What's going on people? It's Stu, trial talk. I hope you're all doing good, I hope you're all well.
So in this video, I thought we could talk about the post from Chris Davidson on the Facebook group.
So Chris recently put a post out there asking the question, how can we get our rates up as
plasterers and how can we create a level playing field in the marketplace so that we're not all
racing to the bottom. And I'm hoping that the video will be helpful for any of you young
plasterers out there that might just be starting up your plastering businesses or have been running for
maybe a year or two and could potentially be struggling in this area of your business. So
but yeah the idea of the video is we're going to look at well my own perceptions so I'm not an
economist, I'm a blaster, I self-employed blasterer and I've been around long enough that I've
learned a few bits of pieces that I struggled with early on and again could potentially help you guys
are just starting out. So in my response to Chris's post, my comment said in order to get the rates up
for spreads we need to start by understanding the true cost of self-employment. So I thought
I'd elaborate a little bit on what I meant by that and also discuss some of these other ideas
with mine that might be able to help you guys. So understanding the true cost of self-employment,
what I mean by that is when we first go out on our own, when we first go self-employed,
typically we've learned how to use these and you know how to blaster a wall and the misconception
is often you know if I can blaster a wall to a high standard then I can just go out there and
start a blastering business and I'll be good at that too. When the truth is it's a completely
different set of skills and I've talked about this before in other videos and the sort of skills
that you need in order to to do well being a self-employed man are things like sales, marketing,
communication and brushing up on a little bit of admin and some basic bookkeeping and bits and pieces
like that. So none of that has got anything to do with blastering walls and again it's a totally
different set of skills that are needed and I think one of the reasons why we end up working for
shit money and low pay and why we end up having our rates dictated to us by our customer, usually
in that scenario you'll be working for a big construction company or maybe a developer
where they will try and dictate the rates to yourself either on a meter or a day work or whatever
it is. I think we end up doing that for three reasons, one I've just touched on but I think
there's a couple of other reasons and again I'm not going to go into you know I'm not an economist
I'm not going to go into the whole sublime demand and all that jazz and obviously that's all going
to play a part in it all. I'm more talking about really the tradesman, the sole trader,
the self-employed man, what can we do to influence our rates and how can we take control of our rates
more and what are the things that hold us back so again sublime demand is going to play a part.
You know how it works if you're driving down the motorway and you pull up into a service station
for a bacon sandwich you're going to pay a tenner for that bacon sandwich and the reason being is
is there's no other fucking shops around to compare to you can't just nip off and think okay I'm not
paying that I'll go next door. Same with blasters you know if you're in a city and you're the only
plasterer in the city you can name your price if you're going up against hundreds of other blasters
you know you can have your price whittled down and the customer couldn't
say to you I don't like that price I'm going to get some other prices when shop around so but again
when it comes to that sort of things it's about differentiating yourself from the competition
but that's a whole other video. So yeah the sublime demand we all know how it works but I'm not going
to go deep into the supply and demand side of it. We're going to talk about the head game and
we're going to talk about why do we go out and either bid low prices on our own work
or accept working for low prices and I think the first reason is fear of no work so we've got a
fear when you go self-employed there's always that fear in the back of your mind that you're going to
run out of work. When you've got that fear mindset you end up either taking on shit jobs that you
don't really want to do or you end up having your price whittled down and cut down so that you've
got work in front of you. The thinking behind that is I'd rather have shit paid work and a little
little bit of work than no work at all. I can completely understand if you've got to put bread
on the table. That's one of the reasons I think that we end up working for low pay is the lack of work
fear of running out of work. I'm wanting to get something in the diary so that we can keep busy.
Second reason I think that we end up working for shit pay or low rates is we end to value ourselves
so I've talked about this on one of the blog posts that I did last year. The amount of spreads that
I've met that are fantastic spreads that lack self-belief and lack confidence in their own abilities.
It's quite a common thing that I see especially new big new starters that might have been
on the tools maybe five years five plus years. They've got the hand skills that they've needed
and now they're out working for themselves and it's almost like they feel they don't deserve
real self-employed money and they've still got this mindset of you know a day's graph for a day's
pay which is fine if you're working for somebody else and you've got the you know you might have
your company van supplied and you you've got benefits and all the rest of it but if you're
a business if you become a business this idea of a day's graph for a day's pay and it doesn't work
because you're not just going to be doing mastering you're going to be doing many many other tasks
that involve you generating work and keeping your customers happy and admin driving around looking
for jobs and all the rest of it. At the end of the day your business needs you to do all these other
tasks in order for it to sustain itself and keep running without you doing the tasks your business
fails so it's an essential vital part of your business and it should be you should be earning
for that and should charge for that so we'll talk about that. The last reason is the lack of business
skills as I've just talked about so again you know when we start up luxury businesses we'll
typically learn what we need to learn on the tools and then we jump straight into self-employment
and the only skills that we've got really are the skills on the tools unless you've done some sort
of business training which let's face it most of us blasters we don't do that we're bootstrappers
aren't we so we'll typically work for somebody else learn the skills and then we'll go off on our own
and as we pick up work we'll reinvest back into the business and buy equipment and
spend some on marketing and whatnot and things like that so but we're not actually learning
and those crucial business skills especially if you want to go domestic full-time domestic where
you're bringing a service to market in your local area and you're selling your own work to your own
customer base not working for not still being and working for the people so really really important
that we brush up on on these skills and what tends to happen is from my own again these are my own
perceptions from being a young lad that started a business very naive and a bit wet beyond years
and not knowing what I'm doing reflecting back and looking at the mistakes I've made and seeing
those same mistakes being made by young lads today on trial talk and seeing on sides and
again just meet you on off a little bit of guidance and some insights for you
hopefully it might help you if you're if you're starting your business but yeah so what we typically
do is we'll go out start start our own business and we'll spin our wheels and we'll get battered
and smashed about by the marketplace we'll lose money typically and after so many years of doing
this you end up developing a bit of a bit of a nose for business and you start being able to survive
and you start working things out but it does take a number of years being self-employed
before that before that happens really think of it of think of the analogy of a sailor at sea if
you like so start sort of jumping into a boat and just going out into the sea and not really knowing
how to fucking sail a boat or how to navigate the seas or knowing the tides or anything like that
you're just sort of going out there not knowing what to do and and winging it basically and a lot
of us do that and it does take a number of years before you become a competent sailor so what I'd
suggest we do in order to get our rates up is look at these three areas that I've mentioned okay
so the fear of no work the fear of running out of work how can we tackle that fear so that we can
feel more confident and stable within ourselves when we're taking on jobs and have a bit more of a run
no I always find if I've got four weeks in front of me booked I'm happy I don't need to panic if it
starts creeping into two weeks I'm going to start thinking okay I need to ramp up my marketing now I
need to run I need to hustle a little bit and get some more sales in so the fear of no work if you
can get four weeks in front of you I'm talking to domestic clusters mostly obviously the guys that
are listening to this that have about eight weeks 10 weeks 12 weeks but maybe more this video is not
really going to be too helpful for you because you clearly are established and you know what you're
doing and you're getting bookings in it's more for the guys that are struggling to to get sales
struggling to get the leads as well and it's more for the guys that might as I say they might be
just starting out they might have one or two jobs booked in and panicking and going in real cheap
on the on the leads that are coming in in order to try and secure the work so what I'd say is
once you've got four weeks booked start looking at your prices okay and thinking right I can breathe
out a little bit now I can go in a little bit higher on my pricing now the comments about
panicking is what happens when we panic price don't we so the bookings start looking a bit
thin on the ground and then we start panic pricing so in order to prevent that happening and stopping
this fear of no work we need to get jobs in front of us and and working and we've talked about how
how we can generate leads for free before on trial talk it's about using Google My Business and all
the other free online platforms if you want to learn a little bit more about that join the group
drop me an inbox and I'll share some knowledge with you and try and help you as best I can
with your lead generation so the second reason and devaluing yourself and having low confidence
was the second reason that I think that we price cheap so again we'll learn the skills at college
we'll go out there we'll work under somebody else for five five six years maybe a bit more
eventually we'll start around plus three business but we've still got this mindset of the employee
we've still got this mindset of the the apprentice you know the kid that doesn't know everything
the kid doesn't know any better and that little voice at the back of your head where you know who
the fuck am I to start my own business and I don't know what I'm doing I don't know what to charge but
really you need to shut that voice up and you need to be speaking the voice of the business
because that's what you are now you're in business you're a business owner you're not a little boy
anymore you're not an apprentice you're not a worker you're your own gaffer you're self-employed so
you need to walk walk that confidence talk that confidence in front of your customers and at the
end of the day you're the expert okay if you've started a plastering business you've done your
time you know what you're doing on the tools you know your products you know your materials
you know that you're good at what you do in your heart that has to reflect and show to your
customers otherwise you ain't going to win the jobs if you go in there lock a quiet little
mouse when you're quoting and looking at the floor and you know scumbling your words and
and not holding you holding your head high and having your shoulders back your customers ain't
going to believe that you're capable of doing the job for them you need to be going in there
not arrogant you're not allowed mouth that you need to be going in there and be assertive
and basically going as the expert because at the end of the day these customers that are calling
you up that have found your business online or wherever it is the customers that are calling
you they're looking for help from an expert they're looking to you to solve their issue whatever it
will be you know my ceilings collapsed and i've took the paper off the wall and all the plasters
fallen off the wall they haven't got a clue about plastering okay they haven't got a clue about how
much plastering is going to cost they're relying on an expert the same is if your engine was to
have problems on your car you know you take it to a reputable mechanic you're looking to him to
to lead when when you go and visit and you're showing the problem with your car you're looking to
him to show you what's wrong and to explain thoroughly what the issue is and then you look
at him to say look i know what the problem is and i can fix this no problem and here's how much
it's going to cost and that's why experts exist so you're going to become the expert in your
industry okay the other plastering expert so you need to um sell yourself really and don't
undervalue yourself when you're pricing your jobs up don't go in there quiet shy be confident
be firming your pricing try not to spit ball prices out on the spot some spreads like to do that
you know if you've been in the game a long time you can often look at a job and know off the top
of your head how much it's going to cost you and how many days it's going to take but typically you're
going to need a little bit of time to reflect after you've gone and looked at a job and you're
going to need a little bit of thinking time to work out exactly how much material is you're going to
and the key really is how long is it going to take and give yourself plenty of time and a
little bit of a cushion as well so if you think it's going to take you four days put in five days
and if it takes you four days you've you've earned yourself a little bonus yeah if it takes four and
a half days and you know you've put that cushion in there because you've got to allow things
like that you don't see you can't just walk into a quote and think to yourself okay you know
I've got a 12 by 12 room overboard the ceiling get some pva for the walls yeah I'll probably be in
and out and about in half or two days because you've sort of got a price in for bottlenecks that you're
not going to be able to see but you have to anticipate happening on domestic work so for
example I've done jobs where the parking was a fucking nightmare and ended up spending like 25
minutes a day just trying to park my vehicle so I can get a parking space out on the customer's
street because it was permit permit holders or it might be a built-up area or it might be near
school or something like that so there's things like parking there's things like chatting to the
customer I mean you might not want to chat to the customer every morning but they might want to chat
with you they might want to have that little 10 minute intro chat every morning when you get there
tell you about their evening or whatever it is or tell you about their cousin's uncle's brother's
dog that's sick and they might chew your ear off you do get chatty customers an again that will
just chew your ear off throughout the entire job and being a local service you can't turn around to
them and say look shut up will you're trying to crack on with my job and I need to smash
yourself as quick as I can you need to you're gonna have to stand there listen to their bs
for as long as it takes you know that can eat into your time that you've allocated to do this job
so when I say bolt on a bit of extra time for these jobs that you're looking at it's to allow
yourself things that you can't see on the job okay things that might slow you down when it comes to
undervalue in yourself um be confident believe in yourself you're the expert okay you've done your
time on the tools you're self-employed now okay you've got no benefits you've got no pension
you've got nothing you've got no holiday pay nothing okay so the book stops with you and that's
why you have to be you have to have a bit of swagger about you when you're going self-employed
and you're looking at these jobs because at the end of the day you're going from being an employee
that has basically zero responsibility it's like when you're employed and you work for somebody else
somebody else is always responsible aren't they somebody else is always answerable to the job
and the problems on the job and the things that go wrong and when the materials have run out
um you know when when um when the plastering is actually going tits up and it's not setting
properly or you might have had a dodgy bag of plaster your gaffer was always responsible
for any issues and problems that popped up so it wasn't your issue you know five o'clock you clock
off and your life's your own when you go self-employed you're 100 responsible so you're going to be
responsible for absolutely everything you're going to be responsible for turning up on time for making
sure the job's absolutely flawless and perfect you're going to be responsible for cleaning up
you're going to be responsible for causing any damage that might happen in the customer's house
through accidents or spillages you're going to be responsible for paying your suppliers
and paying your lads on time every week or every month or whatever it is you're responsible for that
you're going to be responsible for having the right insurances in place so that if one of your lads
break their fucking leg and fall off a set of ladders you're responsible because you're the
employer so you're going to go from having absolutely no responsibility at all working for
somebody else then you're going to take on 100 percent responsibility for everything okay the
book stops for you that's why when I say be confident you can't be that person and go into
that role if you're not confident you can't go into that role being like oh I hope things work out
you've got to go into that role with the head game of I'm going to fucking smash it and you know
I'm responsible and you've got to walk in there even if you don't feel confident you fake it till
you make it when I first started out I couldn't speak to people like I've said on my other videos
I couldn't look people in the eye I really struggled with communication I struggled to
hold eye contact and speak clearly and effectively it was something I struggled with because it wasn't
something that came naturally to me and I've had to learn all this stuff as I say being self-employed
working for myself for 20 years is a good way to fast track yourself through the skills that you need
in self-employment so be confident don't undervalue yourself okay this will link in with number three
the lack of business skills it sort of links in so I've just mentioned about you taking on 100
percent of the responsibility the business skills that you need you're going to be wearing many many
different hats in your business not just going to be the plasterer you turn up you get your trial
and you walk out and you do the job and you you know that's only part of it the business skills
needed and going back to Chris Davidson's post how can we get our rates up and my response to him
was it starts with understanding the true cost of self-employment what I meant by that was being
self-employed and working for yourself involves especially if you're domestic spread it involves
a hell of a lot of sales marketing driving around looking at customers houses and looking at jobs
yes you can look at a few different jobs via whatsapp now and messenger I get that however
you're not going to be able to look at a good decent size job through messenger okay you're
going to have to get in your van you're going to have to burn your fuel and go and look at it that
might take you an hour two hours sometimes it'll take you three hours they're going to want that
quote put on the letter-headed document and and sent over to them now that takes time because not
only if you got to get that price right because if you don't get it right you're not going to earn
any money or if you get it if your price too high you're not going to win the job so getting that
price right takes time you need to allocate that time factor that into your earnings every single
year so when I first I'll tell you a quick story and I know this video is creeping into 25 minutes
now guys and I'm rumbling on I'll tell you a quick story and then we'll wrap up when I first started
out I was going self-employed I was I was thinking it was about two months into self-employment
and I went for a beer with my good mate Mick and Mick's a carpenter and we'd had we sunk down one
or two and we're having a little bit of a bounce and it was sort of plaster versus carpenter
and you know a bit of wavy waving going on if you like and it was you know about carpenters earn
more than you plasterers and I was like yeah plasterers earn way more than you you chipies
and I was like you know I'm self-employed now I'm going to earn much more than you because he was
still on the books for a big construction company and he says well how much do you earn then and I
told him and he told me what he earned and he said see I earn a lot more than you and he says well
how much how many hours do you work and I said well I'll typically get up around I don't know half
six I'll be on site for half seven I'll be flat out then till around five or half five and then
I'll be wrapping up loading up and then I'll usually go and look at a couple of jobs on my way home
then I've got to go home and email them jobs over to the customer and he said well how long's all
that say what time what time you're wrapping up says I'll probably finish all that like about half
seven but I was only factoring in my time on the tools and he says well no you've got a really
you've got to factor in all that other stuff that you're doing so getting up at half six driving to
your merchants filling your van with plaster and that whatever else you need and then driving to the
client's house says that's a business task and then when you finish work as well driving around
using your own fuel looking at these jobs going home typing off he says you know I'm getting to work
half eight and by half three I'm thinking about loading loading the van and going home and when
he finishes work at four or half four whatever it is he says my working day's finished so he
says it's true when you think about it you're working almost twice the amount of hours as an
employed tradesman and it really got me thinking it really got the the cogs turning I thought you
know what it's fucking right he's right I might be earning more money because we all know self-employed
guys earn more money than somebody on the books but there's a reason for that we're working so
many more hours when you look at all these other aspects of running a business so
when I said we need to understand the true cost of self-employment this is what I meant
we need to factor in all of the hours that we're putting into the business the business tasks the
admin the pricing up the shopping around the meetings with the accountant your time on the phone
you know those hours where you're playing email ping pong with your customer because they keep
changing the spec all this has got to be factored in and once we can get these areas right so our
confidence is right we're accurate with our figures and how much it costs to run our businesses
not anyone else's business our business because all plastering businesses are different
all plastering businesses are different sizes different size businesses
and somebody that's subbing to you know knocking out new houses on site they might have four five
six months in front of them house bashing and working out of a car if they're doing that that's
a different overhead to somebody that's running a domestic plastering service in in their local area
because one's going to have a shitload of admin and quoting that needs to get done in order to
keep work coming in and the other one might have you know six months in front of him so the overhead
is different and the pricing is going to be different the pricing is going to be different for
somebody that works on their own one man army compared to a guy that's got five lads on the
tools on the book so every plastering business is different that's why we shouldn't really be asking
on social what's the going rate because it's a dangerous question but the going rate isn't going
to be your rate it's going to be a generalization of the cost in a given trade and it might give
a like a helicopter view of a rough price but is it going to be your price and are you going to be
are you going to cover all your hours that you're putting it into your business anyway listen
we're ticking on i've been rambling on for a long time and i'm almost home so i'm going to wrap
this video up i hope this video has been helpful for those of you that have just started your business
and let me know your thoughts on the the topics that i've talked about in the comments and we'll
see you next week thanks very much for watching have a great day cheers guys
you