Getting your first customers when you've got no reviews and no history

You've registered with HMRC, the insurance is in place, the van's got your number on it. And the phone doesn't ring.

This is the part nobody warns you about properly. The trade you can do; that was the easy bit and you've been doing it for years. What you've never had to do is be the reason somebody picks up the phone in the first place, because until now that was your employer's problem.

Why most of the advice doesn't work yet

Search for where trade work comes from and you'll get a sensible answer. Look after your past customers. Keep your register entries up to date. Be the person other trades recommend. Get your free sources working before you start renting expensive ones.

All of that is right, and none of it is available to you.

We've written that advice ourselves — the four kinds of source is a fair account of where work comes from, and the order it recommends is the order that works. But read it again as somebody in week two. Look after your past customers: you haven't got any. Fix your register entry: you might not be on one yet. Be worth recommending twice: nobody's recommended you once.

The free sources are compounding assets, and compounding takes a starting balance. Yours is zero.

There's a second problem, and it's one our own posts contribute to. The per-trade cost breakdowns — electricians, plumbers — work out whether a paid lead is worth buying using ratios like winning one job in five, or needing to convert nearly everything on smaller work. Those ratios describe a trader who is winning their normal share.

A profile with no reviews, sitting next to three traders with two hundred between them, does not win a normal share. So the maths in those posts is sound and the conclusion still doesn't transfer, because you can't yet hit the conversion rate it assumes. Budget from those figures in month one and you'll spend more per won job than you planned for, and conclude the platform is a con when what's actually happening is that you're new.

The bind, stated plainly

You need reviews to win work. You need work to get reviews.

That's the whole problem, and there's no clever way through it. There are only two ways round it: work that doesn't need reviews because somebody vouches for you instead, and paying for work while you build the reviews up.

The two sources that don't need reviews

Your former employer's overflow. Every firm turns work away — jobs too small to send a van to, the wrong side of town, the customer they'd rather not deal with again, the week they're already full. That work has to go somewhere and it usually goes to whoever asks. You have an advantage no stranger has: they know your work, so recommending you costs them nothing in reputation.

One caveat worth taking seriously. Overflow they don't want is a different thing from their customer list, and the difference matters legally as well as personally. Check whether your contract had a restrictive covenant in it before you approach anybody, and if you're unsure, let work come to you rather than going after it. Falling out with a former employer in your first month costs you a referral source worth more than any single job it might have won you.

Other trades on site. A kitchen fitter meets electrical work every week that he doesn't want and can't do. A builder needs a plumber at second fix and the one he usually calls is booked. These convert better than anything you can buy, because the recommendation carries somebody else's credibility rather than requiring you to have your own yet.

The thing that makes this work isn't networking. It's being reachable and turning up when you said you would, twice in a row. That's a low bar and a surprising number of people don't clear it, which is why it's available to you in month one.

Both of these work for the same underlying reason: somebody else's reputation is standing in for the one you haven't built. That's not a trick, it's how every trade business starts.

Set up the thing that collects reviews, on day one

A Google Business Profile is free, takes an evening, and is where the reviews you're about to start earning will live. It's also what shows up when somebody searches your name after a neighbour mentions you — which happens more than people expect, and is the moment a referral either firms up or quietly doesn't.

Do it before you need it. The profile is worth little empty, and the only way it stops being empty is time, so the sooner it exists the sooner that clock starts.

Then ask for the reviews. Actually ask, at the moment the job's finished and the customer is pleased, with the link already open on your phone. Nobody goes home and works out how to review a tradesperson unaided. A review you don't ask for mostly doesn't happen, and the first five are the hard ones — past that you're being compared with everyone else on roughly even terms.

Yes, use the marketplaces

Here's the part that sounds like it contradicts everything else we've published about what those platforms cost.

Use them anyway, at the start.

Not because they're good value in month one — they're worse value in month one than they'll ever be again, for the conversion reason above. Use them because they're the only source that can put a job in front of you this week, and the free sources cannot. You are not buying value at this stage. You're buying speed, and speed is genuinely worth paying for when the alternative is an empty diary and rent due.

What that means practically: treat it as a bridge, not a plan. Expect the early leads to cost more per won job than the published figures suggest. Keep going long enough to bank a handful of reviews, because those reviews improve every other source you'll ever use, including the free ones. Then judge the platform properly, on won jobs rather than leads — is Checkatrade worth it does that arithmetic, and how the four platforms compare is worth reading before you commit to a year of anything.

The mistake isn't using them. It's still using them the same way in year three, having never built anything that doesn't stop the day you cancel.

What the first ninety days actually look like

Roughly, and in this order.

Tell everyone you've gone out on your own — former employer, the trades you worked alongside, the merchants you buy from. Not a pitch, just the fact. That's a morning's work and it's the highest-return thing you'll do all quarter.

Set up the Google Business Profile in the same week, while you've got time you won't have later.

Take paid work to fill the gaps, and accept it's costing you more than it will next year.

Ask every single customer for a review, and write down who they were and what you did, because in eighteen months that list is the source everyone tells you to look after and you'll wish you'd started it now.

Around month three the mix starts to shift on its own. The reviews make the paid leads convert better. The trades who tried you once ring back. That's the compounding starting, and it only starts once there's something to compound.

One last thing

The hardest part of month one isn't the marketing. It's that a quiet week feels like evidence you've made a mistake, when mostly it's evidence you started three weeks ago.

Keep a note of where every enquiry came from and what happened to it, from the very first one. It costs nothing while the numbers are small, and it's the only thing that will eventually tell you which of these sources is actually worth your money — instead of you having to guess, which is what nearly everyone ends up doing.

If you're still working through the setup side of going out on your own, going self-employed as a tradesperson covers registration, insurance and the tax you should be putting aside, and what should I charge is worth reading before you price the first job cheap to win it.