working hours

[Mike Brown]

Hi Steve and Jill, 😀 …luv your web-site!, is it new?

Also, I remember that I never sent you any ideas for your van 🙁 sorry!, can I be of any assistance or have you taken care of all that now?

Odd hours? – yep…we still do some of that. Only difference would be that we don’t do the 6am to 6.30pm thing as well as all the sign work 😕 . Always been a bit of a night owl myself – preferring to design late into the night but then we don’t get going much before 10 o’colck in the mornings… 😕

If it were me, I wouldn’t bend too far for the customer, not if it means you always working crazy hours. Business is a two-way street – they must respect you just as you try to accommodate them.

You’ve gotta leave yourselves some time on the weekends (or other days) else you’re gunna get mean and cranky – and you’ll just burn out! 😛 😀 I know things are different for every single one of us, and maybe you’re not actually working every single day of the year – but look after yourselves eh! you can’t do it all… 😀

and remember, “the graveyards are full of indispencable people” 🙁

more soon

mikethesign

[Alan]

Hi Steve and Jill,

Been there, done that, but realised rather too late that I would never become rich working myself to death, so now I don’t bother. 😉
I probably only work one third of the hours I used to do but still make three-quarters of the money.
I’m now content to lead a quiet life living by Mr Micawber’s golden rule. And come Monday morning at 9 o’clock I’ll be thinking of all the people hard at work.
🙄 a fat chance; I’ll be reading the paper and perhaps wondering if I should do some work or have another cup of tea, and the tea will almost certainly win. 😆 😆

Alan

[Phill Fenton]

When I first started making signs I used to work all hours 7 days a week. This wasn’t a problem as I was really enjoying myself running my own business and building a customer base. As time went on I began to resent the fact I didn’t get weekends off or holidays like everyone else does ( I was always afraid that I could not afford to ease up and turn down work). Gradually I have reduced the hours I do and now no longer work weekends.

I’m often asked to do a van at the weekend “because the customer cannot afford to take the van off the road” 🙄 . The last time I was told this I told the customer to rent a van. I also asked him how he gets his vehicles serviced as many garages are closed at the weekends.( I was probably a bit to abrupt with him because he never did come back to get his van done 😕 ) As Mike has already indicated, the customer has to respect your rights also.

There is a saying in business that you should “go the extra mile ” for the customer. In actual fact this is complete b*ll*cks. The more you do for them the more they will take liberties with you.

Even though now I work shorter hours than I did before, somehow I still manage to achieve the same levels of profit as before. Much of this is due to raising my prices over time, and also because I no longer do speculative work free of charge.

Having said all that I’m much more cranky than I ever was (I’m sure I was much more balanced a few years ago when I was working all hours :-?).

I suppose the moral is as long as your happy and enjoying what you are doing than go with it. Once it starts to become a chore, it’s time to take stock and find a balance between working and living. But if you really enjoy the work you are doing it’s not a problem 😀

[Martin Pearson]

I’m still quite new to this game and seem to spend most of my life at the unit but it doesn’t really bother me as I really enjoy it and am still keen to learn all that I can.
Since I got in to this business the time has really seemed to fly by and I am always wishing there were more hours in the day. I know I should take things a bit easier and spend more time at home but I’m scared that if I’m not at the unit I may miss a job or someone will ask for something I can’t do.

[Martin C]

When I started a couple of years back I was in full time employment and worked evenings and weekends as well as maintaining a tired but full social and family life.

The answer for me (I thought) was to go fulltime self employed, a move I made almost a year ago to the day. I started out still taking every job that came my way, even done some courier work in the odd spare morning here and there, and was still knackered but have reached a point whereby I now work it back the other way. What I mean is despite working all hours , I was never any better off financially…easy come….easy go. Now I know what I need to earn on a monthly basis and work to achieve that income on a weekly and monthly basis. Granted it’s not the best way if it suddenly goes slack but at the same time I am not so immersed in work that I cannot plan for the future, something that I’d never allowed myself time to do. I’m also a lot happier as I don’t get the guilty feelings when I start work at 10am and don’t feel put upon when I’m doing work at 2am in the morning!

There’s probably some figures out there that tell you how tiredness affects production and as someone has already intimated you can’t do the hours your doing without something giving………usually your health!

[Lorraine Buchan]

I’m generally in work at 8am monday to friday and can finnish anywhere from 5 – 10pm depending on whats going on.

I found alot of the time i’d be in early or stay late because it was a rush job that the customer had left til the last minute, but now i’ve started to tell my customers that there is normally a 3-4 day turn around on jobs, and new jobs can take 10 days, Now i know some of you might say but if you help some one out they will come back to you. In my experiance this isn’t the case, they do come back but again only when they have left it to the last minute.

Something that works really well is, if your willing to work late or do the weekends, then tell the customer they can have the work done but there is a rush or surcharge to cover extra wages, they understand when you say to them, “the workers will have done over 40 hours by the time saturday comes and therefore a premium is charged for weekend work or you’ll have to pay overtime if someone stays late to do the job”

How many times have you come across a job thats so urgent it just has to be done, only for them to turn around at the last minute and say were not going to bother now?!?

If it truly is that important to have it done they wont mind paying that extra – i mean a van off the road for half a day, what will that cost be compared to an extra £35 to have the vinyls done in the evening or a sat morning??