Hi guys, it's Stuart here from Trial Talk and I wanted to make this short video today just to
wish you all a happy new year and to also talk about work drying up in January
which is a topic of discussion on Trial Talk Community Group on Facebook right now and if
you'd like to join that discussion, if this is something you struggle with yourself and your
plastering business, if work typically goes quiet for you in January, February time and that's
something you're looking to tackle and change and try to work on, then go and hit the community
group, it's free, it's not going to cost you anything to be part of this community, all we ask
is that you contribute to the community and help those less experienced than you, so the new
plasterers, the new self-employed lads that are coming in to the plastering trade, all we ask
is if you've got some knowledge there, maybe you've been plastering three or four years or even
you know a couple of decades, you feel you've got some value you can add to the learners and the
newcomers coming into the trade, then all we ask is you help others when they post up on the group,
if that's something you're willing to do, by all means come and join the free community group,
like I say it's not going to cost you a penny, but alongside this community group,
some of you might be aware that I've also got a coaching program that I run and inside this
coaching program, I teach you step-by-step tools and strategies in how you can tackle
the problem of work always drying up and going quiet in your plastering business and this is a common
problem that many of us self-employed trades people face and most people will tell you well that's just
normal, that's the way that it is, the feast and famine nature of self-employment, there's nothing
can be done about it and we just got to suck it up and get on with it and wait for the inquiries to come
back and there's truth in that, there's truth in that. So I completely respect and understand that
frame of mind because that was me for over a decade in my plastering business here in Warwickshire
and that all changed for me when I started to implement a plan and a strategy in how I was going to cope and
deal with work drying up in the cold winter months and I'm going to quickly outline what I did
quickly on this video to tackle that. So number one, I niched down. So I started to niche down
to specific jobs that were going to be more likely to run through winter months and that can be obvious
things like let's stop doing the rendering over winter and jump on the internals, that's one example.
Another example is targeting the type of projects over winter months that people are going to
need fixing in their home. So another example would be dump. So condensation is a massive issue
through condensation season which typically runs like through October into March time.
People see the condensation, they see the black spot mold building up, then they start inquiring online
and how they can resolve that problem within their home. Now if you've got that as part of your skill set
and you can fix that for them, that means that now your inquiries are going to trickle through winter
and you can carry on taking on bookings and working through winter because you've changed the type of jobs
that you're targeting, not just re-skims and bashing out bedrooms and lounges anymore. Now you've got an additional
skill that you can start targeting these different jobs. So that's a couple of examples there.
Another thing that I did is I started to implement organic marketing strategies in my business for free.
So I moved away from CheckerTrade, my builder, rated people. I moved away from paying for boosts
and paying for Google AdWords and Facebook boosts and things like that.
I binned all that off and I started to slowly build strategies organically
that allowed me to bring in tons of work without spending a penny on advertising.
And this is what we focus heavily on inside the coaching group. And how that works is we leverage
Google. So we use Google to do that along with four other key platforms. And it also includes an
organic free website that we show you how to build as well. So there's a lot to it. It's not like a
quick fix, overnight fix. Building out your online footprint and learning the tools and skills to do
it isn't going to be something you do in five minutes. So it's something we have to train and
teach you how to do with support, with multiple recorded training videos that you've got full
access to when you join. But also I'm in the group every single week live for an hour each week to
support you directly to take in your questions and your challenges live so I can actually walk you
through it and screen share and show you exactly what you need to do to move your business forward.
One of the myths that's out there guys, when it comes to work drying up and people being quiet and
they're struggling, is people often say to me, well these businesses that are doing well and busy
they're established. They're established. That's not always true. Although you have got more of a chance
of keeping busy and getting more working obviously when you're established, there are some established
clusters on trial talk community that have been in the game 20 plus years who are now quiet and the
phone stop ringing and are struggling. So just because you're established and you've been self-employed
for years, it doesn't guarantee that you're going to have lots of work through January and winter time.
Being established is only one little piece of the puzzle. There's some businesses that have started
up over the last year or two years, for example Damien Button on my coaching group. He's more or less new
or newish to self-employment. So he's not established. But what he did is he followed the steps in the
coaching program. He followed the Google business profile training, the Facebook business profile
training, the website building training lessons, the reputation building training lessons. So building
up your reviews, your organic reviews. He followed everything from scratch as soon as he went self-employed.
And he's inundated with jobs and work all the time. He doesn't run out of work. He doesn't run out
work over winter. And that's proof that it's not so much becoming established that it's going to
guarantee you loads of work. It's having a plan and a strategy to how you're going to bring in the work
and plan and move forward to offset these quiet winter months. And if we haven't got a plan or a
strategy, we often just leave it to chance or we'll just say to ourselves, we'll just see what comes in
next year. We'll see what comes in. We'll wait for the phone to ring. The problem with that is it's
a passive approach to your business. We need to be having a proactive approach and we need to be
intentional with how we approach lead generation, especially if you want to be a domestic clusterer
and you're relying on your income to feed your family. Otherwise, if we don't do any of this,
we'll just go to people and pay them to give us job leads. For example, Checker Trade, My Builder,
we'll pay for Facebook boosts or we might just work for builders all the time because we don't know
how we haven't learned the skills and how to actually generate organic leads. So if this is
something that interests you and you're looking to change lanes in 2025 and maybe you want to learn
some of this stuff so you can get out of this rut, this January slump and ensure that you're busy
through January, February, March time when these difficult months can cause stress. We need this
income the most now because we've just had a week or so off splurging over Christmas and we've not
been working. So not only have our expenses gone up, but our income has gone down. So this is a crucial
time for the self-employed plasterer now to get the income coming back in. And that's why it's so
stressful for everybody. And I can help you with that by showing you how to use these organic marketing
strategies inside your plastering business. The cost of the course is 80p per day. And that's on a
reoccurring monthly payment of £24. Now some people come and join for a couple months, they take the
information in, they implement it and they shake my hand and go, you know what, top man, appreciate that.
They learn fast and they're gone. So they get a maximum value for a tiny amount of money. Other lads,
they join the group and they stay on the group for the value of the community and the live sessions
that are reoccurring each month and each week on the group. And each month there's new information
and new skills that I'm teaching you as well. Now on top of the training lessons for your marketing
and your systemizing your business and adding in automations, on top of all this, we've now included
many discounts for plasterers. So for example, we've got the hefty discount for Ruffina tools.
So if you're looking for some new trials or some new buckets or some new spots,
you can get in touch with Bren from Ruffina inside the group and he's going to give you a 20% discount
on tools. We've also got a 25% discount with Plasterers One Stop Shop on any tools and kit that you might need in there.
We've got 50% discounts on socket and spotlight beads. If you don't know what they are, go and check out
Trial Talk and you'll see what they do. They're a great piece of kit to protect your sockets and create
a nice neat band around your PowerPoints when you're e-skimming and the same for your spotlights as well.
We've also got discounts on additives. So Easy Mix have given us discounts. We've got discounts on
training programs with Joel Cook, who's teaching lads about thin coat rendering and EWI systems.
We've got discounts with spray cork suppliers and training providers like CorkSol, for example.
They're going to give you a hefty discount. So when you look at the value that you get
by joining this program for 80p a day and you look at what you get back and you look at the changes that
you can make in your business after a few months and the income that you're able to bring in,
it almost becomes silly not to join if you're a plasterer. And again, it's cancel any time. So
if you don't want to be tied down for six months or 12 months, then you're free to come and go
as you please on the pay-as-you-go setup inside this coaching group, guys. So I just wanted to
make you all aware of that. It's called the Trial Talk Coaching and Mentoring Group with myself,
Stu Roberts. If you don't know who I am, I've been plastering for 21 years. This is my 22nd year
here in Warwickshire. I specialize now in IWI systems, internal wall insulation. Again,
I've niched my business right down so that I'm targeting high profit jobs. I've moved away from
the reskims a little bit now because I'm able to work less and charge more, which means more profit
and more time with my family. This is something that I help self-employed clusters to do. Get
their time back. Stop being the mouse on the wheel. Stop driving around looking at jobs when you've been
on the tools all day. Stop having your time wasted, being ghosted by your customers and having your
skills devalued and priced against three of the plasterers. We're trying to move away from that
and we're trying to focus down and niche down in specialist skilled areas where customers are
attracted to us and they get in touch with us because we've created a strong brand and an authority
within our local area where we live. So instead of us chasing around for jobs, the customers come to us
and they can join our wait list and we can book them in when we're available instead of trying to
shoehorn in all these jobs and working through our weekends. Self-employment life can take over your
life if you're not careful and it's down to us. It's our responsibility as small business owners
to put in place these foundation stones and these systems to protect our time, to maximize our profit
and to actually create a vision of where we want to go with our business instead of just being pulled
around like a puppet on the string and paying everybody else and us being last in line.
And that's often what happens. We burn ourselves out working as self-employed tradespeople. We don't
know how to say no. We don't know how to switch off. And that can wreak havoc on your personal
relationships at home. We're going to show you how you can avoid these pitfalls and these common traps
by putting in place some simple free cost-effective systems in your business. If this sounds good,
hit the link below and I look forward to you joining the coaching group this month. Let's make 2025
your best year. All the best and happy new year.