Information for secondary students and school leavers
Martin Taylor and the long, long hours of successful self-employment
When Martin Taylor’s advisory job in the Ministry of Agriculture vanished in restructuring, he and a colleague set themselves up in a similar line, as horticultural consultants to orchardists.
“The business treated us extremely well, there’s no question about that. We were always very, very busy with long, long hours and long, long weeks.”
Work with clients versus work on the background business
There was always a tension between spending time with clients, and keeping up to date. “In the ministry, the back-up was phenomenal. In our own business we had to update ourselves, but not spend too much time on it. If a course on soil nutrition was $1,000, you’d have to do it or you’d get behind. Horticulture doesn’t stand still.”
Finding time to do all the paperwork, such as GST and tax, was also difficult. “You either charge colossal fees to leave you with enough non-chargeable time to do administration work – or spend a fair bit of your private time dealing with it.”
The horrendous cost of training new staff
- Martin with a pheromone trap, used for attracting insects
Another challenge was training – and keeping – staff. “When you take on new staff you’ve got to take them from the ground floor and the cost of that can be horrendous. No sooner do you get them trained up than they decide to move. For a period all we did was train people and then they moved on.”
Seeing so many employees leave convinced Martin to give up life as a boss. “I didn’t really want to be working the last 10 years of my working life training people and watching them go and starting all over again.”
An easier life as an employee again
Now a technical adviser with a spraying firm, Martin’s appreciating a less stressful lifestyle. “It’s a lot easier. Before, there were a certain number of hours I had to charge out to remain viable.”
And he agrees he now has a better employer than when he worked for himself! “I probably had less holidays and time out than what I have currently got.”
