Self-employment: Business and entrepreneur

Andrew Cave: My name's Andrew Cave and I'm the spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses.

For an entrepreneur you generally go into business because of something you feel passionate about.

What you don't always think about is that you are your own Head of HR, you're your own accountants off.

Parvel: My name is Parvel,I'm self-employed and I train and assess people working on the construction site.

In the construction industry maths is very important.

All self-employed builders have to pay 20% tax when they submit their invoices.

So the sub-total is £250 and to work out the 20% tax deduction, in this case, we'd have to take a fifth of £250 and the fifth is £50.

So we deduct £50 from £250 to get £200.

Andrew Cave: If you're running a business such as a florists, it's absolutely essential that you have the basic literacy and numeracy skills.

Female, florist, long dark hair: As a florist, we have to write quite a lot of letters to clients and so, for example this one, I've divided the letter into three paragraphs.

So the first section, we have discussing the wedding and then the second paragraph, go on to talk about the prices of that.

And then the final paragraph is summarising and information.

Male, market trader, stripey top: Lovely, cheers darling, thank you.

I need to make sure that I get the right price so when people have a few things I just jot them down so then I know I've added the right prices up.

Andrew Cave: If you're a market trader you're probably not going to have a till that you can use to do all of your adding up and subtracting and if you've got a lot of customers coming to you, you want to be able to serve them as quickly as possible to make sure that by the end of the day you've got a healthy profit.

Male, market trader, stripey top: The melons are 75p, strawberries are £1.80 and the cherries are £1.20.

Andrew Cave: It will take you more time and more effort if you do not have those basic skills.

So it's worth putting the time in to get that right in the very beginning.

Male, market trader, stripey top: So that equals £3.75, thank you.