Why I started Real Deal Empyre.

I've never been a 9-to-5 guy, and for a long time I thought something was wrong with me because of it.

It was never the work. I've worked my whole life, and I pick things up fast. The problem was that I think differently. Somebody would train me to do something one way, and I'd find a way to get the same result faster and easier. To me, that was just doing the job well. To most of my bosses, it was "not doing it the way you were told."

Working that way also moved me up fast, sometimes past people who had been there for years, and that didn't always sit well with everyone. More than once I ended up starting over at a new job, working the same way, and landing right back in the same spot. Rinse and repeat.

And through all of it, I was raising kids. I'm a single dad of three, and I'm the one who handles everything for them. My oldest is 18 now, and honestly, I worked her childhood away. I was a present father, but I wasn't there for a lot of the moments I wanted to be. I've even been let go for leaving work to take care of my kids. I'm sorry, but I have to be a dad. I also have to make a living.

At some point I had to admit I was living the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Spending more time to make less money, building someone else's dream instead of my own.

I carried the idea for Real Deal Empyre for years. I just didn't want to throw something together and watch it fail. I wanted to build it right, or not at all.

What finally put it in motion was working for Jean at Optimized IT Solutions. If you're local, you probably already know how Jean does business: he takes care of his customers, period. We aligned on almost everything, and one day he told me straight, "Why don't you start your own thing, doing the things I don't, so we can take care of the same clients from both sides?" The second he said it, I knew that was it.

Here's what I kept seeing. Small and medium businesses are fighting to survive in this economy, and the owners are carrying questions that keep them up at night. Where's my next customer coming from? Does my website have everything it needs? If somebody Googles me, do I even show up?

And a lot of the companies they pay to answer those questions are just collecting a check. I've watched businesses pay the same company for years for the bare minimum: a website that looks okay, but nobody can tell the owner if it's actually working. The owner is too busy running the business to dig into it, and the company knows it.

That's what Real Deal Empyre exists to fix. I build your website, or rebuild the one you have, and make sure it's done right, with nothing on it that makes a customer think you're cutting corners. I get you showing up when people search for what you do, so you're not just hoping the next customer finds you. And I'm the guy you can actually call with a question, or an idea you want to make happen, without wondering whether it'll get done.

That's how I ended up working with a local chiropractor. She reached out to Jean needing a new website and help getting found online. That's not what Jean does, so he sent her my way. We didn't do a sales pitch. We talked it through over the phone, text, and email. She told me what she wanted, I drafted it up and showed her, and we went back and forth on every change until it was right, before anything ever went public. It felt like a conversation between two people, not a transaction. When it was done, she paid me more than I charged. I didn't ask for it, I wasn't expecting it, and I told her she didn't have to. She did it anyway.

I'm not chasing a mansion or trying to get famous. I want enough to be comfortable, to set my own schedule, to be there for every appointment and everything that matters in my kids' lives, and to show them they don't have to be anybody's puppet. And I want to get there by doing right by the people I work with: quality over quantity, a fair price instead of an arm and a leg, and someone who actually picks up when you call. If I'm doing my job right, you're bringing in more customers and spending less to do it.