Managed IT Services, Low Voltage Cabling, Security Cameras, Business Telephones, Access Controls

It’s been a journey for me in the IT industry. I’ve got started in the IT industry during the dot com era. It was 1998, 2 years after I’ve graduated high school. I was living in New Orleans at the time. I had little or no computer skills and no college degree. I ran into an old high school friend in New Orleans. I was working as a Mechanic at the time and he was working at as auto alarm and sound system installation technician at the time. He had convince me to move to Austin TX. We were taking weekly trips to Austin for about 3 months now. I remember, we spend 1 week at our friend apartment off 35 and Runberg Ln before moving to an apartment in South Austin off Woodward St. I was very young at the time. I had no credit and very little money. We saw an ad in the news paper at a Temp Agency for voice and data cable installer, no experience necessary, and will train. We responded to the ad, went to the first day training, and so my journey into the IT industry begins. The pay was very low $10.00 per hour, but it was virtually unlimited work. I remember we were pulling north of 80 hours per week, so we made more money on overtime then we did on regular hours. It was tough, I remember feeling like zombie most of the time. I did that for about a year. During that time, I remember phone technicians making more money than me as they can work on phones. I wanted to do better, so I started taking books home and reading it. It was tough for me as I was more of a hands on person. But I was determined to learn it. After all, I barely make ends meet after paying my bills, I didn’t have the luxury of having extra money to go out after work. So I decided to spend my nights and weekend studying. About a year later, I was promoted to phone technician. Moving forward to 2002, after 911, I was deployed to Guantanamo Bay Cuba. I was a reservists at the time. During my time in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, it was interesting, there were all kinds of phones and internet issues on the based and I was the go to guy for our company. I vaguely remember there were lots of T1 and analog lines on based. During my time in Cuba, when I had down time, I was studying computers and networking. Fast forward to 2003, when we had orders to go back home. At the time, I tried to get my job back, the company I had worked for gave me back my job, but it wasn’t the same. Being gone for only 1 year, all the technology were different with phones. This was when VOIP actually started to get adopted, so my knowledge of phones were simply behind. So now, I was not a technician anymore, the company had assigned me to shadow another technician. This technician, I can did not wanted to teach me. I think there were conflict of interests. It was ok, I ended up deciding to go back to the auto industry, selling cars and fixing cars. I was miserable during this time. I was behind on bills and stressed all the time. One day I had a call from a friend that still work for my old company, he told me all the technicians had left the company, so they definitely had a decent position open for me. I’ve applied and got the position as a phone tech. I was so relieved. I didn’t have to worry about where my next meal was coming from. After all this, I’m now even more determined to never be broke again. I’ve worked hard, every chances for overtime, I’ve took it. Every chances to learn, I’ve try to learned. I was doing pretty well with this company, until they hire a new manager, that treated me pretty badly. I was angry most of the time, but more importantly for me at the time, I felted like my pride was gone. I bit the bullet and decided to go on my own. It was very scary as I had very little money. In a way, this was good for me, it made me worked harder. This was when Business Communication Solutions was born, that was in 2004. Fast forward today, we now offer computer based testing, voice data cabling services, traditional and hosted voip phone services, fiber optic installation services, and computer and network services. Looking from the outside, it may feel a bit overwhelm, but for me it has been 20 years of learning, growing, and living life.