Looking for advice from the pros

[jmartinez]

First off sorry for the "book" but I would rather you understand me and what I am doing instead of just tossing up a random link and saying "What do you think? Tell me how great I am!" and then getting upset because your honest. Quite the opposite, I am looking for people to be very honest with me but I also would hope they are speaking from a very experienced standpoint.

 

Who I am:

I worked for OLIAS (bought by DMVLINK.com over 10yrs ago now) as tech support for a few years. After that I worked for Earthlink (before it got outsourced) as ISP tech support (all flavors). Started my own consulting company doing small business tech support aka outsourced IT for companies that couldn't afford an in house IT staff. Merged with another company gave up controlling share of the company (was young and knew more about IT than real business), major difference in the idea of how the business should be ran caused me to leave. Worked for the State of WI DNR as a web designer. Actually if you know anything about any state jobs you know that statement is a joke, you don't have the ability to "design" anything, instead your forced into proprietary standards, given a bloated title and are really nothing more than a code monkey that goes through thousands of pages updating and cleaning up other peoples garbage code. I now work for and with family running two small businesses and am involved and have been for some time now with how real small business works, doesn't work and the real risks and costs associated with it. Everything I have learned along the way has been from actually doing it, teaching myself and the good ol' school of hard knocks. All the while I have kept some small business clients doing hosting, domain registrations, tech support on a very small scale.

 

Who I am NOT:

Hostgator, ThePlanet, 1and1 or any of you guys right now for that matter, no offense meant, I just know where I am for right now and it's not at that level, yet.

 

My market area:

Small businesses in the immediate town I live in, direct referrals from current clients, friends and family (who also own multiple small businesses).

 

My ideal client:

Small businesses that want a personal, hands on approach to their hosting, data backup and custom programming needs. In the future, once this is nailed down to my satisfaction, I will begin to expand again into offering local outsourced IT solutions for these clients. The ones who are not afraid to pay a little more for rock solid products, are not looking for DIY solutions and understand you get what you pay for.

 

My strong points:

Customer service, business management (it took a few years but I think I got a hold of it pretty well now), understanding what my clients think they want and what they really need, desktop support, PHP & MySQL.

 

My weak points:

A lot of other technologies and graphics/layout design. There is so much yet to learn and I will constantly be learning, but I do know I am much happier handling real day to day business or coding in my plain text syntax highlighting program than playing with Photoshop.

 

My goal:

Grow business over time to the point that I can officially hire someone full time, then work on growing some more. Baby steps right...

 

Where I am at:

I have the time and patience to get this right, I'm not here for a quick buck, I am here to build business relationships that my clients can trust. I don't have an unlimited source of funding so I can't afford to waste money on things that "might work". I would rather pay a premium rate for things that I KNOW work. I currently have a job and this is my second job. I am past the break even point, but definitely far from the highly profitable point. I have yet to point my clients to this site because I want to get it up and running properly before they start coming.

 

Current partner programs:

Rackspace Cloud Sites (seriously looking at Cloud Servers but honestly not looking forward to managing hardware), Mozy, Symform, JungleDisk Reseller version (aka MySecure Backup) and enom. Still looking for more that round out some simple no brainer solutions with excellent service, products and support.

 

My website technology:

PHP5, MySQL5, WordPress and WHMCS (vanilla install, just installed yesterday).

 

What I am looking for:

Other business owners/managers who are kind enough to take the time to understand me, where I am going and what I am doing. Then take a hard look at my site and make serious recommendations based on what you just read. Honestly if you can't find something wrong with my site then I don't want to talk to you. I am not looking to compete in your market at all, just looking to provide my local customers with the best possible friendly, easy to use and understand experience possible when coming to my site. This is site is NOT my only interaction with my clients, but rather just one more avenue for them to interact with my company. I want them to enjoy the experience and gain more trust in my company.

 

The site link:

http://www.techplexdesign.com

 

Thank you in advance,

Joshua