About

Hi my name is John Burns and for 28 years I was a railway employee and for 14 of those years I built a computer repair business on the side (Moon Lighting). My wife Sonja and I took this small home based back yard business from zero to turning over 1.1 million dollars a year. I wish i could tell you that it was an easy journey and yet for Sonja and I, we made a lot of mistakes. We paid for those mistakes with hard cash, and a lot of teary nights wondering why did we get into business. 
       Yes we were dumb business owners in our early days, a great computer technician and yet a very poor business owner! That is how we started the journey of going from employee to business owner and yes I knew everything (or so I thought at the time, the truth is I knew nothing about business)! The business started falling over as we got bigger and bigger. 
        In the past 14 years, we made many mistakes, from employing the wrong people to not knowing how to handle employees (due to me being the union delegate at the railways), to not budgeting correctly or having no understanding of business. On average, I would burn out every 18 months to 2 years as I would start my working day with the railways at 5am, finish at 1pm, go home and sleep for an hour and then start my computer repair business, sometimes going through until midnight. Sometimes I would have no sleep at all whilst working and fixing my customer’s computers! I was the hero to customers and had no consideration at all for my own well being and lifestyle for myself or my family. 
       When I burnt out, I would sit on the lounge for 2 to 3 months – too tired to continue any longer, and this would frequently happen when I could not please all my customers. The difference between a business owner and an employee was when I was in burn out mode, I had the safety of an income with my railway job. In 2002 i walked away from that safety net and became a full time computer repair business owner, yes it was scary.