John D’s Computer Services Turns 1 Today!

Shameless plug for John D’s Computer Services here. Exactly one year ago today, I announced its creation in the midst of a lot of economic silliness. I saw a need in the midst of a down economy for people to be able to get their computers serviced at reasonable prices.

People had been asking me for some time why I didn’t start my own business. After all, I spent a number of years in desktop support, which involved not only desktop computers but setting up and maintaining networks. In addition, I used to build my own systems. I have years of experience in computer security, especially detection and removal of viruses.

Well, to be quite frank, I didn’t want to initially. My father had tried – and failed – at a couple of business adventures. I really didn’t want to go through all that, not to mention taxes, accounting, etc. Then, the economy took a bad downturn.

I began to hear rumors about how much some of the brick and mortar shops were charging people, and it just seemed ridiculous. In some cases, even a small upgrade could cost as much as a new netbook computer or even more!

At the same time, I saw a job advertisement for technicians to go on location to service printers and the like. The only problem was that the pay did not even meet government tax standards for mileage on a vehicle! In other words, they weren’t even paying you enough to cover your gas and wear and tear on your car! So, when I started investigating how much a normal technician in a brick and mortar shop was getting paid, it became obvious that it wasn’t the techs getting the money!

I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want to pay someone over $200 per hour just so they can park a cool looking car in my driveway for a few hours. I really don’t want to pay for the air conditioning, lights and so on, either. I want to pay for the job to get done. Nothing more, and nothing less. I understand that there are other expenses involved, but I want most of my money going to the job and not a lot of overhead, and certainly I want a fair portion to go to those who do the work.

That’s when it dawned on me that I could offer the same types of services for less. I didn’t have to charge an arm and a leg, and as long as I got a sufficient number of customers, I didn’t have to get stuck at a low paying job in yet another corporate entity.

Well, it began to dawn on me that this is probably where God was taking me on the next leg of this journey called “life”. So, after much prayer and thought, I planned out my next steps and made the announcement.

Thank you, Lord, for I could not have made the year without You!