Todd Flippin - The Professional Life
What I Can Do for Your Company
I decided a long time ago that I did not want to be part of a huge organization. After the Army and working for Dupont, I had enough of that culture. I decided that I wanted to work for a small business. I found a job at a small programming company in Dallas, TX. Worked my way to the Project Manager for a HUD programming contract.
And that is where my professional life really started. I enjoyed feeling like I was part of something. Somthing that was growing. Getting bigger. I was excited to go to work every day. It almost did not seem like work. I was successful at completing the project on time and under budget. Every one was on the same team. We all had a common goal. I never had that feeling working for large organizations. I did not feel like part of a spoke in some big wheel on a car. I felt like a little fish in a small pond.
The next step was to be an entrepreneur. I started my first company. GeeksatWork. This was before 9/11. The economy was doing well. There were many small businesses that needed web development. It was the .com boom. Times were good.
Then the unthinkable. 9/11 happened and changed everything. On the same day, I lost $20,000 a month in recurring revenue. The .com boom had busted. Seemingly overnight. I had 8 employees that I tried to hard to keep. That was my first big mistake. It cost me the company. I spent all available cash on payroll and I should have spent it on finding new business. One by one, I had to let everyone go. It was a diffuclt time. Web site development, which was still an emerging technology, had come to a screeching halt.
I realized that most of the companies I had been doing web development for needed network support. They all had networks. Users, servers, computers, printers. They all needed someone that could support their network needs but did not want nor did they need a full time in house network administrator. I started FixMyFlippinPC. Catchy name, huh? I began by going to my GeeksatWork customer base and secured monthly agreements for network support. Some just wanted to pay by the hour. I developed new customers. And before long, I had a thriving business.
Well, I had one client that was very young. They had just moved from the owners garage office into their first office space. Almost 1200 square feet of office. Not a garage. They are an affordable housing property management company that was exploding.
The initial call was to do some cabling. They had 4 people working at the office. The co-owners, a husband and wife team, an person helping with AP and an administrative assistant. The accounting was being contracted out to an outside firm. That process was slow and inefficient. Financial data was always 30 days behind.
I saw the potential that this company had to be a huge success. But they needed IT to get it done. They were not using technology to get their business done. They did not know what they needed or how to get it done. They did even have their own domain and were using sbcglobal.net email addresses.
So we setup server(s). Email, File, FTP, AD. They needed it all. We did it with minimal captial investment. It is amazing what you can accomplish without the newest, latest, greatest technology. Once they had a solid infrastructure, the growth was explosive. We were able to expand into new markets.
As the old saying goes, in the contractor business, you either work yourself out of a job or into a job. It came to a point where the contract fees were more than it would cost to hire me as an employee. They made me an offer and I accepted and became an employee after 7 years of contracting.
Over the next six years, I supported all the servers, workstations and users. And we grew quickly. In the 12+ years I was working either with or for that company, I was instrumental in developing process, policies and procedures that would help the company achieve it's goals. We grew from 32 employees to over 400 today. Currently managing over 120 properties an 14,000 affordable housing apartments. Affordable housing is a very different game than managing conventional apartment communities. Government compliance and reporting requirements are cumbersome and expensive. We did it well and were very successful. Every IT project came in at or under budget.
We were acquired by Mayfair Management in September of 2016. And, as the old story goes, there were changes and I was one of those changes. Of course, difficult times but I believe there is a great opportunity for both a company that needs an all round IT Manager and myself. Click here to see my resume.