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Honest question for you on this - what size city or town are you in, and what training or background did you have? I've been thinking about doing a basic handyman service in a mountain town where my parents live if I end up there later next year.
It's a mid-sized town of about 100k people, but I've really only advertised to a few thousand in one tiny corner of it. Most of my customers live within 10 minutes of me.
I'm a plumber by training, but I'm naturally a bit of a generalist and a life-long tinkerer and have done some work around my own house. I did commercial plumbing for 10 years before I went self-employed. That's the only thing I'm trained at. Nowdays I just watch a lot of YouTube tutorials and sometimes just wing it, too.
Going self-employed was by far the scariest thing I've ever done - lost countless nights worrying about it - but once I jumped, everything just worked out. Probably the best decision I've ever made. Literally today, a customer told me "everything I touch turns to gold." As a plumber, I got a "thank you" maybe twice in 10 years. Now I get genuine gratitude almost daily.
If you'd asked me about going self-employed as a plumber or electrician, I'd have said it's gonna be a battle. But as a handyman, your customer base is way wider thanks to the broad range of services. Plumbing is still a non-negligible part of what I do, but I'd struggle if that was all I offered. Painting is something I do so much that it's one of the few trades I'd actually recommend specializing in.
Go for it - seriously. Even failure isn't as bad as the regret of never trying.
Thanks for sharing this, this is great to know. I'm thinking about a backup plan that doesn't require spending 4 years apprenticing in a trade. I'm too old for that type of career change, but I've been doing my own handyman stuff for so long that painting, patching drywall, installing sinks, etc. sounds like a typical visit to anyone in my family. Though, it's also because in the area where they live trades are a 40 minute drive away and are so slammed they never answer calls. If you don't know the plumber personally, he's not coming to your place without an appointment weeks out. My parents are getting up there in age, and the job market is weird, so it's goo to hear that apparently I've been training for this my whole life.