April I celebrated a year being self-employed. Ok so this is a little belated but I have been somewhat pre-occupied juggling family, school holidays and running my wee operation but I thought I'd take a few moments to share what I've learned, the successes and the failures.
Oven cleaning is a simple process really. Transform a dirty appliance back into a shiny, like-new one, make the customer happy, get paid. Eat, sleep, repeat!
But as I've learned there's so much more to running a business than just turning up to do the work and that's probably been the biggest lesson. You have to be disciplined and organised, not my greatest attributes I have to admit, but I'm getting better.
There's the paperwork for example, keeping on top of receipts for items purchased, filing invoices and keeping the accounts square each month. Making sure I don't run out of cleaning supplies and maintaining and cleaning tools and equipment. Then there's marketing and selling the business to new customers and maintaining the details of existing ones, hoping they'll return.
There's constantly something needing attention. And you spend a lot of hours doing stuff that you don't actually get paid for and sometimes my Friday evenings have to take a hit to catch up on the week's admin.
I wouldn't change it for the world though! The benefits far outweigh the inconveniences.
For one thing, I love meeting my customers and enjoy the challenge of turning their dirty oven, hob, extractor or even barbeque shiny again and seeing the reaction on their faces because they never imagined it would be so clean again.
Customer satisfaction is my main driver and seeing it is the best part of my job.
I quite like driving my van as well, it's mine, no-one else drives it, I don't have to move the seat or change the radio settings and if the cab needs a clean it's because I made it dirty. It's also handy for transporting football equipment back and forth to training!
And of course, one of the main benefits of being self-employed is flexibility to be able to work the hours I choose to, around our various family commitments. A real godsend recently amidst the disruption caused by the fire at Woodmill High School, where our two children attend.
As for my biggest success, it has to be organically growing the business based on great reviews and customer referrals. Receiving great feedback is a huge kick. I'm quite popular on the Edinburgh Gossip Girls facebook page, so I'm told!
And failures? I spent a little too much money chasing new business through a tendering service and it took me a while to realise that the majority of leads didn't care about what they were paying for, only how much they were paying. And if someone with a pair of marigolds and a brillo pad could clean their oven for £30 it didn't matter if they didn't have insurance or used caustic chemicals in the process.
Touch wood, I haven't had any real set backs or disasters. Treating every job with the same care and diligence as the next one and ensuring that the customer is really happy with the results has been the key up to this point and I'll keep striving to achieve that satisfaction.
So here's to another year (and a bit)!
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