How my computer repair business started!
Notice I have talked about ‘my’ computer repair business, and yet beside me the whole time was a great woman named Sonja – my wife. She was doing the jobs I did not want to do. The paper work, the accounting and all the other administration jobs, small and large. I hated the administration side of the business. Allow me to tell you the story of John and Sonja Burns. I was the computer repair guy to all my friends and family for a long time before I decided to transform it into a business. I was the pit bull that would not give up until I found the solution. Does this sound familiar? Working many hours into the night, rising at 4:30am to attend my railway job through the day, I could not wait for my job to finish so I could get home to my new found hobby – fixing computers. I loved tinkering with computers and gained valuable experience and knowledge in those early days. I bought books and magazines to help me understand and learn everything about computers. Do you? Our friends arrived with their computers under their arms for me to repair. Sonja providing coffee, our friends connecting with one another sitting on our lounge. Telling one another their stories of what they have learned about computers. While waiting for me to load an operating system, put in extra RAM or hunt for a virus. In those early days the internet was still coming-of-age, therefore spyware was nonexistent. One day my wife Sonja hit me in the head with a brick by asking, “John how much money do you get from all this work you do in fixing computers for your friends?” My reply was, of course, “Nothing”. Suddenly I thought, hang on Sonja, do you really think people would pay me? That was the day our true computer repair business from home started. I announced to the world that from this day forth there would be no more free computer repairs. Sonja was going to be the bookkeeper and collect our money. I didn’t ask her, I told her that was her role, typical of a business owner coming home and throwing extra workload onto his wife or partner. I soon learnt this was wrong as she had no experience as a book keeper. I set our labour fee at $20 an hour. You would think $20 was cheap in 1992. Guess what, all my friends that had been using us disappeared as soon as they heard about the pricing. Our new computer repair business came to a grinding halt. We waited 3 months between paid jobs. Slowly the word spread among computer users of the pit bull that would not give up in repairing computers. We were terrified of advertising from home in those early days, not knowing about council laws and so forth. You will soon see, by reading the following chapters, that this was a mistake. Do not be scared of government regulations, they can be a big help to you.
What has changed in 300 years!
From the dawn of history the first recorded I.T professional seen at work. A video on what a support person was offering in the 17th century. Who ever compiled this has done an excellent job. I found the video at http://www.tomax7.com/comedy/index.html and you can download it from here www.computerrepairbusiness.com.au/IT_Helpdesk.wmv
The shocking discovery of the problems within the computer repair industry!
When i first watched this video at cbc on the web at Canada. I was shocked and put my head down in shame of the whole event, within a few minutes I got angry and felt this is not fair, there are some great home based pc computer repair business owners out there and why should they also be put into the same basket with the bad guys.
I then felt it would be a great teaching video to train future computer repair business owners in what not to do within their own computer repair business. If you want to go into business or you are already in business for yourself then take study of this video and learn from the mistakes made by the bad guys.
Here is the link http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/2007/10/03/geeks/
What i am going to do over the next few days is give feed back of this video with time slots so that you may also learn from it. In this way you will be able to put standards into place in your own home based pc computer repair business. Of course do not take my thinking as gospel. Please use it and then put your own spin onto it so that it may improve your own business.
After watching this a couple of times i have realised that what is going on is misinformation and a lack of education and no understanding of a business. Some of It has been taken from the viewpoint of employees and not business owners.
Business is about making money and it took me a long time to understand this concept.
My viewpoint of the horror within the computer repair industry video!
Keep coming back for my view point of CBC.ca television show Marketplace. What you should know before you call a geek in to fix your computer. http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/2007/10/03/geeks/
You may think I am bagging Marketplace and the college repair team and yet I am not. I am wishing to thank them in providing a wonderful training video in teaching home based PC computer repair business owners in how to look after customers in there business. It also allows the computer repair industry to put in place, proper operating procedures and standards. Yes the computer repair industry is unregulated and we need to lead the way in regulating ourselves. The number at the beginning of the black text is the time within the video of where something of importance for you to take a look at or what it means to me.
The blue text is my view point on this subject
00:10 It will not be fixed today.
Why not?
I would say “how urgent is it for you to get it fixed” Our rates vary depending on your urgency and becomes cheaper the longer the PC is away. I would also offer a rental PC so as to allow the person to keep operating of course they would pay for the rental.
02:01 But every Tech has a different approach to figuring out our problems.
It is so important to have a checklist to follow whilst troubleshooting, it took me many years to discover what to actually put in the checklist. A simple $25.00 postcard would have shown the memory error on boot and also by carrying a spare motherboard speaker may have picked up the error with beep codes, check out www.bioscentral.com for a complete list of beep codes for different bios on motherboards. Bob Hurt is the owner and is also the owner of Data Depo a diagnostics company from
02.04 Some of them think by passing the computer parts around will help or listening to it:
This is part of a troubleshooting process and is part of a checklist of swapping parts into different PCI slots, it is quite evident that Marketplace has no understanding of why a repair technician would do it this way and yet in my view point i get it that she is rubbishing this process of troubleshooting the problem. The listening part could be for many reasons, such as the crunching of a faulty hard drive or listening for the beep codes that the computer gives for when it has a faulty part. See above Bios Central web site.
02:10 or maybe speaking to the computer in its own language.
I am guilty of swearing at a computer. I have never done what this repair guy is doing.
02:43 We asked the team to give our computer a small common problem.
Yes I agree that it is a simple problem to fix and especially if you knew up front what was wrong with it. Again if the repair guys didn’t nickel and dime there business by not having a Diagnostic card called a Post card in there tool kit which is designed to tell them exactly what was wrong with it.
02:50 Steve Gazzo the computer wizard guy says we are going to exchange ahhh the ram module with umm with one that has been ummm blown, Then Marketplace: so there are some little bits on here that are missing and Steve Gazzo then says right:
Gee what is going on here, the computer wizard Steve Gazzo is now also just as guilty as the poor repair guys that Marketplace have brought in, he is also guilty of playing the role of going along with the over dramatising of the story of destroying the reputation of the whole computer repair industry. Steve Gazzo is it blown or is it missing the little bits? A little Unfair Steve.
03:02 A simple problem a broken ram part that should cost about $25.00 bucks to replace.
Marketplace you’re forgetting about the freight?
You’re forgetting about the actual cost of the repair person coming to your home.
You’re forgetting about a business man in earning a fair margin plus his time.
Your forgetting that the ram module may have been purchased some 3 to 6 months ago for when ram fluctuates like gold, going up and down in price all the time.
You come from the view point of an employee in not caring about your own time as you are paid no matter what, therefore you place no value on TIME.
Did marketplace pay Humber College North Campus for the use of the time taken in taking down the computer repair industry by using the facilities of the college and the 3 employees of the college.
03:20 OK so we have a dead motherboard.
I cannot understand why a company would say you need to go and buy a motherboard, it does not make sense to me, why would a repair company say you need to go and buy a motherboard. Yes we are only hearing what Marketplace is saying. The repair guy is saying, it is a dead motherboard, yes wrong diagnosis. What would the customer do with the motherboard once they have bought it, call back the repair guy to fit it.
03:56 Did you hear the hard drive making different sounds.
What is going on here? The repair guy is asking a question and possibly is referring to the hard drive as the total computer, there are a lot of different terminoglies within the marketplace for what you call a Computer box, I have heard people call it the hard drive, CPU, power box, tower, I have even had customers bring in there monitors thinking that this was the computer. To be continued.
04:34 Steve Gazzo stating = Complete ludicrous you can’t make any kind of diagnosis that quickly.
04:57 My professional advice is the Motherboard. Ah you have to have taken in, you have to replace the motherboard. They must be trained in saying: My professional advice. Lack of training in diagnosing computer problems.
Going from hobbyist to Moonlighting to fulltime.
Remember, just as there are all different levels of Computer experience in the I.T industry and the role of the Computer Repair Business owner starts by having the capacity in fixing hardware and software related problems with one computer.
Are you aware that most people will not read the manual?
A computer repair business starts with people like you, taking time-out to learn how to read the manual and by trial and error. It was not this, hey let’s become a computer expert, it happened because of people like yourself taking the time-out to learn and play with their computers by trial and error.
Technical Skills
How do I know if my technical skills are enough to
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SEO Search Engine Optimisation
I’m constantly getting calls from my friends on the subject of SEO search engine optimization optimisations. Yes I do have one site at number one through out the world at Google and 3 sites within Google Australia at number one and it was by no means by chance.
Yes I have keywords. Yes I have links. Yes I have a site map. Yes I have a Meta Tag. My friends kept ringing in asking for advice and my reply was it is easy and to search on google and you will find all the resources to start learning about SEO Search Engine Optimization optimisation. How wrong I was.
Bill one of my friend’s called me very distraught after taking my advice about searching on line for information on SEO Search Engine Optimization optimisation, John I took your advice and searched google and it may be easy for you and yet for me I have no idea, the words there talking about are so foreign to me such as HTML, meta tags and there is so many sites out there. John you know how to build web sites and most of all you know how to edit them. Please help me to understand.
At first I wanted to fob Bill off as I was so busy with my work load and family commitments at the time. Yet I recalled my first time looking and wondering about SEO search engine optimization optimisation many years ago.
Yes I too went searching online for the answers and yet the money they were asking was a lot $29.95 to $499.00 and yes I bought the $29.95 books online and got no more from them then what I already had learned myself fumbling over all of the pages of the world wide web.
I thought that I would find a SEO “search engine optimization optimisation” book within a book shop. What a journey that was, I looked around my home town of Shellharbour and then drove into Wollongong to the big book shops, hoping to find many books on SEO “search engine optimization optimisation”, nothing was found. I then drove to Sydney looking in the biggest of book shops and after all of my searching through these book shops on the subject of SEO search engine optimization optimisation other then a Dummies book, which I might add was very good and had a wealth of knowledge within the pages and the book on the history of Google and thought that was a bit strange. What is going on here. Then it hit me, SEO “search engine optimization optimisation” is all about being on line and not in books.
I found a book by Arron Wall called the SEO book, yes a little above my normal book buying budget and yet what I liked was free ongoing updates as the search engine algorithms continue to evolve, including the very latest developments for 2007 and beyond. I pondered over buying this book for many days and the search engines kept coming back to Arron Wall’s book. I kept reading his marketing spool, looking for the catch and then it hit me like a tonne of bricks, he offers a 100% No-Hassle Money Back Guarantee. I was thinking to myself and in the end I said John stop wasting time, take the plunge and buy the book and if it is not what this Arron guy says it is ask for your refund, I bought the book and i have no hesitation in recommending it to anyone.
In my oppinion it is time now for all computer repair business owners to learn about search engine optimisation optimization, I ask people on a daily basis as to how they are finding other businesses and what are they using, they reply we no longer use the yellow pages and use Google.
As a trusted advisor to your customers I think it is very important that you have an understanding of SEO marketing. Yes you might think that by allowing your customer in looking for an SEO expert may not hurt your business and yet most SEO experts also in a lot of cases have a web builder and computer repair technician for them to call on and eventually you may find your customer is no longer yours and especially if you do not turn up one day. If you do not wish to learn SEO, find yourself an SEO expert and do a deal in partnering up with this person. Click on this link in taking you to Arron Walls SEO Book!