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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I was inspired by a recent article over at Small Business Trends about small business bootstrapping. In the article, the author tells the story of how he has successfully grown his business into a multimillion dollar enterprise with no debt and using no outside investors.

This is the approach I’m taking with my business and it’s great to hear about success stories of others who have gone this route.

One thing I realized after reading that post is that computer consulting fits perfectly into the bootstrapping philosphy.  In fact, other than online businesses, I can’t think of a more frugal business to start than that of computer consulting.

As I’ve been working to establish my business, I’ve learned some things about how to keep expenses low and avoid the burden of credit.  Although tailored for computer consultants, these strategies can apply to most any business start-up.

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Last week I had to make a choice: to extend my contract of service with the US National Guard, or to let my contract expire and leave the military for good.  This was a big decision for me and my business, one that I didn’t take lightly.  Although the National Guard is a part-time job in the military, it still requires  a big time commitment and many sacrifices on my part.

I’ve been in the military in one form or another for almost ten years now.  I joined the Army in 2000, traveled the world, learned a lot, and had a wonderful time.  My contract ended in 2003 and I decided to stay in the military part time, serving in the National Guard.  I’ve been serving in the National Guard ever since.

Honestly, I have mixed feelings about the military.  Although I don’t always agree with how our country uses it’s military, I believe it is an honorable organization full of amazing people.  That’s why I’ve stuck with it up to now.

This time around, when I was asked to reenlist, it was a harder decision than it has ever been before.  My computer business is one of the main catalysts in my struggle to make a decision this time around. As always, I had to factor in the positive and negative outcomes of my decision.  I was left making some uncomfortable choices, but choices that I feel will be beneficial in the long run not only for me, but for my business.

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Welcome to the 4th Computer Guy’s Corner.  Here is where I collect a small handful of links to useful news, reviews, and blog postings that relate to small business news, productivity, tech gossip, troubleshooting tools, industry news, or any random stuff that I find helpful, and share it with you all.  Feel free to comment about any of the links and let me know your take!

Stay tuned after the links for an update on my first customer.

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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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Although I don’t think I’m really ready for it yet, I decided to take on my first customer as owner and operator of Jiffy-PC, my computer consulting company.  I say I don’t feel I’m ready for it because there are still a few things I wanted to get settled before taking on customers, like getting a separate phone line established and printing up some business cards.  But my girlfriend approached me with a referral and I couldn’t resist.

I have had numerous customers before this, but they have all been off-the-record jobs, or jobs for other companies. The person I meet tomorrow will be the first official customer that I take on as a business.  How does that differ from my customers before?  Not much.  The only difference, really, is that I will provide her with an invoice after my work is done.  That invoice will contain my company logo and if she pays by check, it will be made out to Jiffy-PC. Other than that, nothing much is different from before.

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