Is your business viable?
- Thread starter jsmoke
- Start date
Caporegime
Can you fill a niche in an already saturated market? Or can you offer a competitively priced service/product in a less fierce marketplace?
If you can answer one of those positively then crack on. If you can’t then is it actually a sensible proposition?
Well I'm new to this, can you base a business like this on, 'i'll give it a go and see what happens' or do you need a full business plan with relavant market research ?
How do you know if the market is saturated etc?
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Soldato
Depends what your trade is. If you're interested, do some research and find people's experience with it. Call current people doing whatever it is you're doing, pretend you might need a job doing, see how long it'd take and how busy they are. All really depends on what you're talking about.
Soldato
Follow local Facebook groups. If the same trades are constantly posting in every page then the market is saturated. If not, give it a try.
Create a basic plan, properly count out your expenses for living and working with the changes. Try to keep any startup costs to a minimum but invest in the right product and systems to work efficiently. If you have savings and can afford to give it a go, go for it.
Just remember your trade skills will only get you so far. How you present yourself and manage your business will do the rest.
Create a basic plan, properly count out your expenses for living and working with the changes. Try to keep any startup costs to a minimum but invest in the right product and systems to work efficiently. If you have savings and can afford to give it a go, go for it.
Just remember your trade skills will only get you so far. How you present yourself and manage your business will do the rest.
Yeh that's my fear, back into the murky(ish) world of reputation, networking and presentation. I mean it makes sense but never my strong point. I'm a 'do a professional job' and that's my selling point.
So really you just look at FB to get an idea of the market?
What if you just gave it a go like a trial. Atm I'm pretty comfortable and could just try it out for say 6 months, is this a reasonable approach?
Your local job centre and chamber of commerce should be able to point you in the right direction for market research.
Nowadays with word of mouth in local FB groups etc if you do a professional job and are polite then you could reach critical mass whereby effectively your clientele does your marketing for you. Just needs a bit of traction to get it off the ground and conversely if you are entering an established market with 'go-to' recommendations already in place it could be difficult to break in to because the same old faces will get recommended all the time. For example in my town if someone asks for advice on a tradesman to come and look at domestic appliances probably 75%+ of recommendations will be for the same bloke (who is excellent and deserves all the business he gets but might limit opportunities for others).
Soldato
Business model canvas should be used to validate though tbh! Best way to really answer this question
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depends on what trade it is a little as to the most effective route for work.
As in where you fit in on the build process or is it a retrofit type of trade...
As in where you fit in on the build process or is it a retrofit type of trade...
Soldato
For my area... because I'd be a tradesperson.
Literally every trade has demand that outstrips supply. And most still busy despite having terrible customer service and questionable work standards. But that's a seller's market.
If **** ever hit the fan with my day job I'd definitely retrain as a plumber/electrician/general handyman. With a far better knowledge than your average tradesperson of business/IT/customer service I've no doubt I'd be able to carve out a fat chunk of the market, and that's trying to be modest.
What kind of time period would you be looking at to train, 4 years?
Soldato
I've no idea since I've never looked! But as far as I'm aware you don't need any formal qualifications to be a plumber, nor obviously a handyman. Electrician is obviously a bit different and no idea what's required to get up to the gold standard or whatever it's called to be able to work on commercial projects. Doubt it's as long as 4 years though?
Try a service like Bark.com to guage interest for your services in your local area. I use it from time to time to source new business leads. It's free to sign up and see service requests for your trade in the local area, you only pay when you want to buy a lead that you want to follow up on.
Best part is that all leads are warm as the person interested in your service/trade has deliberately asked to be contacted.