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I can't believe this got posted. Look, anyone with good advice to offer is running their own security consulting firm and probably doesn't want more competition. For more general advice, I've seen SmallBizGeeks linked on Slashdot, and it seems like a worthwhile community.

Try this - http://www.smallbizgeeks.com/phpBB2/ They are pretty active and there are good forums, some of which may interest you.

linky

For more advice... there are a couple hundred people discussing all of these things, exhaustively, on this site.

One common thread is that focussing on *home users* can be a pretty painful route to take. If you go that way, price yourself high enough so that you don't have to deal with the nickel-and-dimers, and make it very clear to customers what they are paying for and what their own responsibilities are.

You'll want business cards (give a few to each customer to facilitate word of mouth advertising).

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is growing in popularity as the defacto "best practices" for IT services. It's not for the faint of heart (nor cheap), but it's extremely comprehensive.

And to blantantly plug the message board in my sig... this is a topic that we discuss there frequently as well. "What's the difference between a 'computer guy' and an 'IT consultant'?" was one of the threads that comes to mind. I know that one of the more frustrating aspects of my job is having to clean up other techs' messes. And worse: having to charge the customer for my time to do that when they already paid the last guy a pretty penny. With PCs now in the magical $300 range, the divide between the two types of techs seems to be growing. I don't know whether this is helping my business or hurting it yet though.

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is growing in popularity as the defacto "best practices" for IT services. It's not for the faint of heart (nor cheap), but it's extremely comprehensive.

And to blantantly plug the message board in my sig... this is a topic that we discuss there frequently as well. "What's the difference between a 'computer guy' and an 'IT consultant'?" was one of the threads that comes to mind. I know that one of the more frustrating aspects of my job is having to clean up other techs' messes. And worse: having to charge the customer for my time to do that when they already paid the last guy a pretty penny. With PCs now in the magical $300 range, the divide between the two types of techs seems to be growing. I don't know whether this is helping my business or hurting it yet though.

I know for a fact that one of the national big box stores mentioned doesn't have *any* of the thousands of on-site techs in their employment. They subcontract out everything to ComputerRepair.com, which is an interesting business idea in itself. I wrote a tech's perspective review of ComputerRepair.com here.

You might run it by other people in the same boat at smallbizgeeks.com. Someone there is probably fighting with the same thing.

My thoughts:

The most common reaction is to just sign the contracts, and ignore them. The companies you are working will probably never do anything, even if you are technically breaking conditions in the fine print. This will probably work... but of course you do run the risk of being really screwed if a company decides to come after you because of some percieved danger to them. Not all parts of the contract are enforceable, but some are, and all parts are valid enough to get you into an expensive court battle.

If you can't afford to lose any clients, you might have to take this risk for a while. You're not in the strongest position -- they can probably find someone who will be willing to sign away their firstborn for the work.

Hopefully, you can afford to skip a few contracts -- and you can give them a revised version of the contract that you *are* willing to sign. This means you write in or attach the changes, and get the person hiring you to sign off on the changes.

In most cases, they *are* just using a boilerplate agreement, and don't even know what's in it. Just treat modifications to the contract as a standard part of the deal.

As a (somewhat) successful entrepreneur, I take exception to your statement. I've been running my own network services company for about a year now. I started it up with practically nothing. Granted, it's nothing as sexy as working on the next killer app with a staff of 3 dozen people, but it was a startup. And it was done without having to sell my soul to a VC vulture.

It's been my fulltime job since I started. My truck was fully paid for before I started, I live in a cheap one-bed apartment and I have three cases of ramen in my pantry as I write this. But, my bills are always paid on time and I have enough cash to grow my biz. In fact, I just leased a tiny bit office space last week. I had been working exclusively out of my home.

You don't need a lot of money to be successful. The #1 thing, by far, that you need is dogged persistence. It's rough and can be very nerve wracking. You have to have the ability to hang in there.

And.... since it's on-topic, I'm going to plug the messageboard in my sig. I started it a couple of weeks ago to help others in my situation. It pays to learn from other's mistakes and it's great to have the moral support. If you run your own biz or are thinking about starting one, please come check us out: SmallBizGeeks.com