No matter what you may hear me say or see me do, my family matters more to me than anything. And that includes my business & my clients.
Since 2010, I’ve tried to build a business that revolves around two main ideas:
- I’m in business to help other small business owners with their online marketing. Companies that provide similar services that I provide are often unreasonably costly, customer service is inefficient/cold and I can serve the needs by providing a great service at an affordable price with a smile.
- My clients understand that not only am I (currently) a one-man operation, I’m a one-man operation with a wife and a baby girl. And those two ladies in my life come first, but can co-exist in a world where the needs of all are met in a timely manner.
I’m lucky that I’ve been able to grow my business around these two concepts and that I’ve essentially hand-picked the clients I’ve taken on to make sure that they understand my philosophies not only on online marketing, but how I run my business with a family-first mentality.
Growing up in a family-owned business has given me a great perspective on how a venn diagram of home life & work life should (and often does) look. Sure – there’s some overlap (in my instance, often a baby literally on my lap while I code up a landing page for a new client), but for the most part I feel like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings – “THOU SHALT NOT PASS!”.
Knowing that every client I take on, every website I complete, every software upgrade I do or widget I install is helping my family stay in a nice warm house, keeping food in the refrigerator and the occasional trip to somewhere sunny for the three of us puts things in a nice perspective. My business wouldn’t exist without my family, and my family wouldn’t exist without my business. It’s a nice little symbiotic relationship that often needs a balancing touch – but I wouldn’t have it any other way.