Start here
What's costing you most right now?
You don't need a business course. You need the one number that's wrong. Pick the problem that sounds like your week and start there — every route below opens with a calculator, not a reading list.
Six honest starting points
Choose the problem, not the topic
Fifteen minutes on the right calculator beats an afternoon of articles.
I'm busy but there's never any money left
Almost always a pricing and recovery problem rather than a workload problem. Start by finding out what an hour of your time actually has to earn.
Customers aren't paying me on time
Work out what the delay is costing, then fix the terms, deposits and follow-up sequence so it stops happening on the next job.
I don't know if my quotes are actually profitable
Test a quote you've already sent against real costs and see the margin before you send the next one.
Tax bills keep catching me out
Set a reserve percentage that comes off every payment, so the bill is already funded when it arrives.
The van and materials are eating everything
Put a real per-hour figure on the van and get materials markup out of guesswork.
I'm thinking about taking someone on
Find the turnover a hire has to generate before it pays, including the costs that never appear on a wage slip.
If you want the full sequence
The order that actually works
Most trade businesses fix these in the wrong order and wonder why growth makes things worse.
- Step 1
Know your costs
True hourly rate, van costs, overheads. Nothing else works until this is right.
- Step 2
Price to survive
Quotes built from your figures, with materials markup and travel recovered.
- Step 3
Get paid on time
Deposits, stage payments, terms and a follow-up sequence you actually use.
- Step 4
Then grow
Reserves, systems and your first hire — only once the first three hold.
Everything else
The seven parts of the business
- Pricing & QuotingWork out what a job actually costs you, then price it so the business survives the year.
- Jobs & OperationsThe enquiry-to-payment system that stops jobs overrunning and evenings disappearing.
- Materials & EquipmentBuying, marking up and controlling the money that leaves before the invoice lands.
- Getting PaidDeposits, staged payments, clean invoices and a chase process you actually follow.
- Business MoneySeparation, reserves, forecasts and honest reviews of the accounts and cards trades use.
- Customers & ReputationWinning better work locally without living on lead platforms.
- Growing the TeamHiring, subcontracting, spending control and getting off the tools deliberately.