So I’m learning all the time what I should, and shouldn’t be doing to make my little business grow. I’ve decided that while it may not be worth very much, I’ll share what I’ve learned little by little, maybe to help some of the other little guys out there.

Chances are, if you’ve decided to start you own business, you’re farther along than me, but if not, here are a few pointers:

• Business Cards - You can do your own business cards for between $5 and $10, including the card stock itself. I have been using Avery Clean Edge Business Cards, #5871 for a while now, and as long as you have a laser printer you can use, you can print out sheets of these at a time and have fairly professional looking cards in no time at all.
• Web Site/Email - Using your gmail account will work for a while, but at some point, you’re going to want to have your own domain and email address, preferably with your company name on it. If you’re a genius web designer, you’ll have no problem putting an attractive website together. However if you barely know a div from a span, search the web and you can find some cheap, and even free web templates to help you get your web page off the ground.
• Home Base - I personally use my home office as my home base for now. It keeps all my tools and extra parts in order and gives me a place to work on anything that might need to bring home. Having a folding table with a 4 or 5 foot power strip screwed to the back can come in quite handy (I’ll post plans for a custom work bench for a techie in the future). Having an older dedicated router for your work is probably a good idea too, since you never know what is on that six-year old machine you brought home to work on.
• Point of Contact - This goes without saying, but having a good cell phone is an absolute must. On top of that goes a bluetooth earpiece. Having your hands free while driving and able to talk to a client, or dispatcher (if you’re that far already) is something that I know older computer service guys can appreciate.
• Customer Database - If I could count all the ways to implement this one, I think I’d run out of appendages. I use a dual setup I guess you could call it. I have both a wiki that I keep all the details and specs of what I have done for each client, as well as a client database that I can keep track of all my invoices and work done for. But this can be implemented, like I said, a million different ways. Paper only, should not be one of them. Ever.

That’s a short quick list that’s no where near all of what I’ve learned or picked up over the past few years, so expect another installment of this in the near future.