Business is Coming Along Nicely
As most of you know, I quit my IT consulting job on 12/21/2007, and started my own business, sans huge overhead, company politics, business practices I didn’t like, and a company owner whom I disrespected mightily.
For a few months, I did some digging up some of my own customers, and did some contract work for a couple of other IT companies for more money than I was being paid at the former employer, with the ability to choose which jobs I did. Then I was approached by Doyenz, a software startup, and started doing contract work for them as well.
In June, Doyenz asked me to come on full time, and I agreed somewhat reluctantly, with the understanding that I would keep my business going to some extent. Business slowed way down, mainly because I stopped contracting for those other IT companies.
At the end of 2008, my no-compete agreement with my former employer expired, and I was feeling as if I was not being utilized in the way that I would like at Doyenz. I spoke with the owner about this, and suggested that I shift to part-time, because I really wasn’t working full time hours anyway. He told me that wasn’t necessary, that he was still seeing the value he was paying for. We then talked about how I would increase my own business, and schedule things around Doyenz work to make it all work together.
Since then, I contacted and visited some customers that I had good relationships with before I left the former IT company, now that the no-compete had expired. I was very well received. One of them actually sought me out a month or so ago, and we agreed that I would begin working for them just after the turn of the year. I have now begun doing so. Two others have now informed my previous IT company that they will be supplementing the services with mine (which will gradually move them in my direction because I will consistently deliver faster, friendlier, and more effective services than them).
Things have actually been pretty busy the last couple of weeks, with lots of billable hours, and much progress made, as well as a series of non-billable sales visits, which will be more than worth the investment in time and effort.
I also sent out a bunch of calendars for 2009 (this, by the way, is what actually sparked the idea for the calendars I gave away for Christmas).
I located some images that I wanted to use to represent various technological milestones, and my friend Eric traced up the images and applied some styles for me, using a Wacom tablet I bought him for the purpose. I added some text to each one, assembled the logo and contact information, and uploaded them to VistaPrint. Whammo! Instant marketing materials. Everyone has liked them so far, and they’ll be seeing my business name and contact information quite often.
I sent out 22 of these to customers I had worked with before, along with a box of peppermint chocolate cherries and a letter in each package. I have already gotten a few good responses, and business is starting to pick up. A couple of them need fairly major network projects done.
The economy might suck, but everyone still needs their network maintained, now more than ever. The small to medium business IT services industry has actually started to increase, as small business spend more efforts working with the equipment they have rather than buying new.
Here are the images that went into the calendars. Click each one to see a larger version. Close the new web browser window it appears in to get back to the thumbnails.
