Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:10 pm by jones
I am self-employed as a locksmith in Arizona & I don't see what the difficulty is. Here in AZ there is no locksmith licensing and I don't have a contractors license so it's pretty straightforward. Each year I must pay a business license fee to the town I work in, that costs $100. I used to own a gun store also and with judicious use of the & sign and also the / sign I managed to pay the $100 each year while licensing two businesses that I ran under one roof. Each month I fill out sales tax forms and send the money that I work for free to accumulate for the county coffers. That pretty much sums up my legal liability to the city/county. I have a small shop like 500 sq ft that is crammed full of stuff I cannot bear to throw away. Sometimes those older used locks can be worth plenty, I have a resort I service where they absolutely love to buy a used Corbin/Russwin mortise lock at one half of retail price plus my labor to install it. As far as making me money, the shop never does seem to pay for it's rent these days, but that is largely my fault for only keeping it open 45 minutes a day. My other option is to hire someone, which I have done many times in the past 20 years, but am unwilling to do again. I have learned many times that it takes 6 months to a year of training for a guy (or girl) off the street to be able to find the correct key blank and then cut a working key. In my business most every employee decides to quit long before they are fully trained, which just wastes a lot of money on nothing. As a result I do 45 minutes in the shop at an appointed time, so folks can come in & get their work done without paying my service call fee & then I leave and go actually make some money for myself doing service calls. Over the years I have found that the gov't is against all small business and as a result I no longer break my butt to do much additional work, as I got tired of paying extra taxes to a gov't that doesn't represent my wishes, anyway.
I would think you would want to begin business as my Dad did, working his full time job and doing service calls before and after his regular work hours. That is easier and doesn't require you to fill out sales tax forms every month. You'll need a dc motor for your key machine and some key blanks along with a pin kit. You will also want a set of auto lockout tools and some lock picking tools you likely already own. I quit doing most auto work with the advent of the transponder key, so most of my calls nowadays are rekeying houses, which I consider to be the easy money. Second are home & auto lockouts, which generally come along at the most inconvenient times. The real bottom line is I have, in 25 years, managed to make a name for myself, and a decent living. I recently put a piece of land into escrow and if everything checks out I will have a new home built on it in a few months. Unfortunately as a small business no bank is interested in making me a loan, which is fine once you learn to save money well.
I really think the most important thing in starting a business is making a go of it as soon as possible. Every day You wait is one more day in an unbroken chain that You have managed to put things off. Putting things off has never managed to get anything done, so seize the day, and quit thinking about it--Do It One thing on your side is the residential market is largely unchanged since 1970. Also since You are a member of this site, you have that going for you as well. You should keep in mind that many of the topics presented on the forum are abnormal in the residential lock world, most homeowners have never heard of high security and couldn't afford it if they had heard of it.
