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Comment by TamDenholm | Hacker News Reader

Having 2 (or more) completely unrelated skills provide a shitload of advantage to yourself. The intersection of those skills helps a lot. I run 2 businesses, software and a property renovation business. Local independent trademen are for the most part great at the actually doing the job, plumbing, electrics, tiling, fitting, joinery, etc. What they suck at is running the business, finances, marketing, customer service, reliability and anything to do with computers.

I can use my tech skills to MASSIVELY enhance the trades side of the business. While i can do enough of the trades myself to cover my employees sick days, emergencies, etc, i dont do it day to day. I run the business and make sure i'm using my primary tech skills to grow us. Its working well so far.

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I really want to get into property renovations. I currently have one rental property mortgage fully paid (I was lucky I pretty much inherited it). I work as a software developer but I'm really starting to hate it. I pretty much grew up on building sites as my dad was a property developer. Unfortunately I didn't take an interest in the business and he's dead now so I've just been reading a few books on getting in to it. Would you mind telling me roughly how you started your business?

While I have invested in property and renovated it (1 rented out flat and my own home) my current work for the business is primarily bathroom and kitchen renovations for homeowners. This is primarily to bring in a more stable cashflow that will be used for purchasing more property long term.

When we started we did anything, painting, small handyman jobs, fences, carpets, gardening, etc. But I ended up just concentrating on kitchens and bathrooms, as they are generally the most investment worthy home improvements a homeowner will want, which means larger profit per job and also they're more room to take away a homeowners problems. Typically if they project managed it themselves, they'd need to bring in a large list of separate trades. Labourers for demolition, plumbers, electricians, joiners, tilers, cabinet fitters, flooring fitters, decorators etc.

The people i hire, with backup from myself, can do everything the job needs, which means they only need 1 company to do it. We have a wonderful woman in the office that does all the customer service, we take away all the old crap we've removed, we help them pick the new bathroom suites and kitchens they want, etc. Its a full service. I think in America, the term for this is General Contractor, over here in the UK, its not typically used.

My advice for you, if you're starting from scratch, is to get some DIY skills to begin with, start with your own home. Try things, Youtube is the second best tool for learning anything in my opinion, only surpassed by actually doing it. If at all possible, whatever you are trying for the first time or are unsure of, try it, then pay a professional to inspect your work AS your doing it and sign it off at the end. Get them in before you start too. Any tradesperson that wont do give you advice that you're willing to pay for isnt worth knowing IMO. The ones that are, are the ones you hire when you do bigger projects that you need help on. Plus anyone that can explain their own job to an outsider, generally is pretty good at what they do.

I'd be able to give you more specific advice with more information, happy to answer any questions.

Thanks for this. I'm in the UK too. One of the things I was thinking of doing is buying a flat that needs work then selling it on or converting to buy to let mortgage. Ive heard getting three under your belt like this is a good time go full time on it. My problem is I'm in a full time job and I've got a one year old. I'd really like to use property as a way to become self employed and get out of corporate world.

What does your software business do (if you dont mind telling me!)

Also what's your profit margin on say a bathroom or a kitchen?

Shoot me an email, its in my profile.

I have a totally quite unrelated skills and degrees. I don't think I'll be able to combine all of them.

You'd be surprised, i'm not saying you definitely will but even if you cant, the perspective that comes from having another skill often provides an extremely valuable point of view.

There are people out there that provide a very specific service cutting kitchen worktops, explanation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux3EZhhYdZo

Its typically done with a jig and a router, its not that hard IMO, but a lot of kitchen fitters either cant do it well or hate doing it and they hire someone to do this (as well as other things like sink cut outs) and they get paid DAMN GOOD money to do that, especially if you can show up at a new housing development where you can bash out 30-100 homes as one job.

Personally, while i have no experience with CNC's, i know what they are and how they work and i reckon theres a way to make this job more efficient by having a CNC machine in the back of a van that can be setup to cut these joints. I've not tried this idea, but i may do it one day.

This is the kind of different persepective you can have from completely different skillsets and experiences that people who do the same thing day in day out for years just dont arrive at.

Have a look at the Shaper Origin. I’ve not used it myself (and it’s not cheap) but its handheld nature may suit your use case even better than a traditional CNC in a van.

List them here and I am sure you will get some idea feedback.

My degrees in the past: Industrial Engineering (I didn't use it at all, so forget about this I guess), Master of Divinity in Theology (still occasionally use this by reading theological/philosophy books), Master in Comp.Sci (I work as SWE).

For hobbies: I do Karate, I do aquascaping, and play guitar (acoustic, electric, bass) and sing (mostly church related weekend gigs).

For languages: Indonesian, English, Japanese (still not proficient but I can get by, Kanji reading is still working on it).

Not sure how I combined all of those. Totally unrelated lol.

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