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.
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