What have we learned in our first year?
In short, we have found starting up a business to be rewarding and stressful in equal measure.
On the upside, the joy of winning business and then sharing the client’s excitement as a job goes through the various stages of a project can be exhilarating. Getting paid is obviously a great feeling too, reminding us that the sacrifices we are making now could pay off in the future as we look to provide for our young family.
Looking back on the last year we have not been able to strike the proper work life balance we idealised at the outset, with too many late nights working and very little time being spent on family time or socialising with friends. We must strive to do better in this regard (whilst adhering to pandemic restrictions) and set aside time for a bit of self-care as it will impact us further down the line if we keep up the relentless work schedule.
Winning and Servicing Work
We definitely won enough work in our first year but the lockdown months of March to June meant we had a build-up of delayed projects and new enquiries. We couldn't visit clients and had no additional childcare options so it has been challenging in the sense that we would normally have a more spread out work calendar.
To become more efficient and make better decisions, a few months in, we invested in a project management tool to help us schedule our workload better - Monday.com. This has been a great tool which has informed our decision making and let us know if projects are straying. If they are, we then rectify the situation by adapting and keeping customers abreast at the earliest opportunity. An example of this was in July when we took the decision to push out new enquiries until November so we can catch up on current work and that is proving to be a wise decision as we are starting to get to grips with the workload and cashflow is steadier.
Having taken on 25 projects in our first year with a good chunk of them continuing into our second year we are in a strong position moving forward which we are really excited about.
Different Types of Jobs Across Various Regions
We have been pleased that we have been able to find work for our core services, two storey extensions, single storey extensions, internal alterations and renovations and interior design. Just today we received a bespoke housing enquiry and that is something we are very keen on. It’s also been pleasing to get a core of work in East Renfrewshire where we are based and then a pleasant surprise to get additional jobs outside of this area in places such as Bearsden, Bridge of Weir and Lugton.
Hard Decisions
One of our major business decisions this year was to introduce a charge for an initial consultation after originally offering this service for free. This was a daunting decision and not something we took lightly as it will ultimately mean we lose out on some good opportunities.
Our reasoning is as follows…
We have worked out that we put in a minimum of 5 hours work per enquiry and thus we have found that enquiries can take up a significant amount of our working week, 4 enquiries a month equates to a minimum of 20 hours work with no guarantee of getting paid for any and it takes time away from our current projects (In May this year we received 10 enquiries).
Our current clients are paying us to do work for them and we think it is only fair that we show them a level of commitment by setting time aside to do their work. The temptation is absolutely there to drop everything, delay customers and try and get more money on the books but we feel in the long run it will pay off if we complete the jobs we have on to a high quality rather than in a rushed half-baked way.
Furthermore, the quotation we give after the meeting deducts the initial consultation cost from the overall price of the job so we aren't making any more money off customers if they go with us!
Growing our Network
Finally, another big learn relates to our local industry knowledge. We have grown our network this past year including builders, structural engineers, quantity surveyors, landscape gardeners and even asbestos specialists. We have created a database and always vet any suppliers we use. This knowledge will continue to grow and we are under no illusions as to how important that network will be in our own success going forward.
What are our goals for this year?
After sitting in on a 2-day RIBA ‘Confronting the climate emergency’ virtual conference, as part of her continued professional development, Lorna wants us to be much more climate conscious with our designs and a goal for the future will be to become Passivhaus accredited.
We would like to see our current jobs through to completion and then update our website with more start to finish imagery to showcase the hard work we have done so far. We would also like to win roughly the same business again in the second year with the view of being more efficient at turning round the work (obviously the pandemic will have a say).
Our current conversion rate is 59% (this does not include customers that we have quoted and may get back to us in the future) and we project the time from Initial Consultation to Building Warrant Granted is 7 to 8 months.
We will also introduce Revit to our Practice this year which will allow a bit more functionality for our clients at design stage in particular and it could well speed up our turnaround on some projects.
Introducing Revit will also set in motion a longer-term goal of adding Virtual Reality (VR) house tours at design stage as part of our service offering. This may not be for next year, but it is very much on our radar.
Thank you!
We’d like to thank all of our customers, suppliers, friends and family for supporting us through what has been an unprecedented year. Here is to many more.