Andy designed his first website at the age of 13 after being taught hand-coded HTML in the MS-DOS editor by his father. Within two years, he had a number of clients and decided to register his own business name (Net Box) so that he could ‘properly invoice’ his first few clients.

Through his teenage years, Andy continued to work hard after school & on weekends to gain new clients through word-of-mouth referrals, having built up a number of regular clients by the time he graduated from year 12 in 1999.

With a large design portfolio but no formal training (at the time), Andy spent the Christmas holidays applying for unadvertised jobs by sending his CV to companies he found in the Yellow Pages and, to his surprise, received a number of job offers a week later.

Andy accepted the first offer and remained with the firm for over 5 years – starting out as a Desktop Support Officer and eventually ending up at the firms National Web Services Manager – until the firm sold the business in March 2006.

 

Andy then moved into a Technical Support role, providing phone, email & remote-access support to clients of a niche software development firm, based in New Zealand (with additional offices in Australia, the UK & USA). Although Technical Support was not his preferred job role, the company soon took note of Andy’s design skills and offered him the opportunity to completely overhaul & standardise  the design of their software user-interface.

From here, Andy’s tasks spread to redesigning the company website, marketing material, as well as devising & implementing a number of new advertising & marketing campaigns for the firm, such as the design & development of regular eNewsletters, online training & online knowledgebase systems which have greatly assisted the firm in being able to take on more clients without necessarily taking on more technical support staff.

 

Andy remains with this firm today and is coming up on his 6th year with them. His current role is Marketing & Branding Manager, which involves everything from designing the company tradeshow booth, managing / updating & designing the firms 7+ websites, designing / writing & tracking [the success of] regular eNewsletters, to organising the logistics behind A/V & marketing equipment for company roadshows & events.

Andy is, in essence, charged with managing & designing the firm’s global corporate image – from the on-hold music, right through to the signage, websites, Google AdWords campaigns & the company uniform.

Despite his full-time employment, Andy continues to run Big Budda Boom in his spare time, as the business has been designed to run fairly autonomously as to not conflict with his other employment. Today, Big Budda Boom provides web hosting, audio/visual & graphic design solutions to over 100 regular clients, including Watpac, Queensland Rugby, Brisbane Boys College, Leighton Contractors, Education Queensland, Metro South TAFE, Arts Queensland & Brisbane Private Hospital.

 

Further reading…