Subbying to subsidise going self employed

Lagentium · Nov 23, 2013

Afternoon all, I was wondering if anyone had gone down the route of subbying to an agency while trying to pick up business as self employed as I'm sure I'm not the first person to think about this. Bit of background, I'm 29, time served, 17th edition with 2391 and CompEx, been at the same company since leaving school. I just don't want to leave it too late so I can have a decent crack at being self employed, any advice would be great.

Cheers

Guitarist · Nov 23, 2013

My advice is to retrain to a career that doesn't involve climbing around in low-pitched lofts, grovelling around on cloakroom floors sorting bonding, and explaining to stupid customers why the "wires twisted together are dangerous".
Do it before you get old and cynical like most of us

CTID · Nov 23, 2013

I was lucky to fall in subbing for a few firms local to me so never touched agencies. I do however know of a couple of lads who came through agencies and got more work with the companies after proving themselves. It can lead to contacts within the industry.

Word of the warning though, I have also come across lads, sent from agencies, talked into subbing direct to the agencies customer, this is not allowed so the subby was told to tell agency they had found work elsewhere and promised lots of work, left the agency, come the end of the job a few weeks down the line, the contractor failed to answer calls about the next job. This leaving the lad out of work, having to go back to agency and feed them a story as to why they were back.

Lagentium · Nov 23, 2013

Guitarist, I see your point, but I don't mind the manual side of it, I love a bit of sleeves rolled up crap as it makes the better jobs seem even better! But thanks for your advice. CTID, that's my angle really to try and make a few contacts and move on from there. It's just making that step!

Cheers for the replies so far

Guitarist · Nov 23, 2013

Lagentium said:
Guitarist, I see your point, but I don't mind the manual side of it, I love a bit of sleeves rolled up crap as it makes the better jobs seem even better! But thanks for your advice. CTID, that's my angle really to try and make a few contacts and move on from there. It's just making that step!

Cheers for the replies so far

So did I many years ago