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If you can make it to the end of this blog, I’ll give you a free, professional self-help book, available on Amazon for $9.99. That’s how much I believe in what I’m writing here.

Some of you know that I was a Technology Instructor at Rockland BOCES for the past 19 years. I do it mainly because I love it. My Grandfather used to say about me “Put him in front of an audience, and he’s in his glory.”

Of course, I always try to make it valuable. My method has always been to first inspire, then inform, followed by one-on-one adjustments. It takes more time, but it seems to me to be a more effective, consistent method.

This year, due to the need for increased attention on our companies Rockland Web Design, RocklandNews.com and RockWeb Systems, I decided to step down (for now) from teaching at BOCES. I love it, but prepping, traveling, teaching and recuperating definitely draws away my energy for the focus I need to drive the companies forward.

When I started teaching in 2001, I was a vastly different person. I didn’t run two companies, serve on a bunch of local Boards, and didn’t have the responsibility of paying a talented team of web developers, graphic designers, content writers, videographers and programmers. I love it, but it takes a lot of time and care to do it right. I also like my 7 hours of sleep per night.

So, as Einstein said (paraphrased) “energy can not be created nor destroyed. It can only change into different forms.”

Starting September 2022, I’ll be devoting that educational energy to teaching inside the companies – showing people how to work smarter, not harder – so that they can continually aim toward the lives they each envision.

Joining me on this journey is my esteemed colleague and friend Irene Gutmann – with whom I’ve co-hosted with on her radio show The Coaching Corner (2008-2012), and currently co-host with on our podcast Work Smarter, Not Harder.

In addition to the podcast, beginning 9/20/2022 – I’ll be hosting a series of new, free workshops within the North Rockland Chamber of Commerce, which will show startup and solo business owners how to grow a company, organization or cause.

The topics will be varied. Here is a sampling of some of the topics I will be covering:

• Software Topics
  • Using (Microsoft Word)
  • Using PowerPoint (Presentations)
  • Using QuickBooks (Online Financial Management)
  • Using Excel and Google Sheets (Spreadsheets)
  • Using Canva and Photoshop (Graphics)
  • Using Promo and Premiere (Video)
  • Advanced Zoom (Meetings)
    
• Business Topics
  • Creating Policies & Procedures Manual
  • Cutting Company Costs
  • Using QuickBooks Online
  • Pricing Strategies for 2023
    
• Professional Sales – Strategies & Tactics
  • Using a CRM
  • Creating referral pipelines
  • Generating Leads
  • Using Sales Scripts
  • Creating Compelling Offers
  • Closing rates (Initial and follow up)
  • Increasing Frequency of Purchase by Customers
  • Reactivating Former Customers
    
• Digital Marketing (2023)
  • The basics: Website, business cards, and a nice shirt.
  • Creating a Market Dominating Position
  • Fostering Trust, Expertise, Education
  • Bundling Your Services
  • Drip campaigns
  • Publicity and PR
  • Building an Online Company

The first workshop will be at the Stony Point Pancake Factory, Tuesday Sept 20 at 7:45 am, hosted by the North Rockland Chamber of Commerce.

I hope you’ll join us on this journey. You have my word I will endeavor to make it fun, useful and valuable.

Are you ready for your free book?

In 2016 I wrote a book called “How to Program Your Life”, which outlined essential steps to starting, growing and running a business. It’s still available on Amazon for $9.99.

But I’d like to give it to you for free.

It’s not the perfect book. But it’s chock full of wisdom and stories from the first part of my journey as a serial entrepreneur, from 2007 to 2016. I hope you will enjoy it.

If you want to learn more after you read the book, feel free to contact us, and we’ll give you more cool things to help you grow in your professional journey. After all – that’s where the fun is.

Click here to get the book How to Program Your Life, as well as an additional free offer.

A few months ago, we posted a bunch of domains that we own that we don’t want anymore. We bought them over 10 years’ time, on a set of random whims.

We landed on RocklandNews.com about 2 years ago, so in addition to our web design and maintenance divisions, our 2-year strong news company is keeping up very busy!

So – if you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, or a business/organization that needs a better domain name, perhaps we have something for you that will help.

There’s a ton of available domains. A lot of good names we’ve picked up over the years. But hey — we can’t develop everything. As Clint Eastwood said, we gotta know our limitations. So we’re putting them on AFTERNIC.com.

You can still pick one up! Visit our AfterNIC.com profile to view available domains!

Start your business with the right domain name!

Below is the list of domains, with their retail appraisal value according to GoDaddy.com. Obviously, that’s the so-called retail price. You can get the domains for a more affordable amount. Especially if you’re a local company, organization or cause in Rockland County, NY.

If you are interested in any of these domains, please contact us and we can get you connected with a representative from AFTERNIC. You can make a qualified minimum bid, below retail.

Effective August 31, 2022 – @rocklandwebdesign.com will no longer be used for business correspondence on projects, tasks or inquiries.

This post has been long overdue. But, better late than never. If you are a customer of RocklandWeb, please read the important information below.

After 2 years of detailed work and settings adjustments, RocklandWeb has launched its new project management system!

This does mean some changes are coming, and we hope you will be kind enough to help us make the transition smoothly!

Effective August 31st, we will be shutting down all our @rocklandwebdesign.com email addresses. Emails will now go to and from @rocklandweb.com addresses.

In the interest of efficiency, we have also created a new support portal, the details of which we will send to each of our clients. (We’re keeping it secret – we hate spam)

Further: Using our new project system (a combination of Basecamp.com and Hey.com – we will be making it a lot easier to handle your assignments and support requests! Here’s how.

1. Each customer will receive a unique email address to send questions during projects. These will filter into your Basecamp project portal.

(Example: client@rockwebsystems.com, project@rockwebsystems.com, etc.)

2. All new or existing work assignments by new, existing or prospective clients must be loaded to https://rocklandweb.com/support. The password is the current year.

3. Our team members will respond directly to, and handle your requests, via your unique email address. The address will forward to your main email.

We’re doing this because we feel that email is broken. It is an inefficient way of handling multiple projects at once, which can sometimes lead to a lot of delays and frustration by you, the customer. It is our commitment to improve our service to you, and we feel this will be a major step forward.

Please note your account with RocklandWeb must be active and in good standing to initiate new work assignments.

In conclusion: Thank you. It’s been a great journey thus far these past 15 years. We appreciate your loyalty, and look forward to another 15 years of service to our valued clients, along with our new, developing platforms for our region: 

• RocklandNews.com 
• RocklandShopping.com

…and we’re just getting started.

Thomas C. Ossa
RockWeb Systems Inc.
(845) 877-7333

Reach up to 20,000 North Rockland Community area residents per week. Stats below.

Thanks for visiting.

We’ll get right to the point – we have an advertising program that can give your local brand thousands of views more per month. Here’s some stats from August 2022:

To learn more, watch the brief video above, and download this PDF to follow along with the presentation.

After watching, if you would like to sign up or learn more, fill out the form below.

Thanks for your time! We look forward to working with you. =)

by Tom Ossa, CEO
RockWeb Systems Inc.
(845) 877-7333

Dear valued client of RocklandWeb:

Please read this entire message.

Due to rising costs, we have made the difficult decision to increase the price of our various services by an average of 15%. This will take effect on July 1st, 2022.

As an example, our long-held standard hosting price of $39.95 per month (price has not increased for 6 years) must now be increased to $49.99 per month, a rise of 20%. On the flip side, single hour WordPress programming rates will rise from $99.95 to $109.95, an increase of approximately 10%.

Certain legacy hosted accounts will be increased to a lower amount than above. The percentage rise might differ, but no by more than 10% over average.

We are not making this decision lightly. We know the economic shifts of the past 2.5 years have been a burden. We hope you know that in making this decision, we are aiming to enhance that quality of your hosting and development services, not deprecate the quality.

The revenues will continually be reinvested in more efficient and powerful capabilities in our server and programming architecture, such as enhanced API connections with outside services (example: payments will be made quicker and more seamlessly in your website’s shopping carts), increased SSL security (protect sites from bad guys), and higher bandwidth per site, so you can begin to integrate video in your business models.

In addition, we have begun exploring the development of individual node servers, where each website can be hosted on its own, without bandwidth or space limitations of other tenants on that same server. This will be only for high-traffic, high-volume websites that need such capabilities for their customers.

If you are unsure of staying with RocklandWeb services, indeed we do understand. We are not the only hosting company in the world, and don’t expect all our valued clients to make the same concession we are posing to them.

As such, we are also and are offering several options for you to choose from, in order to make a qualified decision for your company:

1. If you wish to leave RocklandWeb’s hosting and maintenance services, please reply to this email [LEAVING]. We will send you a zip file with your entire website, and retain your hosting plan for 30 days at the original hosting price, to give you time to move your website to another host.
2. If your site is hosted with us and wish to pre-pay for an entire year of hosting, we will give you one month of hosting for free. You will only pay for 11 months of hosting. This will make the cost of your hosting this year actually less than if we kept the hosting price the same. You can elect for this option at any time between now and September 2nd, 2022.
3. If your site is hosted with us and you wish to remain a customer, we will be adding several new goodies to your hosting plan:

• Increased bandwidth to your website – Our aim over the next 12 months is to speed up your website by an average of 20%, measured in milliseconds. Evaluation required, please reply back [ANALYZE]
• Increased storage space – Upon request, you can jack your storage space up to an extra 10 GB FOR FREE. Simply reply back to this email [BOOST].

We will include you in our new Small Business Advice podcast: Work Smarter, Not Harder. Right now it’s free to listen to on iOS, Google Podcast, and Spotify. But we’ll soon be launching a members only section, where we will start deep diving into your specific company’s concerns.

We will also be leveraging our business advisor network of several hundred industry veterans to provide sound business advice. I and Irene Gutmann (my trusted business advisor for RocklandWeb) have cultivated our respective business networks for nearly 15 years, as we learned and grew our companies. Now is the time for us to leverage them for your benefit.

https://anchor.fm/worksmartny, a weekly video advice podcast that provides advice on how to best develop your digital brand. You are also welcome to be a guest on this podcat, to help to promote your brand.

Back to the point, we prefer not to take the step of increasing prices. But we also wish to remain committed to our 200+ hosted clients, our advertising clients, our promotional clients, and most importantly – you. In order to help build your company, organization or cause.

We truly hope you will make the decision to remain with us. If so, I can assure you there will be more very cool announcements over this summer, which we have in the works for you.

Thank you. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Thomas Ossa
CEO, RockWeb Systems Inc.
(845) 877-7333
www.rocklandweb.com