Accidentally created a $1.6k MRR machine, how to grow?

[mokuaben08]

Some background:

• 22, male, midwest USA
• Started a computer repair business in early 2019, with the exception of spring 2020 pandemic has been steadily growing
• My demographic is seniors, so I worked on a whitelabel AV in Jan 2021 that sends me reports of what virus they got & how, so I can call them and help them avoid it in the future.
• In Jan 2021, my first month trying this, I made $23 gross, $16 net in passive income.
• In Jan 2022, I'm projected to make $1556 ($1143 net) from Antivirus, and $127 ($108) from cloud backups for a total of $1683 gross, $1251 net
• My "active income" is around the average for my area, also growing somewhat steadily

Initial growth has resulted from 1) following up with past virus-removal clients & pitching and 2) pitching the software to new clients. I get more yes than no - maybe about 70-75% yes. I only charge $8-10/mo for the software - so it's comparable to Norton/McAfee with more features. The cloud backup I haven't actively pitched as much yet.

Anyways, I realize that it's not exactly business genius that got me to this point, but rather luck. I've decided to take up on some reading to grow this more since growth is slowing. Specifically, right now I'm reading Lean Analytics. In this book they mention that to make a scalable product you want to ensure there is a 1) problem that 2) I can solve that 3) people will pay for, is 4) "sticky" and 5) "viral" and then I can 6) scale

I feel like I already have 1-3 solved, and it's very sticky as well - customers who purchase this follow up with me regularly with all sorts of small questions & thank you's - and my churn is just over 1% per month (I'm hopeful it won't, but realistic that it will likely rise at some point). It's not crazy viral but word-of-mouth is how I get about a quarter of those sales.

What that is leading up to is: I want to scale, and I think I'm ready. But all the books these days talk about mobile marketing, SaaS analytics, etc. but my customers don't buy from me online - and I can't sell to everyone in the USA/world.

My potential clients are preferably in my region, within an hour or two at most. They are 50 or older, many 65 or older. They are optimists, they are casual computer users, they're prone to error, and they want help from a local, younger person who will listen to their problems and present a solution. Most of them use Facebook, Email (Yahoo, Gmail, Aol (yuck), or Frontier webmail), Candy crush, and google & download random stuff too. And to be frank, about a third of them are very lonely & like having a young guy come over to their house & talk with them while performing a computer servicing.

In a 50mi radius, there's only a couple of businesses I can think of that do similar work to me and they prefer B2B than B2C. In a 10-mile radius of me, I make $665/mo off of 5,300 people. If I had that same ratio for the 50-mile radius (217,000 people), it'd be about $26k/mo. I know that's a high bar, but why not set it? What are some things I could do to get closer to that goal?

 

[badumtish]

@mokuaben08 First of all, congratulations for your entrepreneurship! At your age, my first job was the same like yours. It's like teaching myself after 18 years in career.

1 - Do not create salience for the cloud backup, include it as a free bonus. Explain for them first month is free, then they must pay.

2 - The way you are going to scale this kind of business? You need to sell at the other end the jobs you are going to create expanding your workforce.

You need to create a online crashcourse teaching how to do your job, you are going to run facebook/tik tok ads offering "microfranchising", imagine: "Be your own boss, win X per month doing PC Repairs".

You keep doing your thing around your area to keep up updated and in touch with the user experiencie/buyer journey.

3 - Expand your software portfolio to offer to your customers.

E.G.: Password management is a hassle for old people, most of them write down their passwords, a massive security threat. You can find some with available affiliate programs.

E.G.: Wi-fi signal enhancement, you can sell wifi signal repeaters, setup wifi networks, configure ports whenever necessary...

Just trying to understand how to think about expand, I really don't know your area's demand.

Good Luck!

 

[cmberry]

@badumtish

The way you are going to scale this kind of business? You need to sell at the other end the jobs you are going to create expanding your workforce.

You need to create a online crashcourse teaching how to do your job, you are going to run facebook/tik tok ads offering "microfranchising", imagine: "Be your own boss, win X per month doing PC Repairs".

Brilliant! Thanks for sharing

 

[mokuaben08]

@badumtish First off thank you really appreciate those words! I have a way of doubting myself a lot so hearing all these positive remarks really has helped with some perspective.

1 - Do not create salience for the cloud backup, include it as a free bonus. Explain for them first month is free, then they must pay.

I think I understand - you mean assuming that cloud backup is a must, setting it up for free, and then just mentioning it'll cost X/month after a free trial? (With the current margins I can afford to do this). If I misunderstood would you be able to explain?

2 - The way you are going to scale this kind of business? You need to sell at the other end the jobs you are going to create expanding your workforce.

You need to create a online crashcourse teaching how to do your job, you are going to run facebook/tik tok ads offering "microfranchising", imagine: "Be your own boss, win X per month doing PC Repairs".

I am going to save this and keep having it pop up on my google calendar until I actually do it. I would love this!

3 - Expand your software portfolio to offer to your customers.

E.G.: Password management is a hassle for old people, most of them write down their passwords, a massive security threat. You can find some with available affiliate programs.

Can't believe I haven't thought of this! Yep, they all have their passwords in chicken scratch written down in a musty old notebook

 

[1shae123]

@mokuaben08 Congrats on your work and progress so far. I also think you're thinking about this in a good way.

It would be helpful for you to better define what you offer. You've done a decent job explaining the value proposition (friendly tech support and some companionship), but I'm not quite clear on the nature of your solution. Is it a remote diagnostic software your customers install on their computer? Or is it the service of you going to their house and educating or simply doing tech related things for them? These business models are extremely different and relevant to your questions about how to scale.

 

[mokuaben08]

@1shae123 Thank you!

For the greater part of 2019 & 2020, my solution was friendly tech support & some companionship - which is a good & growing model but 0% passive. Now I'm sort of split on that solution & the antivirus software, which is more passive, hands-off, and seems to do a very good job of keeping even the most 'dangerous' of my client's computers clean. So yeah, I'm a bit confused too dancing between 2 offers as I slowly move more and more towards passive software solutions.

 

[whydis]

@mokuaben08 I dig it, you found a great niche from the sounds of it!

The 2 main growth strategies that come to mind for a company like this would be EDDM post card delivery and a simple referral system.

EDDM stands for Every Door Direct Mail, if you’ve ever received a flyer or such addressed to “Postal customer” that’s how it was sent.

The USPS EDDM system lets you select individual postal routes, and shows general statistics of the customers in each defined postal code based on census data.

As for a referral program, something like offering current customers a free month (or discount) for each friend they can get to sign up would be perfect for generating word of mouth wherever the elderly in your area congregate.

From the sounds of it your customers are very happy with the service, and I feel like at their age having someone they can call to help with computer issues is like having a superpower among their technologically illiterate peers.

Another kinda off the wall idea could be sponsoring something at a bingo hall or whatever the equivalent in your area is.

Also, another source of new clients I think you might want to consider if you haven’t already is kids and grandkids that don’t want to be tech support anymore.

Anyway, hope the ideas help! Let me know if you’d like me to elaborate on any of them.

 

[badumtish]

@whydis The referral program for the customers is a great idea!

 

[ebonypittman88]

@mokuaben08 Just want to say congrats. Not many people achieve that. Good luck!

 

[3rdday]

@mokuaben08 Ask questions like "What's your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)?" so that you can find answers to questions like "Would offering a word-of-mouth referral program work?" or "How much can you spend on free services for each customer?". If you know the answers to those questions then you can calculate a reasonable budget to test out different marketing strategies. Maybe something along the lines of offering free visits to run a checkup on an individual's system for both the referrer and the referral.

Hell, you could take it a notch further and hand out promotional USB drives to people with different how-to videos on them along with either remote support software or a link that can take them directly to a site that allows them to request support from you, with the goal of making it as few clicks as possible. Having done tech support for hotels and working with quite a few older individuals, who lack some tech savvy, I know that convincing is highly appreciated. The lower the friction from inserting the drive to getting you onto their computer the more likely someone will associate a positive experience with your service.

It's great that you are reading books on understanding business strategies through analytics, but don't let those books overshadow the ones written by successful entrepreneurs that may resonate with you and your business. Maybe look into books that focus on customer service like "Delivering Happiness" by Zappo's CEO & Founder Tony Hsieh or a book on building a service brand like "WTF?! (Willing to Fail): How Failure Can Be Your Key to Success" by one of the founders of 800-GOT-JUNK. I also would recommend reading a book on market research just so you can build a solid base of understanding on how to develop questions. Those questions that I proposed above are pointless without there being a goal for them to support and a lot of times, I feel, that a lot of entrepreneurs forget about the "why" and rush into the "how"

Congrats on creating a lean business, it's no accident that your hard and mindful work paid off.

 

[jesusislord7]

@mokuaben08 Good job mate... Going from zero something is difficult and you have crossed it.

Now the first thing to scale is to stop doing the actual work yourself. So you gotta start giving the operations to an employee and make sure if employee quits you can take over and also employee can't take away the clients

The other part is you can make same money from lots of more people or more money from same people. It's easier to do the second. What else can you offer them -printer cartridges, smoke alarm, cctv, etc

The next part is just a suggesion. I have 2 ideas around tech support which you can pick up

1. It support for small businesses with one to 10 computers. Suppose I have a small dental practice and have like 3 computers, if something goes down, who do I call, even if I can fix it, I don't want to, cause im a dentist.
2. Antivirus and security for small websites especially on wordpress. Launching your own wordpress blog or ecomm store is super simple with no tech skills, but once you hit some scale, you start getting hacked, get malware, etc.

Best of luck. Remember to stop doing the ops, if you want to grow