Went out to dinner tonight to celebrate yet another happy customer. Its building a lot quicker than I imagined it would, i am to the break even point now, so if i can keep the customers coming in at this rate I will be very happy, I wont be getting rich doing this but it lets me do something I love to do, which is teach, help others out with tech questions and web hosting and provide great customer service. Word of mouth is really helping me out, a friend of mine is graduating the milw institute of art and design and is telling alot of his friends there, so far him and one other student have signed up, but more are talking about signing up, so it will be a good week =)
April 24th, 2008 by humbrol Posted in Uncategorized
Worked like any other day,, i think the promotion and the pay raise has changed my mentality. I am relaxing more and letting the 2nd assistants worry about their zones, while i focus on training a new salaried manager and some new swing managers, its nice to be to a point where ive learned all thier zones and I can start focusing on learning something new for a change. I look forward to learning the business side of the zone and getting ready for my own store some day.
On the hosting front, I am still taking offers for the redesign and marketing of my sites. Its a big project but the budget is small right now, I am trying to find partners ( web designers, business hosts etc) that need hosting that i can bring business to them for design work ,and have them get cheap reliable hosting from me. So far the going is slow but im trying to build an online social network to help with referrals. Alot of the Milw instute of art and design graduates are talking about switching to my hosting after hearing about the experience of one of thier fellow graduates as well as my friend. Both who host with me.
Hobbies - I am trying to find a good athletic hobby to balance out my life, I am seriously looking into scuba diving. I have always loved flying and the feeling of weightlessness and tunnels. And Scuba diving is a great balance of all of those. I am going to try to get my open water , open water advanced and wreck diving certificates this summer so I can go dive some of the great wrecks here in wisconsin waters. Next summer it would be great to get down to georgia or san deigo and dive some of the wrecks down there and keep going somewhere new every summer.
Boats - I found a boat for 10k I would love to buy, but since my personal credit is still shot, my business credit is just building, its a long road to get it. My Truck is almost paid off, when it is i will see if i can finance a boat through the same great company that financed my truck. Motor credit corp of racine wisconsin. =) <shameless plug since they have been more than awesome for me, if you need a truck or personal loan, go there first>
ill write more tommorow i promise =)
April 13th, 2008 by humbrol Posted in Day to Day life, Small Business Woes
The struggle these days is finding a good work/life balance. I am investing so much time in this business and my primary job that my family is beginning to wonder when they will get some time. They are great at understanding what I am doing but I know that eventually I will need to delegate out and hire someone to help me with this so that it can grow like it needs to.
April 10th, 2008 by humbrol Posted in Day to Day life, Small Business Woes, Work
Ok, now that I have the business up and running comes the hard part, finding a way to attract quality clients and get them in the proverbial doors of my site and purchasing hosting and domain names. I know this is going to be a long haul, and I am one that likes to be able to see results right away, but this is going to take time and patience, both of which are skills i just recently acquired and am still learning to use =). I am going to dinner with Jon and his dad to talk about small business items . His dad is a inspiration, he owns a rental unit, owns his own successful small business and is overall someone I look up to and respect.
Also in the market for other small business ideas, due to my schedule a second job is hard to do unless I can work strange hours but since i make enough at the primary job, leaving it isnt an option right now, it pays for everything else. So if anyone has any ideas, im all ears =)
April 9th, 2008 by humbrol Posted in Uncategorized
Started teaching a class for work today. Teach the same class 2 times a day, once a month. First one was kinda shaky but it was a good learning experience, got the nerves out of the way and the second class ran much much smoother, theres still some changes I would like to make but overall the feedback from the crew and managers going through it was very positive and very well received.
Hosting is going well, still working on how to market the company and get clients in the door, the feedback from the first few clients is they are amazed at the speed of setup, the service they receive and the overall experience. Now if only they would all tell 10 people and get 2 out of the 10 to sign up and so forth i could start working on this as my main job and relax at my current main job some. So if your reading this, go tell your friends to come buy a domain name and a years hosting with me, Ill even help them setup a simple site or stock shopping cart/blog/forum site for them =)