Tag: Basics you will need to run your computer

Tools You Need to Start Your Computer Repair Business

| August 12, 2017

 Tools You Need to Start Your Computer Repair Business

Welcome to Call That Girl’s Guide to starting a computer repair and support business blog series. If you found a blog out of order, you can start with the first blog by clicking here How to start a computer repair business. Each blog will lead you to the next one until you reach the final blog.

In this series I will give tips, examples and information about how to start a computer repair business that I learned on my own initially and then later on through the help of online technical resources & friends.

I will also offer advice on what type of computer repair business to start, business and legal information, remote support, products and services you can sell, tools your computer repair business might need, a guide to pricing, a list of resources, and marketing advice. 

When you first start out with your ideas for a computer repair business, you might already have some tools, heck you might be already doing computer repair “on the side” and have a full tool kit. Since I am talking about four different scenarios for support: Onsite, store/shop, office or only remote…creating a tool list is a bit tough, but I will do my best.

 

  1. Hardware – This will be determined by the types of hardware you support – basic tools of course are necessary. If you support hardware, you already know what you need (I hope); if not, you can discuss this topic on Technibble.com (I am not a hardware tech and only can recommend talking to others).
  2. Software – I keep a “software kit” of all my software tools in Dropbox. Back when I was onsite and had techs, we kept a good list on Dropbox, then saved to USB drives to use in our shops and on the road. All virus removal software of course is needed, all of your tune up tools, Windows repair disks, Winsock utilities, drivers, etc.
  3. Remote support software – If you are going to be doing remote support, you will need to do testing on products you will want to use. Matt Rodela did a great review of many products and voted for his remote support software of choice. To read that article, click here.
  4. Forms – You will need forms for your clients and also forms for your business for general use. Technibbles’ Business Kit is the perfect “everything” kit, I highly recommend you check it out – you can review it here
  5. Ticketing – There are many ticketing programs out there to review and try. When I first started out, though, I didn’t even know ticketing systems existed, so I just used an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my jobs. I also kept track of the marketing in the spreadsheet, “How people found me.” In 2010, once I hired employees, I had to move to a ticketing system, because I had 2 stores to support. (Honestly, I still keep and use that original Excel spreadsheet!). Currently I use Mhelpdesk for all my ticketing, invoicing and client data tracking. If you want to check it out for 14 days, click here.

 

To check out my next blog click here –> Guide to Pricing Your Computer Repair Business Services

 

 

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Resources for Computer Repair and Support Businesses

| August 12, 2017

Resources for Computer Repair and Support Businesses

Welcome to Call That Girl’s Guide to starting a computer repair and support business blog series. If you found a blog out of order, you can start with the first blog by clicking here How to start a computer repair business. Each blog will lead you to the next one until you reach the final blog.

In this series I will give tips, examples and information about how to start a computer repair business that I learned on my own initially and then later on through the help of online technical resources & friends.

I will also offer advice on what type of computer repair business to start, business and legal information, remote support, products and services you can sell, tools your computer repair business might need, a guide to pricing, a list of resources, and marketing advice. 

When I first started my computer repair business, I only had one resource…the internet. Back in 2007, there was a lot out there, but it took me a long time  to find “the good stuff” aka….Resources for computer repair and support businesses

Below is a list of resources I use often, listen to, partner with or have become a member of the community.

Good tech support, advice and help (to get listed here, please contact Lisa@callthatgirl.biz)

Magazines and Online News

ChannelPro Network, chock full of goodies there folks. Free subscription! Click here to check it out.

eBooks

Computer Repair Business Lessons Learned by Dan Hand; you can check it out here.

MSP or Fail by Dan Hand is available here (Never read it, but from what I have heard, it’s a good read for those wanting to get into MSP).

bookimageMatt Rodela How to Quit Your Job and Start a Computer Business, 80+ Ways to Advertise Your Computer Business and 20 Things You Can Do Right Now To Improve Your Computer Business, Check them out here

LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn has some great groups with good discussions going. Here are some I am in:

ACRBO is a group that was created to support ACRBO members, it is all basically computer repair and support discussions. Click here to join.

Technibble also has a lively discussion group on LinkedIn, click here to apply to join.

MAXFocus is a GFI based group. The topics mostly revolve around GFI, but sometimes you’ll find a good nugget of other info, click here to join.

CompTIA, group discussions are about CompTIA certs and IT related stuff.  I don’t really do a lot of it, but I went to their convention in Phoenix last year and had a nice time. Met a lot of cool techs from around the country. Click here to check out their group.

Websites & Forums

Technibble  Membership forum, ask and give tech advice, focused on anything in general about tech support and owning and running a computer repair business. They sell a good Business Computer Kit, you can view it here.

Britec Tech Support Forum  Membership forum, ask and give tech advice. Focused on Malware/Viruses.

Bleeping Computer A Website where a lot of downloads are to fix and help you repair issues (esp. viruses) You can find their forums here.

Tom’s Hardware Pretty much an “everything tech” type of website and forum, click here for the forum.

Here are some lists in Google I found of tech forums

Top 10 Computer Repair Forums and Message Boards, click here to check ’em out.

TOP 10 COMPUTER FORUMS YOU CANNOT IGNORE IN 2014 Click here to read ’em.

CNET Newbies forum, if you’re new, this might be for you 🙂 Click here to read up.

Top 10 Sites For Computer Troubleshooting & Tech Support – more forums! It never ends! Click here to check out their list.

Podcast Shows

Podnutz, a Tech Podcast Network offers a variety of live and downloadable tech podcasts with many hosts. (Including my own Office 365 show!) Click here to subscribe and listen while you work!

Mike Tech Show is a weekly live tech podcast with video and live chat room.  Click here to download past shows.

Matt Rodela’s Your Friendly Neighborhood Computer Guy.  Matt has an active blog, podcasts and has 3 eBooks available for purchase. You can click here to read more.

YouTube Channels

If you’re into videos, you need to follow these two guys, and me!

Call That Girl Offers videos from her podcast shows and how-to tutorials about Outlook and Office 365.

Britec “Your Computer Paramedic” Britec Tech Tips – Malware Removal – PC Computer Repair” How-To videos and Troubleshooting and Repair videos to help those to help themselves on how to fix computers.

Technical Groups

ACRBO Association of Computer Repair Owners, free and paid memberships.

To read my next blog click here –> Computer Repair and Support Podcast Shows

Call That Girl’s eBooks and Training Videos

Welcome to my eBooks and Videos sales page. Below you will find everything I sell and support as well as some free information at the bottom.

Lisa’s eBooks, all 5 eBooks $39

The Remote Support Guide (Best seller!)

  • A step by step guide to setting up your business to have a successful remote support business
  • Tips and information on how to service your clients remotely
  • How to increase your daily sales with new services, prepay tickets and daily monitoring plans
  • Includes templates for email booking appointments, client & project agreement forms, terms and conditions, small business proposal, pricing guidelines and scheduling appointment forms.

The Manual of Operations 

  • This is an old document but many still like using it for a template
  • 40 page Word document
  • Delivered as a Microsoft Word Template, easy for “cut and pasting” your business name into the document
  • Standard operating procedures
  • Employee conditions for employment
  • Job descriptions
  • Human Resources policies
  • Much more…

The Social Media Guide 

  • 29 page workbook style (outdated but have valuable info!)
  • Great tips and tricks that I learned the hard way
  • Easy to understand steps on how to push out social media messages
  • Newsletters, blogging and WordPress information
  • Toolkit information you will need and other things you will need to use social media
  • A social media to do list
  • How to do a social media blast

The Guide to Microsoft Exchange Migrations 

  • 22 page PDF
  • Step by step instructions on how to do a migration without tools with screenshots
  • Learning how to back up current mailboxes, calendars and contacts
  • Learn how to update the DNS for migration
  • Importing mail/calendars and contacts into new server
  • Aftercare lists
  • How to sell administrative support tickets

How to Start a Computer Repair Business 

  • Get all the free blogs in a 48 page PDF
  • Conversational Style Guide

$199

Created just for technicians! Outlook is a program that contains a lot of data, lots of moving parts and offers 100’s of features which are all guaranteed to break at some point. As well, it’s the program most used with the Office 365 Business Plans. These videos will train you how to properly prepare, repair and learn Outlook in a 360 view.

What you get with your purchase

  • 7 videos
  • 4 hours of intense training ~each made in short videos so you can stop & practice
  • Access to Lisa’s private Facebook group

SEO/Google Ranking Services

Get found today! So many technician friends I know have great websites up, but not many have good SEO to help them get found. My services help you get found by creating content in your website using your location and your services. I have a starter set for $450 and buy as you like “next level” for $175. No contracts, no monthly fees, just buy as you want.

Click here to learn more and get found on the internet! If you can’t be found, you can’t be called right? 

Free Learning Guide

Sign up for my newsletter

Check out my Podcast

Need to Hire Me? Below is a list of tech to tech services I provide. Contact me below.

  • Outlook Expert
  • Exchange Migration Coaching
  • Exchange Migration Management
  • Client Outlook Training
  • OST recovery
  • Email investigation

   

Free Marketing Advice for Computer Repair Businesses

| August 12, 2017

Free Marketing Advice for Computer Repair Businesses

Welcome to Call That Girl’s Guide to starting a computer repair and support business blog series. If you found a blog out of order, you can start with the first blog by clicking here How to start a computer repair business. Each blog will lead you to the next one until you reach the final blog.

In this series I will give tips, examples and information about how to start a computer repair business that I learned on my own initially and then later on through the help of online technical resources & friends.

I will also offer advice on what type of computer repair business to start, business and legal information, remote support, products and services you can sell, tools your computer repair business might need, a guide to pricing, a list of resources, and marketing advice. 

Now once you have things set in place to start your computer repair business, your business stuff, your tools and everything else, you have to get on with marketing your computer repair business. This for me was the extremely fun part. I think I had so much fun with this because I was so new to it and didn’t know what I was doing and was learning a ton about business from others. And remember my first blog when I talked about working all weekend building my lists? Marketing was most of it, even though I had no idea what I was doing. I knew I had to come up with tons of ideas and fast.

I’ll begin with definitions of marketing and advertising.

Marketing: the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. (to me, marketing has a longer term effect)

Advertising: the activity or profession of producing advertisements for commercial products or services. (to me this means… newspaper ads, TV ads, Radio, flyers, more short term effects)

So really, you need to do short and long term marketing and advertising, but this will be determined by your budget. We will discuss budget in another blog. I’ll start with a list of things that I did in the beginning and things I would do now that I know more.

  1. Get your website up and running (after you get your logo done of course). If you are handy enough to do it yourself, great! Of course since I just wrote an SEO for WordPress guide, I recommend using WordPress. If you are not handy enough to do your site yourself, you can talk to my website/WordPress guru, Rebecca, and she can help you with a simple computer repair website for $500. Click here to read more.
  2. Business cards, super duper important! Once I got my logo, I had my designer do a card template and I uploaded to VistaPrint and ordered 250 cards. Sooner than I thought, I was ordering another set of 500.
  3. Business domain email, please do not use a Gmail or free email service if you are running a computer repair business. When you buy your domain, I recommend only using your business email for business. It’s just my opinion, but clients judge you by first impressions and if you give them a card that says “Justin@Justinspcrepair.com” it looks better than “justinspcrepair@gmail.com” Right? Yeah.
  4. Go set up all of your social media, Yes if you want to that is! It’s not for everyone. Sign up though if for anything to secure your names on the pages. I recommend of course the big ones, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instragram, YouTube and G+. Grab any others if you want, but these are what I use.
  5. Get a newsletter program in place, you will need this. Once you start getting out there and networking with others face to face, you will want to add them to your newsletter and social media. Stay on top of this! I recommend using Constant Contact, very user friendly and affordable. Click here for 60 free days.
  6. Get out and find face to face networking events.
    1. Common groups are BNI. I never did join a BNI group, but did consider it once. Many techs SWEAR by these groups. What you can do is attend as a guest two times, then decide to join. From what I remember, the cost is in the hundreds per year, but if you go to the meetings and follow their program, it works.
    2. Try to find local business expo’s. I launched Call That Girl at a women’s expo in 2008. I decided to put $2,4oo into this because it was a huge expo in Minneapolis and knew it would help me not only meet new clients, but business contacts. Prior to exhibiting at the expo, I did attend many expo’s and knew that even paying $100 for a smaller expo was well worth the “meet and greet” time you get.
    3. Check out your local Chamber of Commerce. Usually these groups have a fee and offer many monthly meetings you can attend, most should have a local expo as well.
    4. As you get out there and attend events, present yourself as a local “expert” to do free speaking engagements to groups. This was a huge win for me in the beginning. I talked about computer issues and answered questions. It’s a good chance to get your business card out there
  7. Talk to the local press. I got lucky and they came to me many times (new business, found me on social media), but on occasion I did approach them and announced my business and it helped immensely with my third store. We got on page 1 and immediately saw clients walking in the door.
  8. Social Media, where do I begin here. What I did in 2007 and 2008 will be completely different than what you all can do now with it. Back then, it was a mad rush of adding more contacts, friends and whatnot! It was really crazy! I did write an eBook/Guide about Social Media and while it’s still very relevant, you have to have a game plan for social media to work. Posting out a “hey, here is my business!” is not good enough. And now, pushing out your spam (I love my spam btw) has to be done in a manner that  your networks find as “value” and not spam. It’s a game, really. But in time you will figure it out. If you want it to work, you have to work on it all the time. Hire it out if it’s not for you!
  9. LinkedIn, I have a special spot for LinkedIn and while it’s not bringing in the clients it used to (years ago) the value of being on LinkedIn, connecting and joining local groups is still great. Before you jump in and pay the monthly fee and upgrade, check out my blog entry I wrote in 2014, 10 Reasons why you don’t need to upgrade to premium LinkedIn.
  10. SEO/Google is HUGE for your business. Most people are out there looking on their phones and tablets/iPads now and it’s super important to be listed in Google. You can do many things, depending on the business you are starting. Google Places allows you to “stamp your location” on their Google Maps for services searches. You can pay for Google Ads. I called Google to have a sales rep help me with this because I really didn’t understand it. Right now, I pay about $100 per week for my calls in and so far, I’m getting in about 12 times back per month on that investment. Back when I first started out, I didn’t do anything with Google. It took me finding out that my own blogs were generating call-ins that sparked me to do more blogging and then creating the magic formula to get higher rankings. And of course, then paying Google.
  11. Find local partners like website designers, other computer shops, or people who work in the IT industry and become “referring partners”. Some of us don’t watch or track the referrals, but if you want to, you can earn a good commission off a referral.
  12. Hand and Foot, many days of this! When I opened my first office/store (yeah, hard to explain), I went out to the community and handed out tons of brochures and cards. I think overall I got 5 new clients and it was a great experience to get out and pitch.
  13. Truck Advertisement, a must have if you are mobile or on the road. I started out doing this and made $7000 the first year. I was out in the streets of Minneapolis all day and practically all night! So if you are mobile, it’s a thing to do ASAP. I put simple graphics on my truck for $300. Just this year I re-designed for $600, a nice upgrade.
  14. Print Advertising. Of course everyone used to think YellowBook was the cat’s meow. Now people are less into it and even their online option is junk compared to Google Ads. But yet, there are still folks that get into their program. Phone books should go away at some point, but I have to say that…. honestly, many years ago I did some YellowBook ads (2008) and still on occasion get the random call from someone who has an old book! Weird! But when I was doing the ads, they did seem to at least pay for themselves, it does take time and from what those who love phone books say, “they used to make tons of money” and they put in “tons of money”, I don’t think that is the case anymore.
    1. Mailers. Yep, tried this too. I went to the library and extracted out 1000 zip codes and bought a post card from VistaPrint and mailed them out. Got one call, almost squeaked the bill for that. I think I lost $60.
    2. Brochures. When I was just starting out, I created my own brochure, printed them at the local FedEx and mailed them out to 150 zip codes (library again) and of all things, one lady called me and ended up being one of my first and favorite long term clients. So the brochure printing and mailing totally paid off!
    3. Magazine ads, probably not worth it for me. I was in a large metro area, and I got one call from one magazine and a handful from another. The cost of the ads get a good return on the investment. This is my experience though, so if you try it, my only recommendation is you don’t get caught up in a long term contract that is hard to get out of!
    4. Bathroom ads generated one call. It’s all up to you on this one!

To read my next blog click here –> Resources for Computer Repair and Support Businesses

 

Call That Girl’s eBooks and Training Videos

Welcome to my eBooks and Videos sales page. Below you will find everything I sell and support as well as some free information at the bottom.

The Remote Support Guide (Best seller!)

  • A step by step guide to setting up your business to have a successful remote support business
  • Tips and information on how to service your clients remotely
  • How to increase your daily sales with new services, prepay tickets and daily monitoring plans
  • Includes templates for email booking appointments, client & project agreement forms, terms and conditions, small business proposal, pricing guidelines and scheduling appointment forms.

The Manual of Operations 

  • This is an old document but many still like using it for a template
  • 40 page Word document
  • Delivered as a Microsoft Word Template, easy for “cut and pasting” your business name into the document
  • Standard operating procedures
  • Employee conditions for employment
  • Job descriptions
  • Human Resources policies
  • Much more…

The Social Media Guide 

  • 29 page workbook style (outdated but have valuable info!)
  • Great tips and tricks that I learned the hard way
  • Easy to understand steps on how to push out social media messages
  • Newsletters, blogging and WordPress information
  • Toolkit information you will need and other things you will need to use social media
  • A social media to do list
  • How to do a social media blast

The Guide to Microsoft Exchange Migrations 

  • 22 page PDF
  • Step by step instructions on how to do a migration without tools with screenshots
  • Learning how to back up current mailboxes, calendars and contacts
  • Learn how to update the DNS for migration
  • Importing mail/calendars and contacts into new server
  • Aftercare lists
  • How to sell administrative support tickets

How to Start a Computer Repair Business 

  • Get all the free blogs in a 48 page PDF
  • Conversational Style Guide

 

$199

Created just for technicians! Outlook is a program that contains a lot of data, lots of moving parts and offers 100’s of features which are all guaranteed to break at some point. As well, it’s the program most used with the Office 365 Business Plans. These videos will train you how to properly prepare, repair and learn Outlook in a 360 view.

What you get with your purchase

  • 7 videos
  • 4 hours of intense training ~each made in short videos so you can stop & practice
  • Access to Lisa’s private Facebook group

SEO/Google Ranking Services

Get found today! So many technician friends I know have great websites up, but not many have good SEO to help them get found. My services help you get found by creating content in your website using your location and your services. I have a starter set for $450 and buy as you like “next level” for $175. No contracts, no monthly fees, just buy as you want.

Click here to learn more and get found on the internet! If you can’t be found, you can’t be called right? 

Free Learning Guide

Sign up for my newsletter

Check out my Podcast

Need to Hire Me? Below is a list of tech to tech services I provide. Contact me below.

  • Outlook Expert
  • Exchange Migration Coaching
  • Exchange Migration Management
  • Client Outlook Training
  • OST recovery
  • Email investigation

Feel free to leave a comment if this blog helped you! I am enjoying reading and replying to them.

  • Sign up for my newsletter here
  • If you’re looking to earn money just by talking about me to your friends, check out my referral program here
  • Subscribe to my YouTube Channel
  • Follow me on Facebook
  • Invite me on LinkedIn
  • Follow me on Twitter