Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
The niche is small businesses without IT staff who don't lean on local providers, and yet have the funds and need for IT services.
You just described MSP.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
If a company "needs" IT services, you'd think they would have found it already. Either that, or computer stuff is easy enough to find and buy, setup, or rent online, that they rarely need IT in the first place.
Yes, every viable company already has IT today. You will be looking to displace the incumbent IT people.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Is the in-home IT business dying too?
I think so. The Geek Squads and Staples of the world have eaten all of the profitable people in this market (those with deep pockets and no idea what they are doing.) Everyone who is competent doesn't need tech support at home. The number of people needing in home service is a small number and constantly shrinking as the number of computer users decreases.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Is the in-home IT business dying too?
I think so. The Geek Squads and Staples of the world have eaten all of the profitable people in this market (those with deep pockets and no idea what they are doing.) Everyone who is competent doesn't need tech support at home. The number of people needing in home service is a small number and constantly shrinking as the number of computer users decreases.
I have heard horror stories from my customers from places like best buy and staples. They get charged huge prices for simple services, or they get pushed to reinstall an OS when it was simple setting causing the connectivity issue. And they pay a very hefty fee for it.
I do agree, I think that the market is shrinking most people are moving to mobile platforms and away from computers. The need for IT support will remain in the SMB and enterprise market and a few residential customers.
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@prcssupport said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I have heard horror stories from my customers from places like best buy and staples. They get charged huge prices for simple services, or they get pushed to reinstall an OS when it was simple setting causing the connectivity issue. And they pay a very hefty fee for it.
But then again... if they went there in the first place, what were they expecting? It's ridiculously common knowledge that no one qualified is there and that you will always get treated terribly and get ripped off. It's violating the basic rule of knowledge transactions built into the human social experience - paying the sales guy to do your consulting. It's both common knowledge that these places specifically are problems, and common sense that the guy paid to sell you a computer has no interest in fixing it AND insanely obvious that to be skilled in computer repair you'd not have time to also be a good sales person AND crazy obvious that if someone was skilled enough to do the work that they couldn't be working in a situation like that. There are SO many safety nets to make sure that anyone who cares at all about not getting ripped off won't that you can't fault Best Buy for taking advantage of the people who end up there.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@prcssupport said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I have heard horror stories from my customers from places like best buy and staples. They get charged huge prices for simple services, or they get pushed to reinstall an OS when it was simple setting causing the connectivity issue. And they pay a very hefty fee for it.
But then again... if they went there in the first place, what were they expecting? It's ridiculously common knowledge that no one qualified is there and that you will always get treated terribly and get ripped off. It's violating the basic rule of knowledge transactions built into the human social experience - paying the sales guy to do your consulting. It's both common knowledge that these places specifically are problems, and common sense that the guy paid to sell you a computer has no interest in fixing it AND insanely obvious that to be skilled in computer repair you'd not have time to also be a good sales person AND crazy obvious that if someone was skilled enough to do the work that they couldn't be working in a situation like that. There are SO many safety nets to make sure that anyone who cares at all about not getting ripped off won't that you can't fault Best Buy for taking advantage of the people who end up there.
Yes that is true.
I fight to inform the customers of that as well. I forgot to reference (address) your statement that I agree with, about how best buy and staples have tapped into and essentially drained the deep pockets of people without a clue.
I paraphrased that from your post, because I didn't quote it first.Anyways this topic is still a struggle and I want to remain relevent, and help while making the money to live on that I need.
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@prcssupport said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@prcssupport said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I have heard horror stories from my customers from places like best buy and staples. They get charged huge prices for simple services, or they get pushed to reinstall an OS when it was simple setting causing the connectivity issue. And they pay a very hefty fee for it.
But then again... if they went there in the first place, what were they expecting? It's ridiculously common knowledge that no one qualified is there and that you will always get treated terribly and get ripped off. It's violating the basic rule of knowledge transactions built into the human social experience - paying the sales guy to do your consulting. It's both common knowledge that these places specifically are problems, and common sense that the guy paid to sell you a computer has no interest in fixing it AND insanely obvious that to be skilled in computer repair you'd not have time to also be a good sales person AND crazy obvious that if someone was skilled enough to do the work that they couldn't be working in a situation like that. There are SO many safety nets to make sure that anyone who cares at all about not getting ripped off won't that you can't fault Best Buy for taking advantage of the people who end up there.
Yes that is true.
I fight to inform the customers of that as well. I forgot to reference (address) your statement that I agree with, about how best buy and staples have tapped into and essentially drained the deep pockets of people without a clue.
I paraphrased that from your post, because I didn't quote it first.Anyways this topic is still a struggle and I want to remain relevent, and help while making the money to live on that I need.
How many of them really care, in the end, though?
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@aaron said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
If a company "needs" IT services, you'd think they would have found it already. Either that, or computer stuff is easy enough to find and buy, setup, or rent online, that they rarely need IT in the first place.
Yes, every viable company already has IT today. You will be looking to displace the incumbent IT people.
Company? Sure! But... I live in a small town and I know a lot of small business, especially restaurants that have zero IT or MSP. I don't know if the market is sustainable, but it's there. Especially since the owners all know each other and once you impress one of them...
Have you ACTUALLY found owners that talk to each other about IT? That's not something we've seen. Even when companies rave about their IT, they never share it with other business owners. Either they don't think about it, or they don't want their MSP getting busy or they see the other business as competition... whatever. Vendor sharing between SMBs isn't something that we ever see.
Maybe in restaurants, but restaurants are specifically one of those "no IT" businesses.
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@aaron said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Since I was explicitly talking about restaurants, yes. Yes I have found ones that talk about IT.
Small town restaurants don't think about competition as much as getting people to come to their area together.
Like when independent coffee shops like it when a Starbucks opens across the street...
And they buy IT? We never find restaurants buy IT at all.
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I just looked it up. I have talked to about 175 restaurants over the last 4 years. Usually they need an hour of our time to put up Access Points. That's it. Any aspect of IT is not something they worry about. Small town single location least of all. Sure once in awhile one will call to ask a quick question. But Staples is cheaper and they aren't paid by their customers because of IT stuff. They are paid to cook food. IT is the lowest thing on the list.
One of the biggest chains we talked to (international and over 400 locations world wide). They have an IT department, 1 guy can handle it all. He calls on us for consultations for infrastructure upgrades. But one guy can handle 400 locations and he isn't even full time IT. He also handles new product purchasing (choosing new craft beers for locations etc).
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@Minion-Queen and I've talked to likely scores of them too, over the years. Always the same story... maybe one computer in the back office for basic stuff, no needs, no concerns. No customer data or anything.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@aaron said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Since I was explicitly talking about restaurants, yes. Yes I have found ones that talk about IT.
Small town restaurants don't think about competition as much as getting people to come to their area together.
Like when independent coffee shops like it when a Starbucks opens across the street...
And they buy IT? We never find restaurants buy IT at all.
I have also seen that. The restaurants don't care about it. They have a small system and other stuff. But in the end it is their lowest priority. They won't budget for it.
I know restaurants with flat and open networks, no firewalls, just computers running Xp and chugging along swiping cards on the swiper all day.
I could talk till I'm blue in the face they don't care.
They also are a proud bunch... they tend to look down on you (especially if the owner is the chef)
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@Minion-Queen said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I just looked it up. I have talked to about 175 restaurants over the last 4 years. Usually they need an hour of our time to put up Access Points. That's it. Any aspect of IT is not something they worry about. Small town single location least of all. Sure once in awhile one will call to ask a quick question. But Staples is cheaper and they aren't paid by their customers because of IT stuff. They are paid to cook food. IT is the lowest thing on the list.
One of the biggest chains we talked to (international and over 400 locations world wide). They have an IT department, 1 guy can handle it all. He calls on us for consultations for infrastructure upgrades. But one guy can handle 400 locations and he isn't even full time IT. He also handles new product purchasing (choosing new craft beers for locations etc).
I was going to do a public wifi system for one of the local restaurants. Planned to get 3 APs in and configured in 2 hours at most, and with Ubiquiti the entire quote was $500. Would've covered the entire place, and most likely the parking lot as well.
Instead of me spending an evening putting this stuff in, the local cable company did it for free. Of course they only put a single AP in, so only about 1/2 of the restaurant actually has a signal, with 1/3 of the space actually having a usable signal. Yeah, great advertising for your cable company, especially when someone like me realizes that runs on a DSL connection (really, what were they thinking?)
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@travisdh1 good point, in the restaurant world you are really up against "free" pretty significantly for everything.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
The situation is that I have a family and kids and not really interested in hugely risky business types. I live in a small-ish town of 40k people with another town 20 miles away with another 40k people. The type of business I do can't depend on living in huge cities to make it work.
Somewhere in the consulting space is where I see myself. Consulting has a specific niche though. If a business is large enough or complicated enough, they will have their own IT staff already. If the business is a cut-n-paste business, they already have an IT blueprint and use local providers.
Is the in-home IT business dying too? Am I better off trying to work for a large company? Beside mom-n-pop "computer repair" companies, what else can a guy do?Become an expert in your "area" whatever "area" that might be. Go deeper than anyone else, be more knowledgable, be hungry for that knowledge, be passionate about the topic. If you are THE guy who knows about topic X and you develop a reputation and a name based on that, you can be a consultant specialising in that topic. Takes takes a long time...
Don't go mom and pop route, that's a dying/closing market. Now I provide tech support to home users but they are not the spend peanuts, nickle and dime. They want that 1 to 1 high end service and everything to work at business level, they want all the stress taken away.
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@travisdh1 said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Minion-Queen said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I just looked it up. I have talked to about 175 restaurants over the last 4 years. Usually they need an hour of our time to put up Access Points. That's it. Any aspect of IT is not something they worry about. Small town single location least of all. Sure once in awhile one will call to ask a quick question. But Staples is cheaper and they aren't paid by their customers because of IT stuff. They are paid to cook food. IT is the lowest thing on the list.
One of the biggest chains we talked to (international and over 400 locations world wide). They have an IT department, 1 guy can handle it all. He calls on us for consultations for infrastructure upgrades. But one guy can handle 400 locations and he isn't even full time IT. He also handles new product purchasing (choosing new craft beers for locations etc).
I was going to do a public wifi system for one of the local restaurants. Planned to get 3 APs in and configured in 2 hours at most, and with Ubiquiti the entire quote was $500. Would've covered the entire place, and most likely the parking lot as well.
Instead of me spending an evening putting this stuff in, the local cable company did it for free. Of course they only put a single AP in, so only about 1/2 of the restaurant actually has a signal, with 1/3 of the space actually having a usable signal. Yeah, great advertising for your cable company, especially when someone like me realizes that runs on a DSL connection (really, what were they thinking?)
Hmmm.
In some spaces, I wonder what the cost of a Ubiquiti access point is and offering a free managed wifi service? In exchange for a captive portal with advertising potentially...
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I pretty much equate Restaurants to working with consumers (aka not businesses). You are always going up against free or Staples.
