You may or may not know, my company does more than just offer hypnotherapy, hypnosis training and hypnosis audio products… We also help hypnosis professionals, hypnotherapists and other therapists develop their websites, build their business online and earn extra income, attract more clients using the internet.Our team here, led by my business partner Keith Watson, has many years of experience and much dynamism to really help people take their businesses to the next level.
During a recent conversation with Keith, he told me all about the first website he put up, and I just had to share it with you all, so I asked him to write up the tale and we put it on our ezine yesterday and I thought I’d share it here too. To celebrate it being 20 years since Keith’s first ever website, we have an offer available on our audio products, noted at the end of Keith’s article… But if you are also interested in our web services, go and visit tour web services page on this website for more information and get in touch with us or there’s is other web cloud services like www.delta-comtech.co.uk that work with microsoft software online or others.
Anyway, here is Keith’s article, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did:
20 years, ago in May 1992 I was working out in Oman as a Nursing Officer.
I was helping to commission a new University Hospital in Muscat Oman Sultan Qaboos University Hospital, and my wife was working as a sister on the children’s ward there.
But something else happened in May of that year…
I put up my first website. It was a long, slow process uploading using a 14K (very slow) modem onto an American server via a very poor telephone line. In fact, I remember it took me nearly all night to load just a few pages and a few photos. Loading this website absolutely changed my life and came about totally by accident.
The World Wide Web as we know it was really born in 1991, and the first adopters of the technology were the military and universities. Early in 1992, a friend of mine working over in the university main building invited me over to see something. What I witnessed was actually the first internet communication that I had seen, using a bulletin board to send messages to another university in the US. I couldn’t quite get my head around what was happening, but was fascinated.
A couple of months later, I was in on holiday in the UK and visited a friend of mine, George, in Leominster, who had an antiques business with very expensive furniture. It was recession time in the UK and he was telling me how hard it was for his business at that time, especially as the Americans were his market. I then rather foolishly tried to explain to him that I had seen something called the Internet and that I understood that the Americans were beginning to use for commercial advertising.
What I was proposing to him was that I would take some pictures and descriptions of his furniture and go back to Muscat and try to put up a website. The explanation went totally over his head and he said that he didn’t know what I was talking about, but go ahead if you think it will help.
I, of course, didn’t have a clue how to put up a website and began to panic. I went all around London trying to find a book about the internet, but more specifically about making websites. I finally found one by an American author called Laura Lemay. So armed with the book, photos and some text, I headed back to Muscat to see what I could do.
By today’s standards, you would hardly call it a website, but gradually it came together. There was, in fact, very little that you could do, as there were very few tags (for those of you who understand HTML) and the site was just wall-to-wall text with the odd photo thrown in. Reasonable layout and colour were impossible — everything was just black text on a grey background. I quickly found out that the photos had to be small in size, as Internet connections were very slow in those early years, which is hardly the best way to display antique furniture.
Anyway, despite the small images, my efforts were richly rewarded, as my friend was called by various American antique dealers within days of the site going live, and he had visits from dealers as a result of the website. There were very few internet competitors out there then, and a UK antiques business site aimed at Americans was a perfect match. Mind you, how those dealers found the site is still a mystery to me, as there were also no search engines then either.
George didn’t begin to understand what had happened or how it had worked, and frankly he didn’t care, as it was the results that mattered to him. It saved his business basically. o he phoned me and asked me if I could do the same for some of his antique dealer friends. My second website was about ‘grandfather clocks’ and the third was for ‘fourposter beds’.
So, there was I in the Middle East, putting together websites for British businesses and uploading them to American servers. I knew that life had changed forever, and decided that it was a future that I would be interested in developing.
In 1996, I returned to the UK to start a business in web design and I set up a business called Dorset Web, which I eventually sold to my business partner. I’ve just had a look and it is still an active site — hey, I love it (well done, Tony).
I stopped counting when I got to 2000 websites (which was about four years ago) that I have been involved in developing.
In many ways the internet is one of the most challenging businesses you can be involved in, because it is constantly changing. My son, who was just one year old when I put up that first website, is now finishing university this year and communicates with me via Skype and Facebook — what an amazing change in lifestyle. One of my colleagues, Rob, who seems to have worked with me forever and does most of the practical technical stuff for me these days, was seven years old when I put up that antique site (pun intended).
But the internet changes just go on and on, and only yesterday I was looking at a new bit of technology that I think we should be adopting on Adam’s site. I think I sometimes make Adam dizzy with all things I’m wanting to do, but I am well aware of the problem that you really do need to stay ahead of the curve with a technology that is moving on so fast.
It was a major shift for me from nursing to a business running the Internet but the important thing is that I have loved both careers just as much as each other. At least with this business I do not need to retire now, and I’m glad about that as I just love this work and for sure I know will keep my brain active.
What I like about working with Adam and other therapists is that I am able to combine my interest in health with all this Internet techy stuff. A healthy, sorted-out mind is the most powerful driving force to a healthy lifestyle and life success.
So, to mark 20 years, with Adam’s permission, we are going to celebrate by offering 20% discount on all items in our store throughout May, starting Thursday 3rd May.
Enjoy, and here’s to the next 20 years — I wonder what they will bring?
Thanks for that Keith — and have a great weekend everyone, I shall be firewalking this evening and will be back here after the bank holiday.
