Retired Climber

3 minutes ago, John Shutler said:

it depends what your rates are, I tend to charge between £150 + VAT and £165 + VAT an hour. but then we don't trim many conifer hedges 

It's a couple of blokes, a ladder and a hedge cutter. I personally think that more than 100 quid an hour would be a bit steep. 

14 minutes ago, Mick Dempsey said:

In reality though you could sell a few cars a year and trouser the profit.

Of course. However, I think the OP said a couple of cars a week would 'do him'. Selling 100 cars a year is not a hobby, it's a business. 

3 hours ago, eggsarascal said:

I think the biggest thing he missed is the title of the thread, Sidelines!

 

All of a sudden he's telling me about being in the motor trade, tax, vat, warranties, etc. Ya know all those things that have got nothing to do with sidelines.

Any sideline is taxable income ( off the top of my head I think the limit is a profit of over a grand). As such, all of the above are applicable. 

300 sounds about right. You'd be pushing it charging much more for 3 hours. 

What specifically do you need help with? IMO, you'd be better off looking for someone who knows very little about tree work. Most business issues aren't arb related, and an arb specialist will generally know what everyone else in the arb world knows. 

We've all had a similar thought at some point. It's easy to look at such things with rose tinted glasses though, especially when you've bought the car from someone local or someone you know. 

What you've done with this car is not a true representation of what you could do with many cars. If you were dealing cars for an income you'd have VAT, tax, warranties, buying a lemon, trade insurance and all sorts of things taking a slice out of your pie.

Dealing in bangers has got to be a hard way to make a living. You'd need to sell multiple cars every day to make it worth bothering with. 

If the first 2 projects are anything to go by, this is going to be a cracking thread. 

How many quotes do you do? Do you do enough for the downturn in conversions to be statistically significant? 

In my not so humble opinion, if you want to join a mastermind group or find a mentor, make sure they know nothing about the world of arb. You can find out anything you need to know about arb specific stuff on this very forum. What you will lack is all the stuff arbs don't know. If you want business advice, don't ask another tree worker.  

Yep, they are excellent. Little bit of smoke until it starts doing its thing (gasification I think they call it), then hardly any smoke at all. I've only used genuine solo stove ones, but Chinese knock off ones are an awful lot cheaper, and some look identical. 

Take some photos from much further back so we get some context. Close ups of trees with no points of reference for scale are of little use. 

2 hours ago, Ian C said:

Why’s that then? Surly more pages, more content so more time and effort to build it ???? Didn’t know you were so clued up on web design.

Sorry lads; I had intended to go into more detail on this. I'll give a proper explanation when I've got a bit more time. In its most basic form, the reason we use the 'how many pages do you need?' as one of the really quick ways of weeding out less competent web designers is that by asking the question they are showing that they fundamentally misunderstand what they should be doing. Any designer who asks us how many pages we need isn't going to have the skills / knowledge/ mindset required to build a decent site; they are simply thinking about the process in the wrong way. 

It may appear that a 5 year old can understand that a site with more pages costs more, but we should really be setting our sights a little higher than doing what a 5 year old would understand. And yes, I'm aware of the Einstein quote about being able to explain something to a child of a similar age. 

If there's one thing to learn here, its don't think like a tree surgeon when designing a website. I'll include some very specific examples of this in my fuller response. Arbs almost universally include some simple mistakes on their websites that will undoubtedly harm their conversion rates. 

You might want to delete the first word of your advert. 

I wouldn't consider reducing the height of those. I'd thin them and leave a few of the best ones. 

Pictures must be deceiving, none look anywhere near 30m tall. 

There is no specific law you need to worry about, per se. It will all come down to a test of reasonableness. As long as you are being reasonable, and not causing a 'nuisance' (using the legal definition), you have nothing to worry about. 

21 minutes ago, peds said:

West coast of Ireland, we've been sitting on the site for a couple of years now, but we were finally approved for a mortgage a few days ago, so hopefully this summer will be a busy one.

I hope you enjoy it, I know I would. 

16 minutes ago, peds said:

Not much, it's about 20m by 30m, and appearances can be deceiving, it's an utter hole. We are renting from a wing of the wife's family whilst we build our own home, and this small patch of land was a rubbish heap for decades. Old tractor parts, silage plastic, baling twine, broken glass, remains of burnt bags of household waste, you name it, we've got it. I've done what I can with the place, but it's disgusting out there.
Hopefully we'll be moved out by Christmas, and I can start properly, on around 1.2 acres, of much better land. Established woodland, stream coming off the mountain, 150m laneway from the road... and no bloody shreds of plastic coming out of the ground.

I'm not a fan of the broken glass or plastic but usually my favourite part of any garden is the bit that's hidden away and used for very utilitarian purposes. You can keep your finely manicured lawns, show me the best place to have a bonfire. Your next step sounds perfect; I'm jealous. Where is the world are you? 

13 hours ago, peds said:

I've got 5 little chicks that survived, from 6 hatched, of 8 eggs sat on. Hoping for mostly girls, but at least we can eat the boys.

 

 

They are around 7 weeks old now. Their mother, Mother Clucker, suddenly lost interest in them at around 5 and a half weeks, after doing a great job of raising them, so they fend for themselves now, and mum has gone back to hanging with the other six girls. 

 

The father, Harry, is a mean and spiteful bird, and he's doing a great job. It'll be sad to replace him later in the summer, but at least we'll have a spare bird available to honour the arrival of any cherished guests.

Nice space. How much land do you have there? 

1 hour ago, RickandMorty said:

So people are decided on keeping chickens.... maybe I shall just get a puppy 🐶...

Don't forget, you can't eat dog eggs. 🤣

4 hours ago, topchippyles said:

You talk some bollocks 🤭

Just because you don't understand it, that doesn't mean it's bollocks. Sit back and see where this thread goes; you will learn something. 

5 hours ago, Steve Bullman said:

Are you actually serious?

Yes, I'm serious. Why would a client even be telling a designer how many pages there should be? 

15 minutes ago, Steve Bullman said:

The amount of pages being irrelevant 

Care to expand on why my point is nonsense then? Why would any web designer worth his / her salt need to know how many pages the site will have? It's a bit like someone asking for a quote for a tree removal, and the arb asking the client what chainsaw they would like to be used. 

29 minutes ago, Steve Bullman said:

Absolute nonsense 

Which bit? Check a trade, or amount of pages being irrelevant? 

Check a trade, waste of time. 

As far as websites go, find a good designer. A really quick tip I always give is that if a web guy / firm asks you how many pages the website needs at the early stages of 'talks', walk away, they don't know what they are doing. Any designer / web builder with any clue will know that amount of pages is in no way relevant to price. 

58 minutes ago, rodp said:

That's right, neither were expensive saws I don't think, but worth it or not depends upon what you pay for them. That's why I'm asking.

Also, it would appear £150 is without bar and chain, £181 with those ?

Sorry, I always look at ex VAT prices. Yes, 170 quid Inc the VAT. Personally, I can't understand why anyone would buy a saw second hand to save 100 quid or less off of a new one. If I were you I'd be off to the local car boot sale on Sunday, that's how I've always got rid of unwanted saws.