Where to start?

Having spent the past eight years developing myself as a professional automatic gate technician and installer, I recently parted ways with the small gate company I worked for to pursue my own business. I can't help but believe that working for myself will have to be better than working for others.

What do I hope to achieve with this blog? In the most general of terms, education. For myself, for people in the industry who want to learn more about their craft, for end-users who need help with their systems. Dialog for anyone who wants to be involved. A helping hand for myself and anyone who wants to discuss problems with these systems, and talk together to resolve those problems.

Of course, I hope to promote my business, but only through deserved trust from those I might establish contact with here, and other places. The only place I have advertised to date is Craigslist, and not much there. To date, all my business has come from personal referrals by those I have worked for, who trust my work, and won't trust service of their gates to anyone but me.

More importantly, what I hope to do is demystify the gate industry, and bring an improved level of customer service and professionalism to the industry in some small way, if I can.

My background is wide-ranging and perplexing. I am a musician, a professional bicycle mechanic, a technology and computer geek of sorts. I spent some time in the military, in the bicycle business, worked in various capacities for Nordstrom, moved into the information technology sector and got bounced out during the dotcom bust, and ended up in the automatic gate business.

Although the gate business was new to me, I felt like I had been training for it most of my life. In the Air Force (4.5 years), I learned basic and intermediate electronics and radio wave transmission and reception, along with a lot of other stuff. I have always been mechanically inclined, and in the bicycle business (14 years) I honed those skills and learned to use a range of tools I was previously unfamiliar with. I also learned sales and customer service skills that have served me well.

At Nordstrom, I continued to develop my customer service skills, and worked in many areas, including sales and various areas in support; distribution center processing, management, facilities, POS support and PC/network support and much more. From Nordstrom it was into the IT sector big time, at least until the dotcom bust and IT really took a nosedive. After being out of work for three months, the only work I could find was in the gate business, at less than half my previous rate of pay, and significantly reduced benefits.

Enough about me for now. If you have any questions about your gate system, the type of service you are getting, are considering buying a gate system and need help.....whatever, feel free to ask. I'll do what I can to assist. I hope to hear from you.