you give me a price breakdown please? It's ridiculous.
Another thing you don't do is you don't say I'll pay you per snip. This is what happens to us tradesmen, us plasterers. I'll pay you per meter.
No, you won't pay me per meter. I'll give you the price. This is my price and these are my terms. It's my business.
We look at the job and give you a fixed price which will include everything you need to get your job done to a high standard and a quality standard.
It will be a complete package. It's not going to be stripped down to the bare bones so that we make minimal money.
That's called win-lose and we don't operate like that in our businesses.
We put our terms to them. Name your price. Read the blog. Have a good day.
We'll see you next time.