 I guess we'll go ahead and get started. Pretty much I like discussions as I'm going through my presentation, so if anybody has anything to contribute to the talk, please feel free to stop me and let's talk about it. I'm more heavy on content than I am on slides this time, so I don't have a lot of slides to go through, so I just enjoy the talking part of it, honestly. My name is Adam Sewell, and why did it go out? Technical difficulties? All right, here we go. Adam Sewell. I own my Geek Technologies, we're an IT support firm, I guess, located in Lexington, North Carolina. We do IT support for small businesses, nonprofits, et cetera. The way I got into WordPress is actually through, I did freelance web development prior to opening up my Geek Technologies. My background is in system administration. I was a network administrator at Catawba College in Salisbury. I worked there a total of about ten years, then I went out on my own doing freelance and then started my Geek Technologies. I told everybody in the room before, I apologize, I've got some serious, sinus stuff going on right now after lunch for some reason, so I apologize. I am the father of two, my oldest daughter is Emma, she is six. Just turned that on April the 14th. My youngest is Ellie, she's three. Husband of one, my wife Mary, and I'm from Lexington, North Carolina, which has a population of 18,931. And the reason that I put the population on the slides is because it's ridiculous how many times I get asked that question, how big is Lexington? How many people live in Lexington? I did not know the first time I looked or somebody asked me that question, so I decided just to go ahead and include that to get that out of the way frequently asked questions. So some previous talks that I have done at WordCamps, and I actually apologize, I forgot that these links do not work, so I will send out, I'll tweet out the updated version after this. But I gave a talk in Asheville in 2015 on customer service and the freelancer, WordPress, Business the Basics in Asheville 2014, and Beyond SEO, which is really kind of a marketing networking type talk in Raleigh in 2013. If you want to follow today's slides, again, this has the broken links, but you can follow along here if you want to pull those up in PDF format. I'll give you a minute to jot that down and pull it up. Is everybody falling asleep after lunch? Yeah. Hey, you missed the cat videos, all right? So how many people have a WordPress website that is just a website? Nothing else. You do nothing else with it. You don't blog, you just provide information, okay? How many use it for other things other than blogging and informational purposes? What do you use it for? Okay. Yes. We're going to talk about that. Okay? Yes. For your, for your, right, right, okay. So you provide links for other people to download your music, view that, okay, gotcha. Who else? Yes, ma'am? Courses. Okay. Okay. So like a membership type thing where they come in, they, okay. It's a membership plug in and control it, but yeah, that's what's great. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. Anybody else? Yes, sir? Okay. What, what do you sell on it? Right on. Okay. I like it. Did some work on a site way back when that was something similar to that. That was cool. So obviously e-commerce, that puts a perfect segue. So obviously the whole point of this talk, by the way, is it was what you can do outside of WordPress is just a website. It's really a platform that you can build off of. Most people don't know that. Most clients don't know that. They think, okay, well, I want a website, at least in my experience, they'll come to me. We need a website. I don't really care, you know, about all this other stuff. We just need to get our name out there. We need to put, use it for marketing, et cetera, et cetera. Most, I guess by now, most people know that you can kind of do some e-commerce on websites, on WordPress specifically, so, but that's the most obvious answer. With commerce users, raise your hands. All right. Easy digital downloads. All right. What do you sell with easy digital downloads? Music. Okay. Right on. There's a musician right here. If you raise your hand. Yeah. If you need, if you need some content. So obviously that is the, that's the most obvious way to extend WordPress is through e-commerce. I work with several large websites that sell various things from tactical night gear vision equipment to gun manufacturer, the manufacturer holsters, until like I said, I've done some work with some clothing before. And so, I mean, that is a huge, huge market, obviously. WooCommerce blew everybody out of the water when they first came out, so, but most of you all probably already know that. So one of the other ways that I've used WordPress as more than just a website is non-profit board management. Is anybody else in here involved with non-profits? Yes, ma'am. We do. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Who else? I saw some other hands. Okay. What's non-profit? Okay. All right. Promote your businesses. Promote your non-profits. What else? Orchestra. Okay. You've been very music oriented back there. I hear you. Yes, ma'am. Right on. Okay. Very cool. All of these non- Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And we're going to talk about events here in a second, so I'll be interested to know how y'all did it. So I'm involved with a local Chamber of Commerce, the Lexington Area Chamber of Commerce. For some reason, they decided that it would be a good idea to put me as chairman of the board. I don't know why that was a good idea, but they wanted it. So we developed their initial website. They use a product called Chambermaster. Has anybody ever heard of Chambermaster? Yes, it sucks. And I'm sorry, it sucks. Yeah. So we're very, very gradually graduating them from Chambermaster to purely word press-based platform, which includes, and we'll get there again, but part of that includes the board management, right? So we can go in with this plug-in from Wired Impact. It's called non-profit board management. You can track your board members. You can track committees. You can track the resources or give them the resources that they need, and I'm fairly certain that they have to authenticate to get into the back end to get all this stuff. And I could be wrong on that. We're in the very early stages of this. So a lot of this, if you've ever worked with a non-profit, you know, is just purely trying to convince them to change to something new. Change is obviously very scary for most people. So a lot of meetings, a lot of going over what it can do when it actually takes the time to implement it in like 10 seconds. So this is kind of, with all of what we're going to talk about today, it's really putting it all under one roof. It makes it so much easier for management as a web person. And you know, one of the issues that I'd run into with the Lexington Chamber of Commerce is their business directory, which was done originally in Chambermaster. So the way that I had to pull that in to the website, because they did not initially want to change off of Chambermaster, was through iFrames. I hate iFrames. They did not, Chambermaster would not provide me with any kind of API to pull out the data. So reentry of all data into a business directory plugin. We actually work with another non-profit that is sort of a merchant, it's kind of a main street revitalization non-profit, kind of like a, it's basically geared around economic development. It's called Uptown Lexington. And we kind of keep track of the members and things like that. So if somebody goes into, goes to the website, they can go down based on categories to okay, I want to go, I want to see what all my food options are for that, you know, for the area. So you can kind of drill down that way. In the same way with the Chamber of Commerce, you can kind of put them in different categories, etc, etc. So business directory, has anybody run a business directory? Media. Media? Okay. Okay. All right. What, what's the plugin to use for that? Gotcha. Okay. Very cool. Well, there you go, there's some options. Business directory plugin, Gio directory, I feel like I'm in trouble that the two lead fellows are here. Everything cool? All right. Cool. Yeah. All right. Other business directories? Well, I want to start one. Yes. Okay. What do you want to start? I want to do. Okay. Right on. Okay. Very cool. Very cool. Any idea of what you're going to use for it? Yeah. Very cool. Anybody else? Okay. So, when you come across as a developer, or a freelancer, and you come across a client that needs a business director or whatever, here we are. Support ticketing, or ticketing systems, help desk, anybody provide customer support on WordPress? What do you use? Manual? How do you handle your tickets? Fair point. Fair point. Fair point. Fair point. Fair point. Fair point. Fair point. Fair point. Fair point. All right. So, when I first started my IT business, back in 2010-ish, I was looking for a ticketing system. And what was available to me was either too high in price that I really didn't, because the free tier was not really a thing back then. It was, especially when you get into ticketing systems for IT support, because they bundle it with a bunch of other stuff. But anyways, so I decided that I was just, I had the time, and I have the background. I was just going to write my own. So for the first, probably seven years, six years, I used a ticketing system that was email-based, and it loaded directly into WordPress. So when I logged into my backend of my website, which is mygeeknc.com, if anybody wants to bring it up, actually I'll bring it up. Shameless self-promotion. So when I logged into the back side of my website, I could see all my tickets, just like a regular post. And this is Lexington, by the way, beautiful little town, my geek technologies. But on the back end, I could go in and see all my tickets. And since then, and that plugin is actually still out on GitHub if anybody wants to play around with it. I do not actively develop it anymore. It's called Simple Desk. But there's some other options now, awesome support and support plus. Now my business is a service-based business, plumbers, electricians, anybody that works off of work orders or invoices, things like that, on a per-job basis. Something like this would be perfect for them. Anybody done a plumbing website, plumbers' website? How do they handle their tickets? Do you know? Gotcha. So, again, it just kind of puts everything into a nice little package. They can just log into the back of the website, they can manage their work orders for the day and things like that. This worked very, very well for us and I actually hated moving off of it, but I just didn't have the time to develop the plugin that I had written any longer and was needing some reports and things written and I just decided to go with a paid solution at that point. So electricians, you know, any service, those are some service-based names out, service-based businesses out that you've worked with, sort of. There's some other plugins that can handle real estate, but they mainly work off like work orders and service calls, things like that. Sorry? Yeah. You can. So like with some, I don't know about these two in particular, but going through your work orders, going through your invoices or your tickets and then pushing them off to like quit books or things like that, that would be the kind of workflow that I would go through. So once a ticket is resolved and then you would just push that over to billing or accounts receivable, whatever, so that it's kind of a seamless transition. So again, I don't know specifically for these two, but you know, that's, you can always make a feature request if that's something you want to go into. Yes, sir? Oh, absolutely. Any support, any support-based business, I mean, as freelancers, we support a lot of people and I know I have to have tickets or I'm going to forget something. That's all your hand. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, and that's going to be up to the plug-in developers themselves. I mean, take a look real quick, because that is a very handy feature if they do have it. So let's say awesome support. Yes. Yep. So we do, I don't specifically see it right off, but, ah, yes, I did. Did not help. But you know, that could be a feature request that's made, just something to throw it over into, well, it integrates with WooCommerce. Maybe you could, yeah, yeah. And that's what I did for a long time. My office manager did that. And the system that we have now, which is not WordPress-based, but we have that option to throw it into QuickBooks when, you know, when it gets to a certain point. So if anybody has any contacts with the developers of these guys, it might be a good feature to add or a good plug-in to develop yourself, which is the beauty of WordPress. You said, Emma, yes, sir. You have a good support system that does not require the user submitting the support to you. So that's not that simple, because for my web-based products where I put a contact form on, you have to pay to make it a little bit simpler. Right. So the way that I handle it, both with my web host, with my website clients and my IT clients, is we have a email address support at mygeeknc.com. Subject, details of the issue, they send it to that email address and it automatically creates a ticket. That's actually one of the things. I think I saw that one. It might be under remote tickets. I think it was email. Email support, maybe. Emails to be sent to an email address and then automatically imported into the ticket system. So that's what you're looking for. The way that it worked on the plug-in that I had written was that it would just create them a customer record and it would then, if they'd never emailed before, and it would be based on the domain. So like if I have a client that has multiple users under the same domain, then it would just kind of bundle them all together under that domain. But yeah, that is super handy. I've never been a big fan of the forms, the submitting forms for ticket management and things like that. So most everybody can email support at mygeeknc.com. Any other? Yeah. Do you ever get people sending tickets? Yes. And I actually have my contact form being sent to our ticketing system. And it's just simply because I can keep up with it that way. I get probably 200 emails a day. And if it's not in that ticket system, I have a tendency just to glance over my email and try to get it down to zero just so I can't, just because the numbers bug me. I may not respond to it, but the ticket system makes me respond to it. So I have not actually. I'm not. I've never really went that route for WordPress, but that's, you know, if there's not something it would be. Did you have a project panorama? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. How many people do project management? I know you do. You do everything back there. Is it music? If it's music related. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'll do project management. We use Trello now. But in years prior, we would just create a ticket for it and just set it as a project rather than a support ticket. So, yeah, absolutely. There would have to be some kind of connector between the two. Yeah, I mean, is it? Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's like WooCommerce. I mean, if you have the platform already there, a third-party developer can come in and create that connectivity, that connector piece to achieve that goal. I mean, if you've got one person asking for it, there's probably 10 more in a setting that would benefit from that. The beauty of WordPress. Any other questions about ticketing? Support ticketing? Event management. That's another big one. WordCamps are probably one of the biggest, I would say platform that sells event tickets. And obviously, they use WordPress. There's a custom, I don't know if it's public, but there's a WordPress plug-in that manages all the WordCamp tickets and scheduling and things like that. What's that? I can't remember the name of it. I was looking for it. So, pretty much every WordCamp that you go to, real quick, how many people, this is their first WordCamp? Wow. How many people are impressed so far? Awesome. So, yeah, that's awesome. I hope I don't disappoint you. So, there's obviously thousands and thousands of WordCamps that have occurred or are occurring, I think there's four this weekend. I think Chicago's happening, obviously Raleigh, and there's two other ones that I can't think of. What's that? Detroit. Detroit's happening this weekend as well? No. Yeah, somewhere over in Europe, I just don't remember exactly where. But there's other platforms as well. We do, again, through the Chamber of Commerce, we do a summer concert series that could very well be ticketed through one of these plug-ins. We use modern tribes, the event manager, or their event plug-in, to schedule all the events that happens through the Chamber of Commerce. And when we go to sell tickets or RSVP, it's very easy to do that right through their plug-in. I know everybody's heard, you know, there's an app for that. Honest to God, there is a plug-in for whatever you want to do on WordPress, besides just being a Word website. Anybody use any of these guys right here? What's this one on the left? So the little guy right here, that's Modern Tribes, the event calendar. There you go. Modern Tribe. It's probably one of the best WordPress plug-ins I've used. I'll show you in action. So right here on the sidebar, these are all the events that's coming up for the Lexington Area Chamber of Commerce. Maybe a year-ish? Two years? Yeah. Oh, did you... Are you from Lexington? Did you? Okay, right on. Well, so we... It was originally developed by the community college. Some community college students developed it. It was not on WordPress. And then they're one of our IT clients. So we went and they got to... Just in conversation. Most people in Lexington actually do not know that I do WordPress anything. And I kind of like it that way, to be honest. So we're just kind of known for IT, but if they come to me and say, hey, I need some help with a website, or I need a website, then I'm like, ah, I know people. So... But we took it and we kind of redeveloped it. And like I said, the two main things I'm working on right now are the business directory, which Chamber Master... I just ended up just directly linking to what they have. And I can't stand it. So I don't even like to look at it. But that's my next goal, is to get that all integrated in so that you don't really have... Right now, when a new member comes in, or actually an event, too, when they get a new member, they have to go to Chamber Master, put it in there, then they have to go to WordPress, and put it in there. And I just want it on one platform. Just super simple. Post to the website, make events. The easier it is for the customer, then easier your life will be. So... So, like going back to events, apparently there's a water color society of North Carolina, which I had no idea about. Or is doing a show, a traveling show on this date, and so on and so forth. And if we wanted to, we could very well sell tickets to this through Modern Tribe, or any of the other two plugins. And all of that's done, again, through the backend. It's more than a website. Anybody sell tickets to events? Or did I already ask that one? For a store? Like a physical store and sell gift cards on the site? Sure. Yeah, WooCommerce. Essentially what that would be is like a virtual product. And I'm sure there are coupon gift card plugins out there for that. Maybe not a coupon, but a gift card plugin is what you're looking for for something like WooCommerce. You just create the product, throw a little image in it, whatever details the plugin needs. And yeah. Any other questions? Yeah, sure. So let's go to... Now, Modern Tribe has a separate Event Tickets and Event Tickets Plus. With just the base plugin, it's RSVP essentially. So I've not personally used their ticketing system. But I kind of leave that up to the client when they want it. But they do have support for it. Is there something specific you want to see? Just like how it's done? Let's see. Mm-hmm, yep. It would probably be a percentage of the gateway. Whatever gateway you use them. Yeah. So if you use Stripe as a payment gateway, I think it's like 3% or something like that of the total price. But other than that, no. I don't believe there's anything that's taken out by the plugin itself. Mm-hmm. Right? Okay. So they provide the platform for you and then for free. And yeah. They have sort of a directory of all the events that they have. That makes sense. Sure, sure. Okay, that's a separate plugin. That's a different plugin, I got you. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So one of the things that we've run into with the Chamber is having people actually RSVP to events in general. People do not like to give information just to RSVP to an event. If they're paying a ticket, if they're buying a ticket, they will give more information. If... I'm even bad about this. I'll just either text one of the office people and tell them I'm coming to this event, please RSVP me. Which, you know, I guess I'm a little privileged. But, you know, we try to get... They really like to be able to... And I get it from an event standpoint. They try really hard to RSVP so we know how many people to... to expect. But... No, you're right. You're right. Has anybody tackled that problem before? How to get people to RSVP? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Right on. Yeah. And usually... What I have found with that is if there's a cost associated with it, $10, $5, $8, people are more likely to show up to an event that they've shelled out money for. If it's a free event, yeah, I'll sign up and I'll never show. And we've seen that a lot. And then obviously the bigger problem is getting people to RSVP at all. So maybe there's not a good solution for it. How many people actually RSVP to events on a regular basis? Wow. Okay. So... Why do you RSVP? Let me ask you that question. What's that? It's the right thing to do? Yeah, I agree. It absolutely is. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And we did a little a get together, I guess, after hours event through the chamber probably three months ago or so where we had food catered in and we actually had 40 people. It was a free event. We had 40 people that did actually RSVP. I think we ended up with about 10 people and a shit ton of food left over. And so it was one of our local five bars in Lexington. If anybody's been around me this weekend I've talked about the five bars that's in Lexington because we can now honestly bar hop in Lexington. I don't think anybody honestly understands how big of a deal that is for Lexington, North Carolina. Is the town still dry? No. The county's wet? Right. See? She understands, she gets it. So... Right. So anyway, but that's a good that's a business issue that there's really not a good answer for. If somebody ever figures that out they can make a lot of money. So, yes ma'am. Sure. Tickets required, but no clock. So, they wanted you to get a ticket. But it was free? It was free. Limited basis ticket. Right. Sure, sure. Wow. How much was a ticket? It was free. So, just kind of counter that real quick. Yeah. Last June, I put together a Farm to Table event in Lexington. I got three local chefs one of our local mixologist bartenders to come in and make drinks and we had all the food was donated, well not donated but purchased at a reduced rate through our local farms. Tickets were $75. I limited the sale of those tickets to 75 people and I think it was 75. We sold out and we had 100% attendance because food was there good food was there alcohol and everything was included in the price and I really think that there may be something associated with the price of the ticket. When they put that much investment in a ticket they shut. Yes, ma'am. I think the amount when $5, $10 people will blow that. $50 and up they're not going to blow that. Their big decision will be am I going to pay for that ticket because if I pay for that ticket I'm going to shut. That's why I have invested over. My hand. Exclusively. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Yes ma'am. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Reminders, email reminders when somebody registers if they register for an event or maybe you have an email list of people that have come to events before just blast that thing blast your email list. True. That's kind of interesting. Yeah, so require a deposit. Huh. Really? That's kind of interesting. That might be a way around your Yeah, that's good. This is why I love word camps. Okay, so he said that or do you want to say it again? Can you hear him okay? Okay, sorry. So that would be perfect for a non-profit. That's a donation. That would be perfect. Any other questions on that? That's great. We've got about 15 more minutes. Yes ma'am. Amen. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. If they want to know anything else, I want them to do it. Right. So some companies have a place where you can get for events, it's the same thing. They put your name everywhere. Right. So why don't events have a thing that says guess in? And you can be guess one, guess two, guess four. It can respond to your email. Right. But they don't put your information where you are and your house is empty and so on. Just a thought. Yeah, yeah. Then I have to do your email. You're subscribed. And I've got a reason I didn't. What some people do or at least I know I've done it in the past is create different email addresses for different email addresses. So I have an email address specifically for registrations and I have a rule in my inbox that just puts all the events into a certain folder and I never see them. Thank God. And that way if that, if my email does, if that email address does get sold or whatever, then you can just say, okay well I'm done with that one. So yes ma'am. There you go. Do not reply. Do not send at, yeah. If you don't publish your name. If you don't publish your name. Because that's part of the name that's enormous to me who I really don't know will show up. You would be given a number. It would like have a counter and if you signed up it would say you're guessing the 25, you're guessing the 26. Sorry? You're buying in this little exclusive event. 75 people. They normally tell it by name. Well, when you get that you can give them your name. But we don't want it all on the internet. We don't want it electronic. Why not? I'm looking also for the punishment of the guests. I'm looking at your commitment but can I trust you that you would show up at my event if you're not willing to give me your name? So I think he's saying that if you don't provide your name for an unpaid event you then become anonymous and we don't really know if you're going to show up or not. It's what he's saying. For a paid event you would have the name and the credit card information. For an unpaid event I don't know. That's really the fine line of trying to figure all this out. For another example there was an event that we hosted with the local community college the community college was handling all the event registration and they were asking for first name, last name email address, physical address phone number and I think they may have even asked for the last four of your social security number. And I'm like guess how many people we actually had to register? Like two. And then they were like while there was nobody registering this event kind of flopped. Damn information. So I mean there's a really fine line that you have to walk when you're having people register for events. But apparently the best way is to either charge for the event or charge and then donate back or give back. That's cool. I really like that. And what was the why did you do it? Why? It had been talked about for years in Lexington. There was something that kind of totally off on the tangent but it had been talked about for years in Davidson County and nobody really put together a team to do it or whatever. And I just got tired of hearing about it and so I was like you know what, I'm going to do it. So me and where my office is in Lexington there's a restaurant right next door, literally next door that I just kind of go eat at sometimes because it's convenient. And the chef and I just kind of got to know each other and talk a lot and we got on that topic and I'm like alright let's do it. So I put together the team actually funded the whole thing and didn't do any kind of sponsorship or anything like that. And that's just kind of, I did it because number one it was good marketing for me and oh absolutely it's form of marketing and just because I wanted to see it happen. Yup. Yeah we ended up breaking even honestly I think I actually purchased too much alcohol for the event I think I overestimated how much people would drink. And we actually had some food left over as well but we broke even I think I had about $100 leftover that I just kind of gave up to some non-profits. And we were going to do another one this year but some of the staff at the different venues and things had changed and I just, not really in position really that I wanted to deal with it this year. We may look at it again next year but if anybody wants to see it it's filled to fork and see um 18,931 that's City of Lexington I put that on there for that reason um yep so this is uh, this is the website for the filled to fork NC which is what we we've done we were planning to do one June 21st this year but it's not going to happen at Feltory so I guess I need to put up a not going to happen we got covered by the news Fox 8 out of High Point we got some a dispatch article out of it which is our local newspaper we got some good press out of it Facebook blew up you always know that an event went well when everybody does not leave like especially a meal if they don't leave after the final course um we had people stay until the event was over at 9 we had people stay to 11 um we had live music um just a guy that was playing acoustic guitar I mean uh it was a vineyard um that's pretty cool so actually I definitely want to do it again but uh I just got to make sure all the pieces line up so this is and this is a good example of a website that you know ticketing and things like that I totally forgot about this um until we got to talking about it so any other questions uh genesis um responsive from cyber chimps I've used uh iThemes Builder before so it's really all over the place I don't have a go to you yeah it was a CTX easy book laptop running windows 95 that's what I learned to code html and any other questions yes ma'am okay which one okay sure absolutely um alright right on yeah uh so uh in December 31st 2009 uh was my last day as network administrator at katawa college uh and I'd worked there since about 2000 no 1999 I think um I was working in the summer I started out working in the summers in the library cataloging books my mom was a librarian there oh I hated it um and then I just kind of gradually got into um the library was in the same building as the computer services department and so I'd see all the guys kind of go in and out while I was sitting there cataloging books and um my mom like I said was a librarian there so she kind of got into uh talking with um the computer services guys and got me a part time job and so uh I started working help desk and stuff like that and just kind of built that up um in December December 31st 2009 I quit um and started just doing freelance work basically um before Woo commerce there was a e-commerce and it still exists um uh e-commerce plugin called shop s-h-o-p-p has anybody heard of it? I know Ray has okay so I did all of the support work for shop when it came out um the lead developer is Jonathan Davis uh he's from Ohio um he uh about two years ago I think he uh got a job with Apple and moved to California um he still is the lead developer of shop but um he hired me on to do all the support work and then gradually um it was a work my first work from home job and I was paid you know per ticket and etc etc but as I was doing that I was also building my freelance uh client base and so what I would do is you know I would get that income from shop I would get my freelance income and I would put that into what is now my geek and I worked out of my house um and started so I had my web clients and I started um going to like local networking events um like is anybody familiar with B&I? I know Ray is so I'm in B&I and I started networking with local businesses that way they got me in touch with other people um and it just kind of branched out from there um local chamber of commerce um I think you asked how did I get them as a client um I actually just went in one day I think I just basically did a cold call and just dropped in one day they were using on another company um I gave them a card gave them my information and nine times out of ten I'm not going to get a client that way if you're an in-person you know going in and just dropping off stuff it comes about by having a positive reputation in the community so you do some work for these people over here you build up and I think you're doing a talk on this aren't you is it later today 430 430 Ray is doing a talk on networking if you're interested in that definitely go see his talk um and um so it's just getting out there getting in front of people getting to know people and the main thing to remember when you're networking is people do business with people they like if you know if you're being an asshole to somebody you're not going to get their business I hate to tell you that but um so my so my business is basically structured like this or my geek is structured like this we do um IT support what is called an MSP it's a managed services provider um where we have contracts with small businesses and nonprofits um we charge a flat monthly rate which is based roughly upon how many computers they have how difficult of a client I think they're going to be um that is a that's a big thing yeah um so and I have like a kind of like a calculator I have a spreadsheet that calculates all this for me um uh complication number up if they uh if I know I mean you can kind of tell you get in front of enough people you kind of know who is going to be a difficult client and um so we do the flat monthly rate but we also do 30 day contracts um and I was talking with someone about this earlier I hate long term contracts I look at business relationships like I would any other relationship if it if you and I are not a good fit I don't want to lock you in that's bad for both of us so um I give them the option and I give us the option to exit within 30 days um if if we need to um and you know that's actually happened several times because they're not a good fit for us they can go and that's you know there's plenty of other competitors in in my space that they can go to um and so um I use a lot of open source technology in the business uh to keep my overhead low to keep my clients um you know payments low not low but um cheap not cheap we're not cheap but affordable yes uh and so um and then we just provide like the help desk services um uh the antivirus spam filtering backups on-site off-site backups um everything for them for that that monthly rate does that make sense right on so yes sir what open source software uh so we use um a lot of Linux we use a lot of uh uh um our virtualization platform uh is uh something called Proxmox which is based off of uh KVM which is built into Linux kernel uh we use um let's see we use Linux on the desktop a lot like our thin clients which I don't know if anybody has a technology background but uh wise which was bought out by Dell made thin clients which their sole purpose is to connect to other computers to work off of and um so we just took these little almost like the Intel Nooks um type devices and and uh we um um put Linux on them and we just put an RDP client on it and set it up and that's what they use as thin clients so but uh yeah I'm gonna have to wrap up if you have any questions for me um I'll be around so hope you enjoyed it thank you sir