Welcome to the forum! This will be an interesting journey for you. It takes some effort to get your TIME out of the service business equation.

Good luck and dig deep in the search bar!

 

So I'm no expert in this area, but a family member is an IT consultant. I was talking to him about this idea of "Fastlane-ing" his business a few days ago. Not sure if this is applicable or useful to you, but his plan is to begin charging flat rates regardless of hours worked (of course) and just ensure that the client's computers are always up according to X standards based on a contract.

He worries about figuring out how to write a contract in a way that he doesn't get screwed like if a major issue occurs he'll be forced to work tons of hours. It seems to be a trade-off, if you do it that way you have consistency and it'll be really easy to tell if you can afford to hire somebody, calculate what you can afford based on flat dollar amounts per month. The negative is that you could potentially be forced to work at a loss (paying more for the employee than what you are currently getting), but it's bound to go both ways.

Anyways, hope I'm not just spouting obvious information to you.