- You are here:
- Home »
- Blog »
- Starting A Computer Repair Business »
- Top 7 Beginner Mistakes for New Computer Businesses
Top 7 Beginner Mistakes for New Computer Businesses
There are a handful of common beginner mistakes I often see in this business. A single one of these top 7 beginner mistakes can completely cripple a new business, yet I have found businesses that are actually making a few of these mistakes at the same time. I would like to share with you the top 7 beginner mistakes I have found:
Starting A Business Because You Like Computers
You love fixing computers and think it would be great making it a full time job by starting your own business right? If you just want to work with computers then you would be better off working for someone else as a salaried technician. When you become self employed the amount of computer repair work you do declines because you also have to be the business owner, manager, secretary, accountant, marketer and less of a technician.
Not Having Enough Start Up Funds
I believe that the bare minimum amount of money you should start a new business with is at least $1000 and that is not taking into account the amount of money you need to survive while you are starting up. You need to pay for official business registrations, accountants, tools, stock and advertising. I go into this a little deeper in my Computer Repair Business Start up Costs article.
Charging Too Low
We cover this a lot here at Technibble and it’s one of the most common mistakes. There are many young computer technicians believe that they can beat their competition by having lower prices but don’t realize the costs of running a real computer repair business. There are taxes, ongoing advertising costs, depreciation in your cars value, petrol, aging stock, business insurance and licenses for software. There is also another side effect of having very low prices and that is you attract cheap clients who want more for less and will eventually consume most of your time yet you will be making little money. Also, once you raise your prices to something more sustainable these clients most likely wont have any loyalty towards you because they will always be looking for the cheapest price.
Pirated Software Or Inappropriate Licenses
It is extremely risky to use pirated software or inappropriate licenses on both your business computers, or your clients computers. Not only is it unethical, but it is dangerous for your business because your competitors can take you out with one phone call to Microsoft, Adobe or any of the other big brands who go after pirates. Even if you don’t have any competitors in your area, all it takes is one angry client to “tell on you”.
Not Having Business Insurance
I find a lot of new businesses skip on having business insurance because of the costs involved. This can be a very dangerous move because you are more likely to make mistakes in your early years than you are in your later years. There are many factors involved in calculating the cost of insurance such as your location and the sort of clients that you deal with, but you can get good insurance for somewhere between $200 – $500 USD per year. Shop around for a good price using both local insurance agencies and online brokers such as InsuranceForTechs.com and TechInsurance.com
Getting In Over Your Head
I talked about this recently in my article “Don’t be afraid to turn down certain computer technician work” where I personally had a job in front of me that would have put me in over my head. While I could have done the job, if it went wrong I could have been sued into oblivion. Know your limits and don’t bite off more than you chew.
Learning On Clients Computers
This mistake goes hand in hand with the above “getting in over your head”. If I brought my car into a mechanics garage and found out that their mechanic was learning while fixing my car, I would be really upset. If you don’t know what you are doing, hand it onto someone else.
Of course, you need to learn somehow and there are many ways to do it without learning on a clients computer. You could work under someone else for a while or if you were like me and learning when you were young and penniless, I used to find abandoned computers on the side of the road and turn about 5 dead computers into 2 good working ones. If I did damage to any of the hardware, I would just put it back out on the side of the road. I would spend 3 hours trying to fix a problem that now takes me 5 minutes to do onsite. Its not fair chargrge the client for those 3 hours of learning time when it could be done in 5 minutes.
Session expired
Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page.
Absolutely good stuff here, thanks man!
I SO agree with the low prices part. I am guilty of that but have recently realized it. Higher prices weed out the worst clients that are the most trouble. Usually when I try to help someone out is when I have the worst trouble but if I charge a higher price I usually get a client for life.
And getting in over your head is also great advice. If I don’t feel comfortable with something (especially in a business setting) I pass. You don’t want to get open your business up to any liability.
Invaluable knowledge from articles like this is why I love this site so.
100% true to all of the above. Great article Bryce!
Regarding learning on the clients time:
It is entirely possible to learn on the clients time and in fact is expected. Let me explain…
Naturally you wouldn’t teach yourself java onsite after they hire you to build a java app, or teach yourself how to put a sql cluster together onsite after they hire you to do so.
That said, you cannot be expected to know everything, and you will undoubtedly run into difficult issues you’ve never seen before. It is your ability to troubleshoot coupled with your deep knowledge of computers and experience that enables you research the problem and find solutions.
Note that you don’t have to find the -exact- error or symptom to repair the problem. Often fixes for -similar- symptoms will work.
Sometimes you will go down the wrong path, and sometimes the solution was staring you in the face but you missed it.
The client could not have fixed this themselves, regardless of how much time they spent on it, which is why they hire you.
Often during the job you will find out exactly how long they spent on it before they called you.
You can always reduce the fee you charge if you feel that you should have fixed it sooner, or that the cost of fixing the problem exceeds the value of the fix.
But don’t let your embarrassment at having taken too long to fix the problem get the better of you and make you poor. Thinking that you -could- have fixed it sooner is not necessarily the reality of the situation.
Wow….the first item in this list is exactly why I want my own business….but now that you mention the other “hats” I would be wearing, I would not want to do everything right now. Would you recommend just continuing to have a part time business just to supplement my income?
Another great article.
I would however agree strongly with post 4 by Mike Smith. You can’t know it all and sometimes I work on very proprietary software for my clients that has poor or no support or the proper support provider can not or will not remedy the issue. I just make it really clear to them that it may take some time for me to get up to speed and solve their issue. If I feel that I have spent time going down the wrong path or a path that was unhelpful and did not contribute to the solution, I have the freedom to adjust my bill accordingly.
I have a client who recently paid 50 grand for a large LCD sign. The sign installer and the sign manufacturer were pissing him off. No results and a 50,000 dollar albatross in his front lot. Neither the sign installer or manufacturer were talking to one another and neither was helping my client. Because it involved point-point and multipoint antennae/radios and an XP embedded OS to run the sign I knew I could fix it. The proprietary software to run the sign, I knew nothing about. I was clear about that. My client is getting a bill for the whole time I spent on it………and he is happy. Really happy. I charged for my time to review and learn the software and then transfer that knowledge to him in terms he could understand.
I saw that client at a social function last night and something that had been an embarrassment to him was clearly a source of pride now. He could not stop telling people about it and the fact that he had programed the sign himself. He was like a kid in a candy store.
If I had not been willing to charge him for my learning or he had not been willing to pay, he would have big white dud in his front lot that would piss him off every time he looked at it.
Got to agree with Mike Smith and JRoss on this one. Also, I feel the auto mechanic analogy really isn’t accurate or fair. Auto’s cost upwards a few thousand to 100,000 or more. Most computers people have however range from a few hundred to maybe a thousand or more if they have a higher end lap top. Of course there’s exceptions, servers ect, where I think knowing when you’re in over your head covers. But the fact is, computers are not even close to being in the same bracket as an automobile financially and while you can really mess up a computer, most everything can be fixed as long as you back up prior, cars however, cannot be backed up :)
A well written article.
I have been in situations where I had to research problems(learn on my client’s computer,if you will) in order to come up with effective solutions.Without exception,I was able to find a solution to a hitherto unknown or poorly understood problem.If you have a good grasp of computer repair in general you will know when a computer problem is beyond your ken.
However,it is foolhardy to start a computer repair business without adequate training and/or experience.
My store is a one man operation. One of the first things I did when opening was list down all of my service. Of course I piled on as much as I could to make the company marketable to a larger audience.
One of the services that “made it big” was website design. At one point I had 5 websites to design, a couple of computers in the shop, and your day to day business tasks. At that point I realized I was in too deep. I was able to get all of the work completed in a timely fashion (It was a lot of work!!), but I learned a valuable lesson. Being a one man show you really have to focus yourself on core services. Till this day I no longer do website design and have never been in that big of a jam. Only take what you can, and make sure your not getting swamped. The money is nice, but an un-satisfied set of customers is not (luckily I had none of them, but it was a red flag for the future)
I wholeheartedly agree with points 1, 3, 4 and 5 however points 2, 6 & 7, while there’s a grain of truth to them, should not be regarded as hard and fast rules.
I had pretty much no startup funds when I started my business, I didn’t even have a permanent place to live and was sofa surfing at my friends houses. The only assets I had were a pushbike and an IBM 240X I got for £80 on ebay (which was virtually obsolete even back then) and while it took quite a while to build up I eventually managed.
On points 6 & 7 while getting in over your head is by definition a bad thing there’s nothing wrong with pushing yourself hard and I think your comments about learning on the job are dead wrong – I think somethings wrong if you aren’t learning anything from your job. As some of the posters above have pointed out there’s nothing unfair about it if you charge a commensurate rate and are upfront with your customers. If you do a good job for them and prove your trustworthiness most clients will not begrudge you spending 15 minutes figuring out something new on the occasions where you have to, all my regular clients know that if I don’t know how to do it the geek squad or the local shady computer shop certainly wont! As long as you’re up front about it there’s no problem and they appreciate someone taking the time to figure something out especially for them.
Of course there are a class of people who you can and should expect that flawless level of service from, they are called consultants, they charge upwards of £100/hr and tend to have very narrow specialties. Right now I’m a computer repair bloke, some day I may becoem a consultant, until then I’m a reasonably priced guy with broad skills who’ll have a go at anything! :)
“some day I may becoem a consultant”
Once I’ve learned how to use a spellcheck that is! LOL :)
Mechanics, not so much. Doctors and Hair Stylists learn by working on a client, Surgeons to.
They may be new or inexperienced but, I think people freak more about their hair or having their body cut apart, but you have to learn somehow. Often the best way to learn is hands on! :O
Charging too little was a problem of mine for a while. My thought was to underbid the big tech support, but they were getting a much better service and was willing to pay for it.
I agree with your points on starting and continuing a small business. I also agree that taking on too much can really hurt your business. It is called OverExtending yourself. I see that in many other business’s also. Like Lawn Care and such.
I have a policy that also helps. Building boxes is a bottomless pit. When you can buy a white box all inclusive for a lot less than you can build it, considering the time involved. You can’t really bill for the time to install all the parts and setup the software, it gets expensive and the customer see that there is a Dell available for a lot less.
Selling boxes is just the start as you end up being the owner of the box forever as anything that goes wrong ends up with you taking the fall for it’s construction, regardless of whether your right or not. I buy the box from a white box vendor and the client pays for my time, the vendor is the warantee.
I have another policy, I don’t service home computers due to not being able to charge what time I have to spend. Many people want you to do it on the cheap. Why waste your time when small business’s will pay you your hourly rate.
Also, I try to get small business clients to contract for a monthy retainer, which includes a specified number of hours at a reduction in my hourly rate. Extra hours are discounted. This will even your workload and give you a more steady income and you can budget your time easier.
I have been very successful using these ideas and have passed thousands of dollars in work to other consultants who are very appreciative.
Bottom Line:
Treat your customers right and most will respect you and recommend you. Try to cheat them and they will chase away potential customers. Golden Rule.
rich
@ RichNRockvilleMD USA:
Maybe it went over my head but when you talked about white boxes and such, I suspect you were referring to building desktops and such. Is there anyway I could contact you and maybe get a little more info on this, been trying to get into retail and such with no luck so far. Thanks.