Overcoming Obstacles: How to Expand Your Customer Base as a New Business Owner
I still remember the days when finding time off was a struggle as I juggled between being part of an IT team and the sole member of an IT department. It was during this time that I discovered a lack of choice when it came to staff augmentation consultants in my area. I saw this as an opportunity to start my own venture - Grove Technologies.
At Grove, we focus on helping organizations with small IT teams, such as nonprofit organizations and design agencies, to ensure that they have the necessary support to take time off while ensuring their systems are well-maintained.
It wasn’t always easy building my own business, and there were definitely challenges along the way. But it was worth it to see the positivity and impact that we were able to bring to these organizations.
I hope that my journey can inspire the next generation of business owners to think outside the box and to pursue their passions, no matter how daunting it may seem. With dedication and perseverance, anything is possible.
Did you find that it was easy to acquire new clients and find people to take you guys on? We really started targeting companies that, who already had IT departments. One of our focuses early on was to help people who were in similar situations as me. So we were going after nonprofit organizations, design agencies, where I knew that they had, maybe a team of one or two Mac people, and I was just reaching out, making introductions and letting them know that we were around and we were there to support them.
Very few of them had ever had that thought, right? Maybe if I want to take vacation, I should come up with a plan, go to my supervisor and pitch this company so that I know that my users are in good hands. A lot of them never thought about that. And it didn’t really dawn on them that it would be a negative impact event for the company. And so I think a lot of positivity came out of those conversations and for those individuals who pitched those ideas and brought us on board right at the beginning, after that, it was pretty much all word of mouth, getting our foot in the door.
Meeting, greeting people, going to conventions and obviously when I was working as a full-time person in the industry, I was participating and giving back Mac Admins Mac Admins Slack, which is a great way to stay current, which is the way that I used it.
But I had never really approached it from the perspective of a business owner. And so it was a little bit awkward for me, trying to shift my mindset from technician who cares about their end users to how am I going to actually build this? How am I gonna make money with it..