About Us
In the IT business for over 20+ years, we specialize in networking, structured cabling, computer repair, printers, and point of sales. We also rebuild older networks to bring them up to modern standards using all high end cables and materials. Note: We do not sell hardware, we only recommend. This way you are assured that what we recommend is what we truly feel is best for your needs, not our profit margins.
We have a straight 5 star rating across numerous review online sites, and we strive to make sure all customers are pleased with our work and services to maintain our valued rating.
Rest assured that if you are needing technology help, we're the ones for you. As you can see from our list of services below, our expertise goes well beyond the usual spectrum of your standard technology services.
The products and services we offer
Recommendations Received (47)
"Robert is a great connection to have on this portal. Computer Xperts comes as a highly..."
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"Robert is a great connection to have on this portal. Computer Xperts comes as a highly recommendation as well. "
"They say what they do and do what they say!"
Products & Services
Networking Xperts from simple line drops, to structured cabling, to point of sales, network printers, configurations, to entire build-outs or rebui...
Drone Services - aerial realty pictures/footage, & multi-story surveys. Need to see something you can't get to? We can let you see it. Need high qu...
Rather than be tied down to a desk phone, reliance on cell phones for business staff and executives is at an all time high. Some companies have gon...
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Recommendations Given (40)
"I've used them a couple times. As a computer & network engineer, I have referred a number of my..."
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"I've used them a couple times. As a computer & network engineer, I have referred a number of my clients here and they have all been pleased with the service."
Recent Activity
This ban is opening floodgates for other congressional politicians who want to get their names in the books. Some politicians are now coming out with bills to block things like DJI drones from being sold in the U.S. for supposed fear they are sending data back to China. Essentially, if something...
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This ban is opening floodgates for other congressional politicians who want to get their names in the books. Some politicians are now coming out with bills to block things like DJI drones from being sold in the U.S. for supposed fear they are sending data back to China. Essentially, if something from China can access any network, cellular or wifi, there will soon be a bill to ban it. This isnt Freedom. It's not about security. It's about our government using US, the people that buy & use these things, in order to hurt China. It's our government stepping on our freedoms in order to discriminate against China. Meanwhile we're all posting on Alignable, hosted on servers whose electronics were made in China, using phones or computers that were made in China..... yet Tiktok is supposedly a threat lol. You have to ask yourself this. If Tiktok is a Chinese spy app, then why is it banned in China rather than being openly used to spy on the private lives of their citizens? My thoughts are that maybe it's banned because TT wont share info with the Chinese government. Regardless, millions of Chinese access Tiktok anyway via VPN's. The American form of a ban will be a simple two-step. An easy root DNS ban which any child can get around, then forcing Google & Apple to remotely remove these apps from user phones.... and yes, they can do that. There's been very bad apps that got onto their stores, and Google/Apple removed them from all phones they were installed to. So the question is, if our government forces Google/Apple to remove Tiktok from all phones where the app was installed via their stores, where's our so-called Freedom?
As what many tend to call a "tech guru" though I don't care much for the title, I avoid "online" networking meets. I deal with technology every day all day. I don't want to talk to people with it, I prefer face to face. As a matter of fact, I am often the only person in the room that doesn't have...
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As what many tend to call a "tech guru" though I don't care much for the title, I avoid "online" networking meets. I deal with technology every day all day. I don't want to talk to people with it, I prefer face to face. As a matter of fact, I am often the only person in the room that doesn't have his face nose deep into some electronic device. I haven't, as of this writing, participated in any network meetings, though I want to. I seem to stay so busy that I simply forget about them. I don't know anyone who goes to them, so have nobody to hound me so I don't forget. I'm not interested in going in order to promote my services because I am too busy to take on new clients, although I do at times. I am, however, interested in going in order to see what others offer that could be useful or of interest to me. You really want your card to be in everyone else's stacks of cards on their desk, and their card in yours. Network meets are a good way to do this. One day, one of you will need the other, even though it may be a while down the road. So you have to realize that most often you aren't going to get an immediate client, but many potential ones later down the road when they need your service.
You also want people who have a similar but not exact service to have your card. You tend to start referring business to each other. I refer a lot of business out to others. Some savvy ones figured out who was doing it, and realized that because I didn't want to take on new clients, there was an opportunity for them, and presented ideas to me to work together. They could use my skills as an added bonus to better serve their clients. I don't have to sell myself, promote my services, do billing, worry about getting paid, etc. As far as their clients are concerned, I'm just a technical employee of the business. I quite like it that way as well. So as you can see, there are quite a few variations in which you can see efforts in networking come to fruition. You could say I was unknowingly promoting myself by referring business to other small companies. I make it a point to service those who call me one way or another. For example, I don't do residential work, repair laptop/tablet/phone screens, fix/sell printers, etc... but I make a point to know who does because I get calls about these. Most people, while polite, are rather unhelpful to the caller when this happens to them. My experience shows me that referring business out was a great form of networking, even though it was unintentional and I simply wanted to help the callers get to what they needed.
I started out advertising with bandit (yard) signs, authorities always calling me threatening with fines, advertising on pointless websites, and paying the green sheet was even worse. Today I'm the guy over here whispering to myself [I'm swamped, don't do it, I'm dying for lack of sleep, please please please don't send them my way, I swear, don't even think about...... dammit....] "Yes Mam, how can I help you today?" So networking works, maybe not alway right away, and maybe not always the way you expect. In some cases like as happened with me, you might be networking without realizing it. Whatever you do, just never give up. If anything, I'd say what worked for me is because I wasn't advertising myself, and I'd failed miserably every time I did try that. People are blind to promotions & advertising these days because it's everywhere you look (Geico anyone???). Yes it was purely accidental for me, or rather, unintentional. Yet maybe others will realize they have a similar opportunity and can do the same thing... intentionally :)
I used them for several years. You have to know how to play their system. You see, "anyone" can give you a review on it. I stayed busy enough I rarely if ever turned on leads. I once when 1.5 years with leads turned off, but there's a catch on that as well. You can only turn them off for 3 weeks...
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I used them for several years. You have to know how to play their system. You see, "anyone" can give you a review on it. I stayed busy enough I rarely if ever turned on leads. I once when 1.5 years with leads turned off, but there's a catch on that as well. You can only turn them off for 3 weeks at a time. Once they come back on, YOU can't turn them back off until 24 hours later. You get several leads during that time. I started calling them up and having THEM turn it off for months at a time. What's the trick? Well, they do flood the search engines with your info. The ranking works. They put your info on tons of reviews sites which update automatically. So I had customers do reviews, which would spread across tons of other sites, causing search engines to pick you up from each one, which skyrockets your rankings. In other words, the more times a bot finds you listed online, the higher you are ranked. So yes, most of their leads are crap. Keep them turned off. Use them for the search engine ranking instead. Let me go ahead and tell you my worst lead. It had the wrong address, but I didn't know until I got there. So I call the customer back. She can't tell me how to get to her house. Then she says she cut herself bad making a sandwich and starts crying to please get there, that she needs me. Total looney. I report this to Homeadvisor, they called the lady. Admitted it was a bad lead and agreed she was off her rocker, and put in for my refund. Lo and behold, the refund was refused. They never refunded me for anything, ever. So I started using them to MY benefit instead of them using me for THEIR benefit. In other words, for $29/mth, I got a $400/mth service of great & valuable Search Engine Ranking which kept me at the top for my area. I eventually cancelled the service. I grew into servicing commercial contracts, and no longer wanted the residential business. However, if you are wanting residential business, then I just gave you the plan on how to win with HomeAdvisor.
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As said before, everything from firewalls to encryption are no good if the users inside the network are not educated. I sit down and have a training session with several at a time. On a USB drive I have examples of things they may run into. For example, the following address with the IP masked...
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As said before, everything from firewalls to encryption are no good if the users inside the network are not educated. I sit down and have a training session with several at a time. On a USB drive I have examples of things they may run into. For example, the following address with the IP masked for here..
http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/pc-error-0xxxchxx88/supp...
This is linked via malicious advertising. You read a story on an article on some random site, you scroll down, then there's an advert that strikes your interest. You click & all of a sudden your browser is locked up with with a supposed Microsoft message saying your computer is infected and to call the number to talk to support. The user falls for it, often even the office manager falls for it, they let someone in, get charged around $400, and the computer is fried even worse, requiring more $$ to be paid..... when you and I know all they had to do in the first place is ctrl+alt+del and kill the browser session. Yet because of user ignorance, the computer is now fully controlled by someone else, password protected with syskey & restore points wiped out..... all because the end user fell for a scam. So again customer education for every user is the #1 important thing you can do, because everything else is pointless if they fall for a scam and give remote access to strangers scamming them. At the very least, make sure they know to call you if they ever get a browser lockup stating their computer is infected and to call a number on the screen. I'm going to tell you though, sometimes no matter what you do, it isn't enough. I had one home business customer fall for this very scam THREE times in six months!!
This is a loaded question because it is so broad, but I will answer in one area that might help. You can't, you can only do your best. Let me explain, and let's look at some big names. Let's go with Google first. Successful? Yes, but they have had plenty of failures. However, they are great at...
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This is a loaded question because it is so broad, but I will answer in one area that might help. You can't, you can only do your best. Let me explain, and let's look at some big names. Let's go with Google first. Successful? Yes, but they have had plenty of failures. However, they are great at adapting. They try, fail, and try again a different way. They are about to shut down Google+ because it cant compete with Facebook. On the other hand, ATT/Yahoo shut down their sbcglobal.net email system because they couldn't compete with Google's Gmail. The goal is to look at what others offer. Try to offer what they do, but in an even more user friendly method. I can honestly say, that in your case, user friendly interface is more important than the back end. Reason being is that it doesn't matter how awesome the back end is if they get confused on the front end interface. Let me give you an example. Years ago I had a large hosting company that I eventually sold. I loved this software called Hsphere. It was amazing. However, you needed to be fairly advanced to understand it's user interface. They lost the battle to cPanel and sold to Plesk who ruined the whole thing. You see, along came cPanel that was nothing more than a bunch of free programs piled into a very easy to use interface. Some of the programs had major bugs or were insecure, but they were successful because of the end user interface. Now they have grown up since then and fixed all those bugs and issues, but how they started and beat out much more advanced systems is a great success story in itself. You see, Hsphere had great programmers, but cPanel had great designers. They flipped the script on what was the norm. Programmers tend to build something and think it works for everyone because it works fine for them. Designers design for the end user. I don't like all-in-one printers. I want a printer that does one job and does it well, print. Same with a scanner, or a fax. If one part of an all-in-one breaks down, you have to replace the whole thing, everything. I believe the same of staff. Programmers that program, and designers that design.... and often they butt heads with each other, but each do a very good job for you. Back to the all-in-one.... same can be said of someone that does both programming & design. They will be stronger on one than the other verses two people that are among the best in their particular expertise. Then you have your company, and your competitors. Same goes there. Learn what the average customer wants most from your type of system, then concentrate on that the most until you perfect it. Another thing about your customer is you need to talk to them. Call them up once in a while to chat, see if everything is as they like it. Become their friend, a trusted friend. Take it beyond customer & company. Next thing you know, those customers will be talking about you. If they are companies, stay in contact with those employees of theirs that oversee the service you provide. If the company thinks about leaving, they will got to bat for you. If they talk to people in other companies, they will recommend you. My buddy Benoit at Arco can do that for you. My buddy Benoit at Arco recommends this, and he knows what he is talking about, etc, etc. Pretty soon, you have more friends, new customers, as long as you remain accessible. That alone will give you a helpful edge over your competitors. I hope at least some of this helps, and good luck!
I have two questions. 1) If it's a secret, how did your co-worker find out? Did you tell them? 2) You say people are talking about you. The question is, is it positive talk, negative talk, or neutral talk? You need to find this out. You see, if neutral, it's more of a "Wow, I never would have...
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I have two questions. 1) If it's a secret, how did your co-worker find out? Did you tell them? 2) You say people are talking about you. The question is, is it positive talk, negative talk, or neutral talk? You need to find this out. You see, if neutral, it's more of a "Wow, I never would have guessed he was gay" which is no more negative than "Wow, I never would have guessed she's actually a redhead". Easy to take negative, but means you did what you do well.... keeping work and personal life separate. That is something most people cant do. Perhaps a female co-worker thinks you are hot and it caught them off guard. Accept it as flattery. If negative, ignore it. This is 2019, they will get over it and accept it. If positive, which you may find it is... then you may have just gotten people to realize maybe they too can be a little more open if they see this all goes well. However, if you go to HR and the person in charge goes about it the wrong way, it might make waves you don't want. Such as scaring people into being silent. Someone who feels he might be gay may be wanting to approach you for advice, but the way it was handled just shied him away. Take it as a win and go about your life. You don't have to hold back a secret anymore, and you should have never felt the need to have to. Keep in mind that despite all our society rules, humans are sexual creatures. Now that good looking guy in the front office can let you know he is gay as well, and the lady who thinks you are hot now knows there's no chance (unless you are bi?). So it caused some ripples, it'll settle down and you will find that realistically, people will think no different of you after it settles down. Stay open to co-workers. Now they know you are gay, and just trying to figure out if they need to change their ways or discussions around you, just be yourself and they will realize they don't have to. Let them know they have nothing to worry about, you are still the same you. I wish you the best of luck, you got this, you can handle it. A lot of people here assume the talking is negative, and in my experience you often find it was talk of admiration or something else positive. They just don't know how to bring it across to you.
First off, I don't work on websites, so nothing here should be taken as an attempt to gain business. I see a lot of people who don't have websites. They claim they do fine by word of mouth. That's because you can't miss the advantages of a website if you've never had one. I accomplish making...
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First off, I don't work on websites, so nothing here should be taken as an attempt to gain business. I see a lot of people who don't have websites. They claim they do fine by word of mouth. That's because you can't miss the advantages of a website if you've never had one. I accomplish making them feel the requirement to have a site of their own with various methods. Let's say for example they ask me if I know any electricians. I say yes, give them a name, and let them Google them. They end up on that person's website. I immediately point out the fact that they just did the same thing many people are attempting with them, trying to find them online. As for social media, waste of time if you "start" that way. If your business is slow, you have plenty of time to deal with social media. If you're busy, unless you have a dedicated social media person, you will slack on it. Social Media is simply one more thing you have to promote. You don't put up a social media page and then BOOM, magically have 1000 new people there every day, that's not how it works. You have to promote it. How do most people promote their social media presence? You got it, via their website. If you want real growth in the modern world, you have to have a website and show up locally in search engine results. That is simply how it is. You should also keep it updated. Being honest, I haven't look at mine in 6 months, haven't updated it since 2016.... and I'm an IT company. Sad, right? But at least I have one, and it does gain me business. Let me explain something. I remember struggling to make even $1500/mth. I was happy to make that. I wished for it. Now I am paying my guys that much a week. I have 3 very large clients and a lot of smaller ones. The big ones have franchises all over the country, and they keep me quite busy here in Texas & Louisiana, and want me to expand my services to other states. I only recently agreed to expand to all of Texas &
Louisiana rather than just SE Texas. Two of those clients were a result of my website, the 3rd was word of mouth.
Back to growth. With an IT company, you are only as good as your worst tech. I don't hire grads, I also don't hire Sr Techs that have been doing it for years. I hire people who know nothing and I train them my way. They learn my perfectionist ways and don't come in with any bad habits. Each one is trained in a specific segment. As such, I have never lost a client, but it limits my growth and I have to turn down a lot of excess business to the point I have had thoughts of turning off my website for short periods of time until I have more techs trained.
So if you think word of mouth or social media is good enough for you, but yet you research other companies and check out their websites.... then you aren't properly connecting the dots, and are missing out on a ton of additional business from all those people trying to find you. I built mine and had an SEO company get it up in the engines. Then stopped paying attention to it, yet still get growing traffic to it. Like a travel center on the highway has a highway sign to tell you they are there, you need a website on the information highway as well. Take my advice or don't, that is fully up to you. If you do take it, there are several designers on here discussing this that are more than happy to help you out. Again, don't come to me for it. I can design & program, I choose not to and don't want to. I build & maintain corporate networks, and to me, it's far less headache than dealing with people's websites :-) Just to note. The goal of a web designer is a long term relationship. The better you do, the better they do because you use them more often. Yes, they rely on repeat business as well. Contact one and get yourself an online presence with your own website.
Affect labor rates, yes. Decide labor rates, no. I do great work, and demand the same level of work from my techs. That affects the rate. I like things to not only work great, but also look great when completed, that affects the rates. I am constantly watching and reading up on new technologies,...
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Affect labor rates, yes. Decide labor rates, no. I do great work, and demand the same level of work from my techs. That affects the rate. I like things to not only work great, but also look great when completed, that affects the rates. I am constantly watching and reading up on new technologies, that affects rates because it continually increases my knowledge. My company has 5 star ratings across numerous review sites..... and here is comes, that affects the rates the most. Why? Because we get overloaded with too much work. Rates go up to control it, in theory anyway. It hasn't worked. The higher it goes, the more companies call on us.Some things are flat rate, most are hourly. With hourly, we have a 1.5 hour minimum. That covers fuel, tolls, travel, etc. For residentials, we keep at flat rate and/or much lower hourly. I have been trying to wind down the residentials, which we're down to only a few per month now. The money is really in commercial and/or corporate contracts, of which I have been lucky enough to get several. We do a lot of small businesses as well, which is a mid-rate between corporate and residential.As you grow from a one man team to a 10-20 man team, you find out your old rates don't make the cut. You need to make enough from each job to pay your company, pay your tech, pay the taxes, and leave a few bucks in the bank for future unforeseen expenses. The better you do your work and be full of knowledge & experience, the more you grow. The more you grow, the more your costs become, thus causing your rates to go up.The biggest failure many tech companies fail at is communication. They put in sophisticated phone systems that the customer doesn't want to deal with. They want to call and a real person pick up. Meanwhile, that expensive answering system affected your rates while causing things to be less personable.One of the biggest complaints customers have about other techs is the rush job. Techs get known as snobs, they don't want to talk or explain things to the customer. The more you are friendly, the more you chat with a customer, the more likely you become a permanent "go to" regardless of your rates because of the additional "education" they get.They may forget everything you taught them as soon as you walk out the door, but the fact that you sat there and talked to them, answered their questions, showed them how to do things.... well that kinda makes your rate a moot point. They are happy to pay it because it's worth it. Another winning point is my customers know I have 12 other techs working for me, but the number they have is the one on my business cards.... my cell #. They are always talking to the owner, never a receptionist, sales, or another technician.What affects rates isn't any single thing. It's everything.
I use social media for play time. I don't do residential anymore because my commercial side stays so busy. My growth was a struggle for a few year, then blew up. I do work for national IT companies, for example Target and sometimes Walmart, though I tend to avoid Walmart (absolutely disgusting...
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I use social media for play time. I don't do residential anymore because my commercial side stays so busy. My growth was a struggle for a few year, then blew up. I do work for national IT companies, for example Target and sometimes Walmart, though I tend to avoid Walmart (absolutely disgusting network rooms), and I don't do food places (grease & sticky everywhere).
My biggest repeat business maker has probably been my OCD on things working as they should and not breaking again, as well as the aesthetics of finished work. In other cases, such as Verizon, I got on their radar because I networked a Target, which the Verizon tech never showed up, so Verizon handed the contract to me, and I did, and continue to do their work.
My biggest contract, even out performing my HP one, was a total accident. I was sent in to a new franchise to fix a problem 3 prior techs couldn't, and fixed it in 30 minutes. Fixed a few other things as well. From that point on, I handle all their location in Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and much of Louisiana.
One thing that wasn't luck or timing was the residential business. I used Homeadvisor for a while. Any reviews you get there (I have full 5 stars 100%) get sent across over a hundred other sites. Those show up in search engines for your area. I get 5-10 residential calls a day and now refer them out.
You see, here's the thing about social media. Like your website, a Facebook or Twitter is just one more thing you have to promote & gain followers on. You don't build a page and suddenly hundreds of people are magically calling you, you have to promote it. Companies like Homeadvisor spend tons of money every month on staying at the top of searches for you. They spend the big bucks, thousands of businesses pay them small bucks, and it works out well.
I only used them for 6 months, and this started happening
Then I started picking up commercial contracts and stopped with residential. Bad thing is you have to keep paying them or your reviews go offline. I cancelled once and that happened, so I had them restore everything, but I pay yearly and it isn't much. If my commercial business ever slows down, I know I can jump right into residential as long as those reviews are up simply because the calls everyday prove they work.
You would have to work crazy hard non-stop to get that from social networking. So like I said, I use social for playtime, that's it. I should probably mention that I do have social pages for my company, maintained by a couple of SEO companies, but I never get anything from those. Almost all my calls come from repeats, contracts, and Google searches. People generally don't go to Facebook for "services" - they go to search engines for that, so that's where you need to be when they come looking for your services.
Don't low-ball yourself on pricing either. Companies looking for someone to come work on their stuff will pass you up if you are too cheap, and they wont be looking for you on Facebook or Twitter either. Then you have growth limitations, such as the ability to find "good" techs. With only 5 decent techs and several helpers, I have to turn down a lot of work. That's the hump in the road I cant seem to get over right now.
Perfect example of how it can happen easy without social media. I don't even mention what I do on social. It might work for some, but in my case it would be too much effort for too little reward. I'm there to be social, not to see ads, so I treat others the same.
