About tech3x,inc., my history, and a little about me now

In 2006, I joined the Utah Army National Guard's Apache helicopter battalion (1/211th Aviation).  At the time I was doing quite well as a small-businessman, newly-engaged to my now wife, driving a collector's-edition Corvette and having just moved into a brand-new house with an amazing view.  When I told everyone that I had chosen to join the National Guard, the universal response was a shocked, "Why?!"  

The easy answer is because it felt like the right thing to do. My country was in the 'War on Terror' and I was in a position to contribute. My family's storied military history seemed to demand it of me. I'm glad I did. It cost me a lot of money, but it was worth every penny. I planned on deploying with my unit but by the time they were eventually deployed (after a few false starts) my contract was up and my wife wasn't on board with waiting any longer to start our family. So I left the Guard in 2012 without having served overseas, but not before being named not only Utah's but also the entire United States Army National Guard's Soldier of the Year for 2008/2009. I was discharged honorably with the rank of Sergeant.

There was some disruption to my IT services during this period of service, and my clients were very patient when I had to find other providers to take care of them at times. Even back then, when I was nowhere near as experienced as I am now, I didn't lose a single customer because of it, even with all the time away at training, etc. I attribute this to my relentless dedication, technical abilities, and the personal responsibility I take for the success of my clients.

During this time I changed my business from a Utah sole-proprietorship called Always Onsite Computer Service to a Nevada Corporation called Technology Experts, Inc.  It's well I changed it, as I'd have to call it Practically Never Onsite Computer Service now!  It shows you've got to stay nimble in the world of technology. Nothing stays the same for long.

In 2015, Technology Experts, Inc. was re-incorporated as Tech3x, Inc. in Utah, both to position myself better for taxes as a C-Corp rather than an S-Corp and to avoid the fact that "Technology Experts" was a very common name across the US, even though my corporation was the only one using it in Utah and Nevada.  As such, with an eye toward expansion, I changed it to be more unique and shorter to type.  

Otherwise, it was business as usual until the Covid pandemic hit.  When that happened, it became very apparent that my clients were already well-positioned to maintain a remote workforce securely and quickly.  My own IT management style had already moved largely in this direction because of all the benefits to myself and my clients. Due to following my advice and creating the capability well in advance of the need for it growing to that scope, my clients were practically unaffected, at least from an IT standpoint, by the need to send everyone home to work. Many of them have yet to find a reason to make many of their employees return to the office.  One client actually chose to downsize their physical office space  and reduce their overhead simply because of how easy it was to have their employees work from home!

Not only did my clients' employees switch seamlessly to working from home almost instantly... but it became apparent to me that I could do my job just as well from anywhere... and my clients had become accustomed to never seeing me in person by the end of 2021 anyway.  So I took advantage of that to expand both my company's footprint and my family's as well.  It's a new world out there... and it isn't all bad!

Starting as a junior in high school in 1993, I worked for a variety of local computer stores and business consulting companies in the Salt Lake City, Utah area.  I rapidly gained experience in hardware and customer support long before there were college degrees or trade schools that could even attempt to teach you the job.  Computer Science and Computer Engineering degrees existed of course, but no programs to actually teach you how to work in real world scenarios.  It was too new and moving too fast.  The only way to learn it was to do it, so I did it the hard way.

Eventually I found my way to an up-and-coming business owner who had a single store and was starting to gain in popularity. Myself and two of my friends who were working together elsewhere joined this company and, through some extremely long hours, great technical ability, and clarity of vision, took it and developed it into nine stores and a warehouse, with over 100 employees, and a national shipping department.  It's true that I was never in ownership or even what might be technically considered "upper management", but I and my friends were all in management almost immediately... which is where the rubber met the road and where the real work happened.  We trained every employee, managed every store, created the service department methods and policies, built an exemplary reputation, and designed all the systems.  We made the owner a millionaire very quickly... and then watched him very publicly waste what we had built. It was no coincidence that within 2 years of the 3 of us leaving the company, that it had gone out of business with multiple lawsuits against the owner by former employees. I don't want to spend any time on my site bad-mouthing other parties, but for those in Utah and the surrounding area, you know the reputation we built, and I'm proud of that.  I'm sorry to any of you who had our systems with our warranty that were forced to go elsewhere to get it honored.  It was out of my control.  Which is why, 2 years before that company ended, that I branched out on my own, as I could tell the end was obviously coming.

In 2001, I left the company I had helped build.  I never had any share in ownership and while promises had been made by ownership about the future, it became obvious there was no intention or ability to keep those promises.  It was also obvious that there was no ability on the part of ownership to achieve the next level of company growth.

I put out my own shingle with a sole-proprietorship called Always Onsite Computer Service and maintained a positive relationship with my previous employer. We enjoyed a symbiotic relationship where they would send their onsite and networking clients to me and I would reimburse them for the referral and sell their hardware.  This relationship lasted until that company's untimely demise. 

Many of my clients have been with me ever since this time or are referrals from customers that date back to this time.  In fact, I've never spent a dime on advertising in 23 years of business with the exception of this website and a one-time fee to get listed in the white pages back in 2001, and yet I've always been as busy as I wanted to be.  

I didn't really even want to create this site, for fear of having to turn away clients if I got too busy, but I've more or less had my arm twisted by the necessity for a variety of reasons, including proving to my vendors and the newly created federal department called "The Campaign Registry" (that has been created to help prevent and control text spamming) that I run a legitimate business with legitimate reason to be texting my clients from web-based business VOIP phone numbers.

I have also graduated a couple of clients in the last 2 years who were in trouble when they found me, to having grown large enough to move on to their own internal IT managers, so I have bid them a fond farewell and opened up a couple of slots in my clientele roster.  Take advantage while you can!  It might not be long before I'm back to being full.