I've worked for myself a couple of times, mostly out of necessity when it happened. The problem I have with self-employment is that it is a pain in the arse dealing with people who want you to work on your licences for two bob an hour. I know this is stereotyping but there is some accuracy to it - the worst people I have worked for are doctors and Indians and it is a mixed bag of people who either don't want to pay or just simply don't pay, which left me with threatening them under the provisions of the Security of Payments Act. It was only then that I received my money.

The best people I worked for were pensioners. I used to give Seniors Card holders a 10% discount in order to attract their business because they ALWAYS paid their way and most would give me a cuppa tea and scones or lamingtons, etc once the job was done and any mess cleaned up - yes I always cleaned up any mess made and I had a hoover in the back of the car for that purpose.

I tend to be a bit lazy with the back office business functions and found it a drag, so that coupled with having some customers who were certifiable morons made me apply for a full time job again. The job I have at the moment is satisfying enough to have kept me where I am for the last five and a half years and the boss is good. So I guess I am lucky and I don't take it too much for granted because I know what it's like to be out of work too - not good. With a bit of luck I will finish my working life where I am though that will depend on continued good health and the parent company (Australian owned) not being subject to a foreign takeover because that usually is followed by the new owners sending in a razor gang.

You have to pick your Customers Brad , But yes some are as tight as a fishes Bum !! I tended not get lazy when I worked for myself , Sometimes I missed peoples Company a bit though as I like to being around people , I'm quite Social Pete

I had rules when billing people for work.

1/ no pay, = never work for them again.
2/ pay slow, = never work for them again.
3/ Annoy me in any way, = never work for them again.
4/ want something done for nothing = never work for them to start with.
5/ don't pick up work from workshop = break up for parts or in dump bin.

Lost a lot of work using rules, but, always got paid promptly with the customers I had left.

Fred.

I tend to be a bit lazy with the back office business functions and found it a drag

Many tradies that I know have their wives do the paperwork. As any small business person knows, cash flow is the life blood. Many a business has gone to the wall for lack of managing debtors.

Every few months a sole trader guy whose workshop is near mine gives me his aged debtors report and I hit the phone for him to chase the payments. I have pulled in thousands of dollars of overdue payments merely by being polite and persistent. The guy himself, by personality, is not assertive enough to chase his own debts and his wife (an accountant) refuses to do his books saying that she does enough of that stuff all day at work. I do it as a favour returned because he does stuff for me.

I know a very good debt collector and have recommended him to a few people, including another neighbour at the workshop complex. He has been in the game for 30 years and knows all of the excuses and all of the tricks of slippery debtors. He has access to skip tracers and private investigators and his recovery rate is over 90%. He says the remainder make themselves impossible to find. Once he's on a case he's like a dog with a bone. He never gives up. He attends court twice a week to get judgements against debtors and will send in the Sheriff if he needs to to recover goods to the value of the debt. One visit from a Sheriff -- especially in trading hours and in front of customers -- usually puts the fear of God into slippery debtors and they quickly agree to a payment plan.

BTW: one of the debtors I was chasing up for an amount of a few hundred dollars used to answer his phone with a suspicious "Hello?" He promised me three times that he'd attend to the debt that day. It's my practice to write down what debtors promise and on the fourth call I related back to him the dates and the promises. He said he will attend to it right now and he did. This debtor's name sounded vaguely familiar to me and one day I Googled it. There he was mentioned in court reports and Royal Commission findings. Turns out he's one of Sydney's 'colourful racing identities'. A multimillionaire with luxury sports cars, mansions, etc, but he gave me the run around for a debt of a few hundred dollars. I told my neighbour that I won't be calling up any more such debtors!

The good news is that I didn't go belly-up though I also managed to scrape by without getting debt collectors involved. If it went all the way, the good thing about a sheriff's officer is that they can pretty much do as they please to enforce a court order so those who are in debt will know all about it when they arrive.

Yes , Thats one thing good about a business where you sell a Product or Items, Because if they can't pay for the Item then they don't get it !!
so no money is left owning, I think if your Business is of the service type than you will have times where you chasing up money that is owed to you. My business has always been supplying items or products and not to other businesses either so there was no monthly invoice I was waiting on to be paid .. Nothing is a walk in the park though and that why I buy a lotto ticket from time to time !!

I think if your Business is of the service type than you will have times where you chasing up money that is owed to you.

This is a service business and he usually does it in his workshop or will do "house calls" if necessary. His debtors are companies who demand 30 days credit even though the invoices state payable on completion. The great majority pay within 30 days, some let it slip to 45 days, some are up to 60 days late and a few are in the 90 days plus column -- which I call the hopeless cases column, fit for referral to a debt collector.

I once called a 60 day debtor and his staff told me the boss, who authorises invoice payments, was on a month's holiday in Bali. He can't pay a $300 bill but he can afford to holiday in Bali. You can safely bet he has more than one creditor chasing him and in those cases it's the squeaky wheel that gets the oil. I was on the telephone to him the day he returned to the office. His staff had apparently called him in Bali and told him that I was some sort of debt collector so he said he'd pay immediately, and he did.

the good thing about a sheriff's officer is that they can pretty much do as they please to enforce a court order

That's true and the ones that I have seen are big solid guys who won't take any crap from debtors. I've seen them in white station wagons with SHERIFF in big letters on the sides. There's no mistaking them on the job. They don't come cheap but they get the job done.

Once a debt collector is on the job, and is going through due legal process, the debtor gets a negative credit score recorded and it doesn't get lifted until the debt is fully paid out. They scream about that but who wants to give credit to a welsher?

The debt collector that I mentioned told me that he has to make an assessment of whether to bankrupt the debtor or get him/her onto a payment plan. It usually boils down to how co-operative they are. He also has a source of (high interest) finance for those who appear to be co-operative. That way he and the creditor get paid and the loan company carries the debt and has ongoing dealings with the debtor. These loan sharks are not be be fooled with unless you want a biker or two to visit you at inconvenient times demanding "Where's the payment?"

That's an interesting thing - it does pay for one to co-operate if one owes money. The creditor wants their money so most will accept a reasonable payment plan and use bankruptcy as a last resort.

These days, anyone can become a copper if they have a clean record. There's no height or weight restrictions like the old days. I've never seen a small sheriff's officer though. I used to work in North Sydney and sometimes saw them as they came out of the court house at Victoria Cross on my way down to Northpoint Plaza to grab lunch.

Four of them were big enough to take all the available space in a Camry wagon.

Occasionally one can repay a bad boss. I worked for a place that had a few hundred people. The big boss was some bozo who liked to have his ass kissed. I wouldn't do that. After a couple years, he got his bosses in the head office to allow him to do a layoff, and I was on that honor roll. But about a month or so later I got a new job, with a 50% increase in pay. The old place still allowed me to pay visits (as part of a job hunting concession). I had made a copy of my offer letter from the new place for 10 cents at a drug store. I showed it to all my friends at the old place, some made copies of my copy. Heard that the management there (old company) freaked, as I demonstrated that other companies pay much better than they did. And they had to find money to give big raises to the people they wanted to keep around, from leaving. The old place couldn't do anything to me, as I already was canned. I probably cost them a few million dollars the next couple of years. Nice revenge!

An outside friend said I wasn't "professional" doing this, and I answered that they were not at all professional with me...

I'll Get you my Pretty and your little Dog !

https://youtu.be/OQ_g6NOo7yo

That fits in rather well with my comment. Revenge is best served cold and sometimes Karma leaves your hands clean, whilst punishing the guilty.