[business owners] I'm considering starting my own business.

L

loop

Veteran XX
I'm thinking that I might be able to make more money on my own than sitting in a cube all day - and that's bothering the hell outa me. Why haven't I done anything about this?

Once in a while, I do outside jobs for friends or clients that need network services (IE setup of a new Exchange server or upgrade some workstations) or maybe clean someone's computer of whatever the latest adware / malware they managed to download... and I might make 1500 dollars for a few days work for the big stuff or 60-80 dollars to clear a system out...

I don't mind doing this stuff at all, the money's nice... but it occurs to me, sitting here at my cube in this network adminning job, that maybe i need to take my talents and skills and actually get out there, maybe try to grab a slice of that American Dream (tm 2006) and make some real cash, you know?

I know some of you out there own your own businesses - can you tell me how you did it? What are some of the big questions you wish you had asked yourselves in the beginning? What was the best or worst part?

Thanks in advance for thoughtful answers. :)
 
nearly every company on earth has an IT department at this point, excepting small ones that can't pay well, and the world is brimming with people who are certified to setup Exchange, let alone the number of power users who know how to clean out malware

Now explain to me why anyone on earth is hiring your new company
 
twiztid said:
nearly every company on earth has an IT department at this point, excepting small ones that can't pay well, and the world is brimming with people who are certified to setup Exchange, let alone the number of power users who know how to clean out malware

Now explain to me why anyone on earth is hiring your new company
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because i'm good at what I do, ethical, and have a proven track record and enough connections in this city to be able to get in on lots of good contract opportunities.

i think there's actually probably a good amount of money helping desperate housewives fix their spyware-laden systems, as well - i routinely turn those down, since I don't have time very often.
 
I was thinking of getting into wedding photos, since that can bring in thousands of dollars a week for a few hundred pictures on a CD-R. Expenses nowadays are generally nil if you do it yourself. Camera/PC/Blank CDs/Knowhow - thats it. Let the lab deal with the prints. Maybe when im older.
 
Its not my own business but I work in a small company doing pretty much exactly that. Our clients are small-medium size businesses who don't want to pay for their own IT department. We also have a few larger clients who have in-house IT, which we supplement when the needs arise.

What twiztid said is not true, there are thousands of companies out there who don't have IT departments and who are perfectly willing to hire outsiders do to tasks for an hourly rate or monthly service agreement. The trouble comes with finding those clients. Our method of sale is cold calls, it generates the most leads and drums up the most business. If you hit a couple of good calls, you can have 4 or 5 clients total who will easily make you over 10 grand a month...

I service one company with 150 workstations. They have their own IT guy and he hired us to help him with maintaining the network after they let go of 2 other full time IT people. They saved 100k/year by firing them, and now they pay us $36000/year for a service agreement and we do anything and everything.

There's money out there but if you're a one man operation, you have to deal with lots of responsibility. You're the accounting, the project management, the sales, and the technician. It's tough.
 
twiztid is right; if you're going to do this I would forget about commercial work for the most part and put your efforts towards smaller residential jobs with an emphasis on volume. IMO residential is the only viable marketplace for independents, and you can make good money. It just takes the right marketing, a solid business plan, and a willingness to undercut all the big guys doing the same thing.

edit: My partner and I have a small business similar to this outside of Toronto.

edit #2: amRam does make some valid points; I'm just speaking from my own experiences. My partner and I have targeted residential clientele from the start and marketed towards that.
 
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wedding photos is a good extortion racket and aside from the difficulty in getting clients, seems like a good side business

quitting your job to setup other people's exchange servers and clean up spyware....sounds far too risky to me. You'd need to do very well on what is essentially a consulting gig, and there can't be a high volume of those available. So while maybe your brain says "hey i made good money on that", you're not realizing how infrequent they are. As to the spyware/malware/etc bullshit services, there are about a half a million 18 year olds who are equally qualified, and my region at least is flooded with people doing this service, in addition to the family members most families have where one person knows how to do this
 
You do those jobs on the side as just some dude. No one wants to call the "computer shoppe" because they know it's going to cost them a good buck. But calling some dude they know, and paying him whatever is a hell of a lot simpler, and they feel it won't cost them as much. Thus the reason you've made some decent cash doing it. Even companies with a small or even non-existant company are more willing to hire some dude they know will do it but isn't charging retarded consultation fees.


Starting out on your own, will just make you one of those people they don't want to hire because of the price. Even if your price is the same as it was before you were a buisness (which it won't be because you'll need to make a living doing it.)
 
triple said:
I was thinking of getting into wedding photos, since that can bring in thousands of dollars a week for a few hundred pictures on a CD-R. Expenses nowadays are generally nil if you do it yourself. Camera/PC/Blank CDs/Knowhow - thats it. Let the lab deal with the prints. Maybe when im older.
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Yeah, thats it! Take hundreds of pictures, spend hours post processing them and then take them to walmart to be printed!!!

Why didnt I think of this before! :ctrlk:
 
triple said:
I was thinking of getting into wedding photos, since that can bring in thousands of dollars a week for a few hundred pictures on a CD-R. Expenses nowadays are generally nil if you do it yourself. Camera/PC/Blank CDs/Knowhow - thats it. Let the lab deal with the prints. Maybe when im older.
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nil? fuck man, you can't just go take wedding shots with a little $40 webcam that you got at compusa

a nice camera / lighting setup is going to cost a fortune, not to mention the "knowhow" is going to involve a lot of research, trial, and error before you get it right
 
triple is into that garbage i'm pretty sure he spent stupid amounts of money on his camera

i know some guys who did that out in CA and did very well for themselves, very few people know the difference
 
OriGiNaL said:
twiztid is right; if you're going to do this I would forget about commercial work for the most part and put your efforts towards smaller residential jobs with an emphasis on volume. IMO residential is the only viable marketplace for independents, and you can make good money. It just takes the right marketing, a solid business plan, and a willingness to undercut all the big guys doing the same thing.

edit: My partner and I have a small business similar to this outside of Toronto.
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And all you guys do is service home clients?

We service business clients from Kitchener all the way to Whitby, and we routinely turn down house calls.

Toronto is huge. If you think you can't drum up business with companies and are just focusing on home users, you're losing out on quite a bit of money.
 
loop said:
I'm thinking that I might be able to make more money on my own than sitting in a cube all day - and that's bothering the hell outa me. Why haven't I done anything about this?

Once in a while, I do outside jobs for friends or clients that need network services (IE setup of a new Exchange server or upgrade some workstations) or maybe clean someone's computer of whatever the latest adware / malware they managed to download... and I might make 1500 dollars for a few days work for the big stuff or 60-80 dollars to clear a system out...

I don't mind doing this stuff at all, the money's nice... but it occurs to me, sitting here at my cube in this network adminning job, that maybe i need to take my talents and skills and actually get out there, maybe try to grab a slice of that American Dream (tm 2006) and make some real cash, you know?

I know some of you out there own your own businesses - can you tell me how you did it? What are some of the big questions you wish you had asked yourselves in the beginning? What was the best or worst part?

Thanks in advance for thoughtful answers. :)
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Well, if you're thinking of being a free-lance IT guy there are two main things to remember:

1) There's lots of opportunity in the small to medium-sized company range to help them out-source some slice of their business;
2) Of the 500,000+ MCSEs currently in existence, you're not the first one to think of this.

The keys to starting your own business and succeeding in it are as follows:

1) Identify a niche where you can be successful. No one can do everything so pick something you can already do that you can prove has a market need.
2) Make sure you have at least 1 full year's "cash burn" set aside to cover the lean times while you build your book of business.
3) Find someone you can establish a mentoring relationship with that has succeeded not just "in business" but in the specific industry in which you're intending to succeed.
4) Work your ass off for that year's time to get said book of business built.

Promotion of yourself and your services is the difference between success, during step #4, and failure because doing business without some form of advertising is like trying to kiss a girl in the dark: You know what you're trying to do but no one else does.

:D
 
twiztid said:
triple is into that garbage i'm pretty sure he spent stupid amounts of money on his camera

i know some guys who did that out in CA and did very well for themselves, very few people know the difference
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I, in good faith, could never do that to someone who forked over thousdands for wedding photos. To each their own.
 
I, in good faith, don't believe the professional photographers are doing much more.

I believe the general business model is to charge 30-50% less and undercut the pros, grabbing the market of people who want nicer-than-my-digicam photos but don't want to drop thousands on it since they can't tell the difference
 
twiztid said:
I, in good faith, don't believe the professional photographers are doing much more.

I believe the general business model is to charge 30-50% less and undercut the pros, grabbing the market of people who want nicer-than-my-digicam photos but don't want to drop thousands on it since they can't tell the difference
Click to expand...

Like I said, to each their own.
 
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