Going into business for yourself?

Has anyone had an experience unplugging from the matrix and starting a services/consulting/contracting business for themselves ? Providing IT services and all the wonderful things most of us would be tasked with doing on the everyday level for individuals or small businesses?

I was wondering if you guys had some good resources/advice/stories about your experience... as I definitely am interested in providing services without the necessary anchor of it being tied to a specific organization. I have very different moral/ethical/principle feelings when it comes to how Corporations treat people, and would rather start trying to set up my own situation if you know what I mean.

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CyberfiSecurity

NightShade03 wrote: »

It's not illegal, but just be careful.

If you use an automated tool like MailChimp you are required by law to have a way for people to "unsubscribe". If you do it with a personal email address you run the risk of being labeled as SPAM indefinitely. Not a bad tactic just make sure you do it right

Thanks, NightShade03! Definitely, giving the customer to option the mailinglist.

Kinet1c

If you're going to go niche, then your target market would be VARs/MSPs as they'll likely just tag on a % on top of your consulting fees. Going direct could be a hard sell and the VARs/MSPs will want to appear as a one stop shop.

petedude

Mods. . . zap if not appropriate, but. . .

A thought that's struck me lately. Here in the US of A. . . all of its citizens pretty much started out as entrepreneurs, right?

People would farm/whatever, take their goods to market or sell one on one, and that's how they made a living.

Now that it's becoming so costly for business to operate, and they're becoming pickier about who/how many they employ for a variety of reasons, not to mention all the gripes you read about working in corporate America. . . maybe it's time for people to be entrepreneurs again?

I sometimes think it may be a cyclical thing. For a long while, it was better to work as an employee for some firm. Today, maybe it's a less optimal arrangement and we need to look at becoming entrepreneurs again?

Just my random two cents related to the topic.

Cisc0kidd

I have been a 1099 contractor for on site install and break/fix for going on 9 years. When I started I had been doing corporate support for HP and got laid off. I was a single dad and it was scary as hell. I hooked up with a mid level corporate support company doing on site work for HP about 50% of the time. I did other on site work in my off time. I ended up hooking up with several companies that do work for HP, IBM, and Dell. I make decent money and after deductions taxes are reasonable. Sometimes the work hours are intense (tonight I am installing 3 replacement drives on an EMC data array at midnight) but other times I have a lot free time. Honestly most of the work is pretty low level but the pay is good. It would be hard for me to go back to a w2 position.

damsel_in_tha_net

Lots of great advice has been given. Take heed to Nightshade's post.

A peek at ChiTown's profile leads to links to youtube where he already does video training. You (Chi or anyone) could package something like that and offer it, possibly with study guides, OR you could put together a playlist and send to one of the big training providers in town as a portfolio. You could supplement your indie work with training...you would be a contractor, so you could accept/refuse work as time permits.

Also check out CL's "gigs" and other parts of their job pages. There are sometimes small companies who just need someone occasionally for support or for one specific task.

Finally, do something nice for your lady now and then. If she's in a position to shoulder all the bills AND raise your kid, then she deserves it! Kudos to her !

NightShade03

Just one other thought on this topic. If there was ever a consensus around what type of business to start and what type of market to service (because let's face it IT is a huge industry with many different areas) we could just band together and start our own company collectively. How does this work? Quick overview:

Everyone agrees on an area to service
Everyone puts up some form of funding/capital required to get off of the ground (this would give us an idea of what we can work with to start)
Anyone that puts up capital is essentially an investor and will have equity in the company
Someone builds the website, domain name, and hands out email addresses
Someone (hopefully everyone) becomes the sales person to start looking for leads/business opportunities
Not everyone can just quit their day job (and we wouldn't have enough capital for that anyway) so depending on the funding, 1 - 3 people become the freelancers that deliver on the work for the new org
2 people handle the invoicing / money (checks and balances)
As the business grows and funding increases from clients the freelances can turn into full time employees
Wash, rinse, repeat until enough people are on board to run a full fledged company

Obviously this isn't all of the details, but it's a high level overview. I've seen this done before...similar to a kickstarter campaign (for those familiar with kickstarter). Not that it needs to be said, but risk is obviously always involved as well.

Just a thought on the topic...

macboy81

I am about to start my first 6 month contract for a big retail company leaving behind my perm job in a managed service. 3 reasons for this

1 i dont like my job.
2 i want to be working on servers not desktops
3 wife said it was ok

So im now having to decide between umbrella company and setting myself up as limited company.

NightShade03

macboy81 wrote: »

I am about to start my first 6 month contract for a big retail company leaving behind my perm job in a managed service. 3 reasons for this

1 i dont like my job.
2 i want to be working on servers not desktops
3 wife said it was ok

So im now having to decide between umbrella company and setting myself up as limited company.

The rules are different for UK, but in the US an LLC is always preferred for single person shops because of lower entry costs, less paperwork, less headache for management, you can *essentially* do what you want with the money you make.