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!

Getting the Ball Rolling

Starting Up with Low-Cost Advertising

I started advertising for my computer business today, just running around town and putting up some flyers.  At the moment, I am only operating under my name (as I do not have licensing yet, I can't advertise as a business name until I do). 

So I typed up some flyers, pretty simple ones on Word, and stuck them up all over my hometown.

Locations

I started out by hitting the local assisted living apartments, since I am offering a 10% senior discount I figured that would be a good place to start.  I made sure to focus on my ability to come to them, as I would guess that seniors would not want to deal with the hassle of unplugging and dragging their computers out to their cars to get to me.  I was also tossing around the idea of setting up in the community rooms and having a day or so where people can come and talk to me, and since I am there anyway I can do some quick, cheap computer work to start to build a little rapport.

Next I hit bars and restaurants in the area, making sure I hit a lot of different establishments so that I can be sure to get maximum exposure.  I wrapped up by posting on the bulletin boards of the couple of gas stations in town.

Formatting

Just a couple notes on formatting, or at least what I know (which honestly isn't a whole lot at this point, but I will be learning as I go).

1. Leave a bit of extra space in the margins.  On bulletin boards, it can be very overwhelming to deal with the sheer amount of text on the pages, and leaving nice wide margins makes my text stick out.
2. Pictures are important.  I have to say that while I was posting my own flyers I was looking at the other advertisements near mine, and one thing I noticed is that I was drawn much more to those that had any kind of picture, even if it was just clip-art.
3. It seemed to me that printing your material was obvious, but a large portion of the advertisements I saw were hand-written with marker (or sometimes even pencil).  I have to say that, as a consumer myself, I would give a lot more credibility to ads that were printed than those that were written.

Placement

The most important aspect of placement that I saw was to place ads at eye-level.  People are a lot more likely to notice ads that are right in front of them than those they have to look for.

In a few instances, eye-level placement was not possible.  I decided that the next best idea would be to place ads that stick out from the others, for example have my ad hanging out off of the side or the bottom of the bulletin board further than others.  I thought that this might catch people's eye, since it is not just mashed in with all of the other text.


This information will become more refined as I continue to educate myself on marketing techniques.  I did try very hard to make sure that I talked to clerks or managers at the establishment, both to make sure that I had the proper permission to post on their boards and to make sure that I mentioned my computer service business to as many people as I could.  This method got a lot of people to tell me that they or someone they knew was ALWAYS looking for someone to fix their computer, and gave me an opportunity to give a bit of a sales pitch.  This got a lot of people to tell me that they would send people my way if they got the opportunity, and I am not sure if they would have taken the time to even notice the post without that face-to-face connection that I made.

At this stage in the game, it's all about rapport.  My hometown has around 500 people in it, and getting a few people to start talking about me and my business can have HUGE effects on my clientele.

Going forward, I need to start getting the legalities taken care of so that I can start to work on my website, my facebook page, and I can start marketing using my business name and logo.  I am going to try to find a lawyer in my area who might be willing to consult with me for a low price, as I need to keep overhead low and can't afford to have some big-name lawyer charging me for every little question.

I will try to post more information as I get it.  I know the next little while will be a blur of legal terms and tax information that I am not used to dealing with, so as I make sense out of it I will try to keep you guys informed.

Thanks for your support, and stick with it!  It's a lot of info to sort through, but the satisfaction I am already feeling is well worth the worry and effort.

Introductions

Here we go...

I am from a very small town in northern Wisconsin.  I have no degree in anything at the moment, though I am working towards one, and I work in a factory near my hometown.  I am pretty smart (if I do say so myself), and I have worked hard for most of my life.

I don't like what I'm doing, assembly line work is mind-numbing and easy enough for my very young son to step in and do for me, and I have decided to make a change.  So, in a very short time, I will no longer work at the factory.

I know, quitting my job in this economy!?  What the heck could I possibly be thinking?!  Don't I know it's my responsibility to feed and protect my family?!

Well, I have considered these questions.  Over and over and over and over....well, you get the idea...again.  Mostly while standing on the line at work with no way to stop thinking about it.

So I am going to try to start working for myself.  Not an easy feat anywhere, and northern Wisconsin is not the most opportunity-rich region in the country let me tell you. 

I have quite a bit of background in geekiness in general (you know, fixing everyone's computers, setting up everyone's wireless networks, pulling apart every little electronic I can get my hands on just to see how it ticks), and I plan on using this experience to start a tech service business.  For a while, I will be working under no business name, just as Dylan, The Computer Dude (TM...just kidding).  I have a name a logo picked out, but that will have to wait until I can get financial backing.

Which brings me to this blog.  Here, I will record some repair manuals (giving away all my secrets), some ideas and resources I have come across to build my business, and sometimes I am going to come on here and rant.  Anything that I can share with people, I will try to. 

I hope that my humble knowledge and my stories can help someone, anyone.  If my words reach even one person I will be happy.

So here is my story.  I am taking the plunge, leaving my boring, secure job that makes me miserable to pursue a career for myself, so that I can feel rewarded and independent like I have always wanted.  Wish me luck, if you believe in it.  Pray for me, if that's what you are into.  Otherwise, just read what I have to say and comment if you want, and I hope you come out better than you went in.

Thank you for taking time to visit!