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

[loop]

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.

great post.

i do have about 1 year of cash to burn if i *need* to. i'd prefer not, because i wanted to buy a house... but if i go this direction, i'm thinking the money would go to savings and stay there for the "oh fuck i'm fucked" times.

i know there's 500,000 mcse's that have thought of this too - but... i've got 7+ years of direct experience, i'm burning through my degree (should be to masters in info tech within 1.5-2 years if i keep going at this oh-my-god-this-shit-is-insane-my-head's-gonna-pop rate), i have connections, and something a majority of MCSE's don't have - people skills. i know how to bathe. i know how to court clients. i know how to wow people with innovation, when necessary...

i have some people I could consider mentors - my dad started his own cpa firm, my brother is beginning an independent wine distributorship (deals exclusively with indie vineyards, neat business), and I work at an accounting firm that services tons of small business clients. Entrepreneurs in my area of expertise though? not so many...

 

[Diablo Escobar]

not to sound so negative, i'm not saying it couldn't be done, it just doesn't pass my risk averseness smell test. If you've got more of a tolerance for risk it sure could succeed, but it seems to me to be a ship that sailed about 5 years ago and getting into it now would be very, very hard and probably take some good luck

 

[Error|550]

great post

Thank you!

i do have about 1 year of cash to burn if i *need* to ... for the "oh fuck i'm fucked" times

Precisely what it's there for. As for having cash to buy a house, well, if you're successful as you intend to be, buying a house as a self-employed person will be easier then it is now.

i have connections, and something a majority of MCSE's don't have - people skills. i know how to bathe. i know how to court clients. i know how to wow people with innovation, when necessary ...

Hehe ... yeah ... "people skills" are at a premium, apparently, in this sector. Some of the guys I've seen "hang out their shingle" as independent contractors in IT make me think of "Office Space" and red staplers for some reason ...

i have some people I could consider mentors - my dad started his own cpa firm, my brother is beginning an independent wine distributorship

Excellent! The fact that they're family hopefully means they'll "shoot straight with you" when someone who didn't have a blood relationship might gloss over something rather then offend you.

I work at an accounting firm that services tons of small business clients.

Depending on your relationship with the firm's ownership, you might very well have a built-in book of business right there.

Again, depending on the relationship with the ownership, you might very well be able to use their name to court new clients.

Possibly offer fractional ownership to the owners of the CPA firm in exchange for referrals ...

 

[Error|550]

not to sound so negative, i'm not saying it couldn't be done, it just doesn't pass my risk averseness smell test. If you've got more of a tolerance for risk it sure could succeed, but it seems to me to be a ship that sailed about 5 years ago and getting into it now would be very, very hard and probably take some good luck

The harder you work, the luckier you get.

 

[OriGiNaL]

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.

We service home clients for two reasons. The biggest reason is that I’m a University student so I’m not going to be reliable enough for business needs, and evening appointments at residential houses makes a lot more sense. The second reason is that I live out in the suburbs of Toronto so there are a lot of houses out here and it’s a lot easier for us to penetrate the market.

 

[Ultrakiller]

Sell things on eBay with Makasuro. Get in early before it gets saturated!!

 

[Crom]

running a small business means accepting MASSIVE financial risk with only a small chance of success. if you can accept that fact, then you passed the first hurdle.

setting up a business correctly costs money. running a business correctly costs more money. setup costs, even for a business with low hard-costs, are pretty high.

We started our company on a small grant, a small loan, and lots of out-of-pocket money. We already had a proof-of-concept and contracts signed, and it was (and is) still extremely difficult.

lawyer fees, accountant fees, rent, bills, equipment, etc. will constantly drain any money you make, and at the start this is very tough to get out of.

i could go on...but i have a company to run

 

[fb]

Look at this:
http://geeksquad.com/servicesandpricing/onsiteservices.php

With that in mind, nobody can fail at a business like your idea. Good luck.

 

[loop]

quickly (cuz i have to run for a bit) -
the geek squad prices are SICK overpriced in comparison to what I do. I need to raise my prices, apparently.

Thanks for the advice and thoughts guys. I'm gonna give this some serious thinking tonight... any good web resources out there?

 

[Crom]

in this case, i strongly recommend not using the web for resources

the best way to learn about running a small business is to talk to small business owners, accountants, lawyers, and so on. Many cities/states/provinces provide services for new businesses, including Q&A via phone.

The internet can provide you the details in technical terms, but the best advice and insight i got was from other small business owners in my companies field.

 

[euph]

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.

This is exactly what I do and exactly how my company approaches it.

The big issue w/ freelancing your IT skills is establishing a customer base. I could make 4x what I'm making now if I moved even 1/2 of the clients I handle personally to a freelance basis at their current contract price. Believe me, I've considered it, and am in somewhat the same position as you. Fortunately, I'm not stuck in a cube all day and am in the feild 95% of the time. If you feel as though you can consistently line up enough customers, get them on a monthly or quarterly contract, and KEEP them, then go for it. You would be suprised how difficult it is to attain new customers.

 

[euph]

Here is another strategy I've come upon in this industry. DO NOT UNDERPRICE YOURSELF. If you don't have a huge company name behind you to back up your credibility, the average customer will tend to guage your competance by your asking price. If your market worth is $80 an hour, advertise your prices at $120 an hour and provide discounts when need be to "give back" to "loyal" customers. Its a typical salesmans lies and deciet, but it works.

 

[-Timber]

Instead of wedding photos I was always tempted to start a wedding video business. Mostly because I've done video production for 13 years and I can sleepwalk my way through a wedding. You can make almost as much as a wedding photographer.

I think it'd be a good business since I doubt any of the other places in down that do this kind of thing either have my experience or a decent all-digital setup.

 

[triple]

yea you dont really need to spend enough on lighting, actually. you can do it via natural light and a decent flash. Just get something like an omnibounce ($20) and you're all set.

The camera or lenses arent important, you could shoot the entire wedding with a 50 1.8 ($50) and a 20d if you wanted to. I'd invest in a backup camera, though.

Initial costs would be easily under $5k and from there on out its all reusable. Score!

You'd make everything back in the first 2 weeks, lol. From there on out its straight profit. Spend some money on a nice website and some poster sized prints to show couples later on.

Oh and retouching.. is a pain in the ass.. but profitable. I do about a dozen photos an hour if im lazy, and each retouch is $28-55 for the company. You think I make 600 an hour? LOL

 

[thedrummingfish]

Can you ban the groom if you don't like his tux?

Or maybe you can edit his vows or something.

go away...

stop acting like you've been here for years (and you do) i dont even know half the stuff that went on back in the day, its why i keep my mouth shut about it most of the time. stop clogging up my internets, i keep having to send lotto balls down the tubes...

 

[triple]

Here is another strategy I've come upon in this industry. DO NOT UNDERPRICE YOURSELF.

there are people doing wedding photography for $85,000 per.

not daily, mind you, but you'll get calls.

 

[triple]

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!

Post process? What happened to good photography?

The only reason I post process anymore is to USM and resize for web. Ive never done it giving photos to clients. Any lab they deal with does that automatically, you know. If I give em my lab, I get a referral cut, AND I get em printed the way I want. Thats another point I forgot.