When I started working for myself in 2013, I wanted to keep things simple. I was one person, usually working for one client at a time, typically as a 1099 contractor. And frankly, I wasn’t sure how long I would stick with it, or whether I would close up shop and go back to being an employee as quickly as I had begun this adventure. So I didn’t see any compelling reason to form a legal entity for my company. Most of my sales and marketing consisted of word-of-mouth recommendations, so I wasn’t terribly concerned with branding.
I did some research and found that I could operate as a sole proprietor without an LLC or even a DBA, if I based my business name around my own name. As long as I could keep things legal and above board, operating under my own name and avoiding paperwork seemed to suit me just fine.
Over the years, I learned a lot about the industry, about my clients, and business in general. I got to work with some great people on some amazing projects, both large and small, and my little business has grown. I started out mostly doing contract software development, helping clients extend the functionality of existing in house web applications.
We still do that, but we do a lot of other things now, too. We do technical consulting and code analysis, advising clients on difficult technology decisions. We build enterprise integration solutions, tying together modern SaaS products, legacy databases, and even industrial automation hardware, to make sure clients have the data they need when and where they need it. We build cross-platform applications that work on the web browser, desktop, and mobile platforms. And we are even starting to work on our own products (stay tuned for more on that soon).
Not only that, where I used to be a one man operation, I now have a team supporting me, with a wide variety of skills and specialties. So it’s not just me anymore.
The name “James Adams Technology Consulting” just didn’t fit anymore. It was time for something different. Throughout all the various types of projects we have worked on, the common thread has been empowering our clients. Our clients are on their own missions to change the world, and we can’t do that for them, but we can provide solutions that make them more efficient, and multiply the impact of their efforts. As I thought about this, I became slightly obsessed with one of man’s oldest inventions: the lever. As a business owner, you provide the lever and the force applied to it, trying to move whatever heavy object is impeding your path. But we provide a fulcrum; it’s a small and unimpressive object, but when placed properly it allows you to exert the same force as before and easily move what was once immovable.
The other thing I noticed was that being an extremely small company (even though I have a team now, it’s still a small team), we are able to move quickly, and to adapt to our clients’ needs. We handle projects as small as troubleshooting a client’s Google API script, and as large as custom multi-platform SaaS applications. We have expertise in a wide array of technologies, and the ability to quickly acquire competence in any others. We use Agile development methodologies that allow us to quickly adapt to changes in project requirements. We go to great lengths to be flexible and meet our clients’ needs.
So from the lever metaphor, I grabbed the word “fulcrum,” and from our trademark flexibility, I grabbed the word “dynamic,” and thus Fulcrum Dynamic was born.
We are still the same small team, committed to meeting our clients needs with well-crafted technology solutions. You will still deal directly with the owner when planning your project, accepting delivery, discussing billing questions, and receiving follow up support, but now we’ve got a cool name and logo, which we hope better reflects our mission and our team.
As part of the re-brand, we of course have the new website fulcrumdynamic.com and the new email address listed above. Any links to the old adamsnet.info web site will redirect to the new site. Likewise, any email sent to the old adamsnet.info domain will be redirected to the new fulcrumdynamic.com domain. At some point, we may get rid of the old domain, but it will not be any time soon. Right now, the new site is mostly just a copy of the old one, with changed logos and names, but we have some improvements in the pipeline for the web site, so stay tuned for that.
If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to me directly via phone () or email ().