Feedback and thoughts

My last blog post was about how much should a decorator cost. I posted this on a few of my social media accounts and got a good bit of feedback. Now I was open about how I hadn't gone too deep into this as it was really for customers to get a basic understanding of what entails cost wise. However several people pointed out I hadn't taken into consideration or listed the ever expanding list of expenses and other bits people never see. When you do start looking further into it then you see how much is actually taken up in running a business and bear in mind a lot of tradespeople are sole traders or small limited companies often just run by one person. So lets have a look at some of the things others have mentioned.

These are, and this is not an exhaustive list, the wear and tear on your vehicles, accountant fees, public liability, wear and tear on your tools and accessories, cost of sundries, profit margins which cover these expenses and so on. Then you go into the time a tradesperson spends visiting jobs, sourcing materials and access equipment, writing up quotes, chasing unpaid invoices, managing cash flow, doing bookkeeping ready for the tax return each year, dealing with unforeseen delays on jobs which then have a knock on effect on your diary. This is on top of doing advertising, posting on social media to keep the calls and enquiries coming in, asking for reviews from customers and other general day to day business bits. All these things have to be accounted for in our prices.

Now most small domestic construction businesses are run by one person doing it alone, be it as a sole trader or as limited company. They don't have reserves of cash or staff doing all the admin work, they do it alone on an evening or on the rare day off. Often working until the early hours. I posted a couple of posts back about the life of a tradesman https://dbarrettdecorating.co.uk/blog/post/life-of-a-tradesperson so I don't want to keep repeating myself, but the points made in both are valid. Also I've wrote a couple of posts about depression https://dbarrettdecorating.co.uk/blog/post/depression-revisited-it-does-get-better-trust-me and https://dbarrettdecorating.co.uk/blog/post/opening-up and I find these can go hand in hand with running a business, especially when you work alone 99% of the time. And thats before you throw in the anxiety most decorators encounter weekly! (That's a post for another day.) 

The flip side is running your own business is very rewarding, not always in the financial sense but in other aspects. You can have more freedom, challenge yourself in ways not restricted by employment conditions, control your own narrative so to speak. The best way to explain it is like a set of weighing scales, the pressures and stresses on one side getting balanced by the benefits on the other. At times one side may lean further but on the whole they seem to be equal. It's this is what keeps us coming back for more each and every day, I may moan at times but I enjoy what I do and I trust it shows in how I come across and my work. Hopefully these posts are an insight to everything we do and that the price of the quote we give isn't just a case of slapping paint on the wall.