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Asierus Carefree Technology |
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February 26, 2018 Issue |
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CEOCFO MAGAZINE |
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Q&A with Jeremy Hale Simmons, Founder and CEO of Asierus Carefree Technology, An all-in-one IT, Business Management and Marketing Company |
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Founder and Chief Executive Officer 801-615-4157
Asierus Carefree Technology Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – February 26, 2018
CEOCFO: Mr. Simmons, what was the vision when you started Asierus Carefree Technology®, back in 2005? Mr. Simmons: Our goal was to establish a company that did away with finger pointing. I have been providing IT services in some form since I was 18 years old. The problem I saw was the complicated nature of the business. One person did one thing, another did another thing, another did something else and when something went wrong everyone ended up pointing fingers at someone else. “Oh, I’m sorry, that was the network team.” Or “Oh, I’m sorry, that was the cabling crew.” Or “Oh, I’m sorry, that was your ISP.” It was always someone else’s fault, and the customer suffered. The other thing that I really did not like was the way the support level worked. Problems were labeled Tier I, Tier II, Tier III, Tier IV and each was assigned a ticket. The client had to wait for someone who actually knew what they are doing to resolve their issue. That was really annoying for me! I wanted Asierus to be an all-in-one IT management company that could do anything and everything from start to finish, eliminate finger-pointing so the client could get on with business. That was my vision. Therefore, I hired the right people, formed partnerships with the right companies and created Asierus CarefreeTechnology. Asierus is actually a confluence of about seventeen different companies. Some of those companies are very simple, small companies or maybe an individual who ran their own business; for example, a web development company, an application development company, or a telecommunications company.
I also was among the first, if not the, first to implement what everyone now knows as The Cloud. I developed and patented and trademarked several applications including Office AnyWare, Desktop AnyWare, Server AnyWare, Support AnyWare, Access AnyWare, Storage AnyWare, WiFi AnyWare, Network AnyWare, and Secure AnyWare. All that our clients needed was Internet access to do business from anywhere in the world, and they were thrilled.
CEOCFO: What is the offering today? Have you been able to put together what you wanted and continue to add as new services and products come into play?
Mr. Simmons:
Yes, we did that.
We created exactly what I wanted. Over the last ten years, it has been as
though a light switch has flipped and everything in business is technology
driven. Therefore, I end up becoming involved many different businesses.
Today, Asierus is actually a business management marketing company based on
the latest technology. We take good businesses and good people and we plug
them into our technology system. Then we take them through our entire system
all the way to the end. If it is some type of a manufacturing business we
streamline the manufacturing side first; if they can make their products
better, faster and cheaper, then they make more money. If it is a service
business we look for technology-based ways to make them more efficient. Once
we have those pieces in place we will help them market themselves in totally
different ways using different technologies and things like Facebook and
other social media marketing, all the technology such as YouTube videos and
commercials. Not many people watch TV anymore. They watch Hulu, they watch
Netflix, they watch things online. Because of that the commercials that used
to make sense no longer do. Spending huge amounts of money on print
advertising in magazines does not make sense, because fewer people are
looking at magazines. Instead, we find new and more innovative ways to use
technology to market these businesses.
CEOCFO: How do you decide when a business makes sense for your approach? Mr. Simmons: I look for good people who deserve more. That is what I look for. A good business with good people, with a good product and good services; those deserve more but are struggling because they do not have the technology. Those are the ones that I look for. Therefore, I am actually focusing on rural communities now. Right now, I am literally looking out my window at horses and cattle and a ground corral and the most beautiful scenery in the world! I am in Ballard, Utah. Where the heck is Ballard, Utah? I am here helping a small saddle shop in which I’ve invested. I built them an online store so we could sell their custom leather products. We are helping to re-purpose them because no one buys saddles anymore, let alone custom ones. We are now the highest end custom leather accessories business in the world. While I was here I stayed at the Best Western Plus hotel. I was trying to run multiple businesses and couldn’t because my internet kept kicking me off and my phone wouldn’t work! I went downstairs to complain and I troubleshot it all the way to a T and I knew exactly what was wrong and I asked if they would let me in my closet so I could fix their internet just for me, just for my room. Instead, I sold the Best Western Plus a whole new system. Therefore, now I am here trying to finish up a project that I started about a week ago, to put in the highest end, fastest and best, most robust wireless network and network infrastructure for any hotel in the world. So that’s what we do. I was here working with the saddle shop, now I am working with Best Western Plus and am also working with a cute little restaurant down the street called Pappies. I am giving them the technology they need to grow. In my new business model, the way that it works is simple. I do not ask much from them up front. My services are almost free. And when they grow because of what I’ve done for them, I take a percentage of revenue increase. If they do not grow we did not do our jobs right. However, if they do grow, they make more money than they ever have and we make our money, too!
CEOCFO: What is the strategy? Mr. Simmons: It is a simple one! There are only twenty four hours in a day; I have to sleep at least one of them. Sometimes two is better. Last night, I slept a lot more than that for the first time in many months, because I have been so busy just taking care of the ones that pop up, the ones that I need to take care of. Eventually, it has to evolve and become more of a science. This is the new strategy. So far I have not had any problems finding work and so far it is working really well.
CEOCFO: Did you have an epiphany one day? Mr. Simmons: Yes, literally! It was exactly that! All of a sudden I looked behind me and saw all the dominoes lined up and said I have always wanted to build this! I have always thought it would be fun to have a marketing company and I really enjoy marketing, but I am a technology guy first. So I will build a marketing and management company based on technology. Because of some businesses and people that I was talking to and I said, “All they need is technology and if we gave them technology, if we build them an online store, if we do social media marketing and all those things that they do not know how to do, they will thrive. That is literally what happened and it is already working. Since the day that we launched the on-line store for the saddle shop we have sold products. What also happened was that I had a bigger epiphany that we needed to help people. Specifically, this year I wanted to help homeless people. When I was a child our family always reached out to the homeless in the limited way our resources allowed. This year things changed and I now have a world class communications team. Bruce Lindsay and Don Olsen, former TV news anchors and corporate communications professionals, are working with us to help us get the word out about anything and everything that we need to. I told them that I want to help homeless people this year. I had an idea I called Santa Bags. We wanted to pack hygiene kits for the homeless but I didn’t know how to find them. Don Olsen said, “I know exactly where they are and I will help you reach them.” Between him and Bruce Lindsay, they found ten thousand five hundred homeless persons to help. Then my challenge was how to get hygiene kits to ten thousand five hundred homeless people in time for Christmas. So I began jumping through all the necessary hoops. I switched my whole team over from doing all the things we do to make money to building and delivering Santa Bags. I even had to learn how to drive a forklift! And we did it! We built ten thousand five hundred hygiene kits we call Santa Bags. We put them on pallets and we delivered them to various agencies throughout the state of Utah who help the homeless population. It was a big project but I felt it was a worthy project. I worked twenty two hours and would sleep two hours then I would get up and work forty eight hours and not sleep at all and then go back and sleep for an hour and a half. Then I would get up and work twenty two hours again and twenty three hours again. This went on for an entire week! It was awesome! Every one of our accounts participated! They would come and help us build Santa Bags and help us do deliveries or help us in some way. Because of that, in one week we were able to deliver dental kits to thousands of homeless people this Christmas. Then we took it beyond Utah and even delivered some to Africa. People told me it wasn’t possible but we did it!
CEOCFO: For the future of Asierus, how do you scale beyond the twenty four hours a day that you have available? Mr. Simmons: I couldn’t do it without our team. I have put together a world class team and it is going to keep growing, growing and growing. If you put the right people in the right places doing the right things for the right reasons, miracles happen. We do not interview for positions. We interview people. It is different. We do not put them in a box, we take them out of the box! We figure out what their skill sets are, what their passions are, what their desires are and that is what we use. We do not have a position that we try to stuff them in, because that does not work. Then they are not passionate, as dedicated or as hard working, because all they are doing is collecting a paycheck. I want people to get up in the morning and “get to” come to work, instead of “have to” go to work.
We also have begun putting together a “think tank” we call ThinkIN, where we will bring together some of the best and brightest minds, mostly from small businesses, to develop new ideas and new tools for the future. Small business is the backbone of the economy. It’s where and most good ideas and good products come from, and where most jobs are created.
That is what we do. We do it every day. Then we just keep moving forward and moving forward and every once in a while, we glance back over our shoulder to see how far we have actually come. Normally, it is pretty far! |
“If you get the right people, in the right places, doing the right things for the right reasons, miracles happen.”- Jeremy Hale Simmons
Asierus Carefree Technology
Jeremy Hale Simmons Founder and Chief Executive Officer 801-615-4157
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Jeremy
Hale Simmons
