When Amber Hawkins started her business in 2005 – Your Computer Needs of Toledo, LLC – she was clearly stepping into a market in which prospective customers were, in large part, still wondering what computers did and how such implements could impact their lives and businesses.

The Internet, for example, was still in its infancy.

Hawkins, however, had developed her own computer skills and was already in the position of helping those “who had a computer and didn’t know what to do with it,” she recalls.

What Hawkins didn’t know how to do, however, was run a successful company of her own, so she sought the assistance of ASSETS Toledo.

“That helped me with structure,” she says of the business program. “I wanted to start a business and was checking the web, but I got confused. ASSETS Toledo was a good way to have a classroom style setting and clear my mind on so many details.”

In 2005, while she was laid off from her 9 to 5, she decided to follow her dream and make her passion for computers profitable. She saved up her unemployment insurance money and opened Your Computer Needs of Toledo, LLC.

The mission is explained as: “Through the tool of computer training, tasks were accomplished in the forms of onsite/online training and consulting, keynote speaking, stand-alone trainings, lectures, workshops, certification tracks and webinars are customized to meet each need, along with the selling of computers on the company’s website and e-mobile computer learning.​”

Now, 16 years later, Hawkins’ clientele are not usually facing quite the same dilemma – the people who have computers, use them for business and personal use, has grown exponentially. However, there are still enormous challenges, says Hawkins. Her clients are “more technologically advanced but they need help in trying to understand different devices – phones, tablets, watches.”

They also need to understand how to effectively use social media for personal and business purposes – how to connect virtually, remotely; how to transfer and store information.

The pandemic, she notes, “exposed who was computer and technologically savvy and who was not.”

So even as her business initially took a hit at the onset of the pandemic, “business has been and is improving” as time has gone on these past 18 months. Hawkins’ clients are a mix of individuals and corporate – the companies being mostly small to mid-sized businesses.

For more information, reach Your Computer Needs of Toledo, LLC at 419-304-4564 or by email at MzPresCeo@yourcomputerneeds.net or online at https://yourcomputerneeds.net.