Thirty years in IT, and I still answer the phone
I look after the IT for small businesses around Sydney that don't have anyone in-house to do it.
Hello, I'm John
I started in IT when support meant reading the manual, or ringing someone who had. If you needed to send logs, you faxed them. Thirty years later I sell a fax product, which tells you something about how slowly some things change and how quickly everything else does.
Since then: IT support, then support at Veritas and Symantec, then consulting, and now working for myself. A fair bit of government work along the way, and I still hold an NV1 federal security clearance. Plenty of overnight jobs putting things back together that broke at the worst possible time.
I went out on my own to lead a quieter life. That has not happened. What I got instead was a better one. Small businesses treat value differently to corporates, and you end up meeting people rather than sitting in rooms full of job titles.
I'm based in Pemulwuy, out in Sydney's west. A lot of the work happens remotely, but when something needs a person standing in front of it, I come out. When you ring, you get me, not a queue and not a ticket number.
Let's ConnectI'll tell you if it isn't worth doing
I got tired of watching small businesses get sold services and products they didn't need, and sometimes didn't even want. So I do it the other way around. If something isn't worth doing, I'll say so.
Nothing ties you in
No lock-in contracts and no minimum spend. Some businesses have me on call every week, others ring twice a year. Both are fine, and neither gets treated differently when something breaks.
About the AI thing
Everyone wants AI at the moment, and some of that is fear of missing out. I'll give you an honest answer about whether it's going to help you, because sometimes it isn't.
Where it does help, it's the biggest shift I've seen since smartphones. The good version of it isn't clever technology. It's sitting down with someone, understanding one workflow properly, and turning five hours a week into thirty minutes. That's the whole trick.
I spent years wishing we'd had this fifteen years ago. Now it's here, 2026 has been relentless, and keeping up with it takes most of my week. Not the quiet life I had planned, but a good problem to have.
What you actually get
Plain English
You get told what went wrong and what I did about it, in words you can repeat to your accountant without checking anything first.
Knowing what to ignore
Thirty years is mostly useful for telling the difference between a warning that matters and one that has been sitting there since 2019.
Turning up
Most things get fixed remotely. When they can't, someone drives out, and that someone is me.
Want to talk it over?
Tell me what's annoying you about your IT and I'll tell you whether I can help. If I can't, I'll usually know who can.
Get in touch