One of the many reasons  I’ve been missing in action from blogging is that I recently purchased and moved into a new home.  It’s an exciting milestone in my life, as I’ve never owned a home before.  It also proved to be a hidden gem for finding new, loyal customers for my business.

It’s important to always be looking for new opportunities to spread the word about your business. After receiving a notice from my new homeowners association that they had a community message board, I fired up the computer to check it out and sign up.    It didn’t take long before I realized this would be a perfect opportunity to plug my services.

This is what’s known as hyper-local marketing: a very ambiguous buzz-word that I take to mean targeting advertising to the area immediately surrounding your business. In this case, my target is my new neighborhood.  Methods used for hyper-local marketing can be anything from fliers in the doorway to web-ads targeting local community websites.  An HOA forum is a less-intrusive way to find a couple extra customers, but considerations must be taken to ensure you maximize your potential.

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No advertising or networking method is more powerful and cost effective for the burdgeoning small business owner than  the business card.  

It’s a great ice breaker and conduit for face-to-face conversations about your business to potential customers. It’s an extremely portable advertisement for your business that people can take with them and keep in their wallets/purses.  Nothing is more basic than the business card, providing the most important information about your business and nothing more.  Finally, there’s no denying that it’s much cheaper than an ad in your local paper or phone book, saving you money in those critically cash-strapped first years of business.

So it goes without saying that the first thing any new small business owner should do is get some business cards made.  And that’s exactly what I’ve done.

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Choosing a phone number for your business may seem like another one of the many tedious steps standing in the way of you and your dreams.  Your phone number, much like your business name and website URL, are calling cards that will most likely stay with your business indefinitely.  Although not a deal breaker, an easy to remember phone number is one that will help make it that much more convenient for your customers to reach you.

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I’m always thinking about the types of services I’d like to offer for my computer consulting business customers.  Of course I offer the usual PC repair/troubleshooting/upgrading that all computer businesses offer. But I’m always curious about out-of-the-box ideas for services that will separate me from my competition.

I recently came across a post on Technibble that got me thinking.

In the post, a new member asks about the viability of an interesting niche business idea he has. Here’s an excerpt:
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So how did hings turn out with my first official customer as a business owner?

If you’ll recall in my initial post on the subject, a customer was referred to me a bit before I was fully prepared to start taking on customers.  I decided to take the client, mostly for experience, but also to get a bit more money into my business account.  The lady wasn’t too specific about the problem (are they ever?), but I thought it sounded like a corrupt HD.  Turns out that it was.

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I’ve been writing this blog for almost 6 months now.  It’s been more fun, and more work, than I ever imagined.  But it’s a passion of mine, and for those of you who know me, when I find a passion, I stick with it!  So I fully intend to keep posting here for the distant foreseeable future.

In these last 6 months, along with growing my blog and joining many wonderful communities online, I’ve also been slowly piecing together the framework of my business.  The going has been slow because, well, I have a lot of other things going on, and I’m in no rush.  I want to do things carefully and do them the right way so that when I finally decide to do this full time, I’ll be ready!  Plus, the discovering, theorizing, and postulating aspects of starting a business are fascinating to me!

But, I can’t be “starting a business” forever, so onward and upward I go. This post (well technically my last post,but who’s counting?) marks the begging of the next phase of my business, Trial and Error.

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Throughout my years in the IT industry I’ve held many positions and titles. Some are fairly accurate descriptions of what I was doing, and some were decidedly very un-acurate.  Now as I start my own business, I’m stuck with the task of giving myself a title.  As it turns out, it’s a little harder than I had anticipated.

Growing Up Geek

When I first fell in love with computers, I was in elementary school.  My parents got a big hunky IBM clone (I don’t remember the brand) complete with two fancy 5 1/4 inch floppy drives.  I loved to play around and find ways to break or confuse the programs.  This started a long love affair with breaking and fixing computers.  At that point, and all through school, I was a true computer geek.  I used computers for the sheer novelty of it.

Flash forward to my time serving in the US Army.   I wanted to flex my computing prowess and volunteered for various computer-centric tasks like creating databases and such.  I then got the opportunity to help network a new office from the ground up.  After that, I was officially appointed the unit’s assistant IMO (Information Management Officer), and was tasked with helping people in the unit with various computer issues.

I loved that job, and found I really had a knack for troubleshooting.  So, after I got out of the army, I took a job as an intern at the Help Desk of a pharmaceutical company.  Within 4 years time I was hired on full time, promoted to a Level 2 Analyst, and promoted again to my current position in the computer industry, Enterprise Systems Analyst.

Every time I was presented with a new position and name (Geek, Assistant IMO, Helpdesk Intern, Helpdesk Analyst, Systems Analyst) I was basically doing the same thing, fixing computer problems.

What’s in a Name?

When I had the idea to start my own computer business, it never occurred to me that I would need to define my job title. In fact, it wasn’t until I started writing this blog that I realized I needed to figure out what to call myself.   So I came up with a list of names that I’m considering using to refer to my position as an independent computer guy, along with how I feel about each one:

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