Clutchy

Couldn't agree more, I'm trying to 'know' more people! I don't think local networking groups are worth much. Well not the ones I've been to. Was a massive circle jerk, the only thing to come out of it were a few domestic jobs.

100% agree Not looking to expand as such as I know margins are so crap in this game its not worth the extra stress. Just trying to find out how to aquire more commercial work I think.

Hoping to get some advice from someone who has progressed their business to the next 'level' as it were. Currently we do around 80% domestic and 20% commercial. By commercial I mean the odd small scale site clearance and pruning for building site preparation - typically projects that take around 4-5 days with a 4 man crew (2 vans, skid steer, 6-8 inch chipper) and bring in around 7-10k + VAT. Rarely do we have any jobs/contracts that exceed £10-15K plus VAT. The remainder of our commercial work is generally for estate agents, working from an arb survey for block management typically. We have sub contracted for large companies with council contracts in London boroughs in the past but struggled to ever consistently make more than 450 + VAT a day for a 2 man team. This isn't something we enjoyed either. I really like working from Arb surveys and the site prep work. We are really good on the H&S side of things and we are CHAS accredited (Although its never actually got us any work directly...) paperwork and response time via email is very good too. Does anyone have any advice on how to pursue more of this kind of work? Haven't had any success on procurement sites as they always seem to be contracts of £200k plus which of course we would never win, nor would I want one client making up the majority of our yearly turn over. Happy to take anyone in the know out for dinner to talk if you could ever spare the time? Hard to find any content online specific to our industry (Open to suggestions if there is, even if it costs to join). Willing to drive pretty much anywhere in the UK for the right conversation. Many thanks

Why? Anyway Managed to get the OP done in 2 days fortunately, still didn't get home until 10pm as there was an emergency call out as soon as we got to the yard at 5pm 🥵. Quoted on an hourly call out rate plus initial attendance fee and said I have no idea how many hours it will take (first time ever, normally just quote high from a pic, but couldn't see what was going on with the trees). Anyway, he said my rate was fine and then used the word Prima facie: adjective 'based on the first impression; accepted as correct until proved otherwise' Had to look it up to know what it meant, will be using that as a caveat with any quotes based off of pictures from now on. Every day is a school day

Yeah definitely prefer removals. Especially as customers so often want a 20 meter tall Conifer hedge reduced to 7 meters but 'I still want it to look nice' - well you can't 😂 So much chip comes off them as well

Conny has to be the most common price cock up, certainly is for us. I'm so scared from misjudging the depth/width of them previously and having super long days that I think we now overprice ourselves out of ever winning them!

I cannot tell you how tempting it was to jump back into the van and go home this morning

So, whats the biggest cock up you've made on a quote? So today we turned up to a job we quoted 1.5 years ago (Subsidence case, took ages for them to allow the fell due to TPO) to take down a twin stem Ash. Didn't bother adding the normal 10% as we have worked for him before at other properties. Quoted in Winter 2019 where we had to lower our prices a bit, couldn't fully see the size of the base (Fence covered it and owner decided to go out before our appointment) and was covered in Ivy. Quoted £975 inc VAT estimated it would take a day, be gone by 2pm 1 van of chip, 1 logs. Not great money I know but was a noob back then. Holy shit, took 1.5hrs to get to Hampstead today, the stems hidden by the Ivy were huge as was the base. Got 50% of the brash down today and some of the front stem. 1 Full van of logs, 1 of chip, going to easily be there another full day, maybe even a third! At least 2 more loads of logs and another for chip 😭 Lots of it needs rigging. Wouldn't dream of saying we need more money, just gotta suck it up I suppose. Not had a bad one like that for a while

Interesting to see so many people thinking the same. Someone made a thread about a tree surgery 'bubble' but didn't expect it to burst until winter! Glad we didn't take on another gang, will just be a shame to not be able to take a fat dividend at the end of the year lol 😆 After chasing the marketing agent calls have started to come in, 3 or 4 a day so will just reduce prices slightly and build up 4 weeks of work hopefully. Got a juicy quote yesterday for a site clearance in a very large garden but quoting against 6 other firms : 0

I think its something to avoid after having a conversation with RT. Short term it works, but its not good long term.

This is exactly what forums are for, thank you for sharing/helping. I can't be the only person who didn't know this 😂 I had the mentality of if it works it works. No need to ask questions...

I'll PM you the details, thank you.

I think so. We are reducing our prices as there's not enough phone calls at the moment. When the calls were coming in thick and fast winning 10-20% was fine. We just kept increasing the ad budget. I'd happily do 100 quotes a month, win 10 and average 1.1-1.7k + vat a day for a 3-4 man team than quote 30 times a month and work for 700 a day. However this seems to have come to an end. Pretty crap business to be in as no one wants to work for profit. Just wages and costs... But you're right, we need to adapt, I just hate the idea of working for peanuts

It is predominantly new work, we have never had a bad review and have tonnes of 5 star reviews on various platforms, just not a whole heap of repeat work. We only win approx 10-20% of quotes (high prices). Well comparatively speaking.

We do get a lot of old customers calling back but thats back when we were really cheap lol and they rarely take us up on the new pricing structure 🤭

We are looking to move the ad words in house or off to somewhere where we have more control of the budget. Currently we spend around 1.2k plus vat a month for a landing page unrelated to our actual website. A company handles all of this and in turn i just get calls and emails from it. I know the leads are from them as it plays a special tone when i answer the call. For example www.treesurgonsnorthlondon.co.uk We have 3 areas (3 separate landing pages). Up until now this has worked really well and allowed us to target very lucrative areas. Our actual website has no spend, we do get calls from it but nothing compared. I know this is a bit naughty but its never been an issue with customers so far. Good point Gav, would like to ascertain if others have felt that or just us!

Bit of a strange one. We have gone from consistently averaging 4-6 calls per day in winter and 9-12 a day in spring / summer time over the last 3 years to 1-2 a day if I'm lucky these last 3 weeks. Has literally gone from insanely busy to dead as a door knob. Is everyone else still really really busy? Nothing has changed with our advertising, so confused and now worried.... Cheers

But could that be because your income is lower per day than what it ought to be? Therefore a higher percentage? Theres so many factors that would vary the percentage but I think 30-40% is about right

Sorry I misunderstood, 113k between 2 is pretty decent. Still, £1,050 inc vat for a 4 man team isn't a business.

You forgot profit... unless you're running a charity of course? 113k inc vat (94k ex) a year for a 2 or 3 man team is terrible. If you're only making that in london or greater London you won't be around for long. I'd be losing 1-2k a month on our 3 man team with those figures. Too many people are in this game to break even... how many other companies/industries run like that.

Oh no...

25 years experience and you'd be happy with £750 on that fell and grind?

I think the real real question is Did they turn up on time? Did they break anything? Were they professional? Did they clean up well? If all of the above is good then the OP has done well and can't be faulted IMO Thanks for the update. Oh one more question... did you have to pay cash?

I bought this a few weeks ago. I can definitely feel it taking the pressure off as you hang upside down but it hurts like **** when I stand back on my feet and gravity compresses my spine again. Going to try again when I'm in less general pain, if it still hurts someone can have it for free if they collect 😬 YOLEO Gravity Heavy Duty Inversion Table with Adjustable Headrest & Protective Belt Back Stretcher Machine for Pain Relief Therapy (Blue): Amazon.co.uk: Sports & Outdoors WWW.AMAZON.CO.UK Shop YOLEO Gravity Heavy Duty Inversion Table with Adjustable Headrest & Protective Belt Back Stretcher...

I've been off work for 5 weeks with a bulged disc. Pain was unbearable for the first 2-3 weeks, lots of strong painkillers. I've been seeing a Physio for 5 weeks using a combination of acupuncture, weird vibrating pads (no idea what it does) and therapeutic ultrasound. Whilst I have massively improved ( I can now walk mostly fine and pain has reduced by 80%) as soon as I bend down or drive for a while etc the pain comes back real bad. Going to start swimming in 2 weeks when the pain is hopefully gone and work on my core but would like to try and osteopath. I don't think this is a good sign at 25 years old. The worst thing about this is I have no idea what caused it, there was no single event that put me in pain.