Jan 07
Get Paid – You Can and You’re Worth It!
On my post Care For Your Clients yesterday, I relayed a story about a certain client who I gave tech support to even when they didn’t have the money to pay my employer and even after I was ordered to stop. I did that out of a responsibility I feel towards my clients, but Ian brought up something else that I tend to forget these days..
Just out of the virtue of you knowing things about computers or technology, people feel that they can come to you with any of their problems and that you will fix it for them for free. I think a lot of people in our industry have gone through this before. For me, it was my family who was always coming to me with their problems and expecting that I could not only fix ANYTHING they threw at me, but would do so out of the goodness of my heart.
And the majority of times they were right.
I Love This Stuff
It’s true, and that was a large part of the problem. If I didn’t like all this computer nonsense, it is a mortal lock that I would’ve tried to find any excuse I could not to work on computers and everyone’s associated problems. But because I love learning, I love tinkering, and I love helping people – I would eagerly sign up to do everything I could to fix their stuff. What this usually resulted in was me spending a LOT of my own time and often some of my OWN money in the pursuit of their happiness. And I remember at one point that I looked around at all the things I “needed” to do one day, and most of them were computer freebies – Which sucked. I mean, who wants to be doing free work for everyone else that takes up your entire day’s time? Personally I would’ve rather tooled around on XBL given the choice.
So I Started a Company
At the beginning, I think I started my company so I could write off my hosting fees that I was paying regardless of whether I had any paying clients or not. *laughs* I think that my thinking was, “If I can write off my hosting fees, I’ll have a ton more money!”. Well let me tell you cupcake – That’s not quite how it works. But I’ll tell you that almost immediately, it had a radical effect on all these people trying to get the free work out of me. Next time I saw them I just said, “I’m really excited to start this new company of mine and if you have anything WE can help you with, please don’t hesitate to ask.” Almost immediately, people stopped asking me to do stuff for free. And amazingly, these people would still come to me saying that wouldn’t mind paying since they trusted my work and wanted to support my new endeavour!
So I don’t know kids… Pople are getting paid for way less out there and for me personally, organizing a business was a BIG turning point in my life. Don’t you want to write off your hosting fees too? (#):)
January 7th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Funnily enough, something similar happened to me. I would forever get tech support enquiries from almost every member of my family. Especially back when Windows 95 was around and many of them were getting computers/the internet for the first time.
When I started my business people stopped asking me questions which has been fantastic because the weird thing was, after working for a large council doing the usual work week people thought it was fine to call in the evenings or weekends and expect me to be enthusiastic about their problem and fix it on the spot.
Oddly many people don’t seem to think before they pick up the phone, they don’t think “this doesn’t work, I won’t bother Pete with it now because he’s working with this stuff all day I’ll maybe text and ask or something tomorrow”. But start a company and things seem a little different.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to work for anyone but myself now and I’m sure you’re the same Bush.
January 7th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
Very good post, very nicely written as well by the way.+
I love fixing stuff for my close friends and family. It’s all the other people that I get bogged down with. Like you said, I would find my days off would be packed full of projects for other people . . . all free ones. Moms computer breaks, I don’t mind spending hours fixing it. A co-worker has a laptop that wont play a game, I don’t mind looking at it (we’re such a small work force here, we’re all friends anyways). A person I go to church with has a computer problem, well I’ll give you a very good rate . . . but it’s not free.
Thankfully I’m actually so busy at work that people have figured out that I don’t have time to work on stuff . . . for free anyways. And like you said, most people that I have charged (even my modest fee) are happy to pay me (usually more then I asked for). But there are always people who just . . . I dunno . . . think I don’t have anything else to do, don’t need sleep, that I just have HOURS during the day to burn away.
Then there are the people who get it. I just spent hours on the phone with my old Lighting professor from college (who now has her own computer repair and instillation business). She’s very good at repairing computers, very good. But no so much on setting up servers, domains, DHCP and the like. So she calls me, offers me a good hourly rate (especially considering that my knowledge in that area is also limited) and we talk through a server 2008 setup. I’ve helped her with stuff before (as she has helped me with stuff), usually a 15 minute conversation about this that or the other or an e-mail here or there. But being a professional, she understands that big projects are not free . . . even for friends. The first thing she said, after telling me she needed networking help, was that there would be a good hourly rate in it for me. That was nice.
I don’t think I have the discipline to start, and keep, my own business though. I don’t think I could make it work, at least not as my main source of income. You guys are awesome for taking that leap, I just don’t think I could do it. Like sky diving, I don’t see the need to jump out of a perfectly good plane.
January 11th, 2010 at 11:19 am
@Pete – Indeed I AM the same way Pete. But I do still greatly struggle with not… volunteering to do free work. Sometimes I still have to stop myself (when I DO stop myself that is). ha ha But yeah, isn’t it funny that as soon as you start a business how ppl start respecting your time?
@Ian – Fascinating comment Ian and sorry that I didn’t get to this reply earlier. You know, I’m not sure if I’m saying that you have to start your own business and jump in with two feet! When I started my design company, I didn’t do anything with it for a long time. In fact, I think I didn’t work with anything that you could call a client for the first year or two.
BUT, what I would do is give people a card and tell the people I knew. And just passing along that word was enough to get ppl to respect my time more, and eventually just TELLING ppl I had a company was enough to start getting business were I would’ve been stupid NOT to pursue it! Weird huh?