The van driver is a simple hard working man, but is supposed to be a solicitor, an accountant, a bookkeeper, a salesman, a personnel manager etc all rolled into one, but in effect he is just a van driver, so he will mess up in some regard, and get hit by penalties. E.g. smoking in his van, not being vat registered, not billing customers the correct amount, not completing his tax return. So a man starting up in business is a frightful concept, and most fail within two years, because he’s a van driver and not multi disciplined. The ones that do succeed are those who can either afford to buy in the services, or have family/friends who can muck in, or has one of the talents outside his core expertise.
So what does the lonely van driver do? He goes and does a govt start up course to get a few quid as a grant. Then he’s on his own. Some government schemes do provide a bit of additional handholding, but its consultants who are paid by the government, and they give photocopies of the same bundle of generic advice to all their mentoring clients.
Alternatively, they can go pay an accountant to guide them, but the accountants get annoyed because they don’t want involved in his business, and he’s griping about the fee., which in a lot of cases is unjustified. So after the first bill, he knows he cant afford them anymore, and stumbles along with no one, or else some boy in the pub who happens to know a bit about computers. The man is uneducated, so goes to bank to get an HP agreement, and the bank manager considers him a fool and says no. He doesn’t know he needs goods in transit insurance, as far as he knows he just needs drivers insurance. Etc etc.
So
Flaimes Alliance would come in, and depending on the business type decide to work with the guy for say anything from a 5% equity stake to say a 35% stake, depending on what was anticipated the van driver needed to see him through support ways.
Services would be provided to him free of charge , just as if he had a business partner who was putting in effort for the hope of reward. E.g. pretend his wife was an accountant, she would be more knowledgeable about matters than him, she could do a lot of the work to help him, and what she didn’t know directly, she could go and get someone in at a cheaper rate. He wouldn’t be paying her, but she would support him because in the longer term if she can make him succeed it will increase their joint net wealth.
So lets pretend for one moment, you are the van drivers wife.
He needs a van, so he would go out and look at dealers and pick his ideal van type , and his second choice. He likes a van at 12k, but has only 2k cash.
The dealers will spin him a lot of sales speak, and offer him finance through their dealerships. But he asks his wife. She phones around, and finds the same van, an ex demo 3 months old at 10k, so saving him 2k. She then gets the finance arranged through a high street lender because hes putting down 20% deposit, not 16%. The finance is at 5%, not the dealers 8%, so again saving him money.
She contacts the insurance companies, and gets a quote. Its not a moneysupermarket.com transaction which is for the consumer market, but she gets him a combined policy, so he’s fully covered with goods in transit etc. She advises him whether to go limited or a sole trader. She arranges the bank account, and free banking for a year.
He needs a website in order to market himself, as although he has a contact with Avon, he has a lot of spare capacity. She cant do the website. She phones Webflare who want £1300 quid plus vat and £100 per month, so she contacts the local college, and posts a notice for an undergrad to do the site for the princely sum of £300. She knows form Webflare, it is Drupal, so she specifies Drupal to the student. Shit site, means no fee, but good site means £300 and an entry on his CV. Guess what, the student has a colleague who does SEO, and advises her to get it hosted for £3 a month with Pipex. He even offers to set up the email, as he wants to keep her sweet in hope of getting more work from her.
She helps him with vat registration, knows what is to go on his stationery ETC ETC ETC
So he needs customers, guess what, she decides to do a flyer, and drop it into every industrial complex within a 20 mile radius, offering special rates etc. She even gets the local boy scouts hall to do the leaflet drop on the basis that she will give them a donation to their summer Camp. Cheaper than paying royal mail or a maildrop company.
The marketing exercise underway, his customers begin to happen. At end of first month, he needs to bill them. His mate in the pub knows a bit about computers, and tells him to buy Microsoft Access, and he’d knock him up a quick billing system that he uses himself. He agrees, tells the wife the next day, who goes ballistic, and tells him Microsoft Access shit, and easyaccounting are selling a £20 package that will suit him. She even completes the Data Protection registrations.
He sends out the bills, and when payment is overdue, she undertakes the credit control, to get the cash in.
Customers are getting more numerous, so he needs a helping hand to cover the work load. So she gets out her laptop, and designs an advertisement to secure a subcontractor or an employee.
Come Christmas, he goes into the bank, and withdraws £2,500 and buys her a nice big diamond ring as a thank you. She is very pleased with him, and the Christmas Vacation becomes akin to a second honeymoon.
He was over the moon, because he knew she had saved him 2k on the van, 1k on the website, cheaper finance, and by being vat reg’d even though turnover was only 60k, he was getting his diesel at 85% of cost, never mind the other grand and half on his vat.
So for a 2.5k ring, she’d increased his wealth by more than twice that, so she was worth it.
Come Valentines day, he had began an affair with his favourite customer, who was half his age, so he comes home in his new BMW X5, tells the wife their marriage is over, and they would go separate ways. He doesn’t need her by his side for work, because he knows about the admin side, the marketing side, the legal side from the knowledge gained from the wife. So he pays her off, and she leaves.
She’s not complaining either, and happily takes the fee to go away, because for the past six months, she’s been having a special relationship with her husbands employee, who happened to moonlight as a Chippendale. The two of them moved up north where a new business was set up called Chippendale Couriers.