ITechnician45

Ok, I have made several attempts at starting my business and all 4 have failed. Right now I am broke and restrating again is impossible (for the time being)! Rather than attempt this again and go further in debt, I would like to ask other IT Professionals who own thier own business what I should do. I need help with financing, advertising, maintaining, and incorporating. I want to name my business "Lithium Computers & Repair Inc." Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to go for broke again. Thanks!

Done_Fishin

I'm gonna jump in here even though I don't have my own business.

I would suggest that, since you've tried several times without success, not to give up but to rethink.
The worst part about setting up a business is having to wait for business to come in whilst paying out hard and fast for the priveleidge of waiting for others to come see you. It seems that you want to be in on the repair side of things .. so whjat you need is a job to keep you solvent whilst tackling the task of building up a customer base that will , when you have sufficient work to do, allow you to take on the business full time.
I used to do TV repairs, I started because friends and colleagues asked for my help, and one repair lead to another to teh point that I was doing one repair per night with maybe one in waiting. This though wasn't sufficient to be able to open my own business, especially when there are 4 mouths to feed behind you!
Don't rush to become a success at the business, BE GOOD, BE HONEST and the customers will come to you, word of mouth advertising is the best advertising. Place some ads locally, library, shop windows etc. to attract custom. Do it in your spare time as a SERIOUS hobby until you feel that you have the amount of work and sufficient income that you can afford to give up your other job.
It won't matter what the other job is so long as it fulfils the basic need to pay your bills while you're getting your future under control.
When you do decide to make your way again, don't hide away in a back street, pick your moment and your location so that you have a good chance of success. No matter how good you are , if you put your business in the wrong neighbourhood, you won't succeed. Look for somewhere that has a lot of reasonably well off kids with money in their pocket to spend on Computers and hardware. Don't put it too close to another business that is doing the same sort of work unless you're prepared to compete in prices or labour charges.

Skie

There's been a lot of threads in this forum from people asking the same/similar questions that you are. Here's a few for you to look at:

http://www.techsupportforum.com/conv...-business.html
http://www.techsupportforum.com/conv...-business.html
http://www.techsupportforum.com/conv...-business.html

There's many more, just do a search in The Tech Business forum. There have been a lot of good ideas and suggestions already.

NWPhotog

Let me offer my opinion based on running such a business fulltime for 2 years. The number one challenge is you have to think like a businessman even if it is a small businessman.

You have to be able to generate a fairly high dollar per hour to make it work. While many techs work for companies make $10-$15 an hour in this business you need to charge a minimum of $50-$60 or MORE! Why? Because if you are really successful you will have 20-30 hours a week of billable time. You will spend a lot of time driving to and from locations, researching issues, buying parts, doing paper work, AND hopefully improving your skills.

Now that said starting such a business is not hard if you have some tech skills and very good customer service skills. For tools you need a six in one screwdriver, set of miniature screwdrivers, and several cds with OSes and your favorite utilities. You can do 90% of your work with less than $20 in tools!

To start off, do it part time. That way you can find out if you like being the tech equivalent of a plumber. To get work print up some business cards and flyers. Tell every one you know you are available to help. When some one contacts you listen carefully to the issue. If it something you are familiar with jump on it. If not either pass on it or let the customer know you'll be glad to look at and if it is beyond you you'll let them know and there will be no charge.

You'll find out in a few weeks to a month if this is right field for you or not. Good luck!

Done_Fishin

that sounds like really good advice .. and the bit about tooling!

ITechnician45

I will try some your suggestions. My problem most likely is the fact that I have been completly putting myself into the business and not working another job. Any other suggestions are more than welcomed, so please continue giving me your opinions.

VincentWong

Did you ever figure out why the first 4 did so poorly?

ITechnician45

Well mainly in part to where I live... it's basically a retirement village not a town conisdering more old people live there than young

Done_Fishin

maybe you should think of computerised bingo ... PC lessons .. virtual pensions
somethng that will get the attention of the elderly.
Train them in the use of e-mail and pc "common sense" security.
No point in trying to encourage them to do young things, they need old folks stuff, play their favourite old tracks in mp3 from their PC's, get my meaning

ITechnician45

thnx never would have thought of that

yustr

One word: fonts.... fonts.... fonts... fonts.... fonts... fonts...well you get my point...

Call it a usability session: for $25 you come in and set up the home screen, word processor and email to be easy on "experienced" eyes. Then "Oh look, you don't have any anti-virus software installed. For a small fee I'd be glad to help you protect you valuable information."

Zazula

IT45, VincentWong actually asked you the $64 question: you really need to find out what went wrong in your first four attempts in this. If you keep doing the same things, you will keep getting the same results. Just make sure you correctly identify what needs to be done differently this time. Start by first evaluating your strategy, and then move on to the tactics level.

Valandil

What a lot of people do wrong is they go lease a shop without any business coming in and are unable to pay for it. All the friends I have who are successful business owners have all started from home and worked from home until they had enough customers coming in to pay for the shop to lease and pay their bills.

ITechnician45

Yes that is what I have been doing.

ITechnician45

I am doing a little sports on the side to learn teamwork. I wrestle for ???! (I won't say the organiztion's name because I dont want to advertise) All I will say is I do hardcore style. It is different to hear of this from an IT Technician but I am also working on the side as a IT Consultant for the company. I may have found the perfect job for a wrestling fan who works on computers for a living. lol.

Dry Crick

As mentioned, rethink everything.
The first idea I would rethink is your name, "Lithium Computers & Repair, Inc." Isn't it better to have something that resonates with the poor soul who has a failed unit and doesn't know where to go? Your name should say what you do.
"Computer Repair Services, Computer Professionals, Computers Repaired in 24 hours, etc. Lithium says nothing to anybody except the advanced user.
Then offer something special as to speed or service. Cheaper, faster, better, higher quality, longer warranty. What makes you special? Advertise that. Throughout most of the country, repairs are too slow, too expensive, and warranties are too short. Guarantee 24 hour turn around. Save files cheaper, faster, etc.
Look at all the entries in the Yellow Pages. Which ones are easy to see. Pay for one that size, whatever the cost. What services do or can you offer than they do not? Advertise what you do really well. Understand that if you do not pay for the advertising or promotion in some way, nobody will know about you in an emergency. They don't care about you until they need sometthing.
A clever short name you can paint on the side of a van or a pickup?
You are not repairing everybody's computer. You are repairing for the person who is in trouble. Only after you get known can you sell them on service.
Then, show up looking very spiffy. Bow tie. shoes shined. White shirt and tie... something that makes you LOOK like you will do it right and do it rapidly.
Stock enough parts that you don't have to waste time getting them or awaiting for them to arrive.
Align yourself with other services... networking, cable, and so on.
Offer free cleaning, then buy a case or two of dust out. Go to the house and clean that puppy. The next time, they might remember to call you.
Learn which email services are good, or cheap. Offer those. Our greatest success was to offer Copper Net for $8.25 a month if paid by the year. Our cost. Then add $10 for the install. We got so much repeat business because it was a great email service with no frills that discounted to us and them if we paid by the year.
Give the customer what the customer wants, not what you want to do.
Free online support while you are sitting on your butt like the Maytag repairman.

PanamaGal

Do your incorporation online. It's much cheaper and easier. Retirement community? Lots of older folks would like to do stuff with computers. Offer some basic computer training, either group or individual. You could offer this training cheaper by the group. A yellow pages ad is probably best bang for your buck. Doesn't have to be huge, but you need an ad indicating what you do as opposed to just a listing. Radio and newspaper ads have never done much for us, neither in the states or here in Panama. Make some flyers and put them around in public places. Maybe you can strike up an alliance with an electronics place that sells computers, or computer related stuff, that doesn't provide repair themselves.

Dry Crick

Addendum: One aspect I learned was that placing an 1/8 page ad or larger in the most used phone book (not necessarily the yellow pages) made a huge difference... despite the $400 (discounted) expense. Our business did ok before, but calls resulting in paid business grew a multiple of eight after the ad began running. We also used ads focusing on the elderly, because they seem to have less success fixing their own, and appreciate the help. Since then, we have experimented, and found that conservative ads work much better than "cute" ones. The costs of the ad were paid in the first three weeks. The ad sales people don't know a thing, by the way. Do your own research.

VincentWong

To add to Dry Cricks post, there is an excellent marketing book titled "Guerrilla Marketing" by Jay Conrad Levinson. It goes over several low cost to free ways to market your business. The book goes over the subject of marketing in general, and then it focuses on marketing for businesses with a limited budget.

Zazula

I second VincentWong in that "Guerrilla Marketing" is a really great guide on developing a cost-effective and highly-rewarding marketing strategy for the small guy (even if big firms, too, have started adopting this book's ideas after they were proven so successful in the field).