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Our first job was in January 2008. So that's when the business really got started. It's
going pretty well - we've had 42 bookings since we started which is a lot more than
I thought. To date it's been going very well. I've had
quite a few new clients in. I'm finding that most of my clients tend to be agencies who
need a bit of extra freelance support. And also support for pitching for new business.
It's going really well. It's one of these things where it's kind of a gradual increase
of orders and things like that. We run through usually batches of ten. We're looking to increase
that up to 50 a month. I think there's always worries to start with
because you're doing everything yourself. And are you going to get bookings, are you
going to be doing your accounts properly. There's all these kind of worries that come
up, and there's things you never really thought about, and suddenly you're sitting there and
you think 'Ok, do I need to have VAT?', or 'Do I need to pay VAT?
Making sure that the gaps between projects aren't too big; that's probably the main concern.
It can be de-motivating when you have a quiet spell, but that's the nature of freelance
work. For tax advice at the moment I've got a tax
advisor I go and speak to. But at the moment I'm not in a position where I can employ an
accountant, so I guess I'm in a bit of a middle ground that sometimes it's me researching
to find the information, and other times I use my tax advisor for advice.
We have an accountant and that's where we go for tax advice. We do however want to learn
ourselves obviously, so my mum who's the company secretary and me often go to the accountant
and say how do you fill in this form, or whatever. One of the things that working with councils
and things like that is the Construction Industry Scheme, and that's something I knew very little
about, until I called up Revenue and Customs and it's something that's very simple but
it's something that I didn't know anything about, so it's something I had to learn about
and I'm still learning about. To find information on tax I go to the HMRC
website. I'm going to be doing my tax return myself, self-assessment online. We'll see
how well I cope with that. Well my latest piece of news is I've just found out I'm pregnant,
12 weeks. And yes it does change things. But also it gives me that flexibility because
I work from home to be able to return to work hopefully not too long after I'm able.
What keeps me awake at night really is sometimes I just think 'what happens if I don't get
another booking? Or 'what happens if I make mistakes on my tax returns', or 'what happens
if I'm not doing something I should be doing'. I know that sounds a bit bizarre but there's
so many rules and regulations out there and sometimes I think well maybe there's ones
out there I don't know about that I should know about.
In three years time I'd love to have distribution across the UK sorted. Every council, every
person to know about Stairsteady and what it can offer them. But also looking at distributing
across the EU and America. We've got a lot of interest for the product, especially in
America. I would like to go to university but it all depends where the business takes
me.