Taking Away the Headaches: An Interview with Curt Coenen and Belinda Casper of Healthy Living Moxie
What would you do if the work computer you rely on for everything—you know the one—suddenly decided not to turn on? Without backups in place, how many files, contacts, and critical programs would your business lose access to?
This is exactly what happened to Curt Coenen and Belinda Casper.
“Mine was a brand new laptop,” says Belinda. “It had all my files, presentations, and information on it. And suddenly, it just decided not to work anymore. I lost everything!”
“My ‘uh oh!’ moment was when I turned on my computer and nothing happened,” Curt adds. “But I had a laptop that a lot of people thought was run by steam power, it was that old.”
File sharing is one of the biggest issues the team at Grand Technology Solutions hears about from small business owners—and one of the easiest for us to fix.
Curt and Belinda are the duo behind Healthy Living Moxie, a wellness company that provides healthy living lifestyles to everyday people.
“We provide holistic options to give people vitality and energy in a variety of ways,” Belinda says. “We believe that the body has the ability to heal itself, and we give people those natural options to allow their bodies to heal.”
In Jacksonville, Curt and Belinda provide yoga therapy, massage therapy, and BEMER circulation treatments, but they also support a network of other practitioner teams around the country. They realized they needed help with IT when supporting that national network’s IT needs turned into a full-time job.
“It’s not like the corporate world I came from, where I had staff members who managed each of those different functions—IT and hardware and all of that,” Belinda says. “Now that we’re small business owners, we became those people who had to know everything.”
Curt found GTS through a networking group, where he met Paul.
“He struck me as a guy who really knew what he was talking about,” Curt says. “When I had questions about IT concerns, he had simple, knowledgeable answers. At that point, we’d had enough ‘Uh oh!’ moments to realize, maybe it was time to incorporate somebody like Paul into our system.”
“Because we are small business partners, Curt will have files on his laptop, and I’ll have files on mine, and our team members have their files across the country,” Belinda explains. “We all need to be able to share those files at any time.”
One of the first things the GTS team set up was a file-storage system with automatic backups. Working with their national teams, Curt and Belinda could arrange a streamlined, easy-to-use database that any team member could access from anywhere in the country.
“After working with Paul and GTS, we have the ability to share those folders and files with team members instead of having to attach a file to an email for every person’s individual request,” Belinda says. “That is huge!”
“Yes, we had to do all the file management and movement, but he gave us the ability to avoid situations where Curt’s in one room in the house and I’m in another, and we’re emailing each other files we need to get our jobs done,” she adds. “It’s not the case anymore that I can’t do something because the files I need are on his computer and he’s not here.”
The team at Healthy Living Moxie sees these new GTS systems as the reason why they’ve been able to boost productivity and cut down on headaches.
“Working with GTS really helps with frustration levels,” Curt says. “We don’t waste any more time or energy waiting for somebody to get back to the office, log into their computer, and send us a file we couldn’t access from ours. It’s been a great solution for us.”
“I no longer fear IT issues!” Belinda adds. “Instead, it’s, ‘Just call Paul.’ Whatever it is, he’ll fix it.”
One thing Curt and Belinda noticed before working with GTS was that many IT providers in their networking groups were only interested in working with “bigger” businesses with ten or more people on staff.
“I have not met anyone in my other networking engagements who are willing to work with the one- and two-person shops like ours,” Belinda says. “I think that created a stigma that business owners have today, that they are too small. The fee that we pay is nominal compared to the peace of mind we have. We don’t need to know everything about IT. We don’t need to have the fear of not having the backup, because we have everything in the network and it’s taken care of. We don’t need to have that fear of having any kind of technical issues. And to me, that’s a great insurance policy to have.”
Before he became part of Healthy Living Moxie, Curt spent more than forty years in the photography business, owning and operating his own studio.
“I had a business advisor that started working with me when my studio was literally in its infancy,” he remembers. “And one of the first things that he said to me is, ‘If you want your business to be a big business, then you have to treat it like a big business from the very beginning.’ What that meant is that you need to put in the tools and methodology that a big business would use early on, and use those to ‘grow into’ what you want your business to be–rather than trying and failing and going in different directions because you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Because of the new system Healthy Living Moxie has in place, Curt and Belinda find it much easier to offer support to their teams—not just here in Jacksonville, but across the country.
“We can help our teams, and give them everything they need, quickly and more efficiently than ever before,” Curt says. “We’re seeing exponentially faster growth. We would recommend Paul in a heartbeat!”
“And we have!” Belinda adds. “I have recommended several of my friends who own small businesses and sole proprietor operations to go to Paul, because Grand Technology Solutions really does take away that headache of having to understand what needs to happen in IT.”
“We’d recommend GTS to anyone that is having issues, from an individual to a small business,” Curt continues. “Paul is fantastic. He knows his stuff, and he’s got a quirky humor about him, which we love. It’s always a pleasure working with him, since he’s always happy to help you out. That’s a unique quality in today’s business world—finding somebody who wants to take on your problem and fix it, and do it with good humor.”
To learn more about Curt, Belinda, and the health and wellness offerings of Healthy Living Moxie, visit their website at www.healthylivingmoxie.com.
To learn more about Grand Technology Solutions and the ways we can help you boost your business, give us a call at (904) 606-6011 or email info@helpgts.com. We’re here to listen, and we’re here to help!
