Handy Women
I had just bought my first flat. I’d always sworn I’d never live in a ground floor flat, but I absolutely fell in love with this one, and purchased it despite my concerns about safety on the ground floor. So, when I need to get some work done in my new home, I was already feeling a little insecure– a single woman, living alone on the ground floor. When the guys I hired came, they all seemed a bit gruff and intimidating. It was probably just meant as a casual comment, but when one of them asked me if I lived there alone, I couldn’t help feeling nervous.
It made me think – why did I have to hire men to do this work? Why couldn’t I get a woman? I wanted someone who wouldn’t make me feel intimidated or ignorant, and who would really tell me about what she was doing – after all, it was my home. I thought that a woman would be more likely to put me at ease and better at communicating.
I did some research, and, while I found a few women working on their own as sole traders, there didn’t seem to be a company I could turn to to get everything I needed under one roof.
I’d been thinking about starting my own business for a while. I had worked for big city firms for several years, and was tired of working long hours for other people – I wanted my hard work to be for my own business, not someone else’s. It struck me that, if I felt this way about having tradesmen in, other women must feel the same. Though I’ve always been handy, my professional background is in marketing, and I didn’t want to spend the time retraining to go into the trades myself. So I decided I would start the company that I’d wished I could find.
After researching the market and looking at the resources that would be available to help me start my own business, I quit my job, and set up an “office” – in the tiny space also known as my store cupboard! I took advice from a few organisations, about the logistics and legalities. Then I put a few ads out online looking for tradeswomen who could work with me.
In October 2007, with 4 tradeswomen on the books, I opened the business by e-mailing everyone I knew to let them know Home Jane was available for work. I was really worried that no one would call us, but 2 days later the first job came in and it wasn’t even through a friend. Soon after that we were featured in Time Out, and the phone really started ringing.
It wasn’t long before I realized that there was just too much work and too many clients for me in my cupboard to handle. I found a proper office to rent and hired an assistant, and we’ve kept growing from there. There have been ups and downs, and I’ve really had to learn on my feet. Now Home Jane has four office staff and over 40 tradeswomen, and we’ve expanded outside of London into the southeast and Manchester.
We’re still growing, both geographically and by adding services – in addition to the standard building trades, we’ve added gardening and cleaning, and start teaching DIY courses for amateurs. It’s hard work, but very rewarding – I’m incredibly proud of how well Home Jane has done, and sometimes I still can’t believe how far we’ve come from our humble beginnings.
By Jo Behari, founder of Home Jane, a team of professional tradeswomen with all of the skills needed to solve your DIY challenges.
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