I learned about Nate Marles through keepMEcurrent.com, a daily and weekly news website for the Greater Portland Region.
Nate, a 17 year old entrepreneur, has a computer repair business called Current Computer Tech and has already found 65 customers who use his services to fix and upgrade computers.
In addition to being a high school junior, Nate is certified by Hewlett Packard, Intel and IBM to work on their computers. He is also a beta tester for Microsoft.
Nate started the business at 14 when he fixed computers for people in their homes. He says the biggest growth for him came when he moved from personal computers to working with small business customers.
“I have at least 10 or 15 business clients. I take courses on how to service their needs. These are businesses that have Web sites, and have their employees connected to servers.”
Although Nate owns the business, it has become a family affair where his father helps him with his taxes and his mother drove him to client sites before he got his own license to drive. His father, Greg, used to run two different business and has helped mentor Nate.
“I’ve taught him that if you don’t take care of your customers, you won’t keep them. You need to deliver what your customers want, not what you want them to have.”
The advice is paying off as Nate’s customers are happier than ever. According to Anne Telesco, one of his customers:
“Nate is just wonderful. I’ve got him on my speed dial under the name ‘computer god.’ Nate is very mature for his age. Quite frankly, he is very mature for someone 10 years older than he. My computer had flat-lined when I called Nate. He did the work really fast. He took my hard drive home, ran some diagnostics on it and fixed everything. I was relieved. This was something I could not do myself.”
Price has also been his competitive advantage. He charges $20 per hour where many computer repair technicians can charge up to $100 per hour.
“Charging a lot of money would be too stressful. I try to do what is reasonable. I may have scheduled two hours to be at a client’s house or business to fix one problem. What if I find other problems and it takes me four hours? Then I am charging that person $400. That’s quite a bit of money.”
The money he’s made so far is going towards his college education as well as a new laptop that he just purchased and his cell phone bills.
“This is an exciting time for my company. More businesses are finding out that I can do major repairs but at a lower cost than the competitors. I’m flexible too. I put out proposals that fit the clients instead of telling them this is what I can do.”
What’s next for Nate? He’s planning on going retail to start selling electronics and warranties. He has also recently created an online accounting section on his website where his clients can see price quotes online, access their invoices, and pay their bills.
