Our paths crossed.

Not long after moving back to suburbia (after living in the country for 3 years), and still settling into our new digs, I got a message via Facebook from Ben, a trustworthy acquaintance I have had for around 12 years. We had the same circle of friends and I had also known his wife before I had even met him (actually, before he had even met her).

He had a small web design business which operated out of an actual premises. Whereas I had worked out of a home office. I figured he just wanted to catch up, and suspected he liked to network, with the possibility of offering me some work if he had a lot going on.

Lets just say after solely working for myself as in me being my own client (though it makes for lousy Christmas parties) and producing work to my own standard before loosing it upon the world wide web where it can sink or swim of its own accord (and if it sinks, it doesn’t mean it stinks, it could take between 6 to 12 months before I see it making a return on the investment in time) I wasn’t sure if it was what I wanted do. But it wasn’t going to hurt to drop in and chat and catch up on whatever gossip that we had, though with Facebook I pretty much kept up with all the happenings in the lives of my Newcastle friends. Gossiping about other people is now a thing of the past with Facebook, everyone is so willing to share and divulge information from their own lives. Sometimes too much I think!

Ben’s place of work was nicely presented, and he was conducting some renovations on part of the office space that he had previously shared with another separate business. He employed full time a programmer, and a casual admin assistant. He also had a bookkeeper come in for 4 hours a week to keep all his paperwork in order. Which impressed me immensely. I’m not fond of that side of the business either. And by doing this he freed up his time to focus it on things he was better at.

He was currently doing signage for cars, banners, windows, etc (he has a trade background as a signwriter) and doing graphic design for his clients and arranging the printing of business cards and brochures. As well as websites. And the websites were of a very high standard too, with some really funky stuff happening with things that his programmer was implementing. I was beginning to wonder why he’d want to avail himself of my web design skills as he had it all sorted. That is, if that’s what he was after.

We got onto talking about the direction he wanted to take his business, and some big opportunities on the horizon. We got talking about Social Media such as Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Webcasting for small businesses and the ability for the audience to give immediate and live feedback which the presenter could answer in real time.

Ben had seen my use of Facebook, even how I use it personally (I have two accounts), and he knew I was already attuned to the way that he was thinking. It gave us both a lot to think about. And I would drop in again the following week.