Randolph West

The TL;DR summary: Life is good, business is good, and I am loving it. Ready to roll with Year 2 of Stedman Solutions, LLC.

The Details

It has been an interesting year.  I officially formed the business about 3 years ago, but never worked at it regularly until April 1, 2015. Prior to April 1, 2015 had a full time position at a company in Bellingham.

My long term plan had originally been to go full time at Stedman Solutions, LLC in June of 2016 at which point my wife would have completed her schooling to become a nurse, and we would have had some additional family income to help while I got things rolling with Stedman Solutions, LLC.

“the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”

In life, things don’t always work the way you plan. At the end of March 2015, my full time position came to an end due to what the company called a “lay-off”, one person in the lay-off, that’s me. I learned later that the employees there had been told by management that I had left of my own accord. Can you smell something fishy with that? Things are awesome today, and I am so glad every single day that I no longer work there.

So there I was March 31th, 2015 in a position felt much like that of a historic military leader who burned the ships after landing on the shore to prevent the troops from retreating. The point of no return, I was all in (or out depending on the perspective). I knew what I wanted to do, but I certainly wasn’t entirely ready; no business structure, no marketing plan, and no client leads. That was a very scary point in time, but I knew what I wanted to do, I was going to be an independent consultant focused on SQL Server.

With my 25 years of SQL Server database and programming background, at that point in time I was certainly up to the challenge technically. I was an overly skilled self-proclaimed consultant with no clients.

Read More »A year in review – The first year of Stedman Solutions, LLC.