Power On will hit the “on” switch September 1, bringing a new kind of tech support to Downtown Lansing.
“I’m an educator by trade,” says Chris Fritz, primary owner and manager of
Power On. “Something that I hear a lot is that when something goes wrong with people’s technology they want to get it fixed, and they also want to learn more about it.”
Instead, Fritz says, they typically get ripped off. Technology professionals often overcharge for their services, and then allow customers to take their hardware back with no idea how to prevent the problem from reoccurring.
“If people can learn more about their technology all the time, they could do lot of the work themselves,” says Fritz. “I talked to
Tom Stewart, about making a support center that educates people, and he, Scott Cassaday and I made it happen.”
Power On, located on Allegan, will be just that. The education will come in form of both one-on-one advice after maintenance and classes. Fritz also intends to offer free tutorials on his website.
Fritz gets the same question a lot when people hear bout his business model: won’t you educate all of your customers out of needing your help? But he isn’t worried.
“If I’m able to help everyone in Lansing solve all of their own technology problems, I’ll happily accept my Nobel prize and move on the next city,” he says. “But I’m always learning new things, so I’m guessing I’ll always have something to teach others.”
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