People are always asking me: “You have clients? What do you do for them? Oh, you’re an I.T. consultant? What kind of I.T.? What can you do?”
The main thing to take away is that a consultant is someone who has answers in a specific field. People are always trying to narrow down exactly what it is I do and it’s sometimes a challenge for me to sum it up.
Right now, I have a little over two dozen clients that pay me for my knowledge and services. They value my expertise, my resourcefulness, and my advice and they count on me to steer them in the right direction. They pay me because I have answers to questions, and I facilitate what they would otherwise not be able to, or don’t want to put the time into. They pay me also because sometimes it’s more cost efficient, and I’m able to provide solutions at a much cheaper rate than the general consumer would expect from department stores or big business.
I strive to provide a service that’s superior in three main regards:
- Cost: In the long run, I’m going to save you money. You’re not going to spend anything on the unnecessary, and you’re going to put money in the right place so you get the most value out of what you buy, and how you use it.
- Efficiency: Every client of mine gets personalized treatment. I cater to your specific needs and put the extra time (without extra billing) to make sure the job is 100% complete. Examples being data transfers and personal setups are done to your satisfaction. GeekSquad, Futureshop, or the Apple Store won’t do it as well as I do. I’ve seen it done, I’ve seen them leave huge gaps in transfers leaving a customer completely unsatisfied. I guarantee you’ll be happy with my service, or you don’t have to pay me.
- Knowledge Base: The reason I hold myself at a much higher esteem is that I’m well versed in numerous different subjects. Your Futureshop employee won’t have the greatest advise for you Mac purchases, your Apple store genius won’t have the answers to your home networking issues, and your GeekSquad will give you scripted answers that you would expect from a company, not a person. I’m the only resource you’ll need to handle your wide array of issues, and best of all, I’m honest, up-front, and direct. No run around, and no B.S. responses from me.
Having said that, I’d like to share with you a list of the recent work I’ve done for my clients, to give you a better understanding of how simple (or complicated) the service I provide can be.
To protect client’s privacy, I’ll simple refer to each individual client as a number:
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Client #1:
- This family had been filming their trips and vacations for more than 10 years, and had all their footage stored digitally across 3 different hard drives (2 external, and 1 internal). They wanted to backup all the footage, and make better use of the space. I helped them decide where/how made the most sense. After all was said and done, they had all footage stored on the hard-drive, a backup running every hour to make sure everything was safely duplicated, and an extra drive to make use of elsewhere.
- They wanted to be able to showcase their final-draft footage on their TV, and also share it on the Internet with friends, securely – I showed them how this could be best accomplished.
- Their son casually plays a game called Warcraft 3 on the internet. He was having issues with wireless dropping, connection slowing down, and the inability to host custom games himself. Based on symptoms he described, I was able to fix half the problem, and instructed them on how to resolve the other half through the support of their ISP (Internet service provider). Within 3 days, everything was running optimally.
- Their daughter was having problems with a Powerpoint presentation she was designing that wouldn’t play music properly. Certain files weren’t playing on the school computer, and I taught her a quick work-around that allowed her to present her final work as she designed it at home.
- Client #2:
- When I first arrived at their home, they sat me down in front of their computer and showed me, rather than explaining to me, what the problem was. I turned on the PC and I was over-run by spam messages of what was obviously a virus that had taken over. The virus prevented task-manager, control panel, and other integral Windows processes from running (it would close them a split second after being opened). After taking a closer look, I found that the firewall was disabled and the machine wasn’t sitting behind a router, and was clearly exposed and vulnerable (regardless of the robust “Rogers Online Protection” software that her internet provider installed).
I explained to her that because the virus had such a profound impact on the function on the computer, the safest (and most efficient route) would be to back up personal files, wipe the computer clean, re-install the operating system and all software, and restore backed-up files. This process typically takes me 3 to 4 hours to complete, and gives the client an added bonus of having a freshly formatted computer. I left with her computer, and returned 2 days later with the machine in it’s most optimal form, with all other files exactly where she left them.
special consideration: It’s important to note that with Windows XP and Vista, (I can’t speak to Windows 7 yet, hasn’t been out long enough) the operating system degrades over time. When I was playing video games professionally, I needed my computer running at 100% at all times. To be sure of this, I would format my computer every 3 to 6 months. Reason being, I noticed that after 6 months without a format, I would lose some performance (loss of frames per second, slowness in loading programs, delay in simple functions). Now, you can imagine how slow a computer that’s had Windows XP running for 7 years can be. People think “Oh, well, my computer is so old, it’s obviously going to be slower.”
This is a misconception; the computer’s hardware hasn’t changed – ideally a computer should run the same way it does on day 1 and day 1000. Software that comes out long after a computers inception date obviously won’t run optimally, but for the simple stuff, your computer should be performing to a certain standard.
A re-format is usually the best course of action – you clean the computer completely (100% ridden of the virus), but also get the added bonus of a ‘fresh’ computer. A virus that can’t be removed with one simple scan usually requires hours of effort anyway – it’s a better use of my time to format the computer – more value for you.
- When I first arrived at their home, they sat me down in front of their computer and showed me, rather than explaining to me, what the problem was. I turned on the PC and I was over-run by spam messages of what was obviously a virus that had taken over. The virus prevented task-manager, control panel, and other integral Windows processes from running (it would close them a split second after being opened). After taking a closer look, I found that the firewall was disabled and the machine wasn’t sitting behind a router, and was clearly exposed and vulnerable (regardless of the robust “Rogers Online Protection” software that her internet provider installed).
- Client #3:
- One of my long-time clients had decided she wanted to make some web changes to the site for her business (that was put together before we were in touch). I facilitated these layout, media, and text alterations, even though I was initially unfamiliar with the particular architecture of her website.
- After inquiring a little further, I found out that she was paying much too high a premium for her monthly hosting service (that gives her a custom@domain.com email and website services). I performed a total site and email transfer to a different server (cutting her monthly cost from $44 a month to $12 a month), saving her $384 a year, indefinitely.
- She also was looking to generate a little more traffic on her website – I advised her that Google Ads may be the way to go – we put a couple ads together and it’s helped to increase the traffic her website receives by up to 400% (on a good day). Granted she’s paying a small sum for the increase in traffic, but if she attracts new clients (like I have for www.marcitpro.com) it’s well worth the advertising cost.
All this is a short description of some of the services rendered lately – there’s much more, but I don’t want anyone’s patience to wear thin. I wanted to share some of this stuff to encourage people to contact me for anything (small or large) problem or project they’d like me to help them with. As usual, if you have questions, feel free to contact me on www.marcitpro.com/contact.
Until next time,
Marc
