Trying to grow my shop

Hi all, my name is Dean, and as everyone knows, I'm the guy that kicked this place into a solid page (I still remember when I first found PTS10, and I don't miss the place being down every 30 seconds).

I'm a 29 year old self-employed mechanic. I've worked for several shops across the country, doing small engine, specialized work (restorations, maintenance, repairs on a specific set of vehicles), as well as regular auto shop work. For the last three years I've been in business for myself. I've built my company from nothing more than a couple toolboxes, into a great fledgling mobile service. I started out with a little Ford Ranger, working out of the bed, and now I work from a van which has everything inside. I go to my customers for everything from a simple oil change to full on jobs like clutch replacements. I do auto as well as small engine, working on everything from little string trimmers to fullsize yard tractors, motorcycles, cars and trucks. I rarely turn down a job, and being self employed with everything in a van, I have very little overhead, and can put almost all the money back into the business or food on my table.

Unfortunately, being a small one man operation, I still don't have a lot of client flow. The small (but growing) customer list that I do have is great, but I do my job well, and my customers rarely need to call me back. As such, the last year and a half I've been working part time jobs to keep food on the table, and while I at least keep fuel in the van, and food on my table, I sometimes struggle to do even that.

With that, I recently started a GoFundMe campaign, hoping I can raise the money to fix up problems the van has, build a website, advertise, and get more tools and supplies to do my work. Right now I advertise a lot on Craigslist, and I hand out business cards like candy, but I need to get in the newspaper, the phone book, and put out signs where I can.

If anyone here feels generous and wants to help a homegrown company stay in business, your donations will be most welcome.

Here's the campaign link http://www.gofundme.com/774e70

As promised in my campaign, any donors that give $75 or more will receive a t-shirt reflecting this generosity.

Thank you all!

While I can't help right now, as I'm in pretty much the same spot with my business, I hope this works out for you, if so I might just have to try it for mine too, lol.

Isn't it great being the boss? lol

Even better, the front wheel bearings on the van are in the middle of self destruction, took the day off work to rip the front end apart to fix everything

<sighs> #Firstworldproblems?

Isn't it great being the boss? lol

Even better, the front wheel bearings on the van are in the middle of self destruction, took the day off work to rip the front end apart to fix everything

<sighs> #Firstworldproblems?

Oh yeah, lovin that ramen, lol.

I was in the same boat as you at 29. The dealership I worked at for almost 10 years as shutdown in 2009. I opened my own shop at my house and did it for 4 or 5 years until I needed a change ... and some benefits! I handed out business cards everywhere and peoples word of mouth brought the business to me. Also working in a small town where I grew up helped a lot. I hope you have been doing good with self employment over the last 4 years!