What business do you own and how did you get into it?

[Countdown]

Gemaeden said:

I don't remember saying it was commonplace, just that it's easily achieveable in London and the South East. Getting into the top 1% is relatively straight forward for a trainee, if they have the right training.

I'm a bit confused. If "getting into the top 1% is relatively straight forward" why don't all the other driving instructors do it? Surely the whole point of being in the top 1% is that you're the elite, the best of the best, etc etc....

[singlecoil]

Countdown said:

Gemaeden said:

I don't remember saying it was commonplace, just that it's easily achieveable in London and the South East. Getting into the top 1% is relatively straight forward for a trainee, if they have the right training.

I'm a bit confused. If "getting into the top 1% is relatively straight forward" why don't all the other driving instructors do it? Surely the whole point of being in the top 1% is that you're the elite, the best of the best, etc etc....

Not only that, you get a stload of money too!

[daemon]

Countdown said:

Gemaeden said:

I don't remember saying it was commonplace, just that it's easily achieveable in London and the South East. Getting into the top 1% is relatively straight forward for a trainee, if they have the right training.

I'm a bit confused. If "getting into the top 1% is relatively straight forward" why don't all the other driving instructors do it? Surely the whole point of being in the top 1% is that you're the elite, the best of the best, etc etc....

And any trainee can do it from day one?

All seems very odd. As you say the whole point of being in the top 1% of any field is that you're the best of the best and thus command a commensurate salary?

It seems odd that a trainee can chose to do be in the top 1% from day one, and likewise, why - if its so easy - doesnt everyone? Why settle for an average, dull, mundane pay when with seemingly little effort you can be the best of the best?

[bearman68]

Well, I'm an auto electrician.
I trained as a mechanical engineer, and spent 25 years in industry. The best 10 I spent working as a production engineer looking at why things broke. A combination of stats and creative engineering nous and I loved it.
After the Jap co closed, I spent another 6 years trying to find a job I loved, but could never really settle. So one day, I handed in my notice, and started repairing cars.
Very quickly I realised the mechanical stuff was fairly straightforward, but the electrical stuff was much more difficult. Managed to get on a few training courses, and found I was able to learn and apply very quickly.
6 years later, the business turnover is nearly 1/4 million, I have an electronics partner, a full workshop that has been through 2 expansions, and is about to get a third.
I feel really settled and content in my choice of 'jobs' and I'm able to keep an eye on our 2 kids (as I work from workshops on our family farm). Life is good.
We have also developed ideas for repairing certain electronic parts that regularly fail, and we are just starting to export and develop 'partners' in Europe, so that seems to be going OK as well.
Wish I had done this 20 years earlier, and really caught the start of the electronics in cars.

[MTech535]

Come on all you powerfully built company directors.

Where are you?

[Tuna]

VitzzViperzz said:

I had a look at the IR35. It seems interesting, but if you are doing well, why not just convert that into a proper business? I've got entrepreneurial blood in me - business is the end goal.

Also, why is contracting bad right now?

Sorry for the late reply. PH does not have a way of informing that someone has replied to me (unless I am missing out on something).

You asked: Why not convert that into a proper business? Here's why:

The high rate contracting is usually for companies that have global scale businesses. They're not at all interested in a 'proper business' sitting on their margins, and not set up to deal with companies much smaller than themselves. You're either deeply involved in their operation at a hands on level, or not at all.

The lower rate contracting work can be set up as a business, but the overheads of running a full office, staffing it and so on will wipe out margins very quickly. You have to scale quite fast to get back to where you started, and further still to provide the sort of level of consistency a 'proper business' needs to maintain payrolls, pay rents etc.

Contracting is bad right now because a number of global companies have cut back lately and a lot of the rest are holding off on projects whilst there is such economic uncertainty. There are a larger than usual number of contractors currently hunting for jobs. Add in the current government being positively antagonistic towards small businesses, and it's a difficult environment.

Edited by Tuna on Tuesday 25th April 12:42

[Transmitter Man]

Tuna said:

My company will be twenty years old this year. I moved on from a software consultancy to contract out and write the occasional piece for my own business. On the whole I get involved in leading edge technology - so I was tech lead on the team that wrote one of the first online banking sites in the UK, I've worked with biotech and telecoms companies and developed software from 8 bit microcontrollers up to petabyte scale private clusters.

Right now, I'm working on my own product - building a 'full stack' tool for UAVs (drones) that deals with everything pre- and post-flight to get useful results out of flying robots. It's a great technical environment - from Android apps up to cloud computing - but also has the benefit of spending the occasional day on the top of a mountain flying.

How did I get into it? I enjoy technology, love a challenge and thrive on building new things. The rest is 'just' a case of looking for opportunities to flex those muscles.

I'll give you a challenge.

Write a programme to stop the NHS wasting so much money :-)

Phil

[funkyrobot]

I've enjoyed reading this thread.

It's interesting to me as I'm currently in a situation where I'm hating my job. Been in IT for about ten years and utterly sick of it, and working for other people. Just looking around at other things to see if I can get out and into something more interesting.

[vsonix]

bearman68 said:

Well, I'm an auto electrician.
I trained as a mechanical engineer, and spent 25 years in industry. The best 10 I spent working as a production engineer looking at why things broke. A combination of stats and creative engineering nous and I loved it.
After the Jap co closed, I spent another 6 years trying to find a job I loved, but could never really settle. So one day, I handed in my notice, and started repairing cars.
Very quickly I realised the mechanical stuff was fairly straightforward, but the electrical stuff was much more difficult. Managed to get on a few training courses, and found I was able to learn and apply very quickly.
6 years later, the business turnover is nearly 1/4 million, I have an electronics partner, a full workshop that has been through 2 expansions, and is about to get a third.
I feel really settled and content in my choice of 'jobs' and I'm able to keep an eye on our 2 kids (as I work from workshops on our family farm). Life is good.
We have also developed ideas for repairing certain electronic parts that regularly fail, and we are just starting to export and develop 'partners' in Europe, so that seems to be going OK as well.
Wish I had done this 20 years earlier, and really caught the start of the electronics in cars.

'managed to get on a few training courses' - this is something I am finding a little tricky at the moment.
Basically due to family reasons I now lie in a part of the country where there is a lot of competition for badly salaried jobs. It's basically a fait accompli that if you want to do well down here you need to be self employed and have some kind of trade skills.
However, all the training courses for automotive stuff offered by the local colleges are either aimed at under 25s only, full time apprenticeships or failing that you need to already be working full-time in the trade to access the courses. As a 40 year old bloke with financial and other commitments I need to be doing some kind of part time course - I don't mind paying - and get my skills up that way. But I can't really go be someone's dogsbody five days a week and study at the same time, I have too many real life commitments (I care for an elderly relative, am responsible for upkeep, gardening and housework on a largish house where rooms are rented out etc etc). However I do feel like I need to be devoting some time to upping my skill level so that when my circumstances do improve I have a base for a business i.e. bodywork/smart repair, car electrics, mobile remapping service or something similar where there is plenty of demand and the ability to own or invest in some kind of mobile franchise where I can be in control of my own hours etc etc.

[Tuna]

Transmitter Man said:

I'll give you a challenge.

Write a programme to stop the NHS wasting so much money :-)

Phil

Ha! The problems there are largely political, not technical. A lot of the government IT projects could be done with half the staff and a quarter the budget, but before they start they've got stakeholders falling over themselves to make their mark, and an absolute inability to draw up a specification that satisfies all parties and accurately describes the problem to be solved. Then by about half way through the project, some politician has changed places, the priorities change and the project has change direction to satisfy a whole new set of largely unrelated (and often contradictory) requirements.

Some of the best (billion dollar, global, heavily used) software has been developed by teams having only a handful of staff and the authority to decide exactly how the problem can be solved. These days there is no technical impediment to rolling out systems that can support millions of users 24/7/365 across continents and using a dozen different platforms - the challenge is setting up the work environment to allow that to happen.

[Gemaeden]

daemon said:

Countdown said:

Gemaeden said:

I don't remember saying it was commonplace, just that it's easily achieveable in London and the South East. Getting into the top 1% is relatively straight forward for a trainee, if they have the right training.

I'm a bit confused. If "getting into the top 1% is relatively straight forward" why don't all the other driving instructors do it? Surely the whole point of being in the top 1% is that you're the elite, the best of the best, etc etc....

And any trainee can do it from day one?

All seems very odd. As you say the whole point of being in the top 1% of any field is that you're the best of the best and thus command a commensurate salary?

It seems odd that a trainee can chose to do be in the top 1% from day one, and likewise, why - if its so easy - doesnt everyone? Why settle for an average, dull, mundane pay when with seemingly little effort you can be the best of the best?

Beat's me too why people make even seemingly little effort to research a potential new career before entering it. Like most people, new entrants to the business think that a driving instructor is a driving instructor is a driving instructor.

They don't appreciate that there is any difference between them, and so they don't know to search out the top 1% to train them, so they don't learn what it is that the top 1% do better.

So any trainee can't do it from day one, just those that have been well trained

Then, even when the badly trained enter the career they make seemingly little effort to improve their skills or earning potential. Still that's how it is... Odd is what it seems, because odd is what it is.