Chapter 5 : Expansion

Expansion… that word has many meanings in the American Dictionary. Some of the meanings are: (1) The act of expanding or the state of being expanded. (2) Something expanded; an expanded surface or part. (3) The degree, extent, or amount by which something expands. (4) An increase, enlargement, or development, especially in the activities of a company.

Well in this particular blog post we are referring to the fourth definition I wrote here.  But I suppose I should explain why I am evening writing about this first.  As you have been reading, our company is growing at a slow but very comfortably steady rate.  We have been pulling in clients at a steady rate that has not allowed us for any downtime at all. Mostly they have been DJ’s and restaurants, which is where we found our knack to be.

There has been however some discussion if Austin and I have chosen the best name for our company to represent us and what we want to do for the company. We held numerous meetings with each other and came to a unanimous vote that we needed to change the name of our company in order to present ourselves as a more “techy” company to the public. Ray has used a name for years now before teaming up with Austin when marketing web sites and hosting services, and that name was 13South. We will get into the history of that name at a later date. But to wrap this paragraph up, we registered that name under the corporation, and now use that name to represent our company.

Moving on … Up until now (now being February of 2011), work has been coming into the company at a slow, but comfortable rate, and we were able to sign on a client, and produce their website in about two weeks. But now the clients were coming in and getting stacked up. Austin came to Ray and stated that he needed help. This is where our company expands in the essence of people working for the company, for the first time.

Wesner & Graham Web Services Inc. which is now doing business under the name 13 South, hired their first graphic design specialist, Ryan Beilhart, out of Baltimore Maryland. This is unique in two ways. We are now a three person company, and we are technically located in two states now, which will allow us to pull in clients in a more extensive radius.

What this has done for the company is it has allowed us to delegate the work coming in more efficiently. And by this I mean it allows Ray to work on setting up server space for each client, and allow him to focus on each customers administrative access to their websites, and allows Austin to focus on the actual frame and content of each website, leaving the newest addition Ryan, to solely focus on the graphic design area of each website.

Expansion: An increase, enlargement, or development, especially in the activities of a company.

Keep checking back, to see where we are headed next!

Chapter Four: Progression

It has been quite some time since I last gave an entry to this blog, and updated you all on our status. We are doing great, and have successfully landed quite a few clients. We have started several projects to get our name out there, and one of them is changing our public name to 13south. We have done this because it is easier and shorter than saying “Hi, we are from Wesner & Graham Web Services Inc.” We can now just say “Hi, We are from 13south” and it sounds more techy and flashy.

We also have launched a website that is designed to help, promote, and serve the musical industry, it is called Further Me.  What this website does is pretty simple and straight forward. It is designed to be a community of bands, musicians and talented people. Artists can sign up and upload their music and videos, and there friends can sign up as fans and help promote the artists, and build a huge online community. The website has built in blogs, homepages, and television and radio stations for the artists to share their music and videos. The website can be found at http://www.furtherme.com.
Oh, and we built in an advertising system so adds can be placed on the radio stations and video channels.

So as you can see Austin and I have been busy at work making this business into a successful one, and our brains are constantly spinning out great ideas every day.

One of the hardest tasks that we have found so far is promoting the business. We have hundreds of great ideas, but getting these ideas into the move is bigger task than we have ever imagined that and finding personal time for ourselves and those around us.

Keep checking back for updates on what we are doing, and how we are progressing!

Chapter Three : Impression

What can I say except we are now a legal company and half our dreams were currently met. We accomplished what we talked about in the beer cooler at work, and that was to take our two ideas and make them one, and start a legit company that we could call our own. As you can image we are both eagerly excited and can’t wait to sign on that first big client! But there is more work to be done. We are a legal company in the United States, but the corporation we decided to start was only in the conception stage of this story, meaning we still have a lot of work ahead of us to complete our corporation.

To give you a time frame of where we are at, we started talking about creating this company back in late July, and we are now into October of the same year. If you allow me to back-track a little, I have another story to tell you.

It is August of 2010, and we just met with our lawyer and got the corporation paper work filed. My phone rings and it is Austin, he has big news! A non-profit organization needs a web site over-haul and they want to meet with us! So Ray and Austin got all “dolled up” meaning we wore our Sunday’s best and went to meet with this person. She heard of us from a friend of a friend and was interested in our services. So we went and talked the talk and looked the look. We were so sure that we had this contract that we started pushing our business on other potential clients. Even though we never got the client in the end, it was the ego push we needed to get out there and prove ourselves. We needed to make an impression on the community around us, and that is just what happened.

So as our corporation is still being worked on today, we have signed on about a half dozen clients, with another half dozen in the works to be signed on. But it is safe to say that the impression has been made, and people know about Wesner & Graham Web Services inc.

Chapter Two : Perception

It was decided that Ray and Austin were going to merge their ideas, independent “non-legit” businesses together, and start off on a venture that scared the crap out of both of them. Why were we scared? Putting everything on the line and putting money into a venture that is not guaranteed to be successful can scare anyone! But we decided that it is better to take a leap of faith, then to take a nervous step backwards.

The next few weeks consisted of exchanging ideas back and forth, coming up with a name for our business, and deciding whether to involve a lawyer in the creation of our business, or to try and do it ourselves and save some money.

While the ideas were being exchanged, and the brainstorming was underway, word got out of their business venture, and business started rolling in before we were ready. This put some unsettled nerves at ease, and at the same time got us focused on getting this business together.

It was decided that it was best to talk to a lawyer to obtain advice on the best way to get our business started. We decided on a lawyer due to the facts that we: 1) Wanted to start a corporation, 2) Had no idea where to begin 3) Wanted to begin a rapport with a lawyer now, so that we had someone to represent us and be able to go to with questions and concerns later on down the road if need be.

So a meeting was scheduled with a lawyer that Ray already knew and had used in the past and Ray and Austin went to meet with him. We discussed starting a partnership business, and a corporation, and we went with the corporation. It was at this time, well actually a few days earlier that the name Wesner & Graham Web Services was picked. Now we got to put a dot inc behind it! And that made us very happy. It is amazing how the littlest things can make us happy. Needless to say conception was done, and perception was just beginning. Wesner & Graham Web Services Inc. was now a legal
business in the United States of America!

Chapter One : Conception

With every new business, there is a spark of an idea…..

And two long-time friends shared an idea. Helping local and small businesses get noticed on the internet.

And on that same note… two long-time friends shared a passion and a belief: keep it green.

Back to the shared idea… Ray Wesner for as long as he can remember has always been developing and publishing websites online with little to no profit for himself. But that did not bother him, because he loved to help others. As long as he could remember he was creating websites for musicians, DJ’s, nightclubs, and small businesses. But the expenses of keeping these websites up and running outweighed the income that was being generated. Austin Graham also has always had a passion for designing websites, and drawing. He has been creating websites for DJ’s and businesses for a few years now, but was having trouble fronting the cost to make his website business legit.

Remember in the introduction when I mentioned the walk-in cooler, and two longtime friends collaborating their businesses? Well this is where it happens! Ray and Austin asked each other if they were interested in merging the two company ideas together, and creating a business together that focused on each other’s areas of interest. The answer of course is yes ....

And so it begins …..

Introduction

In the early days of the summer of 2010, two long-time friends Austin Graham, and Ray Wesner were talking in the beer cooler at their job at a local nightclub about their individual “not yet legal” web site business that they were working on for a long time. They talked about the ones that were a pain, and the ones that never paid, and they shared their ideas and interests with each other.

Then it hit them. Why not collaborate the dreams, talents, and shared interests, and create a business together? Well, that is exactly what they (we) did.

Here is the story of how Wesner & Graham Web Services started….

The next few blog posts will tell a chapter in the
story of the startup of Wesner & Graham Web Services.