The Start Of YourTradebase

In a new section on our blog, our co-founder Dean gives his view on being a self employed tradesman.

He’ll be updating us once a month on anything from a job he’s currently doing, or some tradesmen tips of his own. Just keep an eye out for the hastag #Deansblog!

Take it away Dean!

The start of YourTradebase

When I first decided to make the jump from employment to self employment I knew that the hours I had to commit to working would increase but I accepted that with the understanding that my pocket would (hopefully) be rewarded and allow me to almost purchase my own free time in the future.

How wrong was I?

After 18 months or so I found myself working near on 100 hours a week, either on the tools, viewing potential jobs and sitting in the office knocking out paperwork whilst trying to build my reputation for being an efficient and professional tradesman.

This working for yourself malarkey wasn’t quite as I had pictured.

The money was definitely better but working after a day on site was gruelling! No spare time meant no play time with the kids and I couldn’t manage more than a grunt when the boss (missus) spoke to me.

I needed to change the way things were.  I didn’t want to continue spending every waking hour working. But knew if I wanted these rewards, all of these tasks and paperwork were part and parcel of the job.

Voice box re-calibrated, I sat down and actually ‘talked’ about the situation with Sharron (the wife) and came to the conclusion that I needed to ease my paperwork chores.  Some way of making the boring bit of my business, well, EASY and less time consuming.

After numerous conversations with Adam (the other co-founder) we started to build a way to literally ‘take the pain out my paperwork’. The first version was basic, and only really for my use, but it soon lifted so much of the weight of paperwork that I had to deal with. Now I was actually able to get back to normal, this meant even managing a few cheeky pints down the pub where I told my friends, and soon they were all wanting to try it out.

That’s when I knew I wasn’t alone, and so YourTradebase was born!

Thanks Dean! Let us know what you think by leaving a comment or tweeting us.