What's up Nayspreads, are we doing? I hope you're all doing good. I wanted to shoot this
quick video for you on non-payers, people that don't pay. I did a video on Wednesday
that I wanted to put out on the group, on YouTube and it went tits up and for whatever
reason the audio, I couldn't hear myself when I played it but I spent like 15 minutes
rambling on and when I played it back it didn't work out so I've got up early today,
I've come into a different room and I'm hoping that it'll be better acoustics and you can
hear what I'm saying so. Non-payers, non-payers when you've plastered somebody's property
or room or whatever it is and you're struggling to get your cash, they're not playing ball.
They're not common. I bumped into Ricky from Coventry, Plaster and Rendering Supply.
Oh you're Ricky, you're doing well pal. We were having a chat yesterday, he came and
dropped some gear off for me, I appreciate that mate by the way, dropping that off for
me. And yeah we were having a chat and I don't know how we got onto the topic but he was
telling me that when he was younger he did a job a few doors down from where my job was
and he was telling me how he struggled to get paid from the customer and he put it down
to being young and inexperienced. He's been in business for a long time, he's doing very
well and I was asking him about his payment terms and stuff and he said look I don't fuck
about anymore when it comes to getting paid so he does a lot of big external render jobs
and stuff like that and he was just chatting about how soon as the scaffold goes up he gets
a payment, soon as a render comes off the wall he gets another payment and he'll break
it down, he'll break his jobs down into chunks like that and he'll take interim payments
really really regularly, probably weekly and although I'm in a different market to Ricky
doing smaller scale internal jobs I said that I'd operate in the same way as you now
I take 25% deposit and so we're having a quick chat about that but at the end of the day
it's about taking control of the cash flow and keeping it, trying to keep it weekly and
trying to keep it regular is what basically is a gist of where I'm getting at with this
video because there was a recent post I think it was earlier this week or was it last week
where one of the ments sort of got a bit of a frog in my throat this morning just still
necking this coffee, yeah I think it was either last week or earlier this week someone put
a post up basically it plastered somebody's house and he's owed like £2,500 or whatever
it was and the customer's not playing ball and basically giving him a snagg list and
saying you know I'm not happy with this I'm not happy with that and it's quite a common
thing I've been through it before and you guys watching probably have had the odd customer
and it's quite common on the groups isn't it not just trial talk but other Facebook
groups you'll see posts, lads that have completed jobs and they're saying look customer's not
paying me what do I do and all that kind of thing but I just wanted to put my thoughts
across on it I'm not going to give fucking legal advice on it because that's not my
forte but as a tradesman self-employed tradesman I can give you a few pointers what works for
me and Ricky's you know I've already said he you know what he does and probably most years
that I've been in the game a long time you probably do the same thing I know a lot of
spreads go room for room with plastering internal and that's obviously a smart really smart way
of operating you know you do one room you don't do the next room till they've paid you for that
room common sense way of operating so you know you never owed in any more than what 700 800 pound
whatever it is and during throughout the business you never owed more than you know that amount it
doesn't build up basically into silly money and also when you operate like that you've done one
room for them you kits on the job you started and you've got a bit of collateral there you've got a
bit of bargaining power where you know they want their room they want their house finished you want
your money and it's the sort of you know it's a game of give and take if you like between the
tradesmen and the customer the worst way you can operate is going in on the verbal on the handshake
yeah yeah no problem sound I'll start Monday plastering in entire house for example and then
putting your billing at the end and you know you stood there with your fingers crossed hoping and
praying that they they read the invoice and then they pay you the invoice quickly problem with
that scenario is they've got what they want now you know I'm not trying to paint customers to be
you know nasty characters we all know most if not all of our customers are honest decent people
aren't they you know you do the job and they pay you the monies but the issue we've got is you do
get that small percentage that do fuck you about for whatever reason you can bend over backwards
for them you can you know jump through the hoops and snag the job and do whatever they want and
they still won't play ball and they'll still give you a hard time so I just wanted to talk about
what what can we do in that scenario to try and repair the repair the relationship basically because
a popular response to these posts that I've noticed from spreads because we're all fucking alpha
dogs is all go go around there smash your fucking work off the wall and then get your materials back
and then you're quite quite comical reading through the responses and to be fair when you when you
are wronged and when you when you've done a job and you owe money and you're not getting that money
when you when you're in that position and I've been there as well you do feel like that you
you know you feel like you know you want revenge don't you you want to get your you want to get
your own back but the problem is with feelings is feelings and business they don't go together
so we've got to use our use our heads keep your feelings in your back pocket think about it
because if you go around there smashing people's ousers up all it's going to do it's going to ruin
your reputation firstly you know you're going to if there's one way to scare off potential new
business and new customers it's you know getting a reputation for being there being the local
psychopath so don't turn up there you know at midnight with a can go threatening to take the
strip the walls back because they ain't gonna do any favors for your business or your reputation
you'll probably be done for criminal damage and all the rest of it so try and keep your emotions
at bay and let's use our heads and think about what we're doing and it would be nice to do that
make you feel better after a day but then obviously the repercussions of it it's not going to be good
it's not going to end well for us um yeah again i'm not going to go legal um all i'll say on the
legal side of it is from my own experiences get everything right in once you do a quote once
you've popped out and you've had a look at somebody's job okay get it get it on the email or the text
or even whatsapp whatever you choose whatever platform you like to use for your quotes get everything
bullet pointed cover your ass make sure you bullet point everything that you agreed to do
um and fire it over to them because then that's your evidence then okay that's your
your written quote and then if they agree then that is contracted so um i was in a situation
that i mentioned on one of one of the comments where i was having problems with the customer a
few years back and um all i did i called it went a few weeks went by and i was having issues so i
called trading standards up and had a chat with um with them and they they really helpful um they
pointed me in the right direction gave me some free legal advice and they also um let me know what
my rights were as a tradesman and they gave me a few hints and said look send this email um i
talked to their advice i did that um it included a threat of loss of earnings as well and um it
worked and within 10 days i had my money so i didn't need to go down um down the legal road so
um but yeah this video it's more about our own mental health really and how not being paid how it
can um how it can affect us mentally when we're running a business so um you know if you're in a
position where you've completed a job for somebody in a year you a couple of grand and um you've got
a family to feed and bills to pay and you're not seeing that money in their ghost in you and they're
not paying um it won't start to happen if you start taking this these problems home with you and start
taking your work home and then you know it'll eat into your personal life so how can we as self-employed
tradesman how can we um sort of snap ourselves out of that negative thinking like that stress it's
always a stress isn't it if you've owed money and it's not coming in and your funds are running
loads it's a constant stress so i just wanted to quickly talk about a couple of things we can do
within our plastering businesses um that can number one prevent this ship from happening in the first
place okay um and number two it will protect it'll give like a a defense mechanism really in our in
our businesses to try and weed out these um characters that might not um have the best
intentions for us if you like say most of our customers you know salt with the earth you do
the job they pay you and they're happy and you're happy but you do get some that do slip through the
net um not so nice characters that hire people in they have absolutely no intention of paying you
and we've got it's our job really to um protect ourselves from these characters so what I do is
I use the payment terms template and also try and sniff them out on the quote so the first
the first defense we've got is we can actually go out to these um jobs when we're quoting we can
meet the customer and have it just have a chat with them and get get a vibe off them and if you
feel there's something off here i don't like them there's something there's something not right with
them you know they might have um it might be something they've said the way they speak the
other way they look at you they're arrogance anything if you get in a if you're getting a bad
vibe off the customer you can't quite put your finger on it and someone ain't right just i'd
say just walk away just leave the deal on the table because if you're having that vibe on the quote
you know and if you've started a job and now they owe you money and you invested
that situation's probably just going to get worse you've got to make sure that when when you're
going in and quoting there's a mutual respect okay between yourself and the customer um and you
know there's a rapport going and it's it's healthy if it's a case of they're talking down to you or
they're telling you what you're going to do you know you're telling you the spec telling you where
you're going to start and how you're going to do it and basically telling you how to do your job
and uh telling you how much it's going to cost and if they start trying to go down that road
just be polite so yes no problem i'll get the quote here and then just just drop them a message
a couple of days later and just say look i'm really sorry i've took on a i've had a big job come in
i ain't going to be able to get onto it for you and just politely let them go because
um if it starts off bad it'll probably end bad that that's my experience um with with these customers so
let them go and get you know someone off fucking gum tree who's going to do a shit job and just let
them go and do their thing you do your thing you just you remain professional and uh stick with
the decent customers that are gonna you know see see the value that you have see see the skills
that you have and uh pay you for them skills and not try and devalue you so that's the first thing
that's the first thing i'd say is um sniff them out on the quote if you get a bad vibe walk away
second form of defense is the payment terms template i've done a video on this before
i've chatted about this before um if you agree to do a job for somebody okay and they've said
all systems go you know we're happy with the quote when can you do the job once you've arranged the
date with them and agreed on a date it's really important that you then fire in your payment
terms immediately it's no good chucking in your payment terms halfway through a project when you've
already started and they owe you money and their relationship's going a little bit tits up you
need to get these payment terms in either when you quote which i know some will have to do that they
have a small print on the quote or once they've accepted your quote and you've sorted a date
you can then get the payment terms in immediately after i say look here's the payment terms um
and it has to include how and when you get paid okay and um if you want to go 30 days it's unlikely
that you'll want to some lads are happy to go 30 days if you're going to go 30 days make sure you've
included that uh within the small print i personally um actually put payment on payment on completion
and i take a deposit on booking okay so and it's uh payment is due on the day that i send the invoice
in there's no fucking seven days ten days 30 days it's due the money's due when i've plastered your
else okay and i've loaded the van on off swept sort of the money's due um that's what works for me
i need weekly payments most of us that are sole traders that we've got one or two gang setups um
we need weekly payments we need weekly cash flow don't we so the only way we're going to get that
is if we demand that and state that in our terms we're not going to just leave it for the clients
to um to be kind and think oh let's give them some money because they're not going to okay they've
got their bills they've got their busyness and their lives and all their expenses going on so
they're not going to prioritize us as a cost unless we demand it and state it in our terms so
um the reason that the deposit payment works for me personally is i've found that if you book a job
in and then you say look um 25 up front 75 percent at the end if they dispute that if they say i'm not
paying 25 what i've experienced is it's only happened once in like six years or seven years or
ever long i've been doing it um what i've found is if they dispute or quibble the terms then it's
often because uh they don't plan on paying you they're not very good payers in a way so they're
either going to pay you late or they're going to fuck you about so the the payment terms works
really well the customers you want is where they trust you you trust them and it's fine
and you put your terms and they say oh absolutely fine no problem and they go there you go and they
pay it because number one they've got money okay they've got money there reserved for this project
because not all customers believe it or not do have money some people will hire tradesmen
they don't actually have any money um i've got a mate that did a job for somebody it turns out
they were completely broke and they were spinning everything on cards and uh trying to pay the
tradesmen through through credit cards for fuck's sake so they never actually had any money so um
that's another job for the booking deposit is they'll they'll test the waters for you not okay
they've got the money and they're willing to pay you know when you need the money in there so
two defense mechanisms there sniff them out when you quote here get your payment terms in and
test the waters with the booking deposit and uh also get all that in writing as well so if they
send you the deposit send over the deposit terms and a receipt of payment as well so everything's fair
and transparent and everyone's cleared up so they the customers know now okay when he's done this part
of the job i need to pay him and you know in your mind when i finish this phase i'm going to get a
payment and it's all in writing and everyone's cleared up if you just go in with the handshake
you know i'll do this it's five inches quit and um when i'm finished i need i need to be paid
because it's verbal verbal verbal information can just you know it's it's up in the air isn't it it's
it's not set in stone so you there's nothing to refer to apart from you saying will you said this
or them saying will you said this and um it's it's not set in stone so we need to get it in writing
get all your stuff in writing um and that way hopefully it'll protect you protect yourself and
you you and your customers can refer to your emails and you can discuss it and say look this is what
we've agreed blah blah blah um last thing i want to say now because i'm rambling on and then the
lads are outside i think i need to get going um the last thing i want to say is look after your
headspace protect your headspace when when you owe money because um it's easy to get into this
mindset of like you know fucking revenge oh fucking wankers they haven't paid me you know who they
think they are and we're getting to a negative spiral i have so i'm talking about my own experiences
here when i'm owed money and um all i'd say is focus on your future prospects focus on your business
um try and get in some decent sized jobs in the diary pull some deposits off of and focus on the
customers that are going to see you um and value you for what you're worth and your skills and
and um they'll be like i said i'll be a mutual respect there so focus on the decent clients
okay and try and shrink down um how much space that these non-payers are taking up in your head
because really you don't want them being a problem in your life you just want them in the background
okay you don't want them being a massive problem for you in your life so if you can get some decent
jobs booked in i'm not saying ignore the problem you still got to take action on the problem but
don't let it um fill your headspace too much and try and remain up being focus on your customers
and pleasing them and try and shrink down the amount of space that these these people are taking up
in your head um it helps if you've got um a reserve obviously um if you've because the main the real
problem here is that um it's not so much that they haven't paid on time it's that we've run out of
money and that and that's what's causing our stress and getting us stressed out isn't it we've run out
of money so um if you're self-employed you've got to get some some in the bank um you know i'm better
at giving this advice and uh taking it so um i'm guilty of this myself but try and get some cash in
the bank try and get a bit of a reserve so that when these people do um have you over a barrel
if it happens at least you've got a little bit of reserve there okay and again focus on your future
customers your future jobs where you can focus on them because at the end of the day um these
customers that these are the ones that are going to be able to get money into business the fastest
and the most regular so rather than trying to chase money from these um people that owe you the money
um try and pull money from creating value focus on these decent customers and um you can quickly
recover and get these earnings back so hope that helps guys anyway i'm going to go max outside um
other top day and uh what are your comments on non-payers and don't say i'm going to go
around and smash the fucking pluses off the walls okay have a good day boys and that's what