When you're working out your day rate, how much of that should be profit? Now, the answer to that question would depend on a few different factors, I think. And the first one would be your knowledge and experience and how many years you've had in the game. Because somebody that's been plastering for 30 years. Across a variation of different situations and scenarios and materials and different type projects. It's going to have a different figure in mind than somebody that's been at it six months. So I think when we're looking at our profit margins and what we should be earning, we have to take into account our knowledge, experience and expertise. Which is why I always would encourage you to always be increasing your skills and also to niche down. Which, as you know, is the key strategy on this coaching program. Niche down and refine your skill set so that we can charge more. But ultimately, this question is dependent on your skills. How much can you charge? And I think we have to start by asking ourselves, what do we want? Because, yes, the question's about profit. But how much do we want to earn per year? Moving forward in your plastering business. Because if we can get that figure. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. And it might mean that we have to increase our skills and our knowledge. Before we can hit that income goal. But it can be achievable with the right plan and the right strategy. Now, there's other things to take into account as well, guys, when we're looking at profit. And ultimately, there's two ways that we can increase profit, increase our profit margin. Number one is lowering expenses. And number two is increasing your price. We can either lower the expenses or we can increase our price or we can do both to get our profit margin higher. Lowering the expenses is a great strategy and something I encourage you to do off the tools and on the tools. And that's about having good relationships with your suppliers. And getting the best possible deals and prices on your materials, on your fuel. On anything hardware. Anything that you're going to be buying in bulk, for example, beads, drywall screws, etc. And making sure we're getting the best possible prices. Now, when it comes to lowering the expenses. What we don't want to be doing is going penny wise, pound foolish. Which is something I used to do when I was younger in my plastering business. To give you an example of what I mean when I say penny wise, pound foolish. I would drive out of my city to pick up eight bags of plaster. Because they were a pound cheaper. In the Neaton. And by the time I'd factored in the extra fuel that I needed to get there. The additional time lost. Where on the van, etc. That was not economically. Clever to be trying to save myself, you know, eight quid. When in fact, I'd lost more in the way of my time and fuel, etc. So sometimes it doesn't make sense to try to gain cheaper materials if it's going to impact us in other ways. Like our productivity and our time. But in general, we should always be lowering expenses where we can, obviously. And on this group, essentially we're slashing all of our marketing costs. I spoke to a gentleman recently. He spends £9,000 per year on marketing. £9,000 per year on marketing. My marketing cost is zero. And we're both doing roughly the same turnover. That's a lot of money. That's a serious amount of money. So not only should we be always looking at lowering our costs of materials. And hardware and fuel. And also labour costs as well. Now, we don't want to be paying peanuts because we'll get monkeys. But we do, if we are bringing in labour, we also need to make sure that the price that we're putting in for the project easily covers that labour plus more. Easily covers that labour plus more. And I made these mistakes again early on. I were paying them too much. And my profit margin made per man was absolute minimal. And I see a lot of plustering contractors doing this. Where they'll bring in teams of lads to help them. But they're gobbling up all the profit. They're eating into that margin too much. And there's a general guide to try and help you with this. If you're paying a man £200, he needs to be priced out at £400. And I know that this might raise a few eyebrows. But if you factor in all the additional responsibilities, costs, stress, problems that come with employing staff members. OK. And you're only making a little bit of chicken feed on top of his day rate for yourself. But you're the one who's shouldering all the risk, the expense, the stress, the sleepless nights and the hours. Worrying about your jobs and pulling your hair out. And the book ultimately stops with you and he can go home and switch off. If you're willing to put yourself under pressure like that. Then make sure you're doing it at a high profit. And don't make the same mistakes that I did when I had staff members. So I hope that kind of makes some sense. But there's when it comes to your profit, there's a lot to impact. There's a lot to impact. We've got our direct costs and we've got our indirect costs, which, you know, that I spoke about before. Your direct costs being your materials, your fuel, anything you've needed for one particular job. You know, I needed five bags of skin, a tub of PVA and five beads to skim out Mrs. Smith's lounge. Those are your direct costs. Another common mistake that I see is people will work for somebody else in a job situation. And they'll take that income that they've earned working for somebody else and they'll have that mindset in a business. They'll bring that same mindset into a business. So they'll think, well, I was earning £180 working for John. I was able to pay my bills and survive on what he paid me. So as long as I can earn £180 a day working in my business, then I'll be able to keep the lights on and pay my bills. And everything will be fine. But what they're not factoring in. Is the indirect costs of that business and the increased hours that the business will require from you. And also, when you were working for John on £180 a day, you only had one role of responsibility. And that was to turn up with your trowel and skim a wall and then go home. That was your responsibility. When you step into a business situation. You're going to become 100% responsible for every single aspect of that business. So your income has to reflect all the different hats that you have to wear in that business. You can't charge yourself out on a low daily rate. I'm thinking that that's a long term strategy to have a successful business because it's not going to work. And to give you a rough idea of what I'm talking about, as your business starts to become profitable and you get busier, let's say, you know, your overheads are £5,000 a year. To start off £5,000 a year overhead, indirect costs. And by the way, all this can be tracked using the app Booker P. Let's say your overhead when you first start out your business is £5,000. That's £400 a month. Out of your pocket, straight out. If that increases to £10,000, it's £800. If it increases to £2,600 out of your pocket every month. And of course, larger businesses with teams of lads, etc. You know, it could be anywhere up to £3,000, £4,000 a month indirect costs. And we've always got to be tracking these indirect costs all the time. And again, I can't tell you what you should charge because it's dependent upon so many different factors. Your location, your skills, what type of work are you doing? Who are you working for? How many hours are you putting in? Which is another important point. What I did one year, guys, is I worked out how many hours that my business required from me per week. Because we can bullshit ourselves sometimes. And we think, well, I've worked six days this week. You know, working Saturdays is normal when you're self-employed. So I've worked six days. I've charged £200 a day and I'm happy with that, right? But what we don't realise is how much our business pulls from us when we're not on the tools. When we're driving around looking at people's projects or even if we're on our phone apps or on our tablet or on our desktop and we're costing up jobs. Or we're on the phone. Or we're putting together a piece of content for our marketing. Whatever it may be, even if we sat down with the accountant or having a Zoom meeting with the accountant. Or WhatsAppping a customer, whatever it may be. All that is work. All that is work. But in our mind, we don't frame it as work. We frame it as, well, that's not work because I can't charge for them hours. That's just me, you know, trying to draw more business. And we write it off and say, oh, no, no, that's, you know, it's only when I'm on the tools and I'm plastering walls. And that is work. When I'm not doing that, everything else is play. Everything else is play. So if I'm, if I'm communicating with customers on the phone or if I'm sending emails or sending WhatsApp messages or I'm creating marketing content or I'm trying to build a website page. Or I'm trying to track my costs and my profit and my expenses. Or I'm trying to set up an automation. Anything that it may be to do with your business. If we dismiss these tasks as play and not work. Then we're not going to include them hours. In our weeks and our months. In our business. And we're only going to look at the days worked on the tools. And what I did one time is I calculated roughly how many hours does my business truly need from me. Per week. Per week. Let's not BS myself anymore. How much hours does my business truly need from me per week. And it was actually around 80. At the time. I calculated it to be like 35 40. And at this point. I was sending a lot of emails, a lot of messages, and I was still visiting customers in their homes quite a lot. At least twice a week. Three times a week sometimes. And when I actually calculated it. And started to track it. And I only did it for one week. It wasn't a particularly busy week. It was just a standard normal week. And it was around 80 hours. And it was just a standard normal week. It was just a standard normal week. It was just a standard normal week. It was just a standard normal week. It was just a standard normal week. It was just a standard normal week. It was just a standard normal week. It was just a standard normal week. It was just a standard normal week. 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It was just a standard normal week. It was just a standard normal week. It was just a standard normal week. It was just a standard normal week. It was just a standard normal week. It was just a standard normal week. It was just a standard week. ! That has taken 10-20 years sometimes to get to that level. And we strip it all down and we realize we're working for minimum wage. That's a slap around the face. And it was a wake up call for me. So when it comes to your profit. Again, this is all to do with Alex's question. When you're charging out your day rate, how much do you bolt on for profit? I want you to think about some of the things I've just spoke about here to help you understand what that figure should be. And again, we've got our indirect costs and our direct costs. And every single self-employed person and every single small business is unique. And that's why I can't throw a figure out and say, charge this, add this on, bolt this on, you know, put this percentage on. And that's why I'm not going to do that. And that's why I'm not going to do that. Because I would just be BSing you, basically. So you're the one that has to sit down with the pen and pad. And figure this out for yourself. I can only give you insights and ideas. And expose my mistakes. But also my wins. So today, my profit margin has been higher than it's ever been. If I were talking to younger shoe. I would have been shocked. I would have said, no way can a tradesman charge that. You might get away with it here and now on the odd job, but you can't charge that consistently. Yes, you can. If you target the right customers with the right skill set, you can. Now that is dependent on a few things. I have to get the estimated timeframe of that job right. And as you know, being self-employed, this is where we can easily drop the balls and get it wrong. If we hit a bottleneck on the job or we are a bit optimistic on the price and we think, yeah, I'll get this job smashed out in three days. I'll get this job smashed out in two weeks. I'll get this big rendering job knocked out in two and a half weeks. But it takes four or five weeks. This is where it all goes to shit. The day rates just go to shit. When you give a fixed price for a project, and this can only come with experience. You have to make sure not only are you putting in a very profitable day rate, but you're also putting in enough time for yourself. To be able to complete that project, including any problems and bottlenecks that might come up. You've been blowing up. Delays and other problems that may arise. In a nutshell, we have to price in for invisible problems on these projects and delays that could happen. Now, let's say the job runs absolutely smoothly. There's no delays. There's no problems. There's no van problems. There's no van problems. Nobody holds you up. You don't discover any dramas on the job that require another day or two days of work that you didn't factor in. And everything goes plain sailing and smooth. You've just earned yourself a really good profit. Happy days. But you and I both know that's not reality, is it? When you're self-employed. So you've got to factor in invisible problems that may crop up, may arise on these jobs. You've also got to factor in your indirect costs and your profit. Working on my business instead of being trapped always in my business on the tools. It's great being on the tools. That's what we want. That's what we like. That's why we become trades people, because we love being on the tools. But we don't want to be in a situation where we're trapped on the tools. And we can't get off the tools ever. We're on the tools six days, seven days a week. We can't get off the tools. We don't want to be in that situation. So it's all about balance. Now that covers me for being on the tools and off the tools. And it covers all of my indirect costs through the year. That figure covers me. It also covers the lifestyle that I want. So I said at the beginning, what do you want? How much do you want to earn a year? And is your business capable of providing you with that figure right now? Or do you need to increase your skill set and increase your earning capacity in order to achieve that figure? Now, some people, 200 quid might do it for them. And again, I'm not here to say what you should charge and how much you should charge. Another thing we need to factor in is can I realistically charge this in the market that I'm in? Now, for me personally, I couldn't charge 500 pounds a day skimming kitchens and lounges and bedrooms. I couldn't. And that's why I ended up taking on staff members. And increasing sales. Which is a common strategy that I see many, many, many plusgers I'm using. So they think, right, I've capped myself of what I can earn. Can't earn any more. The market's not allowing for it. I know what I'll do. I'll duplicate myself and I'll create more of me. So I'll have another plasterer that goes out doing more jobs and I can have more sales. More sales, more profit. Makes sense, doesn't it? However, I didn't factor in all these invisible problems that I spoke to you about earlier. So the cost of employing staff is phenomenal. Is intense. The cost of employing staff on salary is intense. The cost of running another secondary vehicle. Year in and year out and having the responsibility of the maintenance and the running costs of the vehicle is intense. Increasing sales. Increasing sales. So you're bringing in more work. And all the legwork that's required to convert those additional leads is intense. So you can imagine. I needed to convert, you know, a couple leads a week for myself. Now that I've got a team of lads, I need to convert six, seven leads per week. Now, if most of these inquiries are rejecting my price because now I'm a team and I'm in the domestic market. The second light bulb moment was, oh, I'll go and do contract work. So I got in with Zenith and a number of other larger renovation companies and tried to ride piggyback on them. So I thought, you know, next common sense move. Let's find reoccurring work. Started to do some sub in work. Now, my hours at this point, guys, went through the roof, literally through the roof. My quality of life was pants. I weren't seeing my kids. My working hours in my business doubled. My responsibilities doubled. My stress levels doubled. And my income went up by probably five or 10%. So when I talk to you about scaling your business and increasing your margin. The reason that I feel scaling isn't for everybody. It's because I know on a personal level how much it will take from you. To scale a business. And if you're looking for more personal freedom, more personal time. And less stress. More personal time and less stress. And then scaling probably isn't going to be for you. I'll be honest. And that's why I feel the specialist model. So instead of bringing in teams of labor and being responsible for all these people in your business and having to increase sales. What we're doing with the specialist model is we're binning off all the labor. So we're back to just us again. And we're literally just increasing our prices and working less. So the strategy is to slowly keep increasing your price. You know, so you could start at 200 pounds a day, move up to 300 pounds a day, move to 400 pounds a day, move up to 500 plus per day. When you get into that kind of 400, 500 plus per day, you don't need labor because you can target specific jobs that don't require teams of people. Especially in 2025 where we've got all these systems and spray machines, etc. So it doesn't have to be a damp IWI. It can be, it can literally be any market. If you become the authority in a demanding market where you know there is a demand for this product in your location, then you can start to slowly increase. It's about becoming in demand. And it doesn't matter if you're selling sausage rolls or plastering walls or insulating houses, whatever it is. Think about it like this, right? I spoke to a hairdresser, Ollie was a barber. And this wasn't for me. So my bald is, you know, it was for my son, Tommy. Tommy, my wife likes to use this guy, Tony, right? And we went to him for years and he does a sterling job. She says he does it just how I want the boys hair. I've taught the boys to get their haircuts in loads of different places. But this guy, he does it in just the way I like. And he listens to me and he does it perfect. And I don't want to use anyone else. I want to use Tony. Tony charged more than everywhere else. And we paid more because he does a unique specialist job that we wanted for the boys hair. So we're willing to pay more. Now he's in a demanding competitive market because here in Coventry, Barbershop's a tan a penny. But he's got a very niche customer base. They're not looking for a bish, bash, bosh, quick haircut for the kids. That will do job. They're looking for quality of service. More importantly, they like Tony. So he's able to charge more. So it doesn't necessarily matter what you're doing. It's how you do it and where you position yourself in the market guys. And again, I'm going to put a spreadsheet, a Google sheet together for you. That will hopefully help you to calculate your hours against day rate. Help you to understand the hours that you're pumping into your business. Because another myth that we tell ourselves is, well, this is just how it is when you're self-employed. You know, there's nothing can be done about the long grinding hours. And it's just the way that is. We can't charge for being off the tools. We can only charge for being on the tools. It's a myth. Yeah, we do have to hustle in our businesses. Sometimes we do have to knuckle down and have a good work ethic. And we do have to graft. But it is possible to find balance in your business. And move away from this minimum wage mindset that we put onto ourselves, guys. What if you have lads on a self-employed basis when you've no employees liability, national insurance contributions, etc. Yeah, it's a good point. So your overheads will be less. But the responsibility remains the same. Whoever's got a team of lads consistently every day has the pressure on his back to keep them lads in work. And although his monetary overhead might not be as much as if they were on salary. He's still obliged. And especially if he's a decent bloke. He's still obliged to find enough work for that team 12 months of the year. And that kind of pressure can get to you sometimes. So it's not even just about what's coming out of your wallet. It's the psychological effect of being responsible for people's wages every week or every month. Long term. It can become extremely stressful, especially over winter months. I'm not sure if it makes that much difference. Overhead wise. If you're paying. You know, 200 pound a day to a self-employed lad. Or. 150 quid a day to a lad on salary. Because one of them's got the. The pensions and all the rest of it and the contributions and the running of the vehicles. But when you factor it all in, the costs are probably not that different. And again, it only takes. One job to go to pants and then you can't pay the lads. And most, most people will pay your men away. They'll pay them out of their own pocket. Before they pay themselves. And that's another point. I used to do that a lot. Where the jobs weren't going right. And you know, my cash flow had stopped. But I'd still be paying the lads. Still be make sure the lads would get their wages every month, every week. And again, it's the reoccurring pressure of that situation. That can be hard. And it's harder. When you walk through the front door at home. And you've got more responsibility. So you, you know, from the second you open your eyes, you're responsible for all these people. But then when you get back home, you're now responsible for another bunch of people, your family. So, like I say, this is personal choice. I can only give you my experiences of scaling. And why, for me. And the book, there's a, there's a great book, by the way, guys. If any of this resonates with you. There's a great book that I encourage you to read by Paul Jarvis. It's called Company of One. And that book might really open your eyes up to the growth myth that many of us trades lads are attracted to. And this is just a general view that people have with any business. They think, well, you start small. You start on your own. And then the goal is to grow and have this big team of this big team of people. And then because you often hear the phrase grow your business, you need to grow. But there's many different ways that you can grow a business. Essentially, my view is we don't necessarily need to be growing the business. So we've got one vans, two vans, five vans, ten vans, 20 members of staff turning over, you know, 2 million a year. What we need to be growing is our profit margin. Not the size of the physical business. And I think, like I say, I fell into this trap. Cookie did. Many other people do. I think, well, if I grow it physically, so I've got more vans, more team members, more jobs coming in, more sales, more turnover. Then I'll naturally increase that profit margin. But it doesn't happen. Because the business grows arms and legs and runs away with itself. We think we're earning all this profit. But when we sit down and strip back the numbers, we see that it's just being burned away on the additional expenses that we've brought into the business. So think about that rather than thinking, I want to grow my business and, you know, so I look the bollocks and I look good and I look impressive to people. Think about instead, I want to grow my margin. So whatever your turnover is right now might be low, might be 20 grand. It doesn't matter what it is. Whatever your turnover is now, look at your profit margin. And the only way we can do this, guys, is if we literally strip back every pound of expense that we've thrown into that business over the year to keep it running. We strip that back and we look at, you know, that net profit figure through honest eyes. And we look at that figure and say, can I increase that figure? Without increasing my sales. Can I increase that figure without increasing my sales? Now, if you're, let's say you're a single parent and you're plastering a couple of days a week for extra income, you're not going to go and scale a big business. You're probably not going to go and, you're probably not going to be working five days a week ever because you need to be part time. You need to stay nimble and flexible for your personal lifestyle reasons. But you still should be looking at your profit margin, even if you're a part time and you, you're just doing plastering a couple of days a week. You should still always be looking at your profit margin and you should still be looking at your skills and your expertise in the marketplace. Because if, if you can earn 200 quid skimming the lounge or skimming a few walls, you can only do a couple of days a week. Why not increase that to 500 pounds a day and earn a grand a week doing two days? That's what makes sense to me. It's not so much. Let's, let's be greedy piggies and earn as much as we possibly can, you know, so we can dominate the plastering market. It's not, it's not the Joseph Valente mindset. The mindset is I want more free time. How do I get that? I need to charge more. If you can charge more, you get more free time, don't you? You get to choose right Thursday, Friday. I'm going to be knuckling down and working on my website. I want to build a new landing page for external wall insulation. It's something I've wanted to do for two years. And this isn't me, by the way, this is just hypothetical. Let's say you've wanted to target EWI projects for two years. You know how to do it. You know what materials to use. You're good at it. But you just haven't had an opportunity to sit down and create a campaign or a website landing page or any kind of content. You haven't had the time to put yourself in a strong position ranking wise with your organic marketing because you just haven't had time. There's not enough hours in the day. That's your typical business owner, isn't it? There's not enough hours in the day to sit down. I haven't even got enough time to take a shit, let alone build a landing page is most plasterers. So if we can start to charge more money. Then we get our freedom to choose. We can think right Friday working on my business. My earnings have covered this week. I don't need to worry about losing a day on the tools and all this because I've covered myself. And now I can knuckle down and focus on what I want to do in my plans for where my business is headed. The marketing will guide your business in a direction. And if we're not if we're not doing anything. In the way of marketing, then we'll just keep getting. Odds and sods coming through the phone, random jobs, because you're not controlling the type of leads that come in. And so that's a profit margin, but we'll unpack it more. Do more boring maths on it. As this year unfolds. And again, I'd like to put together a Google sheet template for you to try to. Give you a visual representation. Of hours worked. And what your true hourly rate is. Because I think once you have that eye opening moment. Absolutely. Let's create a sheet. That active because I said Google that activated Gemini on my phone. Yeah, I think a Google sheet. Would give you a visual representation. Which might give you that eye opening moment that I had. Years ago. Where you think. I've parted with that much blood, sweat and tears in my business. This week or this month. And this is my true hourly rate that I'm earning. And it can make you angry at first. And you can think. You know, this is a joke. I need to increase my earnings. And I think the blockers. That stop us. Most of the time is our own BS. That we tell ourselves. Because we might go into a community group. And we might see that. Oh, you know. Most clusters in most places charge 200. I can't charge more than that. You can if you lose the crowd. And you start specializing. And you start building your reputation. To become highly attractive. And you strip away all those middlemen. Checker trade, construction companies, builders. People that keep feeding you work. You strip all them away. And you become self-reliant. And independent. In your business. In your marketing. You become the main contractor. If you like. In your business. That's where you can get your earnings up. On any given project that you do. The person making all the money. On that project. Is the main contractor. Not you. So in your business. You want to always become. Or be in a position. Where you are the main contractor. There's no middlemen. The customers are finding you online. And they're coming straight to you. Straight to your mobile phone. You're not going through anybody else. Who are picking at that profit. Before you get to it. It's your job. And you run it how you like. You run it how you like. But obviously that comes. Along with a lot of responsibility. As well. But that's how you get your earnings up guys. Being the go-to guy. And the main contractor. On the project. So I hope that helps today. And we've run over. I did want to touch on a few of the bits and pieces. But we'll catch up with that next week. Ten past seven now guys. Appreciate the people that have jumped on as well. Early doors. And again. If you're watching this back. I will put it on audio as well. I'd like to welcome Caroline to the group as well. Caroline. Freddie's recently joined the coaching program. If you're watching this back Caroline. Thanks for joining. I know that you're. At a stage. In your plastering career. Where you're considering. Working for yourself. And maybe on one of these sessions. I can go. You know. Back to basics. And this will help. Other members of the group. That are in the same position as you. Where. They've either just gone self-employed. Or they're considering it. They're on the fence. And they're thinking. How do I get all my ducks. Lined up. Before. I pull the trigger. And take the leap. So we'll do a session. Where we go right back to basics. And. Put some fundamental steps in place. For you. For you. To help you get started. Maybe in self-employment. But listen. Have a cracking Friday guys. Whatever you're up to. My window wipers. Pooped themselves. Yesterday. On the van. Wipe mode is gone. So I'm off to the garage now. To drop the van off. And then I'm going to be working on some systems. Working. Working. On the business. And this is one of the first Fridays. Of this year. That I've managed to get off. So although I preach to you. The four day week. Four days on the tools. Friday on your business. On your business. It doesn't always work out for me. Doesn't always work out for me. And a lot of it. Will be dependent upon. Pressure and deadlines. And I fully appreciate that guys. So if you're looking to get off the tools. But you're not there. It's something that we aim at doing. But it's not always something we can do. Every single week. Like this church job. Like I said. It had a tight restriction on it. And a time frame that I had to honor it. And that was the agreement. And that's another reason why. I predominantly target domestic projects. Because on domestic projects. You determine. The time frame yourself. You tell them. How long do you need. To complete the job. And as long as you honor that time frame. You can do your four days on the tools. Friday's working on your business. And you can explain to the client. I'm not in Friday. But I'll be back Monday. You don't need to say why. Because it's your business. So have a think about that as well. Some more stuff. To stew on. Until the next session. Have a great Friday guys. Whatever you're up to. And I'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.