Retired Climber

Fair play to you mate. You've taken advice and got yourself a decent bit of kit there. Welcome to the world of chopping up bits of wood. Stay safe.

Tell her not to go out in the garden in her bloody slippers.

They aren't in the food business, they are in the property business. The mouse shit probably wasn't the least nutritionally valuable thing being served.

Good post. Having staff on the books is one of the main differences between actually having a business and simply 'winging it' to pay the bills.

My first thought is always to make sure there is money in it for you. We always used to use the very rough rule of knowing that an employee will cost you twice their hourly rate. Make sure you can charge them out at more than that.

Haha. That I can believe.

Did you take advice on those discount levels? It's impossible to give accurate advice without data such as your customer lifetime value and your average spend per transaction, but those discounts don't seem optimal to me. There's been a lot of research done by some very knowledgeable teams in this area, and there's a lot of research data available if you want to optimise such things. How exactly are you using these discounts, and where exactly in the customer journey are they being told about them? It's really important when giving discounts that you gain leverage from doing so. If you don't, you are simply giving money away.

Whether they actually know anything or not.

I take your point. Whilst I see your point, I don't agree. I only really post on subjects about which I would consider myself an expert, or at least those in which I have a great deal of experience or expertise. When someone then posts a load of poorly thought out nonsense which contradicts my point (whilst at the same time being full of holes), I tend not to sugar coat my objection. I don't lack humility (far from it in fact), but I do admit to not suffering fools gladly.

I'm not trying to shoot you down, I just don't think that saying a contract isn't worth anything is useful to the OP or anyone else. A contract is incredibly useful when it comes to collecting money owed; nothing more, nothing less. Edit. Have you noticed that those who I "rub up the wrong way", are always those who say something stupid, then get in a strop when I don't agree with them?

I'm not sure what that opinion is, based on what you've written. You said "contracts mean nothing", but you agree you should have one?

Having a contract is still a good idea.

The long and the short of it is this. Get yourself some terms and conditions written, and get them signed before you do any work. That way, you've got something to fall back on if people mess you about. Do make sure you are actually a self employed contractor though.

There is always a contract; it doesn't need to be written. Anyway, if no agreement was made before hand, you'll just have to negotiate when it gets paid. Nothing written on an invoice after the fact will be legally binding. You need to contract prior to acceptance; there's no point adding clauses to an invoice.

In which case, it depends entirely on the contract.