Starting Your Own Computer Business

I originally wrote my book about starting a computer business after a friend who knew I was in the business mentioned to me that he was thinking of quitting his stable government job to give it a shot. We talked about it for a while, and I found out that my friend's fantasy job was having a small shop where he would build PC's from scratch and sell them at a good enough profit to pay the rent and replace the income and benefits from his government job. I had to tell him that the chances of that happening were near zero.

People who build PC's for a living these days are pretty much all standing on a factory production line with an electronic screwdriver and a hair net, and they get paid about as much as you would expect for a job that consists of handling light parts and putting in screws - say $10/hr starting in the U.S. Building PC's is not a challenging job after you have the first ten or twenty builds under your belt. When I used to build PC's for schools twenty years ago, I could get through about thirty a day (long days) with testing, which I would run all night. And I figured I could train anybody to do a great job building computers in a couple hours, as long as the parts list was constant.

Folks who want to start their own computer business usually make the mistake of believing that it will be like running a small town coffee shop, except with computer hardware instead of coffee. People will flow in and out all day, looking to buy a new computer or have a friendly chat while you do an upgrade or a repair, and they'll pay the menu price with a smile. It would be really nice if it worked that way, but it turns out that attracting customers is the greatest challenge for new businesses, and starting a computer business is no exception.

Another common mistake people make is believing that they can buy their way into the computer business. This is only true if your goal is to be a silent partner or the hands-off manager, you find an existing business with excellent controls, and you're willing to fork over six-figures, a year of gross sales is one common valuation, to purchase it. I don't write about acquiring an existing business in my book because it's really a job for lawyers and accountants.

You need to plan your launch to match both your skills and your bank account. I have never advised anybody to borrow money to start a small business, there's always a way to do it on a shoe-string. If you can't handle a business on a shoe-string, the odds of your making a success of it when there's a lot of money and work to do isn't good. There really isn't any specialized equipment required to get into the break-fix or service business, a couple screwdrivers, some common spare parts and free diagnostics software is all you'll need to get started. Wasting a lot of money on hardware diagnostic and resoldering equipment that you'll be lucky to use once a month just doesn't make any sense for a start-up. What you really need is customers.

If you're set on a store-front but you have no savings to get started, working for somebody else and saving up enough money will teach you some valuable lessons about business and discipline, lessons that you can't expect to learn in a classroom or from a book. Depending on the real estate situation where you live, it might be possible to rent retail space short term with very little up-front cash, but if you're counting on hanging up a sign and getting all the business you need from walk-ins, you'll usually be disappointed.

When computing your start-up expenses, the most important thing that people leave out is replacing their existing income. If you are giving up working for somebody else to start your computer business, or if your unemployment is running out, replacing that weekly or bi-weekly check is going to be a bigger expense than paying rent on a storefront, paying a new cellphone contract, buying some parts and printing business cards. And unlike one-time start-up expenses, replacing your existing income is an expense that goes on forever, it's now your job. So if you are married or living in an economic relationship with other people, make sure that everybody is on board with your plans or you could end up losing more than your time and money.

Back in the 1990's and early 2000's, I wrote a series of books for McGraw-Hill titled "Build Your Own PC." Those books sold over a hundred thousand copies and launched people all over the world into building computers with a simple step-by-step approached that used hundreds of photographs. There is no simple step-by-step approach starting a successful computer business. The key word here is "successful." I could lay out a recipe of "Do this, then do that," complete with checklists for actions and parts lists for hardware that would put you into a shop feeling ready but it wouldn't work for most readers. In fact, the only readers it would work for would be the ones who already had the skills and background in place and just lacked the confidence to get started. That sort of advice is available in any inspirational business or self help book.

I took a different approach in my book "Start Your Own Computer Business." The idea was to provide the sort of knowledge you wouldn't have unless you worked for years in a small computer business as both a technician and as a manager. You may learn from the book that you really don't want to own a computer business or that you aren't ready to go it yourself yet, but it in that case, you should gain a clear understanding of where you need to build skills. There's a lot of attention paid to the money side of the business, managing inventory and customer relations, and nothing about techniques for building or fixing PC's or removing malware. There are plenty of books and Internet resources available for learning technician skills, including my own, the point of this book is strictly how to run a small computer business. The pages in this computer business collection are not book excerpts, they are executive summaries of some of the chapters. The downloadable eBook version is available here for $11.95.

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