Yebbut he was a frickin' idiot who would probably have managed to go bust selling water in the desert.
I made the following points to him and got a load of abuse back....
1) People don't want to pay for bike repairs, they don't value them. After all, you can get a new one for £100 from Halfords. People with a decent bike can probably do the basic repairs themselves.
2) What do you reckon you could charge for fixing a puncture? After riding to the site, fixing it and riding home again...you're probably looking at 1+ hours. Minimum wage is nearly £6 an hour....you might get that, I think a tenner would be tough to get.
3) Most of the time you'll be doing nothing - big void periods.
4) Unless you hook into offices, then you'll be doing most of the work in the evenings and weekends. Offices might be a flyer - find the local BUG person and offer your services to the office bike park. If you can get 2 or 3 jobs in the same location, the economics starts to add up.
5) Insurance and overheads will be annoyingly expensive.
6) You've got no upsell. If you do a brilliant job, then the best you can hope for is repeat business. If you're attached to a bike shop then it is useful as a way to persuade the punter to buy accessories or bikes off them.