The small business thread - do you work for yourself?

Combat squirrel

Combat squirrel

Combat squirrel

Soldato
Joined
7 Aug 2004
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11,330
I thought it would be interesting to see who on OCUK has their own small businesses & who works for 'the man' ?

I think everyone is feeling the challenges in recent times with keeping small businesses afloat.

I think whatever area you work in, we are all selling goods or offering services to clients.

What have you found most challenging in the past 5 years? & if anyone has any general advice on whats working best for them in gaining new clients, feel free to share with other small business owners!

As much as it grates me, I've found social media leads to the most leads at the moment.
 
I've been programming for some time now and have a couple of decent ideas for websites but I struggle with motivation. Having said that I do want to be fully self employed at some point.
 
The wife has three things going on, one way bigger than the others, and it's the one that has a pretty linear scale:effort ratio.

The biggest challenge with the largest is getting out of starter mode; doing the same or better than the competition while undercutting them to grow gets you to a point where your sales are pushing the realistic limits of your time. Something needs to change, whether it be pricing, range (remove the lowest profit/time products or introduce more on the opposite end of that spectrum), and shifting customer focus from retail to B2B. The alternative is to carry on, but hire someone, and that becomes a different beast altogether.
 
^^ Isn't that a critical piece of "am I a small business or just topping up the funds on the side"? Small business doesn't have to include only the owner but there is a jump (a different beast) both mentally and financially to make that happen.
 
Run a small service business with my other half, work with some well known brands, no staff or overheads now, living the life.

In terms of attracting new clients, I’m very fortunate that I just seem to get recommended. I avoid social media, the Linkedin subtle bragging is too much to handle.

Most challenging in the past few years.. had to close my other business, had a good run for 7 years but couldn’t find staff with sensible rates post-covid, clients wanted cheaper saas solutions, tried to scale too aggressively etc etc, lots of tough lessons.

If I could give any advice I’d say always be honest with people, go the extra mile and look after your customers.

Also, don’t be afraid to pick up the phone to owners of similar businesses, they might have customers they can pass your way. You can’t beat word of mouth, no matter what anyone says.

Lastly, get a good accountant, they don’t need to be an expensive mob, a local one will do but make sure they are on the ball and reminding you to submit vat returns etc, not the other way around.
 
I run a small CCTV/alarm installation business, I also install WiFi and am fibre-optic trained. My wife does the office admin side as well as homeschooling one of our kids.

Until early last year I had 4 employees, but I went down to just myself - I just couldn't make it profitable enough, the amount of work I had to get through and the stress just wasn't worth it.

Now I'm by myself and much happier, but I do recognise that I will need to get someone in to work with, this time however I'm looking for someone who can eventually partner in the busines. At the moment it's a lot of hours, there's just a constant stream of callouts it seems, leaving less room than I'd like for actual installs (where most of the money is).

What's kind of mad is that I'm averaging about 40-50% of our original turnover, with a little contractor help, it shows where the problem was I guess (my management, not the lads work).

Anyway, I'd say the hardest part is people management, followed by scheduling management, but also the feeling that 'oh that was a good month, hard getting all that work through, now to do it again this month and every month, forever!'.
 
People management is the hardest part not just with scheduling, etc. Dealing with HMRC for PAYE, pensions and similar is just plain awkward and frustrating where you end up going round in circles with little idea of what you’re doing is correct.
 
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