Starting a Business (Making a hobby into something more) Advice Please!

[Riley2012]

Long story short. My boyfriend has a Masters in Accounting and works as a tax accountant and I am finishing up my Bachelors and work in the logistics industry. We have always talked about starting our on business. He somewhat regrets his career choice (the firms snobby environment, long hours, and everything in between). I love my job and have progressed pretty fast, but at the same time I feel like I may hit a glass ceiling in such a male dominated environment.

We both share a passion for technology, specifically mobile devices (cell phones, tablets, laptops). We engage in app development, rom development, and also repair. We eventually started buying, selling, repairing, and flipping mobile devices. At this point we make enough doing this to where we can pay a majority of our bills with the profits. That is just doing this in our free time also.

Lately, we have been putting serious thought into this. Possibly even investing in a store front. At the same time we work, and work hard at that. It is tax season for him (60 hours mandatory plus every saturday until april), and he is mid way through taking the CPA exam with 2 parts left. Its warming up so work for me is picking up fast,I am trying to wrap up this capstone course/plus 2 test, and I Drill with the army reserves. :willynilly:

Ok maybe that was not a short story

What do you guys think?

Should we hold off on this until we have more free time? (I think I am to anxious though)

Smart idea? (In our area there is not a whole lot of legit competition)

Any good books, sites, blogs to with good information? (Already put together a "business plan")

We have the financial and marketing parts down, just not sure on how to execute. Any advice will be appreciated. eeya:

[Ace_King]

We both share a passion for technology, specifically mobile devices (cell phones, tablets, laptops). We engage in app development, rom development, and also repair. We eventually started buying, selling, repairing, and flipping mobile devices. At this point we make enough doing this to where we can pay a majority of our bills with the profits. That is just doing this in our free time also.

I have a friend doing this, who lives very very comfortably. He is a single male, a condo right near the beach. I asked what he did for a living and he pointed to his office in his condo, "I work here..". That's when I found out he repairs, fixes, does rom development, you name it. I told him I'm willing to learn and quit my day job, LOL! He has a bachelors in engineering from a well known university and has been offered jobs but he actually decided to do this instead.

I say go for it! Just continue doing this in your free time until he finishes the CPA exam and you of course finish the capstone. If you guys are making profit already without actually having a store open, imagine the possibilities when you guys do actually open one up.

[cookderosa]

Long story short. My boyfriend has a Masters in Accounting and works as a tax accountant and I am finishing up my Bachelors and work in the logistics industry. We have always talked about starting our on business. He somewhat regrets his career choice (the firms snobby environment, long hours, and everything in between). I love my job and have progressed pretty fast, but at the same time I feel like I may hit a glass ceiling in such a male dominated environment.

We both share a passion for technology, specifically mobile devices (cell phones, tablets, laptops). We engage in app development, rom development, and also repair. We eventually started buying, selling, repairing, and flipping mobile devices. At this point we make enough doing this to where we can pay a majority of our bills with the profits. That is just doing this in our free time also.

Lately, we have been putting serious thought into this. Possibly even investing in a store front. At the same time we work, and work hard at that. It is tax season for him (60 hours mandatory plus every saturday until april), and he is mid way through taking the CPA exam with 2 parts left. Its warming up so work for me is picking up fast,I am trying to wrap up this capstone course/plus 2 test, and I Drill with the army reserves. :willynilly:

Ok maybe that was not a short story

What do you guys think?

Should we hold off on this until we have more free time? (I think I am to anxious though)

Smart idea? (In our area there is not a whole lot of legit competition)

Any good books, sites, blogs to with good information? (Already put together a "business plan")

We have the financial and marketing parts down, just not sure on how to execute. Any advice will be appreciated. eeya:

I don't know anything about mobile devices, I don't even own one lol, but whenever you have the change to step out on your own you should do it. There is more to life than being someone's employee, and even if this business doesn't work- who cares? It give you experience to use in your next venture. Go for it!

[mrs.b]

Have you thought about doing a virtual storefront instead of a real in-person shop? It may be a way to expand a bit beyond what you're doing without investing all the front-end resources to see if it's something you want to get deeper into. And if there is more market to tap, it could provide that edge so your transition from working for others into working for yourself will not be such a big leap of faith. The cost of starting up a website, particularly if one or both of you are tech-savvy enough to develop your own website, is minimal, whereas the cost of opening a physical shop can be significant, especially since one or both of you will need to quit your day jobs so you can staff the place for walk-in clients. It could provide enough steady increase in work to get both him through his CPA exam and you through your busy season and remaining classes until business is booming enough to justify jumping into a physical store.

Edit: If you already have a website, marketing that you'll do home repair evenings and weekends - i.e., travel to someone's home to pick up or repair on-site - could be the next biggest step. (If someone has mobile devices and needs them fixed, they will likely look around online for the location so just pushing the online marketing angle could generate the larger customer base that will help with the transition.

Whatever you do, go for it - now or later - because any opportunity to do what you love and make a living at it is too good to pass up!

[Riley2012]

Thanks for the advice guys!