For the majority of the year, I spend 95% of my time, working on the business. Securing new finance, securing new deals, educating and networking to keep up with ever changing legislation in the property industry, running my team to deploy most of this for me and keep the pipeline happening.
However - every now and then (and more rarely these days), I’m working…in the business. This means, me / Andrew - being physically on tools, paint brushes and power drills galore.
Most of you would know it’s been pretty difficult with trades recently. Good trades get to choose the good jobs and get paid premium for it! There is also a very lengthy wait time for trades as well.
So - should you be working on the business or in the business?
Andrew and I started off as home renovators, doing up and flipping our own house (multiple times) and adding buy to lets along the way. Andrew’s trade background and my willingness to give it a go at least once, means we have been pretty good being on the tools over time.
It’s only recently that we have taken a step back, further step back from it all and began to outsource…well…everything on the physical side, despite loving being on site.
However, when the market is this tough for trade labour, materials are at an all-time high and also in short supply and you have a budget to maintain…sometimes you just have to make the call.
I will do it.
I will roll up my sleeves and get the job done.
Why?
Because despite being a business owner, and it’s easier to say - yeah I’ll get someone to do that for me, sometimes it’s not always the right answer.
I’ll give you an example. I had a quote to get the kitchen sprayed to freshen up a solid kitchen (it was just in the wrong colour). £1,700+VAT. Excuse me, what? And that was the cheapest quote!
£140 in paint and materials later, I rolled my sleeves up. I calculated my hourly rate to be £50/hr. 25 hours x £50ph = £1250 of my own time, £140 in materials = £1,390. That’s a £650 saving. Or £1900 in real monetary terms, but I value my time. That “saving”, meant I could spend it on a new ceiling or new Astroturf for the back garden.
Financials apart, not only was this better for my budget, it moves the project timelines along, we work better together as a team, and we can get this project tenanted a lot faster! It was also because all the admin heavy lifting was done prior, and I could free up some time to be on site.
Cue my “new” kitchen. What do you think?
Are you team on the business or in the business? Or maybe a bit of both?