Thinking about starting a formal business

[brandonkick]

I've been doing repairs "causally" for a few years now and for the most part it seems to go very well. I usually do not have very many difficult customers and for not having a real business I earn pretty decent money for each job that I do.

Right now I'm not happy with where I am in life. I have a college degree that isn't really getting me anywhere and to be honest I LIKE to repair computers. It's not really work in my eyes, it's something that I enjoy doing. I also know for a fact I can do better then I am now, it wouldn't be very hard to improve upon my current earnings.

I don't have a lot of capital to invest.

I don't have a "shop" and wouldn't have a formal place of business for a while.

I don't know what I would need as far as business license's or any of that stuff.


How much did it take some of you to get started? How much capital did you have to invest? How did things progress?

I live in Pennsylvania (cambria county, about two hours east of Pittsburgh) and there is a local small business development center that is hosting a workshop in a weeks time. I'm thinking of attending and I want to go prepared. I'm seriously thinking now could be a better time then ever to start putting things together for something like this. In what I perceive to be my starting "target" are there is a total population of roughly 140,000 people. I'm smart enough to know that not every man, woman and child is a potential customer. What I don't know is how to approximate the "reasonable" number of those people that might need a computer repaired. My area isn't saturated with PC repair places and many of them charge very high prices with poor customer service. I think I can beat most of them on both avenues by a wide margin.

I want to have at least a rough business plan in order.

I want to have marketing ideas.

I want a general idea of the target demographic.

I want to expand upon some possible business names. I have a few pretty decent ideas already.

So what advice can people offer me? I've already received some very good advice on the subject and I think that this is something I should really try. I only worry about investing myself too far to find out it's not going like I thought it would.

 

[NYJimbo]

Did you spend any time reading the hundreds of threads that answer the questions you just posted here ?

Seriously, these are questions that have been asked and answered countless times. Go to the Business and Legal section and just start reading all the threads:

http://www.technibble.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=6

and tons of other threads all over the place.

 

[hightechrex]

agreed.

Did you spend any time reading the hundreds of threads that answer the questions you just posted here ?

Seriously, these are questions that have been asked and answered countless times. Go to the Business and Legal section and just start reading all the threads:

http://www.technibble.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=6

and tons of other threads all over the place.

I'm gonna have to agree on this on. There articles, posts, threads, etc. EVERYWHERE. That's the entire point of this section and forum as a whole. OPs question is far too general.

 

[brandonkick]

I've just read through the last ten pages with little to nothing answering the questions I have... gonna dig back a bit deeper as I know this whole thing will take a lot of time and effort!

 

[lan101]

You are basically where I was a few years ago. I advertise in the county seat's local paper and in both phone books in the area. I also have a few good quality signs around the town that I am in. I live in a rural area with several small towns within 15-20 miles of each other. I work in about 10 different towns altogether.

All I can really say is it took a solid 2 years to get consistent calls where every week you gotta few jobs to keep you somewhat busy. I'm in year 5 now and still feel slow at times, but been staying rather busy lately.

You need to advertise though because referrals won't be enough starting out in my opinion. It sounds like you already got a customer base going though.

Just do good work and take your time with everyone. Don't ever seem like you are in a hurry, and treat everyone like their your number 1 customer and it should go well.

Also if it's a job that is going to be more than a day or 2, give the customer a call and update them. A lot of people really appreciate me taking the time to do that.

 

[lan101]

I forgot to mention.

I started because I was unable to find any work related in my area. I had a few thousand dollars saved up. I invested in nothing but advertising in the local paper for the first year just to build up clients.

Any parts I needed, I just ordered as needed for a while.

So yeah I literally started with nothing. If I had found this forum before I started, I would have got a few things that would've made life easier.

 

[16k_zx81]

Did you spend any time reading the hundreds of threads that answer the questions you just posted here ?

Seriously, these are questions that have been asked and answered countless times. Go to the Business and Legal section and just start reading all the threads:

http://www.technibble.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=6

and tons of other threads all over the place.

yeah.. agree completely

Definitely worth doing the reading here. Takes time but worthwhile.

 

[pc-quebec]

I want to have at least a rough business plan in order.

That's a good idea, you have plenty of business plan helper on the web, just Google Business Plan. I don't know in your place , but here we have plenty of associations that help to make a business plan for free. Doing a business plan will help you to discover the competitors around the market and a lot of little details you may not think about it.