Your Friendly Neighborhood Computer Guy
Start and Grow a Computer Business
Are you a computer business owner looking to fill out your list with some cool tech toys?
Or do you have a techie on your list and not sure what to get them?
This year we have 9 great gifts that will help geeks get to business with office essentials and a few fun surprises. Check out our top picks below and then let us know about your favorite in the comments below! [Read more…]
Whether you’re a computer business owner, an IT guru, or you know someone who geeks out at all things tech, it can be tough to find just the right gift to add to your list or buy for someone else. We here at YFNCG decided to scour the web to find the coolest, strangest, and most practical gifts for the IT crowd. The following are what we hope to find under OUR trees, and I’m sure they’ll be a hit with those special geeks in your life too!
This is my personal must-have device for 2016. Microsoft finally woke up to that fact that in this age, if you’re going to be an OS company, you also need to get into hardware. They came close to realizing the laptop/tablet hybrid utopia with the Surface tablets, but now they have a true winner in the Surface Book! It’s sleek, lightweight, well-engineered, and perfectly captures the essence of a hybrid.
This is the perfect computer to take into the field. It gives you the power you need to run diagnostic software on-site along with the convenience of capturing electronic signatures in-person. Load this up with the forms in the Technibble Computer Business Kit along with invoicing from Freshbooks and you’ll be an unstoppable IT road warrior.
Google+ has been slowly but surely revealing itself as a great social network destination for Geeks and Techies. It has the right balance of media and text to make it easy to share videos, images, articles, and text updates without the noise of everyone and your Grandma(literally) being a part of it.
I’ve enjoyed hanging out in Google+ and I plan on spending more time there in the future. And it’s for that reason that I decided to add Google+ to my list of account roundups like I’ve already done with Twitter and Facebook.
The following list is one that I’ve personally curated from people, places, and communities that are currently active on Google+. These are the essential pages that you should add to your circles in order to stay up to speed on the latest in the tech world.
Before we begin, I’d be remiss if I didn’t do some shameless self-promotion and mention my own Google+ profile first: Matthew Rodela.
Alright, now that we have that out of the way, on to the list!
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One of the most important things to consider when starting your own business is your legal obligations. There is more to running a business than just thinking up a business name and getting it registered with your statutory authority.
You also must ensure you’ve got the proper computer business documentation in place to help protect you and your business. One policy that you should give serious thought to is a refund policy. Not only is it legally required in many areas, but it also gives your customers the peace of mind that you run a friendly and reliable computer business.
So how do you know exactly what to include in your refund policy?
[Read more…]
My ideal customer’s name is Doug Haywood. He lives and works in my town as a family practice doctor. He has a wife and two young children.
At work he has two other employees besides himself, one receptionist and one assistant. They have 3 Windows computers and two printers networked together in a Workgroup. It is imperative that these computers are operational and that patient data is backuped up properly, which is why I am on retainer with them and perform regular repairs and maintenance on their systems.
Because he runs his own business, he also calls on me to design and update his website, since he knows these are services I perform. I also help out with his website’s SEO and social media needs from time to time.
At home Dr. Haywood has one desktop computer, one laptop, and a tablet. Here, he and his wife are most concerned with checking email, making the internet safe for their kids, and keeping their family pictures secure. I helped them set up their network at home and I visit once every three months to perform a quarterly maintenance and cleanup. They also call me every now and then when something goes wrong or they have question.
Doug lives in a single family home in an upper middle class neighborhood. He coaches one of his children’s soccer teams and is active in the local community. Dr. Haywood is easy to work with and always pays on time. And because I have such a good relationship with him, he always recommends me to his friends and colleagues which keeps me busy with referrals.
Doug Haywood is my perfect customer.
He’s also fake.
By bottled_void
Before I started running my computer business full time, I had a feeling that entrepreneurship would be far and above more stressful than working in my corporate IT job. I suspected that I’d be working long hours supporting my business and stressing out over making my customers happy. After all, as a business owner, all responsibility falls on ME for EVERYTHING, right? That sounds nerve-racking!
In my corporate gig I only needed to worry about one small piece of a large business. Sure, I could show some initiative and go outside my box now and again, but mostly I just did what my boss said. More importantly, if the business got sued, if equipment failed, if employees quit, or the company went bankrupt, it really wasn’t my concern. At the end of the day I’d just leave it all behind, go home, and watch The Office.
While I do sometimes work long hours, sometimes have problem customers, and cashflow is still fairly unpredictable…I’m very rarely stressed out.
In fact, after running my solo consulting business for over a year and a half now, I’ve come to the realization that I’m FAR MORE happy and relaxed in this new role.
But why?
It’s been a little over a year since I quit my job to start living the life of a full-time computer consultant. I had been running my business part time on the side for about three years and between changes at work and my growing list of consulting clients, I felt a year ago was a good time to make the transition. I had saved about 6 months worth of living expenses and figured between that and my established list of clients I’d be off to a good start.
Boy was I wrong!
I can say without a doubt this has been one of the toughest years of my life. But it’s also been one of the most rewarding.
I’ll walk you through my first year as a full-time consultant. I urge anyone who is planning on going from part-time to full-time consulting to read through this and learn from my mistakes.
[Read more…]
UPDATE: We have a new list for 2015: 10 Geeky Gift Ideas for IT Techs!
It’s that time of year again, where we take the time to try to find the perfect gift for the one’s we love! Well, if you have a computer tech on your list, or you’re a tech looking for things to put on your own list, here are some ideas for great geeky gifts.
First, be sure to check out my list from a couple of years ago, most of the items are still available and would still make great gifts: 10 Affordable Gifts for the Computer Tech on Your List (2008).
My list this year runs the gamete from practical to downright insane. Therefore, you should be able to find the perfect gift for the needs and personality of the recipient.
The ultimate cool gadget for this season is the ASUS Transformer. It’s the first tablet/laptop hybrid that got it right, in my opinion. You can carry the tablet around by itself. It runs the latest tablet-friendly version of Android and has specs that match or exceed the iPad on the hardware side.
Check out what’s under the hood:
But where this baby really shines is in it’s detachable keyboard. Snap it on and you have a very functional android-based laptop. The keyboard dock adds functionality like USB ports and a track pad.
This is a wonderfully versatile gadget that will come in handy for any computer consultant out in the field.
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I was thinking the other day about how it takes an equal blend of different skills in order to be a good, effective computer consultant. I drafted a simple Venn Diagram to really visualize for myself, and others, how those different skills work together to create the different facets of a computer consultant.
If you are weak in any of these three skills, then being a computer consultant might not be the right job for you. Lets take a deeper look at each of the facets mentioned in the picture.
[Read more…]
In the Breaking into Tech series of posts I weigh the pros and cons of the three basic means of preparing yourself for a career in tech: certification, formal education, and experience. For each category I’ll give separate advice for those seeking a corporate career versus those seeking to start their own computer business. Drawing from my own experiences, as well as my observations of other successful people, I hope to give a realistic look at what it takes to break into tech.
It may seem counter intuative to use experience as criteria for breaking into an industry. Afterall, if you’re new to the profession, how can you have experience? That’s been the ultimate catch 22 for many tech as they begin their career, including me.
But the fact reamins that experience is the ultimate qualification in the tech world, and it is the most important notch on your belt. Practical experience working with technology is worth its weight in gold. You’ll learn more in 6 months of field work than you ever did in 4 years of college.
So it’s important to start getting relevant experience as soon as you decide that technology is the field you want to go in to. You may need to take a cut in pay or simply work for free in order to get your initial experience with computers. Thats okay, because it will pay dividends in the future. Lets explore how experience will help you in both a corporate IT career and with being a computer consultant. [Read more…]
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