Working as a freelancer, if you want to go self-employed, you're ready to go self-employed,
you're going to need people skills, you're going to need good work ethic, time management skills,
cleanliness, and sales skills. Well, it goes without saying. So oftentimes we get good on
the tools and we think, well, I'm good at plastering walls. I'll go and work for myself
and I'll be really, really busy because people keep telling me how great my work is and my work
looks so great. But that's only one piece of the puzzle because when you start working for yourself,
you need all these other skills, guys. People skills, time management skills, marketing skills,
sales skills. If we overlook this, don't matter how good you are on the tools and how nice your work
looks, people aren't just going to knock your front door and give you work. So you have to be able to
bang the drum and sell yourself, sell your business. You've got to become your own cheerleader.
And if you want to scale, those skills have to be even more potent and you've got to look at
upskilling yourself even more. So I'll put here, leadership skills is what you'll need if you want
to scale your plastering business. Okay. Strategic thinking, like with your financial thinking,
you've got to be very strategic. You need to be resilient. So you'd have to be very resilient to
stress. For example, things going wrong, you know, managing a machine with, you know,
the cogs stop turning, let's change this part here, is different to managing people and dealing
with their dramas and stress every day. You know, you become a, you have to become a counsellor at work
and dealing with your lads and dealing with the stress that that brings. They're unpredictable.
People are unpredictable. You don't even have to turn up half the time. So one of the,
one of the other challenges of being in this manager position here is the constant search
for staff all the time. That can become overwhelming and stressful in itself because you just about
build your team and then someone fucks off and leaves. They might, they might have been
your lead man, your wingman, uh, who you rely on. And now they've left. And this is what
happened to me. And, you know, I had Matt for 10 years and a couple of apprentices, uh, when
they leave it, you know, throws a spanner in the works and now you've got to find somebody
else and that can become exhausting. Sometimes you're trying to find the right people for your
business is one of the, even if you've been in the game decades, it can still be the hardest
challenge finding the right people for your business. So you got to have a resilience there,
financial skills, guys. What skills do you need to become a specialist? You need specialist
skills and knowledge in a specific niche. You need advanced sales and marketing skills,
and you need to have a focus guys on continuous training, continuous training and developing
yourself and your skills all the time. Over in the, uh, freelance model, the bread and butter
plastering model. Plasters get stuck in that model because they've learned how to skim a
wall and how to use a straight edge. And then they stopped learning. They think, well, I've
got my skills now. Um, I don't need to learn anymore. Now I've done, I've done my time at
college. Um, and then they get trapped cause they might buy a house, get a car on one tick,
uh, get a van on finance. So the whole focus is let's keep getting these jobs, skimming out people's
houses or, you know, doing K rend or whatever it is. Let's keep getting these jobs in cause we've
got to pay the bills. So the focus become, the focus goes off training, off learning.
Um, and that's why the coaching groups here, you know, it's to help you give you easy access
to training and knowledge and business skills because I know how it is when you're in that
position, you've got to feed the kids. Um, you know, oftentimes we don't just haven't got time
to think about our future and think about, um, upskilling our business and learning new skills
and training. So I just haven't got time or money. Money might not be there, which is why this runs
80p a day because I didn't have the money for business coaching. I'll be totally honest with you.
Um, I couldn't afford business coaching for, you know, for a good decade when I first started
and that's why I never got it because I couldn't afford it. And it's, and it's unaffordable for most
new plasterers. Um, the average cost of a business coach is like a hundred pound an hour or something
daft like that. So oftentimes guys, we can't afford business coaches. Um, but it's so important that we
do get business coaching. Otherwise we'll never be able to push forward and move the needle. We'll become
stuck in the freelancer mindset. So I hope that's given you guys, um, a good sort of overview, um, of what
you can do when you go self-employed working as a plasterer in the UK and the three different models that
that are used to try and explain it. But the key focus is going to be finding work. Uh, when you go
self-employed guys and getting the right mindset, getting the mindset, right. When you work for somebody
else, somebody else is always responsible, um, for things that go wrong. They're responsible for time
management. They tell you when you can go and have a lunch break, et cetera. And I'm talking about people
that, you know, they're on the books as an employee. Um, you know, you, you know, when you're supposed
to turn up, you know, when you're going to have your lunch, you know, when you can switch off and
clock off. And if things go wrong, you run out of materials, it's someone else's problem. When you go
self-employed, you're taking on 100% responsibility for absolutely everything. So the book stops with you
now. And sometimes that can really wobble people when they're not used to it. They jump into self
employment, start taking on all this responsibility and pressure. And you know, they throw the towel in
because they've gone self-employed and increased their hand skills, but they haven't increased their
mental mindset to be able to fit that leadership position, uh, being self-employed, everything's on you.
So you've got to be, you've got to wear a lot of different hats when you go self-employed guys.
Um, it's not just a case of, you know, turn up, slap some plaster on and put the invoice in. If you
want to build a professional business and a professional brand in your local area where you
live, it's going to take a mindset shift to do that because you've got to learn these off the tools
skills in your sales, your marketing, your communication. Um, you need a kind of helicopter
view of how each little component works in your business. There's a lot to it. So that's why,
again, that's why the coaching programs there, um, to help you guys to learn that in an easy to
understand format that's affordable. Um, so consider coaching. And that was tip number five
was, um, consider some coaching. And if it's not trial talk coaching, consider being coached
by somebody else. Um, but get some business coaching guys, because it's so vital that we
learn these skills and these, um, uh, these points off the tools.
So, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh