Paul Mongelli spent twenty years making furniture and working with timber in his spare time before it became his job. "It was a hobby of mine for 20 years, then after a redundancy, I turned it full-time," he says. Now he runs Paul Mongelli Services, taking on handyman work across a range of jobs, still guided by the same eye for timber and craftsmanship he had as a hobbyist.
Most of his clients find him through word of mouth or his website, and he puts that down to one thing: doing the job properly. "Ensure quality of work, that customers are happy," is how he sums up his approach to keeping clients coming back.
ServiceSeeking has become part of how he keeps busy. "It fills the voids in the week," he says. One booking in particular changed the shape of his business, a small job that turned into an ongoing relationship. "I was introduced to a customer for a small job, after which I was retained for much bigger ones," he says. What he values most about the platform is how upfront everything is. "Total open communication from the beginning," he says.
Day-to-day, Paul keeps things simple. His PC and phone are about all the tech he needs. When his van ran out of room for his tools, he rented a small storage space and turned part of it into a workshop, where he stored the extra gear.
January tends to be his slowest month. He drives for Uber to fill the gap until work picks back up and says getting through the tougher stretches comes down to patience and persistence. That patience, persistence, and honest work show up in how he handles the jobs themselves; one in particular has stayed with him. A customer called him, expecting to need a whole new set of stairs built. Paul had a look and found only minor repairs were needed, saving her thousands of dollars.
He measures success by sales and profit, and over the next five years, hopes to grow the business enough to bring on a partner or hire someone full-time. He describes his outlook as "carefully optimistic." One lesson from experience sticks with him: "Be very careful in quoting jobs, and ensure you can do the work." His advice to anyone starting out is to get properly qualified across as many areas as possible, something he says he wishes he'd known earlier on.
Outside of work, he plans his holidays well in advance and tries to keep weekends free of jobs, a habit that's kept him going after years in the trade.