Sweat Equity

Hi,
Steve Pike here and I am thinking about my career. I am a successful IT consulting firm owner. I have been in the tech field for a decade and have at times found my work very exciting and challenging and other times to be kind of “blah”. When I first entered the tech field everything I touched was new and different. The simple task of resetting a password was really cool. I began at a community hospital with a couple of hundred computers, a lot of old green screen “dumb terminals” and a few servers. I had to learn all about the help desk duties and I soon learned that I am not an aspiring help desk technician. I immediately began to hone desktop support skills. This was not much better that the helpdesk… I saw the server engineers playing video games and surfing the web and I thought “that’s the job I need”… The only problem was that I did not have the knowledge to do the real work they could do when necessary. I researched tech boot camps for fancy certifications and found that I could not afford them or the time off to go. I turned to books and the internet and found that I really needed hands on experience.
I started to volunteer for projects at work that were outside of skill set. My supervisors recognized that I was a self starter and had the ability to learn really quickly. After some time I was working on servers and playing video games. The server work was really critical and very challenging.
Since my first experience with servers and IT infrastructure, I have worked for a very large hospital organization on an elite team of engineers, a consulting firm that worked on very large enterprise clients, a consulting firm that primarily worked with small and medium businesses.
While working for the consulting firms, I got the bug to be an entrepreneur. I immersed myself in business and marketing research. Wow! I found my niche. I fell in love with the idea of looking for different business ideas. I took the knowledge that I had gained from working with a consulting firm that changed their business model, and allowed me the opportunity to help design the business model and delivery mechanism. I was not only the senior engineer; I was a business development manager. Not much time for video games and web surfing for the fun of it .
Now, in July of 2007 I started to dabble in having my own IT consulting firm and began to plan for my eventual launch into business ownership. This included saving money, spending money and many lost night’s sleep coming up with the right business model. I realized that the dream to be a successful business person it would take a lot of “sweat equity”. With the right product or service, business plan and determination a business was born. I have worked tirelessly to stay at the top of my game technically and hone the new skills of accounting, marketing, decision making and time management.

Stay tuned for the rest of the story!

Steve Pike
President
It’s All Hosted L.L.C.