There is a certain issue that will effect just about every self employed computer technician. It can slowly sneak up on you and may technicians don’t even realize it has happened to them. So what is this sneaky little issue I am talking about?
Read the rest of this entry »

Just about every day I hand out little tidbits of business advice. It might be on the Technibble forums, a podcast or even in person. Here are some of my core pieces of advice for this industry in small, easy to chew, bite-sized chunks.
Read the rest of this entry »

When you are first starting your business, one of the last things you will probably be thinking about is how you are going to exit your business.
However, this something that needs to be considered early on in your businesses life. Do you plan to sell the business and retire at 60 so you can live out the rest of your days playing golf? or do you plan to build the business up over the next few years and sell it for a healthy profit?
Whatever you do, you need to plan your exit strategy now because what you do in the present can greatly increase the value of your business in the future.
So, what can you do now to increase the value of your business?
Read the rest of this entry »

Guest Post by Justin. Justin is a small business owner and computer technician with Protocol16, supporting small and mid-sized businesses as well as consumers in the metro area of Portland, Oregon.

Many technicians that are just starting out would love to accept credit cards, but the idea of accepting them right from the start is daunting. While starting up my personal business, I ended up deciding to take credit cards right from the start, but I learned a lot along the way.
Read the rest of this entry »

Since I have started my computer business I have learned a lot. I have learned not only lessons that apply to the computer business, but lessons that also apply to any industry or even just life in general.

One of the lessons I would like to share with you is that by giving something away or spending more money can actually save or make you a lot more money.
Read the rest of this entry »

In this article, I would like to share with you a series of business and life lessons that I have learned over the years that I believe have helped me become successful in this business.
Read the rest of this entry »

If you have been following Technibble for any length of time, you will already know that I recommend that all new computer businesses should raise their prices to something more sustainable.

Once you have been in business for a year or two you may want to raise your prices again because your experience is now greater than it was when you first started.

In fact, you usually need do this because can fix problems faster. If you charge according to time, you will actually make less than when you first started because you can do it so much quicker.

Of course, raising your prices is the easy part. The hard part is convincing your clients that you are more experienced than the guy down the street who charges half what you do per hour. The client often doesn’t know any better so you need to educate them. Here are a few ways to go about it:
Read the rest of this entry »

When you go onsite to do computer repair work, actually fixing the computer is only half of the job because also need to manage the client.
In this article I have listed a few types of clients I occasionally come across and how you can manage them.
Read the rest of this entry »

The other night just before I went to bed, I walked around the house as I always do making sure all the doors and windows are locked and my appliances are switched off. However, something slightly different happened this time because I noticed there were some cleaning cloths on one of the tables. I tried to figure out why they were there since they should be with the rest of the cleaning products. I wondered how they got there and from what I can remember they were from a big household cleanup some time ago.
I look at this table every single day and am often near it for hours since its near the TV, but I never noticed these cleaning cloths on it.

Why am I talking about cleaning cloths on a computer business site? Because your computer businesses can become like this. When things have been a certain way for so long, it becomes part of the background even though its out of place. You see it, but you don’t notice it.
Read the rest of this entry »

As a self employed computer technician, you shouldn’t be afraid of turning down certain computer technician work. I have turned down a handful of jobs in my time as a technician but one particular time I remember was when I was called out to a courier company that has a central base about 1.5 hours away from me and they called me out to de-dust some computers.
I drove out to their location and once I arrived onsite I found out that these computers they wanted me clean are actually 4 servers. In the end, I had to turn down this job. Heres why:
Read the rest of this entry »