Working Together

My services - how can I help you? - You tell me!

The truth is that starting or growing a small business is a very personal thing. As everything depends on you, the entrepreneur, the type of support your business will need will be very personal and thus unique.

One of the reasons I think that I enjoy small business support, and that I am quite good at it, is that I am quite flexible in how involved I can become with a business, and in what way. My past work has ranged from the nursery business, where I was very involved and basically set up an ran all of the non-childcare parts of the business, to the business consultancy where I was just as involved but only in a specific, smaller, side of the business (the website, online store and public training courses). At the other extreme, with the organisational psychology consultancy I was just doing the time consuming legwork of extracting the data from the online questionnaire, inputting it into the model and extracting the results.

So how we work together is up to you - maybe you need someone to help think through whether your business is a good idea, or what the first steps would be. Maybe there is a very time intensive, repetitive part of your business which sucks your time away from everything else, maybe you’re so busy keeping up with the admin that you don’t have the time or the energy to work out more efficient and effective ways of doing it? How we work together starts with you, what do you need?

Having said that - here’s what i’ve got some experience with already

My pitch to you is that whatever you’re struggling with I can help you work out what to do about it. That might take some time and trial and error (though it might not) but in 4 years of doing small business support full time I have come across a lot of problems before and probably have at least some idea of what you need in regards to:

Business development/strategy

Market research

Writing business plans

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

Marketing

Squarespace website design

Event management

Staff management and training

Staff recruitment and induction

Rota management

Regulatory compliance/navigating bureaucracy

File management

Conference/trade show exhibition retail

E-commerce

Product development and stock/sale and shipping logistics

Cashflow management

Income generation via invoicing, POS (Point of Sale, i.e. card machines) and direct debits

Payroll management

Management accounting (i.e. internal accounting) and financial projection

Negotiating with landlords

Managing tenants and rental property

Copy writing

Digital design (to a degree, I also know some good properly qualified designers)

Document design

Task outsourcing (I have a good network of printers, designers, artists, trainers, coaches etc who I trust)

Our relationship

First Steps

As a first step we can meet for an exploratory conversation absolutely free of charge or obligation for a couple of hours and see if we think we can work together and if I can deliver something of value to you. We would then usually agree a first project or task for me and evaluate after that if you would like to continue paying for my services. Before undertaking this first task I will send you my agreement of work to sign an return (see button at the bottom of this page).

As mentioned before, I work strictly freelance, so I am not an employee and you don’t need to set up regular work hours (unless you want to) or do PAYE or NI, or pay towards annual leave or an employer pension for me, I will simply invoice you at the end of the month.

our working pattern

For the first task, and in our ongoing working relationship, I will give you an estimated cost and an estimate of what date/time I can get the work done. Going forward, we can agree deadlines and estimated costs of any regular tasks and do ad-hoc cost estimates and deadline’s for ad-hoc pieces of work as they come up.

You are my client and I will endeavour to fit around you if I can, but I also have other clients so if you need something done by a certain date, please let me know as early as possible so I can see if I can commit to getting it done by then.

I work from home remotely most of the time but we can work out how much, and of what, you would like me to do for you I can do remotely and how much needs to be in person.

While the nature of what I do for you may change over time, I like to know at any given time what you are expecting from me so that I can be sure I’m delivering good value for you. So if you make a change to what I’m doing for you we will need to briefly discuss and agree that first.

If there’s anything you’d like to know that’s not covered here, download my agreement of work using the button below and have a peruse.

my fee

My rate is £20/hr while working and I charge half that (£10/hr) for travel time, for any travel over 15 minutes, if you would like me to come to attend a meeting or event as part of my work with you. Any expenses are invoiced for as well, as agreed with you first either on a case by case basis or by agreeing general categories of expenses.

I like to keep things fairly simple and I will produce an invoice at the end of the month for you that lists what I was doing and for how long, as well as any expenses incurred, on a given day.