How To Earn More From Your Trade
Learning a trade is one of the most useful ways to make a living. Whatever the trade is, it doesn’t matter, if you have the skills required to excel in a specific area you will almost always be able to find employment and earn a living. Trades can vary from the extremely common – like plumbers or electricians to the slightly more obscure, like coopers and cobblers. What they are though? Trade is essentially something that is not a profession, it is often manual in nature and it generally involves making or producing something. So, if this is your route of choice for a career once you have left school, the next question is, how are you going to ensure that you end up earning the sort of income that you aspire to? Here are a few ideas to help you take your trade to the next level.
There is always more money in management
One of the biggest limiting factors for people who pursue a career as a tradesman is the fact that they never escalate things above the trade. In other words, once they have learned the business of being a plumber or a bricklayer, then that is where a lot of people stop. If you don’t continue to upskill yourself beyond that initial point, then you will always be a plumber, or a bricklayer and you will always earn accordingly. If, however you decided to do some studying, perhaps you enrol to do some building and construction courses online then suddenly you will have the potential to be more than just a bricklayer. That deeper understanding will help put you on track to managing teams and people. Yes, you will still be a bricklayer, those skills will be with you forever, but you will also have another tier of skills and that is where you will start to earn more.
Employ people
Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur but for the bold, it is a great route to follow. To use the plumbing example again, you will quickly discover that if you are the only plumber in your business then your earning potential will be limited to the amount of time in the day that you can attend to clients. If, however you are employing other plumbers then suddenly it is other people working for you and earning for you. The more people you have the more management is required but similarly, with the risk comes to the reward of earning more.
Create annuity income
There is nothing better than earning an income without doing anything. In this regard look to offer your services on a retainer basis. Let clients know that for a small monthly fee you will be on call to them seven days a week, around the clock. This may well require that you hire a few people to help cover the timetable, but what it also means is that you are going to be earning no matter if your services are needed or not.