Hey folks! Thought I would formally introduce myself since I’m probably going to be posting quite regularly on this forum for the duration that InfinityFree is my hosting provider…
Hello from Blantyre Botanicals:
So, I have recently started my own business, trading as Blantyre Botanicals (a trading name of my company, The Bot Factory Ltd.). We offer professional gardening maintenance and landscaping services across the West of Scotland, and at competitive rates.
I am also a Web Developer/Software Development Engineer (with 25+ years experience under my belt) & IT Consultant. Why gardening? It’s always been a passion of mine, ever since my Saturday job whilst still in my teens, and paid my way through university doing part-time gardening.
When lockdown came along, I found myself furloughed and then made redundant. I attempted to set up my own freelance IT consultancy, and likely for the same reasons as my redundancy, I found that companies just were not willing to spend any of their budget upgrading their websites or building a new one from scratch - and without their business, I had no business!
So, I diversified into my former love. I’m not the first 40-something to hit one of life’s hurdles and have a career change, and I highly doubt I’ll be the last! 
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What about IT?
My IT experience hasn’t gone anywhere, and if approached for work, The Bot Factory Ltd is well placed to answer such enquiries (and, as an aside, I now have a beautiful portfolio piece to show potential clients - my own commercial website for Blantyre Botanicals!). So it’s win/win for me, really.
Physically, we don’t need a premises since any work is undertaken at the client address. I have plenty of tools required for gardening. The only thing I was lacking really was transport, so I bought myself an old van.
Digitally, we needed a website - well, that’s like asking a retired professional footballer to play football. Job done. As to the other things I need, accounting software, invoicing, estimating, all these things are shared regardless of whether we are Landscape Gardening or providing IT services - it’s all gravy.
Money’s too tight to mention…
The expenditure comes (or will come) in the advertising and marketing space - seeking new clients and securing those much needed regular contracts for repeat business. With gardening, I could simply just go door-to-door, and indeed, before I formally started this business, that’s pretty much what I did for pocket money, whilst redundant during those boring lockdown weeks (luckily outdoor work in the sun wasn’t restricted!) I’ve since had limited success just via word of mouth recommendations and repeat business with customers wanting other bits n bobs done. Now that I have officially started trading, this is where the gamble comes, do I advertise on yell.com, on google, on the radio, in the hope that it generates traffic to my website/calls on the landline.