Starting Up

[fozzies]

Its because it gave him an excuse to do a couple of lines

Lol

[MrHappy]

Its because it gave him an excuse to do a couple of lines

helps with the long hrs...

[whistle]

sniff sniff

[Scotmod]

I don't think theres anyone at the top of any business who hasn't done 12 hour days for years. People tend to forget the bosses doing 4 hours a week have usually earned it from years of doing 3 didgit working hour weeks.

[PeterJames]

I don't think theres anyone at the top of any business who hasn't done 12 hour days for years. People tend to forget the bosses doing 4 hours a week have usually earned it from years of doing 3 didgit working hour weeks.

Spot on I spent 8 years earning less than half I was earning when I left my job to do it and I was paying my engineers twice what i was earning. I still do 9 or 10 hours a day but the moneys much better this year

[reidy]

I don't think theres anyone at the top of any business who hasn't done 12 hour days for years. People tend to forget the bosses doing 4 hours a week have usually earned it from years of doing 3 didgit working hour weeks.

+1

[Alarm Protection]

I worked with my old man starting up and it was the toughest 4 years. We were doing void alarms and screening for councils and our aim when the money came in was to move onto residential, commercial CCTV and alarms

Luckily it all worked out but thinking back the hard graft we had to do it was brutal and the out of hrs callout would be 4 or 5 times a night and more at the weekends with the little scroats and junkies breaking into the voids.

The Bradford riots were a real treat to be involved in with alarms going of everywhere in the Manningham estate and we just had to give up and return to the destruction the next day.

Ireland was also a nasty place where the estates ruled what went on and the Shankhill Road was a nightmare so you never went there after 3pm.

SSAIB approval came along and we have never turned back.

Now we have 9 staff and everything has settled down. The void property work was given up and we have contracts in place for the next 5 years.

Now that my old man is semi retired, a lot of the responsibility has been put on myself and it is good but it is hard to seperate work from family life.

I also made a lot of sacrifices to build up the company with my dad and didnt see my family as i was down south which i regret in a way but it has been worth it in the end.

I hope to give it all for the next 15 years and sell up, get out of this shithole of a country and do something abroad hopefully in Gran Canaria lol!

You never know what is round the corner though.

[norman]

not too sure I could offset watching and being with my kids growing up for the above though?

[Alpat Systems]

Well i thaught i would report back after almost 6 years....

We now have 8 members of staff offices 5 vans/cars on the road and more work than we can cope with and i am stressed out.

But on the whole things have gone very well for us but my god it has been a 24/7 job to get here and cost me a few health problems due to being over worked

The problem now is keeping on top of all the audits and paper work etc, and we are owed a fortune

Thats ths way it is LOL..

If you are thinking of leaving a full time job to start up on your own and intend to make it work get ready for a lot of very hard work and if like me its going to be 12/15 hour days for years... (

I was in a similar position a few years ago.

The company made rapid growth. I was working 12+ hour, 7 days a week, had people in accounts, sales/marketing, technical and installation. I found it increasingly difficult to keep on top of everything. Best decision I made was to first employ an operation manager who took over the day to day running then employee a project manager who dealt with technical designs/customer/project needs.

I’ve now got to the stage where I can start at 9 and finish at 5....... if I wanted.

It gives me more time to talk to customers and open up new opportunities.

You never get past being “owed a fortune” and worrying about payments!!!

[MrHappy]

Being the cynic....

I suspect a nice mediocre white collar carrer will bring greater rewards with little risk & none of the hassle of being self empployed in this industry ?