[00:00:27] Jay: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Today, I'm lucky enough to be joined by a serial entrepreneur, Jim Aloye. Jim, how are you, buddy?
[00:00:36] Jim: Okay. How about yourself?
[00:00:37] Jay: I'm doing great, man. The weather's broken a little bit. It's not a million degrees out. summertime is starting to feel good again. So, we have a lot of stuff to talk about.
There's a lot of cool stuff. You have a lot of varied, you know, things that you've done. you're not just a, an IT guy, but, you know, a lot of different cool, Seemingly disconnected hobbies, and I'm wondering if we can find a common thread somewhere today, but take me back to where you started Where'd you grow up and did that have an impact on you being an entrepreneur?
[00:01:03] Jim: Gotcha. yeah, I grew up actually in Redding, Pennsylvania and in Strongsville, Ohio. I think that did have an impact on me. You know, we had moved and I had to get kind of adjusted to a new area. you know, at the kind of age when, you know, it's inconvenient to do so. And I think that in sort of the type a kind of fight that had to come out to Navigate through that in my childhood, I think sort of formed the entrepreneurial type a, you know, personality that I have.
So, you know, they always say that sometimes when we, you know, aren't in optimal situations, fantastic, greatness can come out of it. And I see that as kind of the, you know, the route at how I kind of started down the road I've started down,
[00:01:47] Jay: I love that.
[00:01:48] Jim: it was
[00:01:50] Jay: What was the first business you started?
[00:01:52] Jim: Aloye Computer Enterprises, the, the IT firm. and that's, you know, that's still running. And I really took a do or die approach. so I went about that a certain way and that's how I do everything.
[00:02:04] Jay: Well, tell me about that. What do you mean do or die approach?
[00:02:07] Jim: you know, basically, you set out to do something, you know, there's a lot of. Founders that, you know, they bring in, venture capital, you know, they've got a certain kind of runway, a certain time limit. And if they can't get to a certain point by a certain date, you know, it's, it's a bust and they move on the ventures that I, have started, you know, not just the it company, but some of the other ones, I look at them in a totally different fashion.
I look at that as a mission that it's going to succeed or I'm going to die. And I, you know, that's a very different kind of approach. you know, whenever you go down that road, and that's how I really approach all of the endeavors that I start. And that's why all of them get to a point where they're operational.
They become profitable and we just keep going with them. So, you know, I've I when it came to the first business the IT company I did get some outside investment I did Take, and really jump off a lot of cliffs financially, so I put myself in a position where I really had no choice, you know, but to be successful, because the alternative was ghastly, you know, so that, that approach, I think, fueled the success, you know, I developed a certain kind of work ethic, that's just carried with me, you know, ever since, so.
[00:03:23] Jay: Love that. Literally do or die. Do you remember who your first customer was and how you got them for Aloye back in the day?
[00:03:31] Jim: Yes. So, actually there were, there were, I wouldn't say there was a first customer. There was a first batch, maybe like, 10. I was heavily involved with a family of companies, called the draw family of companies. They consisted of like Draw Group, Draw Pro Services, Canyon Compressor, Aaron Pump. They were eventually bought out by Atlas Copco, and I continued providing web and application hosting for them until Atlas Copco ingested all of them. another. A company that I was working with, and doing a lot of managed services for was a company called East Tech Chemical and then Chem Tech Specialties, out of Philly. They were eventually acquired by Brentag and, you know, we continued to do a lot of application hosting and things for them until years later Brentag just kind of brought everything in house. And, the other company that, you know, really bought the entire suite of products and services that, we offered right at the beginning.
Right at the get go was, Diversified Mechanical. Now, their story was kind of interesting because they were an offshoot of the original Corbett's Corporation that pretty much built, you know, the entirety or the majority of Atlantic City. That company split into, like, five, six, or I think seven smaller companies that did specializations and, one of them was in Reading and that's, You know how they found me and we sort of, you know, went forward and did all their I.
T. Stuff. I went to college. So just to kind of make the connection, I originally was going to college for electrical engineering, but like first year in kind of switched over to C. I. S. And switched over to Alvernia College at the time. not universities a while ago because I liked how they did. C.
I. S. Compared to the other colleges in the region. And the interesting thing about Alvernia was they didn't have an IT department at the time. Their CIS program, their, you know, the professor and the students basically ran the IT, maintained all the servers. And it was a very small department. It was like me and literally two or three other guys and that was it.
So we, I scored a full time job there literally as a student. So I went to classes at night and literally got a paycheck. during the day and I did everything along with two other guys and the experience and the knowledge that I got working there as an employee was exponentially greater than the actual education.
I mean, it was a miracle at the right place at the right time and literally did everything soup to nuts from the ground up. And with that knowledge, that's really what let me go out and start the company because. Like I had it all we did. I did it all. and when I started the business, I literally started Aloye Computer Enterprises as we had two services. Dial up internet access, we're competing with AOL and CompuServe. We had our own CDs. I had numbers all over the U. S. If you go out to my Instagram, I think I even have the picture of one of the original CDs, up there and also web hosting and email. So I had a, you know, a server farm. I had a T, you know, T1 coming into the facility where we had all this stuff. And, you know, that's sort of how it started. It was a web hosting company and dial up, you know, nationwide dial up internet access, you know, and just went forward from there.
[00:06:35] Jay: Tell me a little bit about the other businesses that you started along the way. I see there's such a, you know, something about tapestry and then there's like a data. There's a, there's like, it looked like, first of all, I've never seen as many founder, CEO titles in somebody's background. And I think that I saw as yours, it was just like, every time I scrolled a little bit further, I'm like, wow, he found something else on something else and something else.
what's the brief. Run through those different companies that you've spun up along the way.
[00:07:06] Jim: Gotcha. that comes out of, if I'm going to do something of value, well, for somebody. And there is the opportunity to just redo it and keep doing it and, you know, get paid for it. That's the mindset that I've gone forward with these other things. Take the investigations company, for example. We had a client that was actually from the UK and he had some issues with his landlord about, Where he was and kind of, you know, staying and requirements to be occupying the property Certain amount, you know certain times and things like that I'm not going to go into too deep too much many detail because this ended up going to court and our Evidence dossier got him exonerated but the bottom line was they had contacted us to Pull all their Google takeout and forensic, you know, all their stuff from their, you know, the actual cell phone and tablets and basically show because this guy always had a cell phone and you know, his devices with him is watch and they just needed to show that look What you're saying is impossible because you called me.
I talked to you. It was the phone I have and guess where the phone is. It was in the frickin apartment, you know, at that time. So, you know, we went through that whole operation and produced a court dossier and essentially served as expert witness testimony there, through that. And, you know, he got kind of exonerated.
He ended up reverse kind of suing the landlord and they had to Do a whole mea culpa, you know, my bad, I'm sorry, whoops, that type of thing. And, you know, that was something that, you know, we didn't have Aloye investigations at that time, but after going through all those gyrations, I said, well, I'm sure we'll get more of this.
So we might as well, you know, stay on that up. And, you know, we had some other things come in. since then that we're more kind of investigative, type, you know, technology based investigative endeavors. so that's what we use that for. you know, the other ventures, the video game company, that was something I sort of wanted to do.
I am a, a gamer, at least back in the day I had time for it. And the genre of game, the Japanese style role playing game was something I was always interested in. So ran down that road with a geolocation, you know, kind of during the Pokemon go phase. And we got a prototype, for that up, you know, sought out some investor capital, couldn't get as much as what we were looking to.
So, you know, that sort of got put on hold. Cause I've got a lot of other things going on. but what, what did get done is the geolocation IP. So that's actually available if, you know, folks are standing up video games or, you know, they want to utilize that, you know, we definitely have, that.
Ready and raring to go and we can work with video game companies to You know kind of incorporate that into their games you know and kind of in tandem with that i've got the ebooks and the publishing So if somebody's got a game and they say look I developed this game I want to get it on ipad and ios, you know, I need to find a publisher, you know, we do that because we've done that for ios and android to be able to get the initial demo and
the initial playable Files.
So, you know, we've been through all that and, you know, we function as that for sure. you know, the other item being that, Tepa, the Apocalypse collection, I've always been interested in the book of Revelation and the apocalypse. I like the artwork, from the, tapestry, from, you know, Andreas, France.
and it was also the, graphics are not copywritten, you know, they're ancient. so, you know, you can use those in a way that's not, copyright, you know. Violative or whatever the the word is for that So I was able to sort of make a clothing and home products line with Those you know graphics kind of on there and designs which you know is it's kind of an interesting niche it seems like those get sold my gut is because i've been in one of the airbnb's of Somebody that actually bought them. my gut is it's a certain kind of aficionado that likes older, I want to say Indiana Jones style, ancient Greek, you know, they typically have their homes or offices decorated with, you know, what looked like replica artifacts from different periods of time, and these, you know, pillows and different things just sort of fit right in with that decor.
So, you know, they're pretty cute. They're buying them, they're not, you know, they're not buying them like it's an everyday brand, but there's definitely, you know, a decent amount of sales going on, so I would imagine that it's, you know, there's a certain type of individual that sort of fancies that stuff, and, you know, I think that's that. Yeah, we've got a, a comic book, kind of a rare comic book operation, I'm a big fan of, you know, what I would call night type, you know, Batman style comics, and, the Anna Ishikawa She Gallery, it was a very interesting niche comic book, that was created by a gentleman named Billy Tucci up in New York, it was a female, you know, hero, there's some Catholicism and, you know, a religious conversion in the mix.
I'm a big theology buff. I like, you know, the apocalypse, writings and different things like that. So there are some interwoven, themes between the Catholic faith, you know, the kind of heroic, you know, work by day, you know, fight the bad guys by night. And, you know, that sort of ties together, a common thread there. you know, and other things, you know, we've got some property we rent out. So I figure what we'll just establish a property company. you know, at some point we'll acquire more and just load that in there. And, you know, I've always taken the position where if I'm going to do something, you know, I'm going to do it and we might as well stand something up and. You keep doing it.
[00:12:31] Jay: I love that I do love that a lot. What do you think the difference is between a serial entrepreneur like yourself and a One off entrepreneur that just has one business and that's all they do
[00:12:44] Jim: I mean, I look at things from a very different perspective. and I'm not quite sure how that came about. you know, but I'm way outside the box on just how I think, how I operate, how I look to make everything into an opportunity. And I really think that it's a mindset. you know, you're going through life a certain way.
You're looking and analyzing reality a certain way. I don't know if it's something that you're born with, if it's a choice that you make, if you just kind of get there somehow, you know, without deliberately choosing, but everything I do. You know, I'm kind of looking at, you know, can I redo this?
And if I'm going to do it, let me do it in a way that I can repackage and redo it a hundred, a thousand, you know, a million times, you know, moving forward, you know, can I, you know, I've got some like backend staff that deal with the technology, keep the servers running, keep the lights on and stuff like that, you know?
So is it something that I can kind of bundle one hand to them and just have them, you know, continue to work in their, you know, normal process for the way things are. And, I've just always operated like that. So if you were to say, is that the difference? I mean, the folks that don't do that obviously don't have, you know, don't have these different types of endeavors.
[00:13:54] Jay: So, What's your main business today? is it the IT managed
[00:13:58] Jim: yeah, it's the, yeah. It's the technology company. there's a lot of clients, you know, we've got them up in managed services. I've got a small team that, you know, services them and does all of that. And, you know, that. That just continues, you know, current clients buy more stuff, you know, new ones come on and get on board.
And so it's a light touch operation. You know, I'm not really involved in the day to day with it because it's been stood up for quite some time. but that is the, essentially the bread and butter.
[00:14:22] Jay: do you keep your sales pipeline full for that if you're Hands off. Do you have sales folks that are out there generating and converting leads for you? Are you doing the biz dev side of it? Like what? How do you do
[00:14:34] Jim: I've adopted, you know, the business models changed over the years. There was a period where I was, you know, aggressively seeking out clientele. That's actually changed with more of a partnership model. So we've got a couple partnerships where we literally created a new business entity with You know, like the owner of a marketing company or the owner of a kind of an I.
T services company that didn't have access to infrastructure and all this other stuff. And, you know, the partnership is what's like, you know, 70 30 60 40. And, you know, we do all the infrastructure, the bookkeeping, kind of the finance and, you know, we'll swing on a chandelier and do all of the, you know, major stuff. As need be, but you know, they're the ones that are out there bringing the new customers in, you know, they sort of bring it into the partnered entity, you know, they manage the relationship and, you know, interact with the tech folks and kind of get things provisioned. And, you know, that's how we move forward.
So there's a number of those out there and, you know, they're just, you know, filling stuff up and I'm always looking for more folks that are interested in that type of, you know, type of arrangement, and it's worked pretty good.
[00:15:41] Jay: Yeah, that's a great point how do you go about approaching a partnership like that? Like how do you find the right people and how do you keep them? Interested enough because they have to sell your product and services, right? Even if it's a joint venture They still have to and is that just kind of?
Picking off some of their incoming customers as they come in and they go, Oh, yeah, this would be a great fit for this other thing you want to do.
[00:16:08] Jim: Yeah, so, some of them, you know, the, I mean, they've always come to me and I've sort of, you know, vetted and kind of analyzed, you know, who is this, what, you know, but the ones that we've actually established with, you know, they've had a preexisting customer base was actually a need, you know, they're paying these different companies to do something and they're thinking, well, what if I did this?
Well, I can't do it. I don't have the money. I don't have the knowledge. I don't have the infrastructure. Maybe there's somebody out there that's open to this sort of thing and they're not. To. They're not massive with bureaucracy and red tape. You know, if there's another owner like myself that I can find, and that's how they've come in.
And that's kind of how the, you know, the partnership materialized, you know, is they've got a client base and they're, they just. Basically package all our stuff and now they're they're using it You know instead of giving it to go daddy or giving it to google, you know direct or giving it to other companies, you know, it's theirs. you know through Aloye computer enterprises So they get a you know, they get a piece of the pie And they solve the need of now They don't have to send the client anywhere else then and when the client's talking outside there's other People talking to them too, you know, so they keep the client and then all the other stuff is able to get up You know bundled and provided right along with it.
[00:17:20] Jay: Got it. Very cool.
Let's jump to the mystery question. We'll end with that today. And I'm curious where this goes because you don't seem like a guy who sits on his hands and doesn't do something that he wants to do, but if there was anything you could do on planet earth. And he knew you couldn't fail. Non business related.
What would it be?
[00:17:51] Jim: Oh, wow, non business related. Okay. that's a
[00:17:53] Jay: That's the curveball. That's the curveball. Everybody goes, I'll have the biggest business in the world. But you can't cheat with that one.
[00:17:59] Jim: So, I think what I would do is I would somehow, build a cloaked or a stealthed, low flying, slow flying, bus type helicopter, and I'd fly it into a metro area Off radar, you couldn't even see it, and I'd have myself and probably some other folks dressed up as extraterrestrials and we'd parachute out of the, you know, cloaked environment and sort of get into the masses and start, you know, introducing ourselves and socializing and,
[00:18:33] Jay: may be the most fun answer I've ever heard. I don't think anybody will even ever beat that. That is the funniest And, most unique idea, a slow flying invisible bus to just mess with people about having first contact.
[00:18:58] Jim: And I do it yearly. You'd know it's gonna happen, you'd never know what city,
[00:19:04] Jay: You do like comic books, man. This seems like a good comic book, story arc. I think I can see where this one grew out of. Very cool man. Well, Jim, you've been great. if you want people to reach out to you, if they want to talk to you, what's the best way for them to do that? And then if they want to find Aloye or any of your other 75 million, business entities, what's the best way to kind of, to get in touch?
[00:19:26] Jim: Sure, if they go to jimAloye. com, they can get to the site that's sort of the entrepreneurial site, and if they scroll down, there's a tile to each of the businesses down there.
If they want to go directly to the IT company, it's Aloye. com.
same as my last name, A L O Y E dot com.
[00:19:46] Jay: Alright, we'll link that in the show notes. Well, Jim, man, very impressive guy. thank you for sharing some of your thoughts today. I think the partnerships thing is really I think some of the stuff you talked about there, especially spinning up a separate entity, is something we haven't talked about before, so I think that's a really cool kind of tidbit.
just in general with Tern, everything you do that may not be a main vein of your business has the opportunity to be its own company. I think that's a great idea and I think, you know, maybe some people pick up on that. So, thanks for joining us today, buddy, and we'll talk again soon, alright?
[00:20:18] Jim: All right, thank you for having me.
[00:20:19] Jay: Thanks, Jim. See you then. Later.
