Getting My New Computer Repair Business Established

Getting an office ready, finishing a website and Facebook page, and researching education opportunities...

     I honestly have not made a lot of progress on my office yet.  I am still trying to get a second vehicle ready so my wife and I don't have to juggle our one car around all day.  She works second shift, so the scheduling gets a little complicated.  The way I see it, I would rather have reliable transportation so that I can make more house calls than have an office when it is possible for me to work from home. However, I do still feel that having an office is important as it is difficult for me to establish the level of professionalism that I desire when working out of my house.

     I have learned a lot about creating websites from reading articles and such, and would like to share some of that here.

1. Keep it simple, especially at the beginning.  To many fluff items like apps, widgets, buttons, forms, and links...it just starts to clutter everything up until you have a better grasp of how you want the page to flow.  This is true for me, as I tend to let projects evolve and adapt as I go rather than sticking to a strict plan or picture in my head.  Thus, if I try to use everything that I see, I tend to make a big mess.

2. Don't try overdo the text, either.  Keep it concise, simple, and to the point. Like writing ads and flyers, assume that your readers are in a hurry, and write as though you need to give them enough info to know what you're about but not so much that they do not finish reading it.

3.  I used webs.com to create my website.  They offer a free site (however, you will have to use a hosted domain name like tech-ease.webs.com).  They do offer premium packages that get you a custom domain name and various other features depending on the package purchased.

4.  Make sure the theme and layout of your website matches your business.  If you are a cutting-edge tech company, make your website bold and daring as if to declare your confidence and willingness to take risks.  If you are a financial consulting business, you may want to town it down to appear more conservative and stable.

I have to say that many of the same ideas hold true for your Facebook page.  Keep each field concise and to the point, and keep posts friendly and conversational.

As far as education goes, I am at a bit of an impasse.  I am currently attending WITC in Rice Lake as a Computer Administration Specialist, but I am not sure if that is the route I want to go.  I was thinking that, in light of the new business, it might be a better idea to go for certifications one at a time rather than trying to juggle three to five or even more classes while establishing a business.  I was thinking that pursuing a COMPTIA A+ certificate might be a better idea.  Does anyone have any input here?

As a final note, what computer/electronic repair walkthroughs would you be interested in?  I would like to start posting these, but I am honestly not sure where to start.  If you could offer some suggestions I would really appreciate it!

Finally some Concrete Answers

Finally Got some Concrete Info on Licensing!!!

Ok, so I finally found (with direction from some very supportive people) info on how to get my licensing done.  I live in Wisconsin, so I went to Wisconsin.gov and used their Build your Business wizard.  The wizard gives pretty clear questions about your objectives, and if you have questions there are usually links available to help.  The results page can be a little overwhelming, though.  However, I found that if you just take it one piece of information at a time you can find what you need after some looking.

Wisconsin.gov Build Your Business Homepage

IRS.gov FEIN Online Application Page

Anyway, I was directed to the Wisconsin Dept. of Revenue for a Sales and Use Tax ID #, and a Federal Employee Identification Number (FEIN) from the IRS (irs.gov).  These forms are all online and after I finally found them (use the site's search menu if possible, though even that is hard to find on these government web sites, or you will be blindly clicking around all night), they were pretty straightforward and clear.  I filed as a sole proprietorship, as I am the only one at Tech-Ease right now and I don't plan on having employees for a while.  If I do, I can always change it as my business grows.

I finally got to Washburn County's Register of Deeds to apply for a Doing Business As name, and I need to drop that off ASAP (some counties can do it online, others aren't quite there yet but are working on it.  Unfortunately, Washburn county is not yet).  Then I just wait for papers to come back.

Wisconsin Register of Deeds Website

I am checking out an office in town, being offered to me by a friend of my family's, on Monday to see if it will be large enough and accessible enough for what I need, then I need to furnish it.  I will be starting out as cheap as possible, so pretty scanty furniture for the first little while (though the office will have a kitchen-style counter with cabinets installed soon, so I have that going), but I do need to make sure that I have the right kinds of furniture, as I know from experience that working with the proper tools makes all the difference in the world.  After I move in and get some inventory in the office I will have to take a second look and see what needs to be amended so that I can stay organized.  I am kind of a neat freak, so being clean and organized is important to me personally, but it's also important to the look and feel of my store and I don't want my clients walking into a disaster area, otherwise I would just work out of my house ;).

Just wanted to share the updated info with you guys, I hope it helps someone.  Just remember, it's really not as scary as it looks when you first start reading about licensing.  One form at a time, one license at a time, and before you know it you are already done and starting your dream. 

Keep at it, don't give up.  Focus, relax, and just take one step at a time.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Wow, there's a lot more to learn than I thought...

 Constantly reading web articles and talking to anyone I can trap for a couple minutes has brought me to this one conclusion:  I didn't quite have as good of a handle as I thought.
 It's OK, though, I just need to regroup and hit it again.

Still researching who I need to talk to about business licensing and insurance...pretty much anything I need to know about being able to legally get an office in town.  I have decided that is probably my best option, since I don't live directly in town and an office would definitely look and feel more professional to the clients in my opinion.  I tried looking at it like a customer and figured that I would be way more comfortable bringing my computer to a store or office than to some guy's trailer house a little ways out of town.  I have discovered that my next big step is to write a business plan, so more info on that as I work on it and I will include any nice tips or helpful tools I come across.  I hope I can save someone the headache of trying to figure this out on the Web, because legal stuff in general gets pretty vague online without using a live chat site and paying $50.

Latest Projects:

Some interesting new projects have come my way, including a couple of rather abused Dell Dimensions that won't start (no official diagnosis yet, pretty sure one is just a bad hard drive but I currently need to get a good one to test, the other has yet to boot and I have to find the diagnostic codes for it), and an iPhone 4 that would not charge.

The iPhone I got running after I replaced the dock port following the guide in ifixit.com (See the manual here), which was a tedious process but I gotta say I was all sorts of excited when the thing turned on.  Be VERY CAREFUL with where you keep parts and how you keep them organized.  I used ifixit.com's Project Mat (check it out here!), and it served me very well, but whatever you do find somewhere to keep those tiny screws organized.

I pulled the pics off using XP's Scanner and Camera Wizard (yes, I still run XP, and yes, I am one of THOSE people.  7 is great and all, but there's just something about XP that I can't get away from), and restored the phone.  Unfortunately, restoring the phone updated it to the newest build (6.1.3 at this time), which means I have to do some more playing to get the phone either downgraded to 6.1.2 so it can be jailbroken or suffer with the semi-tethered jailbreak for 6.1.3.  Since it is going for sale anyway, I would rather make it convenient and semi-tethered phones are not so very much.

I also cleaned out an older computer for a friend's kids, you know the computer with 15 users on it that all have a million flash games installed...one of those.  They told me it was running too slow (go figure) and that they wanted me to speed it up.  So got it home and ran some of my favorite cleaning tools and virus scanners and rifled through their start up options for a while and it will be on it's way soon.


In the future I will give more detailed walkthroughs on some of these projects, and better reviews on some of my favorite products and gadgets, but I am trying not to rush things too fast.  Baby steps, this is my first blog, remember?

Thanks for checking in, and we just gotta keep on going.  I would rather be doing this than anything else!