Making Time for Business in your Computer Repair Business

Computer repair businesses are often smaller operations owned by people who like repairing computers. The business aspects are an annoying nuisance. Nonetheless, if you neglect them, you can’t grow your business, and you might even find yourself in some legal hot water. Here’s a template for you to start with.

Set Your Working Hours and Stick to Them

When you’re starting out, or even after you’ve started, you’ll work when you have the computer repair business. You have bills to pay and who wants to turn down business? Sometimes you should.

If you work yourself too hard, it’s both not sustainable and not good for you or your clients. You’ll be tired and irritable. You’ll make careless mistakes. You’ll eventually weaken your immune system. This way of working isn’t good for you, your business or your clients.

When you were working as an employee for someone else’s computer repair business, you had set working hours. Salary or hourly, you still had a general idea. Of course, the boss might call you in after hours on occasion, but that situation was rare. If it wasn’t, it might be why you went out on your own. These limits were good, so don’t abandon them because you are both a boss and employee.

A standard 9-5, 40-hour a week schedule probably isn’t realistic. If you decide to work more, go for it. There are 168 hours in a week. Spend them as you wish. It’s your business. Whatever you decide as a schedule, try to stick to it. Decide when work starts and stops. Exceptions happen. You may have a client with a late night emergency. If that happens to you, work slightly less the next week.

This approach means not thinking about work when you are not working. You need to take care of yourself. You need time with your significant other, family and friends. You might be surprised that if you are always “in the trenches,” people won’t find out about your business as easily. Networking doesn’t just happen in business groups; it happens where people socialize.

You are Your Most Important Client: Schedule Time for Yourself

Once you set a bright line to how much you’ll work, you need to schedule some of that time for your business. This is a situation where the “working on” instead of “working in” your computer repair business comes in. This time is something regularly scheduled.

That’s easy to say, but hard to do if business is booming. How can you say no to potential billable hours? If you don’t maintain the business aspects, you won’t have a business. If you schedule this time, just like you would a client, you’re more likely to do it.

This scheduled time doesn’t have to be during normal business hours. For example, I work on the finances Sunday nights for a few hours. This time could be paying bills, balancing accounts or entering invoices. It’s a set time each week I do this part of the business. It doesn’t have to be the same time each week, but consistency helps.

What Are the “Business” Parts of Your Business

Each computer repair business will have slightly different business needs. Some aspects are consistent along all lines. Here’s a short list

• Sales/Marketing: Getting word out about your business and closing the deals.
• Accounting/Bookkeeping:Getting paid, depositing money, paying others, tracking invoices.
• Research/Development: Trying out new tools, new procedures, reading Technibble and other blogs.
• Customer Service: Following up with clients, dealing with problems, scheduling.

Don’t be in a reactive mode for these aspects of your computer repair business. Think MSP for your business! For example, I know quite a few owners who forget to send out invoices. When the owner’s bank account became overdrawn it was the reminder to send out invoices. That’s because they didn’t schedule time for this. Those billable hours don’t do you much good unless you collect payment.

Decide The Parts of The Business You Want to Do Yourself

Some parts of the business end you’ll really enjoy. If you like meeting people, you’ll go to business networking events. If data entry is your thing, enter those invoices. I like data entry. I put on the tunes and get a ton of work done. Find those aspects of the business you both enjoy and have the skills to get done. Schedule those times like you would any other client job.

Outsource the Other Parts of the Business to Professionals

We all have clients who think they know IT. They do it themselves and then have us clean up their mess. Guess what? Accountants say the same things about us! If we hired them from the beginning, we wouldn’t be paying fines to the revenue agencies.

Much like our services, you don’t need these professionals on staff. Use them when you need them. For example, I have an accountant I see once a year. She set up my Quickbooks. My bookkeeper remotes in every so often and enters invoices. If I need marketing materials, I have a graphic designer do them.

These services will cost you, but sometimes you can barter your services. Unless you’re sure you can do a professional job, you should have someone else do that part of the business.

Your computer repair business isn’t just repairing the computers. You need to manage your business as well. First, you schedule time for your most important client — your business. After making that time, you just have to budget resources. Failure to do so will turn you back into an employee of someone else’s company.

Written by Dave Greenbaum