i mean the more you can carry the the more effective it can be
and the uh the less likely it is you're going to get caught short on the side obviously you don't
need something as big as this if you're starting out you can start out with something much smaller
i started out from the boot of a volvo and then went to a transporter before we got the
fat wagon here but um obviously there's an awful lot of stock in there um i i get the impression
from what i hear with the people commenting just then that they perhaps don't carry quite as much
uh someone's saying i've got more in there than eddie's have got on their shelves
but um you know where i live i've got about seven wholesalers all clustered together and then over
the other side of town there's nothing at all and if you go out to site and obviously you're running
a business as yourself uh time is money and if you get out to sight and find you've got something
forgotten something really stupid then it's uh it's an awful lot of time and these are lost
whipping back to go and buy a packet of knockout boxes or a socket or something like that so the
more we can carry the better and the more access equipment we can carry the better as well because
you never know when you're going to need to scoot up somewhere high to to get to something
that you didn't necessarily know you were going to need to get to and again a lot of sparkies
don't carry the big ladders on their vans unless they know they're going to need it but then you
know if they get out there and find they've been caught out then that's a pain in the backside um
i don't know what uh what's what useful i can point out i know gaz was on about the
the maintenance free inline connectors the splice lines uh they're pretty good in lieu of crimps
you can have that
how much do you spend a week like roughly on my first product
uh my it there is a little bit it depends on what kind of work we've been doing but um cef and my
main suppliers just because they're the closest to me i know january was a quiet month but i've
still spent over 500 quid at cef a couple hundred quid at eddie's couple hundred credit denman's i
can easily spend a four-figure sum in any given month on my credit accounts with the wholesalers
um it does all add up but it depends on what sort of thing people are asking for if i've got
to buy a storage heater for someone for example you're talking sort of 400 quid straight away
and that i've got to buy and credit and fit and then invoice the client for and hope
that they actually pay me um and sometimes they don't but a few fortunate few and far between
uh if we're doing um we've done a lot of first fix work lately
we've got two or three rewires on the go so that that's quite cheap in terms of materials
it's all knockout boxes capping cable there's not a huge amount of expense to to that sort of stuff
on the materials it's not the time but then when the second fix comes along and they
want um fancy sockets and uh all that sort of stuff then it starts to starts to cost up again
um at the moment i'm trying to keep the vat man off my back so i might have to get
the clients to start buying their own stuff just to uh just to keep the accounts happy
but uh yeah it's quite easy to get a credit account um most of the wholesalers will bend
over backwards if you're new to the area i know it can be daunting going into the wholesalers
for the first time into the likes of eddies and demons you kind of think that they're going to be
standing behind the counter going who are you but you know it's not it's not too bad they want you
your business and they'll happily sign you up um did you ever go to alex the trade shows they're a
good place to go to yeah the wholesalers are all there and if you're starting within business for
yourselves which i appreciate you you probably won't until perhaps later in your careers but
they'll be ready to sign up there and then they'll probably give you a free gift for doing it as well
um the van i think this one was around the seven seven and a half k mark uh
obviously it's secondhand the 2011 plates i don't know who owned it before me can't remember if
that price included that or not i know i was about registered at the time so i got that back at least
but the previous van which was a transporter was also about 7k
yeah i find this a lot more practical a lot more comfortable than the transporter
but the transport had a very high mileage it was an xrac van hence the orange branding i
deliberately went for that because i wanted to be noticed and again it's all about advertising
it does yeah um but that got to a point where i was spending so much keeping it maintained i
thought it's got to go i need something i need something else now and also we needed something
bigger anyway because there was there was three of us um obviously there are some things not on
here today i haven't got my my big toolbox that contains the the power tools but um because of the
the threat of a present threat of someone breaking in i have to remove a lot of stuff off every night
which is a pain in the hat so some people say well how come you've got dead locks on it or whatever
if someone's going to break into your van they're going to break in they're just going to do more
damage in my opinion if you start fitting it out with fancy locks so i'd rather take the valuable
stuff off at night if they're going to break in hopefully they'll do it with as little damage as
possible because the the problem to me isn't that they're going to nick a few cable reels or some
sockets or switches or whatever the problem to me is that if the van's damaged and it has to go off
the road obviously that's an immediate impact on what i can do and it's going to affect the
business but um that's uh do you bring your powers into that into your household yeah yeah because
they're all in the role of the box i can just rip them off whip off the toolbox whip off the tester
yeah obviously that you know there's still hundreds of pounds with the stuff on there
in terms of cable reels sockets switches patrases who's going to nick patrice's there's obviously
there's things like work lights and stuff like that on there but it's all replaceable if it
needs to be and it's not not necessarily going to pop me out of business trying to resolve it
yeah the hand sanitizer came with it i can't say i've ever used it i've
already really what's your favorite um tool to use
that's a question isn't it um i do like my testers and i do have an awful lot of them
obviously it's an expensive bit of kit to buy i've got a mega a fluke a metro and a tis mft pro so
for some reason i've got four testers because i just like to buy these things and
play about with them they're all very good they're all very good at what they do
but i do like to to pratt about with with those and have something
something very flash on the van the metro is a very good bit of kit that's the main tester i use
other than that uh it's it's really basic hand tools uh basic drills cutters
saws that sort of stuff um there's nothing really that they're all essential but there's
nothing really that sort of stands out as as being a completely killer
killer item but you do need to make sure you've got a decent test and some people are very sort
of mega versus fluke but there's a whole range of different ones out there dialogue ethos
no experience of those but they all do the same sort of job they all have their proponents they
all have their positives and negatives and it's just a case of yeah if you can get up close and
personal with them at a trade show if you're thinking of investing in them then great do so
you might find something that you like over over others how much you have to invest in power tools
yeah that's a good question they um obviously there's different brands out there with different
price points when i started the business i had about 14k to play with but that doesn't mean
i was flash with the cash half of that went on the van and i had to spend an awful lot on other
things like accreditation and advertising and just just getting the business running so i invested
in ryobi stuff which a lot of people sort of do that face when you say that because it's kind of
known as diy kit i find it very good for its price points um most people will have makita um dewalt
um milwaukee that sort of gear and that all comes in at a higher price point it's all good stuff
but i don't see that it's necessarily any better than what i've got and my colleague nigel he's all
makita based but he's had as many burnt out drills in his life as as i have with my cheaper ryobi kit
and i have the advantage that no one's going to nick my batteries on site because no one else
uses it whereas if you go to site with a load of makita's the plumber's got the same and the
builder's got the same and you know when you're not looking they're going to be swapping out
their dove batteries for your good ones but um but it's essential to have a lot of good battery gear
and to have some good five amp power batteries or some powerful batteries uh i have up there
for example a 230 volt multi tool never use it because i've got a battery one and it's
it's a bit you might look at the two and think well same with drills and things like that and
i look at them and think well the chorded one is so much cheaper i i could just go with that
if you've got a battery one it's going to be so much better because you've got the portability and
half the time you're working with the power off anyway because either it's you're investigating or
trying to work around a fault where it's tripped off and you can't get the stuff on or you're
um you're actively working on the wiring and you you can't power it up so it's it's
it's good to have good battery gear and battery based gear but you don't necessarily have
to spend out on the high-end stuff and you can get away with with lesser brands i find
every people out there when i go away always says go like higher brands than that but well you don't
want to go too far down the stair you don't want to be buying um you know something from audi or
something like that but by the same token you know it's a case of finding a sort of sweet
spot between price versus performance yeah i mean ryb has done all right with me um i i i like so
i've i've lost a sore and a drill over the years because i've burned them out but so there's nige
on his makita stuff so you know i don't see it performing any less than those sort of marks dude
for its price worked out uh also a fast battery charger if you have battery base because when you
buy a drill it will come with some rubbish little slow charger that you know it takes six hours
of a fast charger that again it's all cost but you need it on site to be able to charge
your battery within an hour to keep going um would you say uh were you invested in yeah
so what you've invested to make your business and get it going has you have you earned back
would you say over the years of folk oh yeah yeah um because i because it's a limited company
and i invested my redundancy money in it effectively uh as far as the books go it
was treated as what they call a director's loan i was a director of the business and i effectively
loaned that money to my company to get it going and then over the years that director's loan has
been paid off so that money has come back um as a sort of a tax-free sum an amount of money that
was owed back to me so every time someone paid me um in cash if it was officially on the books then
that would be processed as i put it down i'd receive that cash and i wouldn't put
it in the business bank account it would be it would be taken off the director's loan
and over the course of time director's loan got paid back so i've my investment in it
has come back in the meantime obviously i've earned a living where i'm paying myself a wage
every i don't make a huge amount of money the idea is to make a small amount on the wages and then to
take a dividend out of the business every now and again you can take two grand tax free out
the business as a dividend and then after that you can take further dividends that have a tax
applied to it but it works out it's pretty amazing they don't really tell you anything
a lot about how business works when you start off your own business driving united states
honestly everyone's going to start their own business we actually have to know quite a lot well
but it's funny because when i when i was a whippersnapper like youtube so i never saw
myself as being in management or in business for myself or anything i thought i was going
to ask i remember being sent on some kind of management course when i was
working for the telecommunications company i used to work for and i was thinking back in the
90s i'm never going to need this but you never know what's going to happen down the line um
you can find yourself obviously wanting to further your career one way
or another and that may be that you end up in a management position or that you end up
working for yourself and those those kind of skills you know yeah you may think at a young age
that's never going to happen i'm never going to have those skills obviously
with with the when you're working comes confidence comes familiarity with what you're doing
comes knowledge of what you're doing and if you happen to be a good person uh a good manager of
people then then you may well be put into some kind of management position or you may well end
up going alone and taking on staff and finding yourself in that position but um whether you cope
or not with it you'll find out at the time but never write it off for something that won't happen
like i do things it's um you never know what the future holds hopefully rays of sunshine for you
chaps i'm sure you're with your expert teaching here and your your skills your uh you'll all uh