So what we're doing this evening, tees and seas, terms of conditions in your plastering
business, question for you.
Let's get the chat going.
Who's got some tees and seas set up already?
I know Darren has, who's currently watching from webinars.
He's actually done it today, he said.
But who else has got some tees and seas set up?
I'm not talking financial guys either.
I'm not talking about financial tees and seas.
I'm talking about setting the expectations when you undertake work in people's homes.
Are you relying just on a verbal chat, quick conversation?
Or have you got anything in writing?
Let me know.
Who's got some tees and seas set up and who hasn't?
Who feels that they're necessary and who's been tripped up in the past?
Some of the problems that I mentioned on that video earlier.
Anybody been tripped up in the past?
So that video that I put on earlier guys, I mentioned about Richard, Rich Brooks and
Rich's case.
And look, these things can happen to anybody.
Rich isn't new to self-employment.
He's been self-employed for a while.
And Rich did a lot of things right in all honesty.
He did set out some terms and conditions and he did take a booking deposit and things like
that.
But nevertheless, he's got messed around properly on this job.
And it all starts with, first they moved the start date.
So we had a job booked in with an agreed start date.
First problem is they moved that and said, okay, listen, we don't want you to start here
now.
Can you start in a month?
So this is quite common.
And if you're self-employed, plasterer, then you've had this, I've had this where start
dates get moved.
People mess you about, especially if you work for builders.
So we're well used to that in a way.
Next to the time, we'll either pull work forward or we'll get around it somehow.
We'll go round it, we'll go under it, we'll go through it.
We'll just make sure we do something, spin the plates, we'll just deal with it when people
move dates.
We're well used to that.
But nevertheless, it shouldn't happen and it's a bore like when it happens.
So the first thing they did is they moved the date on him.
He took that one on the chin and he agreed to do it a month later.
The second thing they did is they didn't clear any of the rooms, despite him having that
verbal conversation.
They didn't clear any of the rooms at all.
So we're talking like bunk beds, double beds, wardrobes left in the fucking rooms when he's
gone in to start the project.
We've all had this and because we need the money and because we can't afford to just
down tools and go, we end up being the mugs that shifting wardrobes about and trying to
throw everything into the middle of the room, put a tarp over it and trying to skim seal
into the furniture and there is.
We shouldn't be having to do that.
Nevertheless, we do do it, don't we?
I've done it.
I still do it, if I'm honest.
If I've got a little old lady living on her own and she can't move the furniture and
of course, that's a different scenario.
But when it's down to pure laziness on the customer's part and they're being ignorant
or they forgot or whatever the reason is, we end up being lumped with a job.
And again, that's going to cost us money because it's taking us more time.
So Richard's ended up working around all this furniture, taking down bunk beds with allen
keys and doing whatever it takes for him to get the job done and all credit to him.
He's a person that just sort of rather than have a tantrum about it and spit his dummy
out is just did what's necessary to get the job done and get paid.
So fair play to him for doing it and not storming off.
But point being, this really shouldn't be happening, should it, on our jobs.
So playing in the rooms.
What else happened?
They booked in other trades during his slot when he's supposed to be in these rooms plastering.
They had other trades there, decorators, electricians bashing in spotlights that they didn't tell
him about things like that.
They've stuck extras on the job and expected Rich to just cover it like chases that weren't
discussed.
So I'm not talking just the odd little chase.
Every single room, you said, every single room, multiple chases all around the rooms.
He's had to take that on board and bolt that onto the job as well, which, like I say, is
a good bloke.
So he's done it for him.
But nevertheless, it wasn't discussed.
The arrangement was just stick it on the bill.
So we're going to come on to that later as well and how we can avoid this trick wire of
people bolting on extras.
And then in Rich's case, they challenged the price of the extras at the end.
And he got undercut at the end, got ripped off a little bit at the end.
Still got the bulk of his money.
But what else did they do?
Access.
So he couldn't get in the rooms on some days.
So we'd say, listen, tomorrow I'm going to be in that room there.
I need it cleared.
I'm going to need to be in by, I don't know, half eight.
It turned up the next morning.
The customer's teenage son still in bed asleep.
So we're going to touch on that.
We're going to touch on a lot of different things, a lot of which have come from the
lot of session of them with Rich and taken on board all these challenges that I just
mentioned.
But most of it is just problems that we all face every week as domestic plasters and the
problems that you'll see on Trout Talk Community Group constantly, plasters, pulling the air
out and being messed about on jobs.
So that's what we're going to be talking about tonight, guys.
And again, the financial terms and conditions.
We've covered that in the coaching group quite intensively.
And for those of you that are members in there, you'll know that we've got a whole document
dedicated to financial terms and conditions, which include cash flow, booking deposits,
staged payments, how and when you get paid, what happens if you can't start the job and
you've took a deposit?
What happens if they cancel and you've got their deposit, all that sort of stuff?
So the financial side of the terms and conditions is covered.
We're not going to talk about that because that's covered.
Waste disposal.
We're not going to talk about waste disposal and, you know, sheeting up carpets because
that's also covered in the coaching group because we include that information in our
quote and that's just a line or a paragraph.
That's quite an impressive thing.
It's a selling point.
So we include that on the quotation.
All waste will be removed and disposed of professionally.
Here's our waste carriers license number, blah, blah, blah.
So that's included on the quotation.
All carpets and hardwood floors will be fully protected during works.
That's another selling point.
So that's included on the quotation.
So we're not talking about those two things either today, guys.
So the five key areas that we're going to focus on are number one, working area.
Number two, arrival times and access.
Number three, changes to the job when the customer is moving a goalpost or the job
changes because we've discovered more work is needed.
So we'll talk about that.
Other tradespeople coming in and unplanned additional work, which we touched on earlier.
And the fifth one, the last one is then basically agreeing to these terms.
So that's what we're going to talk about this evening.
But how is everybody anyway?
I'm just going to hit the chat on both platforms just to make sure you can see,
you can hear me all right and everyone's happy and the audio is coming through
properly and they can see the template.
Good evening, Rich.
Hope you well.
Good evening, Ian.
Good evening, Matt Dicketts.
Good evening, Bola.
Good evening, Mike.
Rich just says here that he's got some bullet points that go on his quote now.
I then put them in more detail on the email.
Therefore, they get them twice.
I try to cover what I can when I'm there measuring up.
Yeah, good shout, mate.
Well, hopefully this evening, you know, some of this information will really help.
And.
This document, by the way, for the coaching group, lads, is at the top of the group
and it's free and it's downloadable.
Just click it and it will download straight to your phone and you can edit it, tweak it, change it.
Matt Small.
He's had this a lot, taking radiators off and following up.
They're washing that was left on the banister.
Yeah, don't splash the washing, mate.
Again, stuff we shouldn't be doing.
Shouldn't be moving people's dirty wife and stuff off the banister, should we?
Bola.
It's had similar issues a few times.
Cat and dog shit everywhere, mate.
What sort of jobs you've been working on, mate?
Although I have had that a few times over the years.
Some not so nice areas here in Coventry when I first started up.
George Carr's comments.
He says room clearing is a big one.
Yeah.
Darren says all good on the audio and visuals.
Good evening, Woj.
Good to see you, mate, and it was great to meet you and Edinburgh as well.
Great to meet you.
Steve's on, Steve Broderick's on, Adam Williams is on.
Right, we're all cooking, so let's let's unpack it then.
Let's have a look.
All right then.
This document is, again, it's editable and in green at the top.
Obviously, your company name, address goes there.
Swap that out for your own company logo and details, which should always be included
on any documentation that you have for your business all the time.
That goes there.
Now, I've named it terms of agreement when booking.
You could name it what you like.
Terms of conditions, job agreement.
I think Rich has named his clarifications.
Name it what you want.
But ultimately, what this does, guys, is it just covers your ass and gives you
something to refer back to when these problems arise.
So rather than having a confrontation with the customer, rather than falling out
of the customer, you can name it what you like.
Customer.
This gives you a little bit of give when these problems arise.
And it gives you, again, something to refer back to.
So it's going to avoid confrontations, disagreements, and misunderstandings.
OK, and of course, a lot of this stuff, like I mentioned on the video earlier,
a lot of it, you could say, well, isn't this common sense to you
that plaster needs power or plaster needs water?
It's common sense to me and you because we're professional plasters
and we do it every day.
But you'd be surprised.
I've had it a few times over the years where I've started a project
and the customers actually said, oh, you need water.
I said, yeah, yeah, we need water to mix up the plaster.
And she said, I thought it just come in tubs and you pull the lid off
and, you know, like polyfill it and just start spreading it on.
I said, you have to sort of explain to them, you know, we mix the material on site.
You know, it's fast set in and then we go through the whole process.
But what's obvious to me and you
isn't always obvious to the customer and woge.
I know woge is watching right now.
He said earlier, well, these customers are just nukes, which, you know,
maybe some of them are nukes.
If if they've never had a renovation done in their life ever and they might be young,
especially now young people today, they haven't got a clue about renovations.
Even the young lads, you know, some of them never they've never gotten their hands dirty in that way.
So.
They don't they literally some of them don't know anything about property renovation at all.
So it's our job really as professionals to help them to understand exactly what's involved.
Not to the point where you're being patronising, but to the point where you've made it so crystal clear
and and obvious what's happening.
In writing as well, you could do this in writing, which some of it here you you'll see
is stating the obvious for me and you.
But what it does.
It gives you an edge when you do this, guys, when you've got written terms,
gives you gives you that edge of professionalism.
You're clarifying what's going to happen at what stage every every little stage
through the project. So you you're offering clarification and transparency
for the client as well, that may not be aware of what happens when they have a room plastered.
So.
And also, guys, ultimately, it's protecting us.
That's what this is doing as well is protecting our time and our money, isn't it?
So, like in Richard's case, he spent way too many hours.
Making allowances for this client and.
Moving furniture, waiting for their kids to go out of bed,
waiting for other tradespeople being messed about, being stressed.
So it's preventative measure for us as tradespeople.
And it means more money in the back pocket, isn't it?
At the end of the day, it means that our jobs are more likely to run smoothly.
And if you do start a project and you run into one of these bullet points,
you're in your rights to say I'm ever so sorry.
But if you refer back to our agreed terms that that we agreed
all furniture was was supposed to be moved out of the room.
So we will have to charge, unfortunately, for the time it takes now to move this
furniture out. If you refer back to our written terms, Mrs Smith,
you'll see that we are due to arrive between eight thirty and nine a.m.
There's nobody home or we can't get into the room.
So I'm afraid if you refer back to our terms,
we will have to charge for the time wasted waiting to get into the property.
This is what I mean when I say you refer back to your payment terms instead of having
some kind of verbal with the customer and the disagreement.
All you're doing is you just reminding them and sign posting back
to what they agreed to themselves when they paid you the booking deposit
or when they booked you.
And if they if this were to go to a court of law, for example,
if it got if you got into a sticky situation and it got really bad
and they did owe you a few quid and you wanted to challenge it and pursue it and fight it.
Then basically they've breached their contract because you present this to
the court and you say, listen, this is the terms that we presented.
Once they've paid that deposit payment or once they've said,
yes, we want to book you in now, now you're in contract
and they're breaching their contract by basically doing all this stuff.
OK, so you're while within your rights.
So ultimately, aside from you being more professional and offering
this level of clarification and professionalism,
you're also protecting yourself and your business.
So that's why it's so important.
But anyway, let's let's unpack the first one and then I'll hit the chat again
just to make sure I'm not missing any comments that come in.
So we'll unpack the first one, which is working area, preparation,
power and water access.
This is how I've worded it.
Access to power and water is required during works.
Rooms slash working area must be clear of all furniture.
This is to allow for equipment and full access to surfaces.
If rooms are not clear, we may have to reschedule the job.
Or charge accordingly for time required to move the furniture,
unless this has been pre-agreed and included in the original quote.
When plastering over existing walls,
all wallpaper must be removed in advance, including any backing paper.
If wallpaper has not been removed, we may have to reschedule the job
or charge for the removal of the paper,
unless this has been pre-agreed and included on the original quote.
OK.
How many of you have turned up to do a re-schem
and there's fucking wallpaper still left on some of the walls?
Hit the chat, let me know, because this has happened to me.
Dozens of times over the years
or they've took the top layer off and they left the bloody backing paper on,
thinking, oh, we can skim over that.
How many of you have turned up to do a re-schem and there's fucking wallpaper?
Matt Small.
I've mostly spent most of my 20 year career
subcontracting and doing site work.
About four years ago, I went off on my own, had no idea about business
and I didn't get paid for a £4,000 mark resement job.
Paid for the materials and for my labour.
Paid for the materials and my labour.
The work was still absolutely fine as I've been to the nightclub recently.
The dispute was all about the colour.
I installed the colour that they picked from the colour chart
and it was confirmed on a sample board.
But at the end of the day, they argued that the colour on the wall
was slightly different to the sample board.
And he didn't get paid.
He says that thanks to the coaching group,
I've got terms and conditions in place now.
He's took his first deposit for materials on a job a couple of weeks ago.
Some people have never done before.
Yeah. When we first start off in self-employment,
we always end up getting spanked by somebody at some point
because nobody trains us about the pitfalls of business
and how to create terms, how to generate cash flow weekly and all this.
So that's why this coaching group is here,
is to help the self-employed lads that are struggling.
And many people just throw the towel in.
That's why there's such a high failure rate on new business
because it's just too hard.
And if you haven't got any kind of business skillset at all
and you're just sort of making it all as you go along,
which is what I did and what many other people do,
it can get to the point where you work in 10 times harder than what you need to be
because you've got no systems.
You're just doing everything yourself, 12, 14 hours a day
that you get to the point you think this just must be our self-employment is.
And therefore it's not for me.
And then you go back to working for somebody else.
Self-employment is hard, but we make it harder than what we need it to be,
harder than it should be or not having any kind of systems or procedures locked in.
And these people can smell it a mile off these people that like to rip off tradesman.
They can smell it a mile off when we're a little bit green
and they see us come in.
And unfortunately, these people will always be around.
And then we can't change that.
All we can change is how we run our businesses our end.
And putting these firewalls in place to prevent it happening, for example,
the booking deposit, the staged payment agreement
and these written terms, things like that.
It's all there as a defence mechanism to stop people like that ripping us off.
Good evening, Aaron Blakestone.
I hope you're keeping well, buddy.
What we've got on the Webinar's group,
Wage says that he says,
I usually go through these things with the customer during the survey.
Most of us will just have a verbal discussion with the customer
when we're there quoting the job.
But like you touched on earlier, Wage, it's not enough.
Sometimes it's not enough and assumptions are dangerous, aren't they?
You might feel that you've set the expectation thoroughly
during a little conversation.
But verbal information can get lost, it can get forgotten,
it can be miscommunicated.
They might say, well, you never said that.
I don't remember you saying that.
You know, at least by having it in a document form.
Again, you could refer back and by then agreeing to book you in
is scheduling you in.
That's their agreement.
If they've not read through it, that's on them.
You've presented it to them and said, listen, you know,
payment of the booking deposit, which I'll come on to this later.
But basically how it works is payment of the booking deposit
indicates that you've read and agree to our working conditions,
whatever you want to name it.
So like say, most of us will just have a verbal conversation.
But like in Rich's case, he did say to them, I need the rooms clear.
I need the furniture removed.
I need the beds out of the room.
And then Monday morning came and they hadn't done it.
And they didn't really have an excuse or a reason to not do it.
You know, we told them on numerous occasions in that situation, you know,
they could say, oh, sorry, I forgot.
Oh, sorry.
I don't remember you saying that, you know, but at least if it's in his terms.
The customer is less likely to take the piss if it's in written terms
because they know they know they can't really.
They can't really push it because it's in writer.
And finally enough on that job I mentioned about Rich as well,
the electrician smashed all these chases into the walls.
And then the customer said, are you going to be filling these chases?
And the electrician actually said, if you refer back to my payment terms,
madam, you'll see that we don't actually fill any chases.
That's the plosters job.
And they said, oh, OK.
And, you know, you didn't see her saying, oh, no,
you know, you've done the chases now fill them.
And that's the professional way handling it.
By referring back to the agreed terms.
So the sparky sparky wasn't daft, you know.
And unfortunately, Rich has ended up, you know, doing it doing the chases
and then not paid him properly, which will come onto that.
So I don't think verbal a verbal conversation.
Sometimes it's not enough wages, and that's what that's what this document's all about.
And again, with the power in the water,
it's bad that we have to put that in writing, but.
It's just covering all ground because I have, you know,
I have seen posts on trial talk community where lads have said,
the customers kicked off because I'm using their power in their water.
And you like.
And you like.
You know, surely this is common sense
that the plaster needs to use the power in the water,
but it needs to it does need to be somewhere within your coat.
Because some people are like we're just said earlier, they are not.
Is and they.
It's just not cross their mind that you need to use their power supply
and their water supply.
Right, let's talk about arrival times and guys.
Now, again, this document is going to be editable,
so you can swap change and add things to how you work
and how your business operates.
But this is how I've worded this paragraph here,
arrival times, working hours and access to the property.
Arrival times can vary depending on material collections
and traffic conditions.
But we'll usually be between 8am and 9am.
And the reason that I've put that is because I don't know about you,
but sometimes I'll say to the customer or more likely they've asked me,
what time will you be here tomorrow then?
And in the past, I've said, I'll be here at eight, you know, just.
Flippingly saying it.
And then in the morning, I've either realized,
I've got to drop my boys to school today.
I forgot or I've just realized I need to pick up some more beads,
whatever it is.
And I've ended up getting there at half eight and they've, you know,
some people are regimented and they hang on every word you say.
And I've had one customer who was ex-military.
He was waiting at the gate and he said,
I've been waiting here since 8am.
Because you said you'd be here at eight.
He didn't have to go anywhere.
He was there all day, but he seemed to be waiting for me.
He was there all day, but he seemed almost offended that I turned up at 20 past
eight and not eight.
So as silly as it sounds, as stupid as that sounds,
it's just giving them an understanding that we don't work in a factory here.
We don't turn up clocking, you know, and clock out.
We're responsible for the collection of the materials.
You know, we have to load the materials, unload the materials.
And I do that early doors.
I've done about you.
Some guys will do this on a Sunday.
Or they'll use their evenings to do it.
I don't do that.
I'll do it early doors.
Salco's opens at half six.
So typically I'll be up early and I'll load out relatively early.
So sometimes that means, depending on how busy the merchants is,
depending on traffic, depending on where the project is,
sometimes it won't be 8am.
Sometimes it'll be half eight.
So give yourself a window.
Don't say I'll be there at eight.
Give yourself a window.
I'll be there between eight and nine.
I find that works quite well.
And also you can refer back if there's ever, ever a conversation about
what time you start, you refer back again to this agreement.
And then I go on to say access to property and to work in area slash rooms
is required at this time.
If access to the property is delayed or obstructed,
we may need to reschedule the job or charge accordingly for the job delays.
And in Rich's case, teenage boy wouldn't go out of bed.
I think Rich did lose his rag at this point and said that he'll go in
and flip the bed and drag him out of the room, which I thought was quite funny.
But you can imagine the frustration.
You've already gone through all this crap and then you're halfway through the job
and now the teenager won't get out of bed.
So according to this paragraph here and these terms,
you are within your rights to say listen, I've wasted an hour and a half now.
I'm not prepared to wait any longer.
I have to reschedule this and come back at a time when this room is clear and available.
It's about a certain yourself as well.
Again, we don't want to be falling out of anybody,
but if people have took the piss multiple times,
doesn't give you much options.
Does it really?
At some point, you're going to have to refer back to the terms and say,
listen, we'll come back tomorrow or I'm going to have to charge now for this hour
that I've sat waited.
So it gives you the option there.
Right, we'll go on to the next one.
I've named this one changes to scope of works and scheduling of the tradespeople.
The biggest bug bear for a spread, isn't it?
Us being piggy in the middle, coming into the middle of the renovation.
We're relying on all these other trades to be out of our way.
First fix electrician, first fix electrician, first fix electrician.
First fix chipian and structural or windows being fitted, et cetera.
We're sort of relying on all these lads to be out and done.
But in a lot of situations, they're not finished.
We turn up and they're still messing around, putting gas pipes in
or putting extra butt boxes in it or just got to fit this new window today.
And we're there trying to skim the reveals and we've all been there.
So this little paragraph just sort of covers us.
For situations, I could keep referring back to Rich's case because he had it all in the
had it got walloped from every angle.
But he had the electrician on the decorator.
And the rooms that he was supposed to be skimming and the decorator was steaming off
wallpaper.
The electrician was still putting in holes in the ceilings for downlights,
which wasn't a good idea.
And so this paragraph, guys, it basically just covers us for situations where we've
turned up to skim this room out and they're still fucking around with other trades
and they're not out the way.
So in that situation, we're well within our rights to say, I'm sorry, but if you refer
back to the terms, we do need the rooms completely clear.
It's different if a tradesman comes in for half hour in the morning.
It's not a problem, but it's when they're there all day creating dust,
preventing us from getting to the walls we need to get to and then expecting us to just
wait and get a mix on afterwards.
It's not fair because we're working to the clock.
We're working to the set.
So this covers us in that scenario and how it's worded is changes to scope of work.
Must be made in advance and communicated prior to start in the job.
When scheduling other trades, people to undertake work in the same working area.
Advanced noticed must be given and where possible trades should be booked either before or after
plastering work starts.
It's fair.
All the stuff that's been listed here goes to the trade.
We're not really making any unfair demands.
So if they do want to have another box put in, if they do decide all on a little stood
partition put there or a more changed the window now, they need to either do that before
or after we've done.
It's not going to be happening while we're in the room and we've got a mix on.
So we're going to have to do that.
So we're going to have to do that in while we're in the room and we've got a mix on.
So that paragraph sort of covers that area.
Any thoughts so far in the chat on anything that I've switched on today?
Good evening, Colin Price.
How are you, brother?
And word basically goes on to say that vetting customers gets rid of 90% of these nonches.
Yes, mate, 100% 100% and there's a big emphasis on vetting in this coaching group using a simple
form that you can set up a vetting form, but it goes beyond the form.
If I'm honest, the forms, the first, the first line of defense, the first defense mechanism
is the form.
Once they come through the form, then it's our job to obviously check the answers and get them on the phone.
And the ultimate decision maker will be money as shallow as that sounds because there's no point
continuing this conversation with a new inquiry until you spoke about money.
Because how many times have you spent hours and hours, you know, driving around to different cities
looking at a big potential project?
They've asked you to itemize it.
They've asked you to break it down room for room.
They've made changes when you're to and of frame with your messages.
Oh, I might not have that room done now.
How much extra would it be to run the gable?
You know, could you put that on the price?
And before you know it, you've lost three and a half hours on this inquiry.
You've burnt fuel.
You've wasted your time.
And you put the price in, which is all nicely presented letterheaded.
And you've heard nothing back that goes to Jeff.
How many times has that happened?
I know it's happened at least once to everybody listening to this right now.
And it's happened to me to one too many times, which is why the vet the vetting system is in place.
But we've also got the voicemail vetting system in place on the coaching group as well,
which is a very, very powerful tool stops you from having to answer the phone to price shoppers and tire kickers
and stops you having your time pulled away.
Once you once you have answered the phone, it's very difficult to end that call without looking like a bit of a knob.
Red button in people.
And it's very difficult to get out of that phone call once you've answered it.
So someone could be rattling on to you for 20 minutes while you've got skin setting.
Talking about, you know, their brothers and call sisters pets that's poorly and, you know,
rambling about something that's nothing to do with the project.
In the meantime, your time's being burned.
So be careful about pressing that green button on your phone and answering random phone calls that come in.
Most of them will be total waste of your time.
Get them into your vetting form instead and screen and vet them.
Once you've vetted them, then get then you call them, get them on the phone or use a system like
Callendly, the phone booking system where you decide when they're going to call you and you give them options and give them a slot of when you can answer phone calls.
When I was using this system, it was between 8am and 10am because that's what you know,
anytime after that, I'll either be mixing up or spreading.
So that little window in the mornings on weekdays was when I could speak to people,
but I stopped answering the phone to random phone calls a long, long time ago and I don't answer the phone now to random calls that come in.
Because most of them are just price shoppers and they're unvetted leads.
I won't speak to unvetted inquiries anymore, just wasted too many hours of my life doing it.
Darren says that power, water, is always added that onto his quotes and away, brilliant.
Most don't, to be honest, Darren, which is the truth.
He goes on to say that he did a silicon job a few years back.
The guy had money back because he didn't mastic round the windows.
Thanks to his quote that stated, step by step, the service I was providing, which did not state mastic in, he won a small claims court battle and got his money.
Always good to back yourself up, yeah.
And again, I'm glad you put that in Darren because that highlights and emphasises the point of this podcast today, which is to get a bit in and right in and because you did that, you won.
Otherwise, it had been your word against his, which is the whole point in this podcast today and the importance of having written terms.
It's not our job to mastic up windows at all as plasterers.
The chances are your gear was still wet when you left.
So how is it expecting you to run silicon guns round on wet render?
Like I say, a lot of these things are common sense to me and you, but not so common for these customers.
It sounds like he was a bit of a ball and then away.
So well done, mate, for winning that one.
Stephen says that lining paper was still on.
It's sometimes hard to tell on plasterboard walls, but this was clearly papered.
I said to the customer, I can start taking it off, but obviously it needs to charge extra.
Or you can do it yourself. They've done it.
So I just brought a couple of jobs forward and went back the following week.
Yeah, fair play, mate. And that's what most of us will do.
I've done that before where it rather than creating some kind of upset.
That's the last thing we want to do, isn't it?
The last thing we want to do is have a confrontation.
So if we have a confrontation, that's going to risk number one.
It's going to risk the five-star review.
And I know you're thinking, surely money is more important.
Money is important. Profit is important.
But the end goal, and this is something I spoke about recently on the coaching group.
Our end goal when we do these jobs is to create an advocate in the customer and to get a referral.
That's our end goal on every single project we do.
If we don't get that, we've done something wrong.
We might have pulled the job off.
It might have looked all right tidying off.
We might have got paid.
But for some reason, that customer is not advocating for you and is not referring you on
and is not leaving you a five-star review online.
Something's broken within the customer journey there.
So the reason I say to lads, your end goal isn't getting paid.
That's step two.
The end goal is to be referred.
Because if you get referred, you get paid anyway, aren't you?
So the five-star review will indicate you're getting paid.
But most lads will bash jobs out quick, go on to the next job, bash that one out, get paid on to the next one.
But they're not giving a lot of thought into how good am I, how good is my communication?
How good is my customer service?
Why am I not getting reviews?
Why have some prostrators in my area got 78 reviews and I've got three?
What am I doing wrong?
Why am I not getting these reviews?
And you've got to sometimes be quite brutal and honest and look at your system of what you do from the journey
from the beginning right through to the end and be honest.
And ask yourself, is there room for improvement there?
Because the review will indicate ultimately what it says is you're running a successful business.
Because the customer comes in with an inquiry and the end is then becoming an advocate for you and your business
and referring you on to other people.
And today that's done on Google.
So instead of them telling a couple of family members how great you are,
they'll go online and tell the world how great you are.
And that's what will build up your social proof, your reputation.
That's what will separate you from a queue of other prostrators that won't work.
Because that stands out more than any silly avatar you can put on your website
or any professional nice photos that you have done.
Or getting your van all signed written up or putting a nice clean polo shirt on.
That's going to say more about you than any of all that other image stuff.
Because there's too much focus on image with business coaching.
Everything's about image.
If you look good, you'll be good.
No, not really.
That's part of it.
You don't want to look like a pokey.
But image is such a small part of being a successful prostrator.
If you look on trial talk, look at all the top boys on there.
The guys that are doing well, they're all scruffy rastads like me.
They don't pay much attention to the image side of it.
And again, it is important that I feel there's too much emphasis on image.
And we're plasterers at the end of the day.
We're not photographers.
We're not wedding planners.
People expect us to carry dust.
And they expect us to have scruffy work boots on and scruffy vans.
So that's worth mentioning as well.
Wedge says that he always puts things in right in.
Yep, top man.
Changes to the scope of works is a good point.
Yep.
And as well, if anybody has got any thoughts on any of this.
Because I know that a lot of boys are predominantly rendering full time.
And these terms that I've set up here are mostly for the domestic plasterer, the internal guys.
So, for example, scaffolding, that could be a paragraph, couldn't it?
What happens with the scaffolding?
What happens when we're finished?
Who's responsible for the scaffolding?
Who pays for the scaffolding?
And all that's common stuff.
So that could be a conversation and that could be a paragraph.
So any feedback from the boys watching would be appreciated as well.
If you're not predominantly internal.
Steve says he set up a text message on his phone.
He can press rather than answering.
That's the customers send room dimension.
Okay.
So this is very similar to the system we use, mate.
So we use our skin on to send customer room dimensions and pictures to see if he can work out an estimate based on that.
Yeah, that's a good shout.
And ultimately any kind of vetting and screening of the customer is what you need before committing,
before even driving around there, which you know, there's a big emphasis on that.
I always put a big emphasis on that, guys.
I'm just going to refresh these comments within the coaching groups.
I think there's a lag.
Well, I'm just waiting for this to load up as well.
I just want to talk to the guys that are in the webinars group watching.
The guys that have joined the webinars group.
I know that you boys have been interested in a few of the things that I talk about that we cover inside the coaching group.
And I want to just reel off what is covered.
For those of you that may be new to trial talk or new to the webinars group.
And you ensure what, you know, what do I get?
What is this group all about?
Who's it for?
So the first thing we cover guys is lead generation, as you know.
Many of us are still on my builder.
Many of us are still paying for Facebook boosts, Google ads, even worse, checker trade or tricker trade, as we like to call them.
So there's a big focus on lead generation inside the coaching group.
And we do that by using Google and many of the free platforms that's on Google.
So that's the first thing.
Probably the biggest value asset that you're going to get really from being part of the coaching group is you're going to learn how to generate your own leads and get off paid subscriptions and paid platforms.
Video marketing, building free websites, building dedicated landing pages.
You'll learn how to embed videos into your website.
You'll learn how to rank your website and the YouTube channel and your Facebook business page, things like that.
So that's probably the biggest selling point really is the lead gen.
But on top of that, there's a big focus on customer and job management, which we've touched a little bit on that this evening.
We use a CRM system. You can use any CRM system you like.
Your trade base is the go-to for me.
I know that some lads are using a service mate.
There's lots of them. There's loads to choose from.
But we basically unpack the CRM and we leverage it and utilize it and we tie it in with a lot of the other systems.
So customer and job management, a lot of us are still dropping the balls really when it comes to booking in jobs, scheduling jobs, merging jobs.
So one job will end and then we've got another one starting.
That's where we tend to drop the balls, let people down with start dates and things like that.
So because a lot of us haven't got any kind of structure or system in place for job management, we're either keeping everything in our head or on a paper diary or on the back of a sandwich packet.
And it's not really a reliable system.
So we'll talk, you know, we'll unpack that and show you how to get your jobs properly scheduled and organized.
So you never drop the balls.
Payment terms, you know, I've just touched on that earlier, but payment terms is another big, a biggie that I help people with in the coaching group as well.
So I'll show you how to draw 50% upfront when you book in your jobs and how that looks, what that looks like in writing.
How do you present that to the customer? How do you tell them about that?
How do you stage the remaining 50% of the money and things like that?
So obviously if you're new to self employment and, you know, you're getting ripped off left, right and centre or you're being pulled into other people's payment terms, which is even worse.
This is going to help you immensely to get a grip of your cash flow.
The book, the book and deposit system has changed the game for many, many of the members inside the coaching group, because they've gone from using all their own savings and their family's money to buy their own.
They've gone from using all their own savings and their family's money to buy materials to then swap in and using the business's money to cash flow their business, which is how it should be.
We shouldn't be relying on a line of credit.
We're not big businesses.
We're freelancers, sole traders and small business.
So we shouldn't be relying on a line of credit really.
We're not, you know, unless you've got, what's the word?
Capital investment and you're a very large business, right, with a with a huge pot of working capital, which let's face it, most of us aren't.
Then I don't believe we should be using line line of credit.
I think I feel we should be using the business's money in the form of deposit payments.
So that's what we do.
And that's what works brilliantly for the small setup or the one man band or the trades person.
So I show you how to do that.
There's accountability sessions in the group.
So everybody in the coaching group, we're all we're all on the same page.
We're all doing the same thing.
We're trying to improve ourselves and our cluster and businesses.
We're trying to do better.
So we work as a team.
So on the live sessions each week, we'll like now we'll jump in, we'll have a chat.
We'll hash it out.
We'll see what's working, what isn't.
When when lads are struggling like Rich was the other week, we'll we'll get around him
and we'll put things like this in place.
And so that doesn't happen again, basically preventative measures.
And so that's my little shameless plug on the coaching group.
These comments are back in now.
So and there's a lot of them.
So let's see.
Let's see where everyone is.
Good evening, Aaron.
Yeah. Sorry, mate.
I did I did catch a comment there.
John Sweeney says that it's simple and straightforward whenever you think it's in writing and there's no arguing.
Yeah, bang on 100%.
Rich says largely I think you're covering things well.
I couldn't word them better myself.
Yeah.
Well, again, Rich, if there's anything, because I know you do a lot of rendering and a lot of corkspray
and a lot of external work, which will involve scaffolding.
And obviously, we haven't got that issue of other trades people being under our feet and teenagers
lying in sleeping in and not coming out of the rooms.
We haven't got that issue externally, but there are other issues that we might face that may be not be included on on these terms.
So again, any feedbacks welcome as as you know.
Bolo says that one day you had a family meeting in the living room five people were smoking fags.
So you couldn't see anything.
You can't write it off of this stuff, honestly.
I did have one job years ago and the old boy pulled out a deck chair and prompt in the middle of the room says I just want to watch how you do it and see how you do it.
I was like, that's fine, but I'm going to be hitting this lid in about 20 minutes.
And I'm worried that you know, you're going to get plaster in your eye or I could end up falling on top of you with this trial.
So I said, I'm really sorry, you're going to have to you're going to have to leave the room and it was upset because he genuinely planned on sitting there all day and watching me how watching how I did it.
Blessing.
We've got video content now, so they don't need to do that.
Aaron says in the terms he has.
He's he's putting a bit about using their toilet.
That's a brilliant shout mate.
That is a brilliant shout and that's not I've not even considered that using that toilet.
And the wash facilities.
He says that his cousin got fined by the local council for not having them in his terms.
Unbelievable.
His cousin got fined by the local council for not having that in his terms.
You can state that you have an agreement with the local cafe to use theirs, but you're supposed to have them particularly if you have lads working for you.
Brilliant shout.
Yeah, that's a good point that Aaron, right?
And then maybe maybe something we should be including the use of the toilet.
Good evening, Eric Devon.
I hope you're keeping well and I hope you've sobered up.
After your late one Monday night in Edinburgh, 4am, I think, we rolled in or past 4am.
And I know that Eric was up at half six on the Tuesday to do it all again.
And by Tuesday night, he looked like he was ready for a nice long sleep.
So I hope you've had that long sleep, Eric.
I hope you've recovered.
I hope you've recovered, mate.
Aaron always state or have a recommended scaffolding company that the customer pays directly.
He's not part of the rendering.
It's not part of the rendering quote.
I was going to suggest I don't do much rendering, mate.
In fact, I don't do any rendering.
I do the odd corks all over spray.
I'll do a bit of something, some men if I have to, but I don't really do much rendering at all anymore.
But if I did, that's how I would arrange scaffold now.
I wouldn't even get involved.
It would be completely separate to what I'm doing.
And it would be the responsibility of the customer.
The last thing we want is phone calls in Texas about when are they going to take the scaffolding down.
The scaffolders dropped a plank on my car.
We don't want to be dealing with that headache, do we?
So good shout out to that one, mate.
Matt Dickett, some good solid points and information.
I didn't think of, what's he say, some good solid points and info that I didn't even come to mind with the terms and conditions.
Loving the vetting, the customer's topic.
Yeah, that's big.
That's big in this group, mate, the vetting.
And there's three or four full length video tutorials, Matt, inside this coaching group.
If you go to the top of the group, you'll find them up there in the guide section.
There's three or four full length videos on how to vet your customers from start to finish.
So show you how to build your vetting form, what questions to ask, what platform to use for you that inform.
It will walk you through the whole lot from start to finish and how to do it.
It's all free as well, starts free in a way.
If you do want things like file uploads, video upload features and things like that, I can help you with that as well.
Get them to send short videos directly to your WhatsApp, which I know a lot of lads are doing straight through the vetting form.
So that's an option as well.
So just going to touch on the last few comments coming in off webinars and then we're going to wrap up guys.
So I hope this one's been of value for everybody this evening.
Great to chat to you all.
And again, anybody that is in the webinars group and you're interested in jumping in, the doors open.
It'd be great to have you inside the group.
We're about 70 deep now.
We've got 70 plasterers now in here.
And people are sticking around, which I think is a good sign.
So something's working and we're doing something right inside the group.
Camille's on board now, by the way.
He's going to be the group tech support.
I had a chat with him in Edinburgh.
He's been offering down his time and offering down value for everybody since the day he started in here.
He's well ahead with a lot of the lessons now, the GBP, the Google Business Profile, the verification process,
the building of the websites, the video content.
He's well on board now with all of these lessons.
So he's now going to be on hand as tech support inside the group, helping new lads as well.
Feel free to approach Camille as well with questions that you might have on your Google Business Profile and website issues as well.
Any final thoughts from anybody in webinars?
If you've got any questions at all on anything that I've mentioned this evening,
or questions on the coaching group,
get them in now just before I shut down and I'll try and answer live for you.
Darren says, how do you sign up to the coaching group?
Could I have the information message to me?
Yeah, that's not a problem at all, mate.
I'll drop you a message as soon as this live session ends.
I'll also be smashing a link in webinars for anybody interested watching now.
I will be putting a link into webinars so you can just press that as well.
That'll go straight to the subscription page where you can just join straight away and you'll have full access into the group
and all the live sessions and also all the video training lessons,
which there's a lot of ground that we cover, like I say, a lot of ground.
Michael, hi all. Thanks for the advice.
Do you mentor in group help with EWI and rendering leads?
Checker trade keeps harassing me for weeks to sign,
but I'm not sure after watching your videos, mate, please don't sign up with checker trade.
I'm not going to go into a rant,
but all I'll say is I've had a recent conversation with somebody who's still with checker trade.
He's spent over £10,000 with checker trade and he's built up 278 five-star reviews with checker trade and now we can't leave.
He said to me, I can't leave. I want to join your group.
I'm really interested, but all of my work comes from checker trade.
They phoned him up recently and told him that they're doubling the membership fee
and he found out that new people coming into checker trade are paying like a quarter of the price that he's now being expected to pay.
That to me says it all really about checker trade.
And not only that, the last campaign was really underhand and I won't go there.
I've a look at it yourself and make your own mind up,
but they're basically tiring tradespeople as untrustworthy crooks, people that can't be trusted,
and the only tradespeople that can be trusted are the ones that they have in their database, which we know is total bollocks.
As soon as you pay them, they branch you as a trusted honest tradesperson.
The whole operation is bent in my opinion and I can't stand how they operate.
So please don't join checker trade. Come and join the coaching group for a month.
How it works is if you're not happy, you pay your first 24 quid.
If you're not happy after a month, you don't feel it's for you, then I'll refund your money back and you can leave.
I can't say fairer than that.
I'm trying to be completely honest and transparent to encourage people to come in and join.
I'm not using any paid ads. I'm not using any Facebook adverts.
I'm not doing anything paid to bring people in.
I'm literally doing everything organic, like I teach you to do in your business.
So that's why you see me hammering YouTube and Facebook and TikTok with these sorts of videos
and also doing these live webinars where you can physically see what we do because I'm trying to do it organically.
I suggest you do the same thing with your business because honesty is always the best policy.
You just show people the results and then that encourages them to join you
rather than banging the drum and talking a good game.
I'll just show you what we do.
I'll let the lads speak inside the community group and talk about it in there.
And ultimately, if they're not happy, they're going to tell other people.
They're going to go back to trial-talk community and say this guy's full of shit.
The group's rubbish. So I can't risk that happening.
I've sort of put my ass on the line in that way haven't I really?
But will it help with EWI leads? It will help with any kind of leads.
It will help if you're a tyler. It will help if you're doing microcement.
It will help if you're a corksoul lad.
It doesn't matter what you're doing because the systems that we teach inside the group
aren't dependent on whether you're doing a specific niche.
It can work in any line, even if you're not a plasterer.
So if you're a roofer or if you're a plumber, you could still join the coaching group
and apply these lessons and you'd still build up an authority in your local area where you live.
That's basically how it works.
Now I have got another webinar in the webinars group called Introduction to Organic Marketing.
If you watch that one, I'm being completely open and transparent about how the lead generation and ranking actually works.
So if you don't, you're still not convinced, go and watch that one first.
But you'll see that basically you can dominate Google on bringing a shitload of organic leads without paying a penny.
And it's all done through keywords and content creation.
And building up, most important thing lads, building up your reputation like I touched on earlier.
There's way too much emphasis on image.
People think if I look the part and that's all that's needed, it's not.
You've got to go old school.
If you want to be successful plasterer, you've got to go old school and look at the people that have got five-star reviews and a lot of them.
You've got to sift through those reviews and look at what people are saying about that business.
None of them are saying he looked good, he had such a shiny van.
His website was so flashy, that's why I hired him.
They're not saying that, they're saying he was clean, he was professional, he was friendly, he was reliable.
I could trust him, I could leave him in my home while I went to work.
He was a lovely guy.
These are the keywords and this is what's important to your customer.
Not looking the part, not spending seven grand on a website.
What's important is old school fundamentals.
There's no new fundamentals.
We go back and we look at what's really important to the customer.
Focus on that.
Build up your reputation where you live in your little town.
Then you broadcast that reputation all over the internet.
You showcase yourself using social proof.
It's not bullshit.
You're basically just saying, listen, these are my reviews.
This is what our customers say.
That does the selling for you.
Rather than you having to keep hard selling people and convincing them all the time that you're such a great plastering business,
you just allow your customers to sell your services for you.
The phone won't start ringing.
Basically, that's how it works.
It's working for me.
It's working for everybody inside the coaching group.
Some of them are all at different levels.
Some are brand new to self-employment.
Some have been self-employed 30 years and have never considered internet marketing or digital marketing.
Never used a laptop before like Ian.
Ian's never used a laptop before in his life.
He's probably in his 40s like me, maybe a bit older.
He is now, after a few months being in the coaching group,
he's built a website from scratch.
It's ranking first page of Google where he lives.
He's got multiple dedicated landing pages for each one of his services.
He's got videos embedded into his website.
He has built a YouTube channel on his uploading regular content to his YouTube channel.
He's got his Google business profile set up and optimized.
He is literally, it's like night and day from when he first started in this group to where he is now.
Never used a laptop in his life.
He's done all this using an iPad and his smartphone.
It's costing nothing.
It's costing 24 quid a month.
He's bought no specialist technical equipment.
He hasn't had to outsource to anybody.
He hasn't had to pay a web developer five grand to build him a website and get it ranking.
This is just straight from Norse's mouth.
You can chat to Ian if you like.
He'll tell you himself.
He's on trial talk community group, but he's not the only one on there.
Again, Camel is one of them.
Damien Button is one of them.
Alex is one of them.
Alex Haer, he's doing the same thing.
Mike's dominating Google.
Mike Smart is dominating Google and his local area on Google business profiles.
It does work and it's not bullshit.
Where are we now?
It's got to be pushing quarter past eight.
The hour's up.
I'll put a link in and I will be texting Darren over as well.
The link.
Anybody who wants to join us in a group, the door's open and we look forward to you being part of the group.
I hope this has been good for you.
Have yourselves a good Sunday evening.
I'll catch you boys on the next one.