KPick wrote:Holy crap lol I want to start a business here in Fresno, but your lists of equipment is just insanely expensive, but like my father said to me, you start with just a few tools and gradually expand over the years with investments of newer tools and skills. What do you guys think?
I always talk about opening up a locksmith business.
I think you can do what your father described, but you will likely hafta start off as a mobile service provider. You can begin opening cars & doing residential/commercial lockout service, with rekeying.
Later on when you can get money together you can begin doing auto lock key making/transponder keys. I never actually started making too many of these newer style keys and I have only ever had 5 or so people even ask me to do them per year, so why even bother?
Anyhow there is no reason why you can't begin doing mobile service, even if you don't have a van or truck yet. You will need a 12volt dc key machine,some key blanks, a universal pin kit, some auto tools and some lock picking tools & a vehicle to carry it in. You can work at any level You desire, just need that internet ad and some phone skills. If someone asks "Can you install a new lock" of course you can, cause you will teach yourself to on a 2x4 until you can. On the way to the call you can buy a kwikset and a schlage lock from home depot and double the price-Or whatever You feel comfortable with. You don't need to have $20K in tools or $25K in inventory. Anything you don't have You will get--& your customer will be ok with that, most times anyhow.
The only thing You must do is Believe in Yourself. Whenever I start wondering if I can do something, I think back to a thing my Dad once asked me. We were talking about building my house, since I could not qualify for a loan, I saved up my money and bought a piece of land. Then I saved up and paid for the concrete slab, etc. I was worried cause I knew nothing about building a house. He said Billy, you have seen construction people on their jobsite when rekeying locks, did they look like rocket scientists to you? Do you think they are smarter than You are? Do You think they were born with something You didn't get?
Of course these answers are all a big No. We are all people, if you can read instructions You can do just about anything. Lots of jobs I go out on it was obvious that the people before me refused to read the instructions and messed up--which is the good news, if they had done their jobs properly I would have never been called! There is a huge amount of substandard work being performed all over our country and if you will take the time to care you can out do many who won't bother to.
