Blogging, you silly geese.
My name is David Baldini and I am the Vice President and CFO of integrateIT LLC. Unless you and I have been friends for a while, you have probably never heard of my company. We are an IT consulting company with a niche in portfolio management based in Northern Virginia.
So who am I and where did I come from? I graduated from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia in 2003. I believe I finished somewhere around 310 of 330 students, but I’m okay with that. After graduation, I moved to Northern Virginia and worked for some big consulting companies such as KPMG, Accenture, and Booz Allen. After realizing that working for multiple people was miserable, I decided it would be easier to work for one person, and joined integrateIT where I met Geoff Keller, our President and CEO, in January of 2006. It seemed like a great idea to join a company of two with a single contract, seeing as I was getting married about five months later. This is probably a good time to mention Jenny, the other (and most important) CEO in my life. Jen runs our family and without her, there is no chance I could do what I do on the company side, because she literally takes care of everything else. Outside of integrateIT, I am the father of Jake (age 4) and future Son (age 8 months in belly). I am a huge sports fan (Redskins and Wizards), music fan (Bon Jovi, 80s hair metal, Creed, and other bands no one else respects), and fan of degeneracy (casinos, professional wrestling, my idiot friends). I will supplement future columns of this blog with tales of the aforementioned awesomeness.
And now, the company. integrateIT has been in business for 10 years, and has grown to 22 full time employees, which in itself is a great success. Geoff and I take great pride in our business. It is our baby. It is our goal to nurture, grow, and sustain our business no matter what the day or state of the industry brings. We care about our employees. The commitment they have made to trust their careers in our hands is one that Geoff and I would never take lightly. I truly believe that we work for them as much as they work for us.
But with all great successes come great challenges and obstacles. I can honestly say that no two days of running this company are alike. Running the company is more than a full time job. You never have to “turn it on” because you never really “turn it off”. Other than our families, it is the first thing we think about in the morning, and the last thing we think about at night. When you are a small business owner, you truly are accessible 24/7/365, wearing whatever hat is needed at the time. There is always an employee that needs assistance, a meeting that needs taken, a call that needs returned, an interview that needs conducted, a bill that needs paid, or an email that needs written. Oh yeah, and I need to work my full time job on client site as well. And the industry? Well, that changes daily too, what with the next furlough, sequestration cut, administration change, hot technology, and the like.
So what is the point of this blog? To make you read about me as much as possible of course. But other then that, it is to communicate with anyone who is interested in any aspect of business, whether it be how to operate a business, lead a business, grow within a business, or step away from a business. I hope to learn more about myself in these posts, just as I hope you all learn a bit about me.
David M Baldini 