So back in July 2008 my good friend and now business partner, Daniel Houle, and I decided it was time to leave our cushy and secure paychecks to start our own company. Sure we were motivated by the possibility of growing rich, isn’t that what we all want? To not have to worry about paying the bills month to month and providing for our families every desires? But that wasn’t the easy answer…
Both Daniel and I are problem solvers, we like resolving peoples pains and challenges. We spend our days listening to people and trying to solve their problems. While we are tech guys we don’t see every answer to be a technical answer. So the underlying problem we saw was that businesses of all sizes and shapes are distracted by technology. They are distracted because they are spending so much time and effort managing (fighting) the technology they can’t focus on their business. Isn’t technology supposed to be helping business??? We realized they are distracted because, well… in general a lot of IT guys are awful business solutions providers. Sure they can fix a broken mouse or printer but they can’t see an issue and solve it so that it fits into their clients business. For them, the technology drives business processes, for us business processes drive the technology.
Based on this principal, Hosted Solutions Inc (HSI) was founded. HSI is not a technology company, while technology supports our service, our business is about providing owners and managers a release from dealing with the day to day challenges of using technology.
So its been 9 months and I have never been happier with the decision we made. Life is good! Business is good! And we are helping! With all of these accomplishments comes clarity. We always knew it, but couldn’t wrap our hands around it. What is it that is making this work? Well… “We not your typical IT guys!”
OK, now for the part where I start bragging…. no i wasn’t bragging before 😛
Our ability to dissect issues and resolve them, often times before even seeing them on the computer, is awesome! Its always been there, and it certainly contributed to our success at KAWG&F (prior employer). But it became very clear recently… I was telling Daniel about a lunch I recently with a friend of mine. So I was at lunch catching up with Eric Brotman catching up after the last 9 months and he started to tell me about how great his current IT guy is. He keeps everything running and keeps Eric very satisfied. Great! I like to hear good stories like this. Then Eric proceeded to tell me about an unresolved issue he was having. He would try to print from Adobe Acrobat and it would take an unusual long time before the Print Dialog box would open. After about 2 months of fighting with it Eric’s IT guy tells him it is an incompatibility between Adobe and HP. Uh oh… the first sign of an IT guy that can’t find the answer so he pulls out the incompatibility story. Don’t get me wrong, technology and compatibility are often an oxymoron, but lets think about it carefully, HP (largest manufacturer and provider of printers in the world) and Adobe (the lead provider of PDF software in the world) are incompatible!!! No chance! That’s like saying Jack Daniels and Coke or Peanut Butter and Jelly are incompatible. Do you honestly think the market would allow these 2 things to be incompatible??? Seriously?!?!? Grrrr, now I get frustrated because first its obviously a BS answer and second clearly this is an IT guy who doesn’t understand business because he can’t see that the simple likely-hood of these 2 being incompatible from a non technical aspect is simply flawed. So Typical!
Anyway, clearly I knew this was wrong and knew I would have the answer. I discussed with Daniel and he reminded me of an issue we once saw with slow network drives and it made me think (ok another brag, but we are very good at finding relationships between otherwise unrelated events). So I shot Eric a quick email shortly after lunch and VOILA Eric no longer needs to buy a new printer. The answer was simple, Acrobat tries to read the print drivers for every printer on your computer, if one of the printers no longer exists but is still listed on your computer Acrobat stalls on that printer until it times out. I asked Eric to check if he had any old printers and if so delete them.
So I was telling Dan about this story and it hit him, we need to let the world know that all IT guys aren’t the same. Stop tolerating Geeks on Call! If the answers you are getting just don’t make sense well that’s because their the wrong answer or a poorly crafted explanation. You are an intelligent person, when the answer doesn’t seem possible don’t accept it, either make the tech guy give a better explanation or find one that can give you one or solve the issue for that matter.
Anyway, down from my podium now, we have created this blog to share thoughts, insights, stories, and who knows what else in an attempt to prove that all tech nerds are not the same. Please join us in our discussion, we look forward to your comments and stories!
Oh, one last thing, just to prove I’m really a geek, yes my first designation is Certified Public Accountant…
Not Your Typical IT Guys 