“The training was brilliant, spot on. We did CS30-31 chainsaw work and maintenance and felling of small trees, and CS38-39 aerial tree work with a chainsaw and rescues. If I can find the time and funding, there’s lots of other training I would love to do - topping out trees, digger driving and perhaps chemical spraying certificates.
The qualifications I now have are such a bonus for the business. I have always had to pass on tree work to other people, now I will be able to do it all. We won’t have to wait for other contractors and tree work is a big part of the business, plus my quiet time for garden maintenance later in the year is when it gets busy for trees. And we could be called on to help with storm damage.
By this time next year I would like tree work to account for 15-25% of my business, especially after I put it on the side of the van. I don’t advertise at all, just use the van to tell people what I do and nearly all my jobs are through recommendations.
I would like to do more training though that obviously depends on finances and having time. The CS30-31 and CS38-39 courses covered three weeks, there were two of us going and we weren’t working or earning the whole time, so the total cost was about £3000.
Now I have all my equipment, which isn’t cheap, the insurance and certificates, I can really get started.
This is so different from what I used to do. I started training as a butcher before I even left school but I got fed up with working for someone else. I had done a lot of landscaping and people often told me my work was good enough to do it professionally. I started in March 2006 and this year I’ve been fully booked from May to September.
Geoff Hill who worked for me last year is a real grafter. Now he’s taking on a franchise of my business to do the maintenance work I can’t fit in (and I’ll do the landscaping work for him). At the moment we’re cutting about 60 lawns every week and in the last two days I did 34 jobs! Now I can add tree work to plants, patios, decking, fencing, walls, paving, full landscaping and garden clearance. And Geoff might be busy enough in 2009 to do some training himself and perhaps take on a lad?
Train to Gain has been great, especially Ange Brockett the Broker Manager from Lantra who helped organise everything through Leeds College of Technology, particularly the paperwork for the funding. You pay the full amount, then get 70% back. The idea came from a leaflet from Business Link, who I’d visited when I first wanted to start the business, hoping for a grant, but I couldn’t get one. They kept in touch, introduced me to Ange and one thing led to another…”