So you’re bored with your boss? Are you ill of Hawaiian shirt days, office politics, being beneath paid, and constantly getting a crappy present out of your group’s secret Santa? So turned into I. So I end.
I had a notion about strolling my very own IT help agency for a long-term; however, the concept of no longer understanding where my subsequent meal changed into going to come back from usually dissuaded me. Fortunately, after I began my company and learned some lessons, I by no means needed to fear approximately my budget or the amount of enterprise I had. In fact, within three months of beginning, I changed into turning down customers because I become too busy. I’m going to tell you the steps I took to start and develop my very own IT support enterprise.
Get Licensed
The first thing you’ll need to do when starting up in this discipline is get certified for your nation to do commercial enterprise. IT paintings no longer require any special bonds or even a business license in my nation and city. Your kingdom may additionally vary. I did, however, sign up for my agency call and incorporate it with the country. This is needed for our subsequent step.
Open up commercial enterprise financial institution bills.
The subsequent factor I did was open up a 2d checking account completely for commercial enterprise purposes. It is always an awesome idea to have a separate checking account from your non-public bank account for tax functions. Accountants and the IRS don’t love it while you mix enterprise with non-public, which brings me to my next factor.
Have a go out the method
Before I commenced working for my first consumer, I knew precisely how much I had to make within the first month and how lengthy I was inclined to live off Top Ramen earlier than I would call it quits. I also laid out a full plan of what organizations I could apply to work for if worse came to worse. Doing this allowed me peace of mind, knowing that if I made a big mistake (which I did now not) that I could nonetheless be able to meet my fundamental desires.
Set monthly goals
You want a whiteboard. You can pick them up from any trendy shop along with a few dry erase markers for $15 to $20. Now write down your intention for the month. When I commenced my commercial enterprise, my goal was to find 3 corporations and 10 domestic customers a month. After some months, I commenced with setting a greenback quantity that I wanted to earn, and after each check, I might begin subtracting from that amount. Trying to make that number visit 0 stored me motivated and jogged my memory that I became heading in the right direction.
Announce your self to the sector
Now to the juicy stuff, it is time to open up save and begin advertising your offerings. The first aspect earlier than you do something is passed down to a Kinkos and spring for a few commercial enterprise playing cards. Yours should say enterprise call, your name, smartphone number, and things together with “Computer Repair,” “Networking,” “Troubleshooting,” “Virus Removal,” and many others. If you decide to no longer get enterprise playing cards, forestall analyzing proper now due to the fact no matter what another sort of advertising and marketing you do, if a small enterprise can not smartly file your name in a Rolodex and look for it beneath “Computer problems” you won’t be getting a call lower back.
You would not believe what number of human beings will call you from this, particularly if you live in a primary metropolitan place. Because my business telephone was also my mobile cellphone, typically, I would be driving down the street when the man or woman behind me could name. I would ask them if they would love to drag over to talk about what their trouble was that they are wherein having, and almost constantly, by way of the stop of the verbal exchange, I would have a brand new patron. Sometimes these customers might be small business owners that is precisely the clients you want. Normal home customers are properly for a fast buck, but typically, they’re a giant pain in the ass and always want to haggle over expenses. If you could, continually try to construct your small enterprise customer base. Once you’ve got some small business customers, you will use my next step.
Small enterprise bookkeepers, your new fine pals
Small commercial enterprise clients are higher for repeat business, the quantity of commercial enterprise, the simplicity of the work, and the repeat commercial enterprise quantity. I have in no way had an unmarried small commercial enterprise “shop around” on me. Ninety-nine % of all small organizations price competency overcharge about laptop paintings. Mostly because your services are a tax write-off for them.
Once you have a small commercial enterprise patron, discover straight away who the booker/accountant is. Whoever the person is who enters inside the month-to-month costs and handles parts of payroll, they may be your new exceptional friend and the maximum essential man or woman inside the business enterprise to you. Find out their call, their personality, what they do for a laugh, where they’re from, what they love to do on the weekends, what the number of youngsters they have, where they stay, what they’d for breakfast, if it is “boxer’s or briefs,” if they discovered Jesus, what’s their preferred shade. Everything you can discover approximately them to help you pal up to them, you need to find out.
This is how I constructed my enterprise. I even have never in my career met a small enterprise bookkeeper that did not make paintings for at least 2 other small agencies. And odds are if the business enterprise you’re at proper now’s having troubles with their computers, and the bookkeeper didn’t refer the IT man from the alternative agencies they work for, that other IT guy either sucks or they do not exist… In both cases, it is ideal information for you because you just determined 2 greater customers.
