Tim Whitfield: Building a Techy: How to put the tech in Techy, Part Five

Part Four

My wife and I got married in 2006.  We love Disneyland.  We are there so often that people start to think that we live there.  There is some truth in that because after we got married we bought into the Disney Vacation Club which allows us to have a home away from home on Disney property.

When Brian Mortensen got married to Jill, it was an awesome party.  I had known of Alex McCabe for several years but never really befriended him. I remember attending his wedding, but can’t remember really ever talking to him.  Amy was tired that night as I believe she was asleep.  It was the after party at the hotel and we all had a good time.  Alex and his wife Melody wanted to go explore Angels Camp and I decided to be designated driver since I wasn’t drinking.

We went down the street to the downtown district and looked at the statues of the jumping frogs and decided we needed something to remember this night by.  We decided that we would borrow (not take) a street sign.  The street sign we chose was asking to be borrowed because it wasn’t even on its post very tight.  I drove the getaway vehicle as inebriated Alex ran and grabbed the sign off of the corner of Mark Twain Ave and Fair View Street.  It was fun.  We still have these signs and someday they will be displayed in the Corporate Headquarters of our company.

Somehow the subject of Disneyland came up and Amy and I were going in two weeks and staying in the Concierge level of Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel as part of our timeshare system.  Alex and Melody love going to Disneyland and were annual pass holders also.  I invited them to come along.

The whole way there (it was three o clock in the morning the wives were asleep) we talked about our past and business philosophies and our individual projects that we had been working on until this point. It didn’t take us long to notice that we wanted a lot of the same thing out of life.  Alex took particular interest to a concept of mine where I was attempting to create a community blog.  MeetMerced.com was the concept and the goal was to create an online community of bloggers and others who could come together to support and shape the new Merced.  To this day, this project, still in its infancy, is on our minds.  We had a blast at Disneyland and by the end of the trip I asked Alex to help me with MeetMerced. He didn’t refuse.

It took about 3 months to finally realize that Alex was a good fit for a partnership, especially when I started thinking about the future of the little company that had evolved from WIWC, ICTS and now Whitfield Enterprises.  I officially asked Alex to be my partner in business sometime in August of 2007 and we hashed out a plan over the phone for what we wanted to do.  We were going to change the way businesses and organizations get websites.  We wanted to create affordable high tech websites from the ground up.  We wanted to make sure that our customers could continue to utilize their websites long after the design is done and the website is active.  We wanted to create a work environment where creativity flows freely and our employees were number one.  We needed a name.  I happened to own the domain name SunnyDayOnline.com which was going to be a portal for the Cattle Industry.  Since the Sunny Day name held sentimental value for both of us because of our involvement with Sunny Day Shorthorns, we went with it.

On April 1, 2008, we formally organized an LLC to be the holding company for all of the little businesses that we envision and are going to create.  Sunny Day Online is a Whitfield Enterprises, LLC company.  It is now 2010.  I've come a long way since 1997.  The era of Asbury Honey Farms, Apple IIe computers and Frontpage is gone.  We now design with web 2.0 and search engine optimization in mind.  We are growing faster than we ever dreamed and we are thankful for that, especially in this economic climate.  We also welcomed Marc Mortensen into our Company yesterday as our first "official" employee.

Our business will someday be multifaceted with many different divisions and hopefully many employees.  For now though, we just keep moving forward because behind us is the past and in front of us is the future and our future is bright!

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