It’s time for a new direction. I’m posting this verbatim on my other sites as well.

For the last two years, I’ve planned and built, tweaked and refined, sold and invoiced, collected and accounted. I’ve marketed and branded and promoted. I’ve written and blogged and spoke and taught. I’ve coached and consulted. I’ve laughed, cried and learned a whole lot along the way.

I don’t regret starting Simplified Solutions, LLC two years ago. It has been the single best business learning experience I have ever had. I made so many mistakes. Too many to list here. I definitely failed forward at times. The best part was that this last two years was a training ground. A preparation if you will for the greatest business opportunity in my life thus far.

As my business has started to succeed the last several months, it’s been in large part due to a company called ithemes- and a open source platform called Wordpress. I owe a lot to Wordpress and to the team at ithemes. Wordpress gave me, and more importantly small businesses, non profits and ministries; an affordable, effective, and attractive way to gain an online presence. Ithemes created some amazing themes powered by Wordpress. That made the rest pretty easy for me.

A few months back my relationship with this amazing company grew a little closer. I always wondered how employable I was after being in sales most of my life and then running a small freelance business. Deep down though I knew I could follow a great leader and be a contributor on an amazing team. Well I’ve found both. The great leaders are Cory Miller and James Dalman. The great team is the team at ithemes and now WebDesign.com.

About a month ago, we started a serious dialogue about me joining a new venture that ithemes was launching. Time passed, many chats and conference calls lined out the details and I flew to Dallas this past weekend to meet the team and join this new venture – WebDesign.com

I am joining a thriving team at ithemes and have become their first sales consultant with WebDesign.com. To say I’m thrilled would be the understatement of the year.

We have a rockin team and we are ready to show the world an amazing model for web design and the customer service that comes with it.

You can follow all the details here at http://webdesign.com

You can also follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/webdesigncom

My new email address is bryce@webdesign.com and the cell phone is still the same.

I have already spoken to most current customers and this transition will be very seamless. I’m just joining the company that I promoted and sold before accept now I have a team of programmers, project managers, coders, designers, graphic designers, tech interns, owners and partners behind me. Way cool!

Simplified Solutions, LLC will still be an accounting entry in Quickbooks. Some things will trickle in and trickle out but I’m putting my 100% focus on making WebDesign.com the best in the world.

• Predictability of service.
• Customer service mentality from everyone in the company.
• Professional sales and marketing systems.
• Organization and efficiency in operations.
• Sleekness and style of office, equipment and processes.
• A committed mission and passion.
• A desire to bring value and the lowest possible cost.
• A desire to get better tomorrow than they are today.
• Convenience of doing business.
• A focus on giving back and not on keeping more.

These are in no particular order, but they are all important when I evaluate patronizing a business.

I highly recommend Seth Godin’s blog.

I don’t agree with him on every issue, but he has some serious knowledge of trends in marketing and productivity- among other things. I bet we’re as different as night and day, but we have this in common- he knows marketing and I want to learn it much better.

He is very consistent in his blogging and it is usually encouraging to me. I read the Dip a while back and just recently finished Meatball Sundae and Tribes. I’m going to trim down the number of blogs I follow and this won’t be one of them.

1. Start a blog- I have used google eblogger but I like Word Press better. Don’t know how to get going- call me- it’s a service I offer.
2. Start reading and commenting on a select few blogs that you really like. This will get your name or business name circulating on the Google organic search results.
3. Start an email newsletter. There are plenty of good programs and if you preplanned your content it is something you can keep up with. Pick a frequency- I suggest weekly but monthly would be OK as well.
4. Create a Facebook page. I have one but it’s not at all customized or tweaked. Remember this is a process and Rome wasn’t built in a day.
5. Get a Twitter account (it’s free just like Facebook) and start telling the world- What you’re doing? You’ll be surprised how many people will begin to follow you or your business based on the content of your tweets. Tweets are the short two line entries you make when you answer the question- What are you doing?
6. Post reguraly on Twitter and on your blog. Make it a habit at certain times of the day or the week.
7. Set up a profile on LinkedIn. It’s a site for professional business networking. Every little bit helps.
8. Use Youtube, Vimeo and Flickr to host your videos and pictures that you’d like to share- in an effort to promote your business of course.
9. Try as hard as possibly to do all these things consistently without sacraficing time or attention from the things that really bring in the cash flow.

Wufoo is a easy to use way to design various forms for use on the web.

1. Create a simple contact form for any website or blog.
2. Take registrations for your annual golf scramble.
3. Collect emails for your mailing list.
4. Design a customer survey
5. Applications- too many to mention here.
6. Invitations to a party or event
7. Generate leads via a form
8. Order forms for a kids sports league uniforms
9. Online petitions
10. Volunteer sign up for civic clubs