if i ever do this again, will one of you just *slap* me? (one man band rant)

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Fulthrotl said:
well, saturday is all done... i have all the first days stuff done, and a drastic
reappraisal, and a clear understanding of what i need to be charging.

we shall see what tomorrow brings.
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today brought the completion of the business plan......
now, i have a ton of work to do... a lot of stuff i was
sloppy about... the backoffice stuff was killing me....

i'll know more in 30 days how this is shaping up....
the lady's biz plan process is pretty straightforward,
and gives you believable results....
 
Let us know how it works out Fulthrotl. I'd like to start my own business in a couple years and am curious if this is the way to go.
 
iMuse97 said:
Why a couple of years? What? Are you waiting for the economy to pick up? jk.
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Actually, I've only been a journeyman for about 3 years. I need one more year until I can test for my supervisor's license.

And I'm hoping the economy picks up.:roll:

:)
 
Cow said:
Let us know how it works out Fulthrotl. I'd like to start my own business in a couple years and am curious if this is the way to go.
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i suspect it'll work. what it's really all about is finding your abilities where
you shine, and selling that which you do better than most other people.

i'm off to a great start... was tweaking 'pooter stuff today, and decided
to change quickbooks premier from standalone, to multi user.... intuit says,
no problem, you can do this at any time.

so i did. it blew up... again, no problem... i had backed up the data file,
so no biggie, right? uninstall, reinstall, reload data file... that's what intuit says....

well, when it blew up, it scrambled the .net archetecture, so it couldn't be uninstalled
without fixing the .net stuff..... and the .net stuff couldn't be uninstalled or repaired

and it turns out that killed autocad, so it won't load or uninstall either.

so, i can't uninstall, install or repair either quickbooks, autocad, or .net framework.
and wednesday is a drawing day, for 12 hours... it'd be nice to have a pooter to do it on.

the "restore" point doesn't seem to do much either. it won't restore.

that leaves the image file to rebuild from. i'm thrilled. i love self employment.
 
QB can be a real PIA. We have been through just about every malfunction and breakdown with it you can imagine. Make backups every day to different thumb drives. We cycle three of them, or were the last I checked. Find a local expert. QB level of support is not always good with sometimes being PP.

I agree.:rant::rant:
 
Never had any serious problems with Quickbooks that I can recall. Have not used all of their features or multiuser modes either.

Have found it to be convenient to have a second computer - even just a small netbook as a backup machine for times like that. I have a netbook that has pretty much all same software installed as my office computer. It is not always sychronized with data on office computer but there are backups of data on removable media and it is not too hard to bring things up to date if needed. Basic netbooks can be purchased for $300 or less anymore. That is worth it compared to potential down time, when you need to get something done besides fixing your computer.
 
I make computer changes around January 2 in case there is any problem. I changed to Mac a couple years ago and dropped Intuit and QB in the process.
 
Fulthrotl said:
subscribed. thanks.
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kennydmeek said:
I charge $155hr and have no problem justifying that to my customers. After expenses it works out to around $80k yr salary and 20% profit margin for the business and I don't have to pay health care or employees.(yet) I'm busy enough that if anybody doesn't like it they're welcome to shop.

go to www.barebonesbiz.com. Ellen will set you straight with your numbers!
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kennydmeek said:
"Where Did the Money Go" and "How Much Should I Charge" are excellent also....both by Ellen..

I first learned about her over in Electrician Talk...
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kennydmeek said:
She's looking for ya!

Between the books and conversation where she figuratively told me to "grow a pair.."

Increased my income considerably!
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Did you guys just get her books, or did you attend one of her seminars? I met her at a hydronic heating show a couple of years ago, a real fireball. You should see the "chopper" model her husband Hot Rod made out of copper pipe
 
mtfallsmikey said:
Did you guys just get her books, or did you attend one of her seminars? I met her at a hydronic heating show a couple of years ago, a real fireball. You should see the "chopper" model her husband Hot Rod made out of copper pipe
Click to expand...

you know everything i know about this... got the link here, downloaded the books
onto the ipad, did the biz plan right out of the book....

plugged in the numbers for the budget into her little spreadsheet for determining
where my break even point is.... to get out of this what i want out of it, i need
myself working with the tools 4 days a week, and one person working for me,
5 days a week.

the profit on the material is critical... so is giving a flat rate for all work being done.

if you haven't got the stones to give a hard number for something that someone
want's you to do, well.... it's hard to call it contracting.... it's even harder to make
any money at it.

but her info it seems was learned in the plumbing industry, and it's close enough
to us in structure to cross over well.... seems the bulk of her disciples are plumbers...

and we all know that plumbers woulda been electricians if they could'a learned to
run pipe level..... ;-)
 
iwire said:
If I recall you are kind of XL, maybe XXL, instead of slapping you can we just send you an email?
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well, now you can. two hours ago you couldn't....

did a restore from the safe mode. it worked.....
everything came back from 9-01, before i added the
evil intuit destruct-0-bomb.

yay.

now, i'm making an image file of the whole computer,
with a recovery disc burned.... then i will go thru and
clean the system up, and burn another image when
i'm done....

automated images every night from now on... i just set
the script up for it. i have 2 USB drives, 1 TB each, i'll
alternate them, so the worst case scenerio is the pooter
dies, and a backup drive dies, i'll lose at most one day of
stuff.
 
Frankly, with a CPU with the swirl inside they are all still X86 machines (or how ever they say it...)

My personal experience has been to apply great caution when installing a new install of hard drive software.

I will freshly shout down and cold boot. I will not be multi-tasking, nor will try other activity when loading any software.
I will not have been working, surfing or whatever for any amount of time and then load something.

I've even defragged the HD and have used other tools before I've loaded software. Fresh start; fresh boot, load the software.

Not that You need that lecture now, but I thought it was worth the keystrokes!

Glad to read, "Raise your Rate" is still part of the forum!
 
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cadpoint said:
Frankly, with a CPU with the swirl inside they are all still X86 machines (or how ever they say it...)

My personal experience has been to apply great caution when installing a new install of hard drive software.

I will freshly shout down and cold boot. I will not be multi-tasking, nor will try other activity when loading any software.
I will not have been working, surfing or whatever for any amount of time and then load something.

I've even defragged the HD and have used other tools before I've loaded software. Fresh start; fresh boot, load the software.

Not that You need that lecture now, but I thought it was worth the keystrokes!

Glad to read, "Raise your Rate" is still part of the forum!
Click to expand...

yeah, i'm usually pretty anal about my 'pooter, and backups are done
whenever the time to recreate something is longer than the time to
back it up.

i've been off my feed lately, so to speak... while this isn't geek forum,
most of us are pretty dead in the water without them, and they
*do* plug into the wall... so i will share some things i've found helpful
in keeping them tuned are.....

CCleaner - for registry and online security
DeFraggler - far better than the MS utility
spyBot - search and destroy - for spyware, malware, etc.

these are all free, or a donation is suggested. they are all excellent.

ESET - antivirus and firewall - friends don't let friends use norton.

not free, reasonably priced, and doesn't slow your 'pooter down.

and what i normally do is make a system image of the entire computer.
why i hadn't done that recently is beyond stupid. it won't ever happen again.

my main 'pooter is a HP envy laptop... soon to be a collectable... :-/
and it's main chance of failure is a hard drive kerpoof... so there is
a spare exact replacement drive in the static bag unopened in the desk
drawer.... the theory was that in the event of a drive failure, i can open
the case, slip in the new drive and use the image to be back up and running...

of course, it's easier if you have a current backup.... dumb. very dumb.
 
Musings from the house plumber...

Musings from the house plumber...

Fulthrotl said:
you know everything i know about this... got the link here, downloaded the books
onto the ipad, did the biz plan right out of the book....

plugged in the numbers for the budget into her little spreadsheet for determining
where my break even point is.... to get out of this what i want out of it, i need
myself working with the tools 4 days a week, and one person working for me,
5 days a week.

the profit on the material is critical... so is giving a flat rate for all work being done.

if you haven't got the stones to give a hard number for something that someone
want's you to do, well.... it's hard to call it contracting.... it's even harder to make
any money at it.

but her info it seems was learned in the plumbing industry, and it's close enough
to us in structure to cross over well.... seems the bulk of her disciples are plumbers...

and we all know that plumbers woulda been electricians if they could'a learned to
run pipe level..... ;-)
Click to expand...

She learned the "method" from Frank Blau, a successful plumbing contractor, who was the first to espouse flat rate billing 20 yrs. ago. Sometimes us plumbers have to show everyone else the way, and as far as running pipe level...drain lines have to have a downward slope, or else your by-products would never leave! :}
 
mtfallsmikey said:
She learned the "method" from Frank Blau, a successful plumbing contractor, who was the first to espouse flat rate billing 20 yrs. ago. Sometimes us plumbers have to show everyone else the way, and as far as running pipe level...drain lines have to have a downward slope, or else your by-products would never leave! :}
Click to expand...

so, it would seem... maybe that is why nothing ever leaves internet discussion forums.... maybe if i tilt the monitor slightly, i'll drain properly....

http://www.flatratepricing.com/

yep... googling frank blau..... take you there....
 
A few Weeks ago I listened to Ellen Rohr 's Webinar for "The Challenge" I decided to sign up for the upcoming webinar seris stating next tues w00p .
I am all over the board with all the info i have gathered over the years .I am hoping I can put all of this in some sort of organizational format.
Can hardly wait till Tuesday . " The Complete Suite" show up a couple days ago.
 
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