Stijn!! - Page 3810

GH85Carrera · GH85Carrera's Garage

Dave, I hope you can see the humor in this.

I know your pain of an industry that is changing. I worked in professional photo labs for nearly 30 years. That industry is gone. Digital photography and Photoshop can do things we never could at a top professional lab.

Outback Porsche · 12-04-2012, 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nynor

why do all those aussie shepherd dogs look like they are on the happiest formulation of meth-amphetamine EVAR?

He is a very happy boy

Has to be kept busy though - lots of toys and plenty of exercise.
It helps that his little sister lives next door, and they have play dates.

nynor · 02:53 PM

i got out of the IT biz for many of the same reasons that dave lists. although i had/have nothing top secret to bide.

i got tired of spotty income, clients that wanted a $2k system for under $100 and didn't want to do things properly. then, those same customers would freak the fk out when their $h!7 blew up.

in fact, the only "client" that EVER followed my advice with a computer build is glen. yup. true story. and, guess what? glen seems to happy with the results.... imagine that. (glen, it was and is my pleasure to have spec'ed that computer for you.)

anyway, dave, your woodworking stuff is the BIZ-DIGGITY. follow your heart.

the above is my two cents. anything else is extra.

porsche4life · porsche4life's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by slodave

I hope I make it. Not looking good right now, but my head is in the haze.

Here's the deal with the IT industry. If you are a smaller company or independent, it's largely word of mouth. The only one's that seem to get away with advertising (which I have seen very little of lately), are guys like Geek Squad. They are so big, that you can pretty much trust them just via advertising.

I have done the route of flyers and business cards. I've done it a few times with zero results. Okay, I got one call out of a thousand or so. Not a good return. A bunch of those flyers were mailed when I belonged to a couple of Chambers of Commerce. Two years ago, I sank nearly a grand into a single advertisement at a car wash. The ad co. was a fellow CC member. He gave me a discount and a prime spot on the board. In one year, I got one phone call from that ad and the lady was calling to find out how the advertising was working or me. Go figure.

I am not a good cold caller. I tend to obey the "No Solicitor" signs. I know they bug the crap out of me.

Lastly, I am fed up with the industry. I have been taken advantage of and things just have not gone the way I had hoped. I have been sticking with it, since it is what I know best and am really good at. But I am tired. You can't keep going for 15 and not see any rewards.

I appreciate the advice. I do.

Sidney, I really did not have that many clients - the ones I had never did the word of mouth thing.

I had three good ones that kept me going for the last years and kept the bills paid. I have no idea why I lost the lawyer at the end of last year. The only thing I can think of, is that they were paranoid in the last 6 months and were firing just about everyone for distrust. I was the one they trusted the most. They may have thought I was part of their problems, which I was not. I take clients privacy very seriously. That started the hurt this year. After my fender bender last Dec. my car ins. went up. That's what put the hurt on AX for the year. I survived until October. Then I noticed that my best client had been very quiet. Mental calculation told me that I had not effectively heard from them since end of August, but that was one of the owner's house calls, not business. It's now Dec. and nothing. There should have been some issue or update to the software that runs the biz by now. It's a pretty good indicator that I'm out. This one really hurt and did me in. I have two biz clients left and a bunch of random home clients that rarely call, but when it gets unbearable. Home was never supposed to pay the bills. I really didn't even want to do homes, but took what I could.

Call them. Literally just call and say that you haven't heard from them in a while, and you wanted to make sure everything is ok. We do this quite a bit, doesn't take much time, and in our case, being available is 99% of it. You may get some work out of it, or at the least, you'll know for sure that the door is closed.

porsche4life · porsche4life's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by nynor

i got tired of spotty income, clients that wanted a $2k system for under $100 and didn't want to do things properly. then, those same customers would freak the fk out when their $h!7 blew up.

anyway, dave, your woodworking stuff is the BIZ-DIGGITY. follow your heart.

the above is my two cents. anything else is extra.

Imagine your product starts at around 10k and goes up to around 250k now, and welcome to my world... They want the 250k abilities for 5k....

The woodworking comment is spot on. Dave is turning out some of the nicest stuff I've seen, there has to be a way to make some dough doing that?

porsche4life · porsche4life's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by slodave

I'm not sure how to say this, but even without IT, I have a monthly income. It's classified.

. It's just not enough to pay all the bills. I was hoping to keep the IT thing going for a while longer to pay the bills while I build a small supply of small woodworking projects to build a FB page and try and sell here and there. Not expecting to be an overnight success, but $50-75 here and there for turned objects could help. I would love to create projects from reclaimed wood - even posted a thread on it here.

I can go on rambling right now for a long time. I'll stop now.

I really think you can ramp up the woodworking side of life dave... You need to get a page going and start to seriously promoting it. The good thing is that you have a keen eye for photos and design, which is the majority of creating a good page. Make it something that people enjoy looking at for pleasure, and they will inherently want to buy stuff!

I'll help you figure out some marketing stuff if you want...

Rick V · 12-04-2012, 03:26 PM

Evening Y'all welp monday number two is over, and it is a good thing, someone was going to get smacked

nynor · 12-04-2012, 03:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rick V

Evening Y'all welp monday number two is over, and it is a good thing, someone was going to get smacked

who?

Rick V · 12-04-2012, 03:38 PM

The useless fellow I work with we have named Derp-Derp. If you look up the word useless, you would find two pictures of him just in case one were to fall out

nynor · 12-04-2012, 03:43 PM

right next to some folks that i work with....

Rick V · 12-04-2012, 03:46 PM

They better not ever make it legal to open hand pimp slap someone. I have a list.

slodave · slodave's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by porsche4life

Call them. Literally just call and say that you haven't heard from them in a while, and you wanted to make sure everything is ok. We do this quite a bit, doesn't take much time, and in our case, being available is 99% of it. You may get some work out of it, or at the least, you'll know for sure that the door is closed.

It's kinda obvious that you are out, when you try and remotely log in and can't anymore.

pete3799 · pete3799's Garage

Just finished the heart transplant on the Kia.
Took it down to the corner store (about 8 miles) got almost there and it started to lose power.
Managed to creep to the store and when i got out i could smell gas BAD. Went in and borrowed a flash light, found the pressure line to the injectors had come undone. I know the fitting clicked tight when i pushed it together the first time. Reached in and snapped it back together and all is well.
What a poor design that is.....a plastic fitting that snaps together on a high pressure fuel line.