Clutchy

This is a good point. Fortunately I'm neither married nor could deal with working with my partner, fake or otherwise. We would go mad. I suspect it would be fairly easy to 'show' the hours if questioned however

Any tree company IMO should be limited, for the liability side of things. Do not assume your house will not be taken, if you have signed any director guarantees which are sometimes hidden in lease agreements, they most certainly can take your personal assets If you're a subbie its probably a lot less important/worthwhile. The advantages as limited if you're really raking it in could be: - Pay you and your wife £12,500 PA (no income tax, small bit of NI) and so long as there are 2 directors, you can offset 4k of employers NI - The rest pay as dividends after corp tax (although each year this advantage is being lessened). Very loosely speaking: Self employed on a 45k income you would take home £34,129 Company with 2 directors would be closer to £39k take home after paying corp tax on the 21k left after wages Factor in an accountant at £500, you probably are better off limited, if you have a wife. If you are a sole director, its negligible. Please bare in mind ive roughly worked this out on site, so could be off a bit

JA Greenwaste Dropped pin Google Maps MAPS.APP.GOO.GL Hatfield, Welwyn Garden City, Royaume-Uni literally take anything £30 a load iirc not far from you

I'm not sure if I misunderstood, but I'm definitely reliant on my business and the wage it pays me to survive. I kinda meant the more we discuss pricing, running costs etc people may find they could be earning more and perhaps have been selling themselves short Or for one tree surgeon that a do a bit of basic consulting for, until we sat down and went through daily income sheets + true running costs he didn't realise he was actually running at a slight loss, and was just slowly eating away at the 50k bb loan he got out.

Schools yes, but not that month. Council no, unless you're the main contractor I've found it to be peanuts, we have worked for 3 in the past. Some council stuff on framework can be good, the process is arduous, and even so quoting against other tree surgeons who are cheap will ensure you have to be cheaper 🫣

Oh yeah don't worry, I accept tree surgey isn't worth scaling unless you're aiming for 10 plus teams, too much of a me too business. Although from what I can tell through instagram, Thors trees seems to be doing it very well, but it's of no interest to me. I like our set up, just need to keep the work coming in. I'm happy with 2 gangs, and growing the other business we have which is linked (access hire mewps etc) which is more scalable and only requires 1 person per machine. In regards profit, our spend that month was £27,800 + VAT all in, so a very good month for profit. Something like £900ish a day This has been our best month though but its been a trend heading this direction

Thats my bad, meant to of said 2 teams

I understand why you want to do this, and we have done it as a company in our first couple of years and its terrible, especially if you are on price. If you're referring to a big tree company in shenley with a few council contracts, then good luck You will be on price and subbies get given the 'return list' which is all the work the main gangs directly employed handed back for one reason or another. Most common reason - can't do it for that money, f that send it back Or its over a major road where it needs TM which they won't pay for and so on. More often than not, its underpriced hard work. Unless you have a relationship with the owner, you will struggle hard. Even if you do, you would be hard pushed to do much more than £350ish a day before being full and that's likely doing 5 reductions on medium sized trees. So you need to be fast too. You also need to be able to withstand 30 day payment terms with some of them, which I assume you will struggle with? Your compliance on some subbie work needs to be bang on which again, you probably don't have Sorry, probably not what you wanted to hear, but good luck.

We did for example, £49.1k + VAT last month, team of 3 and team of 2, sometimes 1 team of 4 and 1 grinding etc. I float about, do office stuff and jump into a team 2-3 days a week. That was on 23 working days last month, so average of £2,130 + VAT a day. Definitely not 2.5k per gang, I wish. To average that you you need to be hitting 3k+ days sometimes to make up for the lower days, we had 2 x 3k+ days that month. Definitely could of done more if we had more work, boys had quite a few early finishes, but if it keeps them happy I'm more than happy with this amount. Not sure why everyone is always so coy about talking money on here. Work wise, 30% domestic, 40% buildings sites, remaining was mixed commercial.

Was it a domestic property?

Nice research, makes me feel happier, but I struggle with being happy with the present, which I know is a toxic mindset to have. I don't think you quite need that much turn over, on £540k + VAT per year on a 2 man team it should still leave £200k ish net profit £90k for the owner £100k retained in the company. My fear is always putting it back into the business, you keep growing, but 5 years down the line it goes tits up you never actually pulled the profit out yourself The real hard part is consistency in keeping the daily earnings up, pretty easy when the works there but we burn through it so fast. Point taken regarding subbies, but what's not been factored in is that as an owner you are likely earning a lot less than the subbie for a few years whilst building, which I think should later be made up. £5-60k also sounds acceptable with benefits in fairness

Not at I'll, will be sending you a PM if you don't mind. You are right, my highest paying clients are all based on relationships and didn’t come from advertising

Costs could be the issue, but the only area I could save on without devaluing the service I deliver would be on advertising and that's only 2k a month. I think its always easier/better to bring in more money then to try and cut I don't 'think' I've grown to an unsustainable level, I've only been going full time 3 years, I'm 27, if it all goes wrong so be it, I'm not that bothered but I need to try and make it work. I'm pretty sure I can handle more stress, although this year I've started to find grey hairs 😅 Ultimately, if it fails it's because I haven't tried hard enough and that's on me. I know I could push harder, and I should I think the question I need the answer too is it even possible to make it work with this business? This month I thought it was, I made 20k profit after wages and 27k outgoings but now the works quiet haha, so maybe not?? So conflicted, young and probably naive

Indeed, and the battle to keep my company going, in my opinion, is worth £90k a year to me for 2 x teams Or ill just take £50k a year as a contract climber (if I was) or more likely, back to my office job which would pay the same (50k), if not more with way less hassle, and I haven't got the worry of a wage bill every month Perhaps I'm on my own when it comes to placing a high value on the stress, extra time and capital investment etc of running my own tree business

True, but its very rare anyone in this industry is actually selling their arb business, unless they have decent contracts with most don't. Most sell for the assets and small token for their phone number Ok, If you don't want to state a minimum take home, maybe state you minimum net profit or EBITDA for X gangs I feel the more we talk the better it is for all as there are a lot not running it as a business and it could be very helpful for them

Na she has her own proper job I do appreciate the perks are worth quite a bit of money though. Especially as you pay a lot less tax on dividends compared to full PAYE... for now. That's slowly being erroded however

What do you reckon? Seems hardley worth it for much less, baring in mind you are responsible for 5-6 other salaries. Not just as a manger, literally their salaries

Ok, I appreciate this is going to be somewhat regional, but caveat it if you feel necessary. I'll start first, given high end climbers in the south east are on crica £240 a day (£57k ish per year accounting for 4 weeks off ) I think £90k per annum for an owner... based on 2 gangs and I feel it should increase accordingly based on the number of gangs you run. Especially as an owner is almost certainly doing more than 40hrs per week. Thoughts?

We are the contractors for the biggest HA in london so potential for me to help.

Hi, please PM me the block management companies details and I'll get in touch to see if they will let me look and quote for any subsequent works that may be required. Many thanks

Na but have for a non paying customer. Wasn't too bad, all done online and settled in arbitration Most lose their bottle well before court once I start sending the legal letters via higgins. Can't rate them enough. Used them on a dodgy builder 2 months ago who I thought got on with me really well and was loaded but just simply ghosted me when it came to payment. Sent a late payment demand with added compensation and interest, was in my account the day they recived the letter, including my costs and above charges. Unreal. After 2 months of waiting So would do the same if it was an ex employee, not that any of my guys are like that.

Its written into our contracts that it can be deducted from the final salary payment. Any remaining balance (if they refuse) can be processed through small claims with minimal effort and £30-£80 legal costs

On the rare occasion anyone pays with cash these days it boils my piss having to come back and collect it. The last person who I prewarned twice to have it ready as the job was quite a ways from our normal area 'forgot'. So I politely told him he would need to drop it off at my house in the week or I'd have to charge petrol money and my time to collect. He made the 2 hour round trip. Doubt he will forget again for the next tradesman

If I'm honest, no I haven't but it's very common practice in a lot of industries and my sister who has HR qualifications and is an HR manager says its all good. Worst case, they sue me for what left right? Or I don't get paid. It's like a cancellation notice, its kind of like a deterrent rather than something I would ever want to enforce. Also, and this probably sounds very callous (is that how you spell it?) but even with a 1k balance outstanding, people tend to be too short sighted to say yeah sure I'll pay the 1k to leave and earn 6k a year more elsewhere. It's mutually beneficial and I think fair. If this was against the law, I feel it would severely discourage investment into employees

Would look like this - Training Agreement: Undertaking to repay costs incurred during external training courses This Agreement is dated 01/10/2022 and is made between: NAME, the employee And Clutchy tree care lol, the employer Whereas: The Employee is employed by the Employer as a Arborist The Employee has obtained a place in relation to a course of study leading to the award of: Chainsaw maintenance, cross cut and small fell CS30,31 (20-12) Climbing and Aerial rescue CS38 (20-13) Chainsaw from rope and harness CS39 (21-08) It is hereby agreed and declared that: In consideration of the Employer agreeing to meet the costs of the Courses which are set out in the Schedule to this Agreement (“£2,046”), the Employee undertakes to reimburse to the Employer the costs if: He or she voluntarily withdraws from or terminates the Course early without the Employer’s prior written consent; He or she is dismissed or otherwise compulsorily discharged from the Course, unless the dismissal or discharge arises out of the discontinuance generally of the Course; His or her employment is terminated by the Employer for any reason prior to completion of the Course; or He or she resigns from the employment of the Employer either prior to completion of the Course or within (24 months) after the end of the Course, except that, in the latter case, the amount which would otherwise be due to the Employer shall be reduced by [1/24th] part for each complete calendar month after the end of the Course during which the Employee remains employed by the Employer. To the extent permitted by law, the Employee agrees that the Employer may deduct a sum equal to the whole or part of the Costs due under the terms of this Agreement from his wages (as defined in section 27 of the Employment Rights Act 1996) or from any other allowances, expenses or other payments due to the Employee. The amount due to the Employer under the terms of this Agreement is a genuine attempt by the Employer to assess its loss as a result of the termination of the Employee’s employment and takes into account the derived benefit to the Employer. This Agreement is not intended to act as a penalty on the Employee upon termination of his employment. SIGNED: …………………………………………. [employee] SIGNED: ………………………………………….. [Clutchy Director]