Starting my own business

[KennyT]

Bravo Sir. For a few years during highschool I ran a computer repair business through family friends and business clients. You would be surprised how fast people look you up when you have business references and charge half the going rate. The paperwork and taxes were a pain though.

I come from a family of small business owners, so you can guess what route I'm going after I get out of college. Good luck to you.

[TexasTerp]

Congrats! I'm back into the world of freelancing and small business again and couldn't be happier. Let me know if you need a website, I won't be taking on any new clients of a few more weeks or so though.

[blunttech]

Congrats I bet you will do very well if you work at it

[kishg]

congrats and good luck!

[equate975]

Thanks guys, I should make it clear I guess that it's going to be an iphone/ipod repair shop mainly, but also we will do computers and other smart phones. We are obviously small enough that if you bring me any broken electronic I will fix it if I have the equipment to.

Another thing that makes this nice and me less able to pass up is the fact my dad is a business owner so he knows what all to do to get me off the ground. Also I have access to all his legal hookups lawyers, tax attorney, banking, graphic design, advertising etc... So just having to sort that all out and figure out exactly what I need to do on paper is exponentially easier than jumping head first into it.

I didn't get pics today, but we finished painting which turned out great. I was a little worried it might be blotchy but the flat paint we and the textured walls we have are extremely forgiving so the paint turned out perfect.

The bad news for the day when we went to rock the wall we built we found that it isn't really a perfect square... It's about 1/3 - 1/2 inch off when I put the sheet rock up. We won't have much time to do anything until after thanksgiving, hopefully the walls will be done this weekend.

[Jonny Cash]

Where will you be getting your used broken phones/- will the cost to repair really offset the price of these parts? Enough to hold down a store front? It seems people who break them either claim insurance, or replace them. Not criticizing, just wondering. It beleive you've done enough homework to make it a reality - so dont get me wrong.

Im also a small business owner, and i wouldnt have it any other way. But its not just roll out of bed and grab my tools anymore. Its 24/7 commitment.

1+ I love waking up and knowing what I have to do and when I feel like it.

right. We're not talking about slanging crack dude. go back to bed.

[george graves]

^What'cha do?

You know - I don't think I've ever seen or heard of a phone repair place that has a retail location. Are there any others?

[Jonny Cash]

Painting/restoration.

-jay

[Uliv1c]

Excellent Bro good luck on your new venture... Iam getting my stuff together to start my own business next year .....:)

[VasFinest]

Good luck with this man! Hopefully in ten years it will have blown up into the next starbucks and you will be chillin on a yacht in the Caribbean.

[equate975]

Where will you be getting your used broken phones/- will the cost to repair really offset the price of these parts? Enough to hold down a store front? It seems people who break them either claim insurance, or replace them. Not criticizing, just wondering. It beleive you've done enough homework to make it a reality - so dont get me wrong.

Im also a small business owner, and i wouldnt have it any other way. But its not just roll out of bed and grab my tools anymore. Its 24/7 commitment.



right. We're not talking about slanging crack dude. go back to bed.

I have just been buying them off ebay, but I have bought many locally as well. The cost of parts are typically low enough that I have a lot of wiggle room with my pricing to keep it profitable for me, but still cheap enough that it's worth it for the customer to repair their phone rather than buying a new one.

Since I'm generally dealing with iphones, insurance is not an issue, ATT nor apple does not offer insurance for accidentally damaging an iphone. I would say thus far a vast majority of my repairs have been cracked screens and backs from people dropping or throwing their phones.

Again with the replacement, it's not always an option for iphone owners. In order to get one "cheap" (new plan price) you either need to obviously get a new plan, or wait for your current plan to lapse so you can renew and get the cheap iphone price. Otherwise you're paying $600 for a phone.

There's a lot of people who either have the option of buying a new phone for $600 because they shattered the screen, or pay me $75 to repair the one they have.

Like I said that's just screen repair, which is probably going to be a high percentage of the repairs we will make on phones. But we are able to diagnose and repair other issues.

With that being said, UPDATE......

The building has been coming along, I don't have any pics of the progress. My partner has been doing all the construction and getting our signs, logos, etc all together. I've spent the last 3 weeks programming and compiling software about 10 hours a day just to get all of our backend stuff going.

I had to write my own customer management program, finished that one. I'm just about to finish my custom bootcd with all my tools on it, that one I'm well over a week into. I ended up writing my own antivirus front end to do a lot of work for me, still working out a few kinks in the system but it's close to done, just about to hit 1,000 lines of code all and all into that program haha.

Then I have to dive into our POS system and get that all setup....

[Court M3]

Excellent Bro good luck on your new venture... Iam getting my stuff together to start my own business next year .....:)

Same here. Good luck with your venture OP

[b*saint]

Someone needs to start a clothing company called, "Name Brand"

[Fusion]

There was actually a local company that manufactured a product officially called "Other Brand Washing Powder" and all the name brand manf. had to redo their commercials.

equate: Is there a way to fix the dead wifi problem most 3Gs now have? The signal just "fades away" to nothing and dies. Is it a mainboard problem?
Good luck on your endeavour, sir.

Oh and be sure to be on the webs for your customers, like facebook or your own page + forum so you can answer questions like mine and offer to fix them.

[markseven]

I don't know if you are familiar with SCORE, an excellent resource for start-ups and entrepreneurs. Their services are free:

http://www.score.org/index.html

http://www.scorerochester.org/