Well, I am really liking this web design business kit. I’m almost done going through it, and I’ve already started to put some of its knowledge to use! I’ve been in contact with a prospect the last few weeks, and finally scheduled a meeting for next week with them. I just sent off a letter confirming the meeting using one of the form letters included in the kit.

One of the key aspects of business that the Kit stresses over and over is contact with the client. In reality, it is just common sense (or at least, common business sense). But its put in such a way that details how and when to make contact, and how to maintain contact. It includes examples and form letters that Brendon uses in his own design business.

All in all, I feel this kit will really help me boost my business, and I recommend it to anyone who is in Web Design/Development. Even those in web hosting will find usefull info in it. You can find some of the sample chapters from the kit: HERE.

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On another note, I’m in the process of changing my business name. My business is/has been ‘Utaria Web Services, LLC’. I’m re-filing as a C-Corporation, and changing the name to ‘Utaria Solutions, Inc.’. I feel that this will give me a broader service base for my services, as I’m starting to get into the local market with IT consulting. All around, my business is going to focus on providing technological solutions for businesses in Minnesota and abroad.

Now I just get to figure out how much work it is going to be to get my workmans comp insurance changed, along with my EIN/TID and bank accounts etc. all changed over to the new name.

2005 is going to be a big year of growth for Utaria. And I’m excited for it.

This weekend I learned several good lessons. While meeting with a potential client, who became a client, they clued me in on a bit of advice about how to present myself. If you have been to this site before, my tagline used to be “Ramblings of the Village Idiot”, but I have since changed it to “Entrepreneur Extraordinaire” thanks to Jan’s advice.

See, the way we present ourselves to the world, gives people certain first impressions. By my having the tagline, even in jest, suggesting that I am the Village Idiot, it can put people off immediately, and diminish in their eyes, the quality of what I say. Even though my posts here are often meant to be taken tounge-in-cheek, that same feeling can be carried over to other areas of my life online. So from this, I’ve decided to label myself, at least here on this site, in a more positive light. This should not only give me a more positive view of myself, but also let others know that I do know what I’m talking about on certain topics.

I learned another important lesson this weekend about the value of your services, and offering fair value. In the last few months, I’ve been attempting to launch a new brand of hosting called Nerfix Hosting. This brand is catered more to the global community, those looking for higher resources for lower prices. Targeting those who are perhaps, a little more web savvy, and don’t require the hand-holding that local clients often need. Well, it has been a rough few months, with only 2 paid hosting customers signing up. This was a bit of a discouragement, but I still kept heart. I decided that I wanted to have a special of sorts, to entice users to sign up, even if at a small loss, to start building a client base for the brand.

I thought about lowering the price of the plan to a couple dollars a month, but then I though that it would be a bad idea. Part of what Jan told me on Friday, I was already figuring out for myself on Thursday. People place a certain value on a certain price level. For example, my normal hosting rate for Nerfix is $7.77/mo. So potential customers have a preconceived notion of what they value as $7.77/mo worth of hosting. If I were to lower the price to $1-2/mo, they would have an even lower notion of the quality of hosting, just due to the price level of the plan.

So I decided to keep the standard price at $7.77/mo, and offer a coupon code for 75% off the regular price. I advertised this in several forums, and did not post it on the site. Now these same potential customers saw that I was offering a hosting plan with the value of $7.77/mo, at the price of $1.94/mo. That was enough of a bargain that 5 people signed up within the last 2-3 days. That is twice as many had signed up in the last 2-3 months!.

So, I guess the point of this post is, people have a preconcieved notion of the value of things. Whether it is the value of a person, or the value of a service/product. You need to meet that preconcieved value, by offering a fair value, whether it is how you present yourself professionally, or how you price your services.

Well, I cant come up with a clever title for this entry, but it is accurate. I’ve had a fairly productive week this week. I got a lot of work done on my amishgeek.com site, as well as getting UtariaMail up and online. I’ve also re-tweaked my Image Up free image hosting site, and became a ClickBooth publisher for Image Up and my Get A Forum sites.

I still need to finish getting Elim’s website re-done in MXR, as well as play “Bill Collector” for a few other clients who need to pay for this next year of hosting.

I’m 22 years old, and I’m still doing all nighters like I was 18… Man, I need to stop doing this. Around 10pm, some friends of mine called, and were going to perkins. So I joined them, had a muffin, some pie, and a couple cups of coffee. Got home around 11:30pm, and plopped down on the computer to work on some websites.

I re-did some more work on my amishgeek.com site, I still need to fix my media gallery script for that site. I also did some work on a website for my church back home (Elim Mission). I’m re-working their site to use MXR as well.

I also had a good conversation with LadyLinux over AIM, that went until about 3am. We talked about all sorts of geeky stuff, and then moved on to talk about spiritual things (God, Jesus, the Bible etc). All in all, it was a cool conversation.

Well, its 5:30am now, and I have to work on campus at 8am. So it looks like I’m just gonna stay up. Thank goodness for caffeine, too bad I don’t have any at my house right now

Oi! It’s been a long, yet fruitful, day. At 10, I had a meeting with a client, and helped walk them through using Site Studio to put their site together. Then I headed over to my friend Caleb’s house to help him and his family cut wood. Their house is heated by in floor heating that is heated by a wood burning boiler in their back yard. So Caleb and I were out with the chainsaws cutting up 9-10ft logs into 2-3ft chunks while his dad used the tractor/bucket to carry the wood over to the wood pile.

All in all we spent probably 5hrs out there working, digging logs out of the snow/ice, cutting them, and stacking them. My arms, legs, and back are pretty sore, and I know I’ll definately be feeling it in the morning. But I enjoyed the work, I need to get more excersize, and there is just something about doing physical labor outdoors that makes you feel that much more alive. Plus, I like Caleb’s family, they’re all pretty cool. Plus, they cook really good food. 

After Calebs, I went to Church at 6:30, Pastor Sunny preached out of Ephesians, and we talked about ‘predestination’ and what it really means in Ephesians 1:5. Too many people look too deeply into what Paul meant by ‘predestined’, when all he was trying to say was that God loves us so much, that he chose us, and chose to save us, even before he created us.

Well, after church, a bunch of us went up to Country Lanes to go moonlight bowling. I didn’t bowl, and just watched/hung out with everyone. Now I’m back home, thinking to myself that I need to invest in a Hot Tub to relax my sore muscles.

I guess I’ll just have to do physical labor more often to get myself in shape, so I’m not this sore afterwards…

Well, today was a semi-average Friday for me. I woke up around 9:30, wishing I would have woke up earlier and not hit snooze half a dozen times. I quickly got dressed, ate some breakfast and went down to “Superior Street Fitness”. They are a fitness club in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Duluth. I received a phone call from them yesterday offering me a free tour, and a discount on their membership. Well, I went for the free tour, but haven’t signed up for the membership yet, they want $20/mo with an 18-month contract.

The fitness center there isn’t that bad, and walking through it makes me want to start getting back into shape. I really haven’t done any kind of strenuous activity since High-School. Dang, that was 4 years ago! Yeah, I really need to start working out. Maybe I’ll get a membership there… I should probably check out the other places in Duluth to see what else is available. If I’m going to be paying to join a fitness club, I’d like to be able to swim…

After the tour, I spent the day working on the computer. I didn’t get much done, other than re-installing some more programs from after my hard drive crash a few days ago. I really hope I can still recover my quickbooks files, as I don’t want to re-do the last 6 months of accounting. (Note to self, make backups, and KEEP THEM ELSEWHERE) I’m not too worried, I just need to hook my old hard drive up now and copy the data over to my new drive.

I had a meeting with a customer about a website I’m putting together for her organization. Unfortunately, when I met with her at Newtech, Jim had switched up his wireless network, so I couldn’t get on with my laptop, so I couldn’t go through anything with her, and Jim wasn’t there to help me out. I’m going to have to have words with him.

Well, I just got back from my friend Koz’s dorm room on campus. We watched a couple episodes of Band of Brothers. That is a really sweet mini-series about the 101st Airborne division in WWII. Those were some amazing soldiers.

Well, this weekend was interesting. I was in Brainerd for “Spring Leadership Day” with Intervarsity, and to be honest, I didn’t get much out of it personally, but it was good to be there, and get to know some of the freshman better.

Yesterday, I was at the Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon watching my friend Rachel race. I originally went there to just watch, but ended up helping get the dogs ready for her race, and helped get the sled to the starting line. She’s doing the Mid-Distance race, which is a 2-day, 150 mile race. The Long race is 3-4 days, and is 400 miles. It was very interesting watching all the mushers and dog sled teams.

But today, I get to go to campus and get some hours in working for Computer Maintenance. I really wish I had more business, or more development projects to work on, as I’d rather be doing that to pay the bills than have to work on campus. It’s not that I don’t like working there, I really enjoy it there. I’d just like to see my business take off more, and be more successfull. It’s been real hard these last 2 months since my roommate moved out. So I’ve been having to cover all the expenses of having a house by myself. I’ve gotten a little behind in some of the bills, and I feel really bad about it. Especially since I’ve had to ask my parents for help a couple of times.

Right now, if I can’t find another roommate, or work doesn’t pick up for my business, I’m going to have to sell my house. I just can’t afford to live here by myself with my current level of income. So yeah, that sucks.

Well, off to campus to work!

I’m sitting here at the datacenter, working on my servers… currently in the process of updating them. I’ve fixed the hard drive issue I previously posted about and that is 100% perfect again. It’s really cold here in the datacenter. US Internet recently added 2 more AC units to help keep the place cool, and they’ve increased the number of vents in the floor. There happens to be a vent right in front of my rack, that I’ve been sitting over for the past 4 hours. I can’t feel my toes anymore, maybe I’ll go stand behind the rack and warm up for a little bit in the exhaust from my servers.

So I set up this blog site thingy with the intent to blog daily. Well, that hasn’t happened yet. Perhaps I should set this to my home page so I’ll remember to post more often. Because really, thats the point of these weblogs isn’t it?

Well, this weekend, I’m going to a leadership retreat for Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, an organization I’m a part of at my college. It will be pretty nice, to get away, and all that good stuff. The only thing, is the retreat is in Brainerd. I go to school in Duluth, and right now I’m at the Datacenter in the Twin Cities. So I have the joy of figuring out the best route to Brainerd from the Cities. I think I can take HWY 10 the whole way, but I’m not sure. I guess I’ll have to resort to Mapquest.

So, one thing I learned this week, is that Business is not about what you sell, but who you know. It is all about people. I went to the Duluth Boat & Sport show yesterday at the DECC (Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center). I went primarily to check out Jim/New Tech Concepts booth. I had just picked up my box of 500 new busines cards, so I took a handfull and went into the show.

I walked around a bit, didn’t see anything that interested me that much. As much as I enjoy fishing, I’m not going to be spending any money on it at the moment. So I went to Jim’s booth. He was talking with a guy I recognized. It took me a minute, then I realized where I recognized him from. He goes to my church! It turns out that he runs a business doing wi-fi hot spots up here.

Well we got to talking, and I found out that he provides broadband to end users via wireless, but doesnt deal with email and other ISP services. I mentioned that I provide email services through my hosting, along with anti-spam/anti-virus and that I’m all set up for it. He was like “Great!” and asked for my business cards. I gave him my whole stack that I had with me.

I’m hoping that a good business relationship grows from this. I’ve learned that for me to succeed in this business, not only do I need to be sensitive to God’s plan for my life and business, but I need to know others who are doing well in business.