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Thread: Thinking of starting a small business IT consulting

  1. #51
    Senior Member slgrieb's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tekboy View Post
    Hell hath no fury like a lawyer who can't access his email at 3:00AM.
    No, you're wrong. This is Tax Season, and about six of my largest accounts are accountants or tax attorneys. On a scale of 1 to 10, I bet that attorney can't even break 5.
    Yes, Mr. Death... I'll play you a game! But not CHESS !!! BAH... FOOEY! My game is...
    WIFFLEBALL!

  2. #52
    Senior Member Webhead's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by slgrieb View Post
    Congratulations! I'm sure you can make it work.
    Thanks! For now it's just a side project. I'm also still looking for full-time work. Even if I find work, I can still do this on the weekends though until it grows into something more permanent. But my friend helping me out by connecting me to his peers is really a good start to this whole thing I think.

  3. #53
    Senior Member Webhead's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tekboy View Post
    Hell hath no fury like a lawyer who can't access his email at 3:00AM.
    Right. I'll be leaving my phone ringer on silent at that hour. LOL

  4. #54
    Senior Member slgrieb's Avatar
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    I know I've given you a fair amount of grief in the past, but you clearly have a lot of Mac expertise, and general PC experience. I think what you will find is that balancing the requirements of a full time or even a part time job with the demands of being an independent businessman is very difficult. The more your independent business grows, the worse the conflicts get.

    My advice is that if you have a pretty good stable of customers, which I expect you do, and you have a few bucks set aside, just make a clean break and start your company. It's nice to have a stable job, but if you are trying to juggle a part time business with another job, you just pretty much guarantee that you are going to be getting those odd hours calls, because you will be everyone's second choice for service.

    Screw that noise. Start the company, gut out the lean times, and run the business the way you want it to be run.
    Yes, Mr. Death... I'll play you a game! But not CHESS !!! BAH... FOOEY! My game is...
    WIFFLEBALL!

  5. #55
    Senior Member Mobile PC's Avatar
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    I know you all realize that us hardware people are the TV repairmen from the 60's? Everything in the cloud, hardware craps, throw it out, buy a new one, bring it down from the cloud, or leave it up there and work it. Cell phone screen repair is hot now. We have store fronts called "Broke Ass Phone" stores advertising on the radio here. I believe small business is the spot we need to focus on.

  6. #56
    Senior Member slgrieb's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mobile PC View Post
    I know you all realize that us hardware people are the TV repairmen from the 60's? Everything in the cloud, hardware craps, throw it out, buy a new one, bring it down from the cloud, or leave it up there and work it. Cell phone screen repair is hot now. We have store fronts called "Broke Ass Phone" stores advertising on the radio here. I believe small business is the spot we need to focus on.
    Yes, I am very much aware that being a "hardware guy" does make me something of a dinosaur. That's why over the last few years I've tried to move my business toward services more than hardware. Still, I have customers that would rather replace a hard drive and restore a backup instead of buying a new computer.

    Meanwhile, on the service side of things, most clients are never going to learn enough about networking to be a threat to my business. And, so long as many companies continue to write really crappy software, I'll always have a job supporting their junk.

    Let me take a moment to recognize Intuit for a lifetime achievement award in the category of "Worst Software of All Time". Fixing problems with Quickbooks has earned me thousands of dollars, and as the quality of Intuit's support has continued to decline (something I didn't think possible) they have become a consistent, dependable source of revenue.

    Here is a recent example. If you use any of Intuit's business services such as credit card processing or payroll services, you are pretty much locked into a three year upgrade cycle. So, a few months ago a client had to purchase a new version of Quickbooks to continue using their payroll service. So, on a Friday, he downloads the new version of Quickbooks, and it won't install.

    After some time on the phone with Quickbooks support, the service rep says something like "Well, the problem is that your older version of Quickbooks is corrupted, so we can't fix this issue with our free installation support. My supervisor tells me that fixing this issue will cost $500."

    To which my client replied, "Well, the software was fine when I did payroll yesterday." but the service rep wasn't having any of that.

    So, Saturday I truck on over to the business, and I find that the installation file for the new version of Quickbooks is corrupted. So, I downloaded a fresh copy from Intuit (and they operate the slowest goddamn servers on the planet) and in just over an hour, I had the new version of Quickbooks installed and done a file conversion to the new QB format.

    So, Monday, I presented said client with a bill for my services. First, I gave him a fake invoice for $499.99. The expression on his face was priceless, and I was laughing so hard I thought I might wet myself. Then I gave him the real invoice for an hour of my time. What can I say; I live in a small town, and I have done work for this client for over 15 years. In a different market I would have never done this. But both the client and I had a pretty good laugh.
    Yes, Mr. Death... I'll play you a game! But not CHESS !!! BAH... FOOEY! My game is...
    WIFFLEBALL!

  7. #57
    Senior Member Webhead's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by slgrieb View Post
    I know I've given you a fair amount of grief in the past, but you clearly have a lot of Mac expertise, and general PC experience. I think what you will find is that balancing the requirements of a full time or even a part time job with the demands of being an independent businessman is very difficult. The more your independent business grows, the worse the conflicts get.

    My advice is that if you have a pretty good stable of customers, which I expect you do, and you have a few bucks set aside, just make a clean break and start your company. It's nice to have a stable job, but if you are trying to juggle a part time business with another job, you just pretty much guarantee that you are going to be getting those odd hours calls, because you will be everyone's second choice for service.

    Screw that noise. Start the company, gut out the lean times, and run the business the way you want it to be run.
    Honestly, it might have to come to that anyway. Most of the jobs around here are DevOps/SRE type roles. So long story short, I'm running an uphill battle with the job search. Hopefully I can find something.

    But either way, I also do hope that starting a business will turn into something because I'd much rather make my own decisions going forward anyway. So he's on a business trip right now but when he returns we're going to sit down and go over everything. In the meantime, I'm just trying to figure out a business name and what type of business structure I want. Torn between sole proprietorshop, LLC and corporation right now.

  8. #58
    Senior Member Webhead's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mobile PC View Post
    I know you all realize that us hardware people are the TV repairmen from the 60's? Everything in the cloud, hardware craps, throw it out, buy a new one, bring it down from the cloud, or leave it up there and work it. Cell phone screen repair is hot now. We have store fronts called "Broke Ass Phone" stores advertising on the radio here. I believe small business is the spot we need to focus on.
    I agree. There is still a need for the small business I think. Even if it's just helping a customer get a web site put up. Most people do need help with technology.

    As for everything being in the cloud,... you sure got that right too. It's crazy. I've been working on learning AWS lately. They have a free tier that allows you to use it and learn it. Turns out it's exactly the same thing as I've ever done all these years. But instead of building a physical server, I build an EC2 Instance. Or instead of creating a folder on the server and sharing it, I just create an S3 bucket. So no more plugging things in, attaching KVM switches, screwing parts together, lifting heavy equipment, etc. Now you just login and create whatever you need. LOL

  9. #59
    Senior Member Webhead's Avatar
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    Also,... totally agreed that Intuit is garbage.

  10. #60
    Senior Member CeeBee's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Webhead View Post
    I've been working on learning AWS lately. [...] But instead of building a physical server, I build an EC2 Instance.
    There is a new player on the field and it's directly chewing into the EC2 user base... AWS Lambda, server-less web services.. on-demand computing billed to the 0.1 second.
    The advantage for Amazon is that they provide the same computing power with fewer resources, no need for some apps to sit on top of an OS multiplied across tens of thousands of VMs.
    As a developer I would just setup the app, upload my code to the service and it's ready to serve 1 client/day or 1 million clients per hour, no need to worry about load balancing and adding extra resources ahead of a major national campaign.
    Last edited by CeeBee; 04-10-2017 at 04:28 PM.

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