As many of my friends and family know, I develop websites and help plan companies online success. Most also know that I do not do all the back end programming myself. My skill set is planning and developing a team the fits each individual project, because different projects require different sets of skills and expertise.
This week I met a client about a project that required a programmer that was skilled in Oracle SQL data bases that would be used both online and offline by the clients staff. I had one programmer in mind that I had worked with in the past. I tried to call him on a phone number that I had for him, my call was answered by a voice mail system, as it was after hours. The next day when I tried to call his number again, it was answered by someone with a thick southern accent, they said he was out of the office and again transferred me to his voice mail. When I did not hear from him until two days later, I put out the call to other Oracle programmers.
I was getting myself a complimentary cup of coffee at my downtown Toronto office space, when another office space client came into the kitchen. I recognized him from previous conversations about technology, so I struck up a conversation about needing an Oracle data base specialist. He told me about a guy who he had work done by, I recognized the name as the same guy I had worked with, but the number was different. The number the other office client gave me was his direct cell number.
When I returned to my executive suites Toronto, I gave him a call. I told him about the project and asked him to come into my office for a meeting the next day. The next day we had out meeting in one of the Toronto meeting rooms at my office space Toronto. Near the end of the meeting, I brought up how difficult it was to get a hold of him through the number he lists on his website and that it was another office client who knew him that had given me his cell number. He explained to me that he was using a virtual office service that handled his calls and that he picked up his mail from a locked room in a downtown office building. It turns out that the virtual office provider he was using was not even located in Toronto, they were just piggybacking on another companies service.
I told this programmer that if he really wanted a quality Toronto virtual office at a prestigious business office, he should talk to my office space Toronto team and ask them about the virtual office Toronto solutions that they provide. I also told him to do his homework and search out virtual office reviews for the different virtual office solutions that fit his needs.