What's happening YouTube? I hope you're all doing good. This week on Trial Talk I
thought I could share with you the latest interview that we did with Chris
Frediani on Fix Radio. So in this episode we talk about marketing as a
sole trader and we give some tips of what can you do when you've just started
up your plastering business and nobody knows who you are and you're just
looking to get some leads coming in without spending silly money on trading
association sites. So we talk about that and give you some of my tips that have
helped me and but also Pete Carter's on there if you don't know who Pete Carter
is Pete Carter is a plasterer slash inventor so Pete invented the socket beads
along with many other products. If you're interested in looking at Pete's products
that is invented join Trial Talk Facebook group and you'll be able to see Pete's
posts and also reviews from members who have actually used the products and as
you know we use the socket beads and the spotlight beads he also invents tools as
well for plasterers so very clever man and so we go back to back on this episode so
have a bit of a chat with me about online marketing and then Chris will speak to
Pete about inventing tools and how can you get an idea out let's say that you've got
an idea on a tool or a product and what's the process when it comes to inventing tools
Pete will talk about that and the steps to take and if you're interested in getting a
tool out there or an idea out so enjoy this video and don't forget to subscribe
if you haven't already done so we'll see you next time have a great day thanks guys
welcome to the plastering show with British Gibson I'm Chris Frediani and on today's show
we're talking about sole traders in plastering I'll be joined by Stuart Roberts creator of
TramTalk a plasterers help group on Facebook last time Stuart joined me on the show we talked about
the group and the early stages of his career on today's show I want to ask him about his experiences
as a sole trader in plastering and to get some tips on how to create an organic marketing campaign online
as a sole trader then inventor and plasterer Pete Carter will return to finish off our chat from a
fortnight ago we'll touch on the importance of a sole trader working alongside each other rather than
against each other in a local area and I want to get some practical advice for any budding inventors out there
listening in on how to get your idea off the ground and into production fix radio you're listening to the
pastoring show and joining me once again is Stuart Roberts founder of TramTalk an advice group for plasterers on Facebook
now Stuart today I want to talk to you about your experiences as a sole trader and how to market your
services online effectively first of all as a sole trader is it challenging to keep the work flowing all
year round oh you Chris thanks for having me on again is it challenging to keep work flowing all year
round when I first started up I really struggled to keep busy all year round and I think a lot of that was
to do with me um not be very experienced in business or marketing should we say and um I find that you
know one week I'd have work and the next week it'd be quiet and it sort of went on like that for some time
until I was able to get my leads consistent and um sort of figure out what were the successful
plastering businesses doing in my area and how can I mimic them and try and um try and get the leads
coming in a bit more regular and uh one of the things I did initially I think a lot of people do
is I paid for leads through some of the online uh trade association sites so that sort of got leads
coming in quickly but I found it was quite an expensive game um so I wanted to sort of build my
online presence up organically really rather than relying on these companies so once I was able to do
that um I found I could quickly keep busy all year round so yeah I think it's a case of learning a few
business skills um and getting your online presence sorted organically rather than uh hemorrhaging money
into these companies that's what worked for me yeah yeah yeah so how do you you know how do you source
most of your work now then uh most of our work is through google um google my business which is a
completely free um online platform uh you people will search plasters coventry for example and will
pop up somewhere on on the map listings and we get a lot of leads through there um a lot of our work is
um referrals so we get a lot of recommendations but mostly it is google um we do use some of the
platforms we use trust pilot uh we use facebook but I say the bulk of it is through google
okay so if you know to any advice to a sole trader starting off out there they're the sort of
sort of platforms you'd go down them ones you just mentioned yeah absolutely yeah um you know when
you're first starting up you're not going to have any money um if you're anything like me um so my idea
was just to sort of leverage any free online platforms that I could really but you know and I say save that
money membership fees and you know save that and you try to utilize it elsewhere in the business you
know maybe on new equipment or maybe taking on a laborer so yeah platforms like google facebook
even youtube you can set up a free youtube channel platforms like free index that's a good one that you
can use if you've just started up and the idea is is just to build up online reviews really and also
pictures so get yourself some decent quality pictures of your work post them up get a handful
of five star reviews and that'll get the ball rolling for you yeah that's what works for me yeah
yeah yeah I mean obviously you you thought you know you feel this is very important to market your
business online as a plaster don't you it's something that that's how you've got up your business yeah
yeah yeah absolutely yeah yeah now from talking to people on the show some of the lead provider
websites out there work for some spreads what's your experience has been like with these well as I say
um if you've just started up and you've got you know you're invisible essentially aren't you you've
just started your plastering business nobody knows who you are um you've got your competitors in your
local area and so if you're looking to generate leads overnight you can you know you jump on these online
platforms part with your money and you've got leads coming in um so short term i've got nothing against them
i think for a long term for that idea for me personally it wasn't a good idea just because
i say the costs that are involved um you're paying that annual membership and then oftentimes
you've also got the cost per lead as well and um you know you can be competing against two or three
other guys um after paying for leads so no guarantee of uh of winning the work so um you know because
there are lads out there listening and they're going oh you know i'm paying all this money and you're
you know you're sort of going to be helping them out now with your personal advice saying well look you
know you go down that road but there's another road and it's not going to cost you any money in
there which is very important when you're setting out exactly exactly and another another point i'd like
to make on on these sites is um you build up all your online reviews and your online presence but
then if the time comes where you can't afford it anymore and you have to cancel membership then all
those reviews that you've built took the lost um you can have a rug pulled from under your feet so
um and then you're back at the drawing board then looking for leads and i think they can have you over
a barrel in that way where you've built up your presence and your online reviews and without them the
the phone's going to stop ringing and i've spoke to lads on trial talk that have inboxed me and said
look i've cancelled my membership i won't name any names um and now i've got no leads so i've had to
rejoin so that they're sort of backed into a corner if you like and um they can't get out of it so once
they're in in that way of depending on these companies they find it hard to cancel the membership so
what we try and say is build up you know if you've just started up by all means join this join the
sites as a short-term strategy if it helps but alongside that try and build up your your online
organic listening through google and through these other platforms but at least you're not depending
on them so heavily right no good advice now what about the local community facebook groups you know
they're you know i don't know they're like residents of bristol or something like that are they a good
source of work do you think or that you know is there some issues with them i've had positive and
negative experiences with uh the facebook community group so some people on the group
they rave about them and they say you know i keep busy all year round just just through marketing my
business through facebook which is you know fair play it can work it has worked for me in the past i've
had some decent jobs through it but again i find that in my experience it was the leads that were coming
in were quite low value really um i'd get a lot of tire kickers um coming through the facebook
lead so for example um i get pictures sent through on whatsapp and um it might be a picture of a wall
that's still got paper on and yeah how much how much the plus to this and that sort of thing so uh you
know you think well at least take the paper off and and i know that they'd probably sent that picture
to four or five of the local guys in the area and i just thought you know what i'm going to try and
raise my game a bit here and try and move away from facebook a little bit but i'm not i'm not
knocking it completely i say i've had some decent jobs come through facebook but i did find it can be
a race to the bottom you know a lot of low value leads come through and for me i think google's the
big one where if you can get yourself a decent organic listing on google and build up those five
star reviews get some decent photos and keep keep the content relevant you'll find that you'll get off to
a strong start and you don't really need to be looking at these other avenues yeah yeah you keep
mentioning like reviews so what i'm going to ask you now is like what's your experience been like
with the scale of jobs you've taken on as a sole trader you know have you caught yourself out in the
past and bitten off more than you can chew worrying about the reviews of letting people down you've got
all these outverts kicking and you and you're yes i can do it yes i can do it and all of a sudden you're
thinking have i taken on too much i have i think we all might have chris uh i took a big one on in
the cotswolds a few years back um it all come good in the end but i think the job was a little bit too
much for uh me and my little team to handle if we're completely honest and i did have to call on some
local mates that were in the trade to come and give us a push but um again it probably was like you say
that the pressure to deliver isn't it and having that worry that oh if i don't get this right if i don't
deliver then i'll get a bad review um yeah yeah we got it sorted in the end yeah it's all learning
though yeah it's a learning curve it is yeah it is a learning curve yeah and we take the jobs that i
take on these days um although we do take on some big jobs i'll always try and make sure that we can
manage them in-house rather than having to um calling lads because you know you never know what it's like
they might be booked up so if i can't manage it in-house with my own team i tend to um you know pass the
number one to a bigger company fix radio time to crack on let's welcome back on the plastering show
inventor and plasterer pete carter now today we've been talking about sole traders in plastering i also
want to get some practical advice from you for plasters that might have an idea for an invention of
their own but aren't sure how to get it off the ground and into reality but before that you sent a
text into the show a few months back saying you support my calls for sole traders and spreads in
general to work alongside each other rather than to compete is it really important for sold traders
in particular oh definitely definitely especially if you're a one-man band effectively there's really
only two methods i see of working that's you either price your work high enough that you could lose
one day in five or six for transition days like between jobs or if for some reason a job changes
and it grows by a day or loses a day and the next one's not ready it's so handy to be able to have
people you can call on to step in um you can't do it all basically i've always said it to to sole
traders there's no there's no fool like a busy fool is there there's no point having too much work you can't
do could because then you become unreliable if you price it too high to lower your workload you're in
danger when it's quiet these customers not coming back to you because you're too expensive so to share
it with a with another sub you know um sole trading plasterer it makes perfect sense doesn't it and you
can jump on his job he can jump on your job and throughout the year you can you can talk to each other
what have you got coming on what have i got coming on and between you sort of fill the diary up and
keep everyone happy it's got to be the way forward doesn't it yeah and to be honest if you're direct
competition with someone else in your area there's every chance that people are getting three prices
and going with the lowest price and it's a it's a race to the bottom yes if you're all talking at the
same levels if people aren't undercutting each other because yeah we're all talking about yeah you know
that you and you're and you're holding the prices down by doing that aren't you which isn't any good
to anyone yeah you know by undercutting so it's better off to to share your um your pricing with
fellow plasters and keep keep it where it should be up not down you know so that's all good going back
to the inventions pete what advice would you have for someone that might have an idea but doesn't know how
how to get it off the ground it's a delicate process at the beginning of it i've now met many people
that are extraids people and have invented something firstly is try not to tell the least
amount of people you can don't don't put it on the internet no no get some sort of protection on it
either a registered design or a patent how would you do that because you know to someone like me
wouldn't have a clue it sounded easy how would you go about it how do you do it it's a complete
minefield to be honest i've i've met quite a few people that if you if you google painting there's
dozens of companies on there that look like government websites but they're not they're uh
patent attorneys if you if you go through a patent maternity the minimum it's going to cost you is 10
grand some people pay much more than that for it and they don't even get a patent and it'll take
three years if you go for a patent attorney but if you go on the u.gov website intellectual property
office ipo um yeah if you go on to that and make sure you're on the one with u.gov at the end of it
you can do it all yourself and there's templates on there that you can adjust to suit your situation
you have got to be pretty literate really to do it it's it's quite complicated i'm very lucky my wife
is extremely clever and she's got a degree in teaching so she helps me with all the paperwork
you can do a patent really from scratch for about 350 pounds registered designs even cheaper than that
you do a registered design for about 125 i think yeah which i've done a few other i'm not sure i've
got 27 registered designs oh dear and now potentially things that i may bring out in the future because of
the cost of tooling you have to sort of balance up whether it's going to be viable because anybody
could have the greatest idea in the world but if it's going to cost too much to manufacture
and then too much for the customer to buy it it's not a viable product and then it's just going to
kill you financially i've seen that a few times as well where people absolutely certain they've got a
great idea and they've put 10 grand into uh getting a patent another 10 15 grand into tooling and they
don't sell anything which is a horrid thing but you really need to do enough a bit of market research
and sort of see that the idea is worthy i i recently did a show in uh coventry um one of the other shows
and part of the reason for that was market research because i've got six ideas that are ready for tooling
now and in a couple of months time i've got a little bit more money coming in so i plan on
getting at least one of them going um but i just wanted to market research to which one is the most
likely to succeed well that's another plastering show done and dusted here on fix radio next week i'll
have a special show recorded from the recent diy sos build in stoke-on-trent with none other than mr nick
knolles and a previous guest from the show that's just joined us on site
you