Luxcentric – an Origin Story

In 2006 my grandmother got a computer. Soon after she called me up and asked if I could visit her regularly to teach her how to use it. So once a week my baby and I went over to grandmothers house for lunch and learning.

I will always cherish the time we spent together and the deeper relationship I was able to have with her. For her weekly lessons, I created instruction sheets and introduced her to email and internet surfing. After about a year, she looked at me and said “Honey, now you need to go do this for other people.” From that Luxcentric was born.

With fear and my grandmother’s encouragement I created some marketing materials and introduced myself to a few retirement communities. Soon I was teaching basic computer classes as well as giving private computer lessons to seniors. It was perfect.

Previously, I worked in retail, apartment management (for the elderly), and in the online banking support call center of a major bank when online banking was just starting to become mainstream. Isn’t it interesting how our past skills can blend together in a new way?

It was at that online banking job where I developed a love for solving computer problems, most of which were resolved by educating the customer about the system and how to use it. I am always fascinated by how my past experiences are used in my current situation. No one becomes a success overnight. We all know this, but how does success arrive? For me, success has always been built upon success.

After working with my grandmother and my baby started school full time, I took on several medium and long term administrative projects for small businesses while continuing my work with seniors on computers. I helped entrepreneurs set up their administrative systems to work in a consistent and duplicable manner. We set up procedures (more instruction sheets) and organized digital files and systems.

I have discovered, not surprisingly, that many entrepreneurs don’t actually want to spend their time figuring out how the latest business software works. They just want to be told what they need to do to get on with the core of their business.

The financial planner wants to meet with clients and talk about solutions to their situations not figuring out how to set up their calendar so it is available and easy to use when they need it.

The pastor of a church wants to meet with parishioners and develop sermons, not fight with how to organize all the contact information of their members.

The restaurant owner doesn’t have time to sift through their computer files to find the invoice for that supply of stuff they are missing.

These are just a few things I have helped my clients with. It’s all about helping people focus on what they need and want to do to be most effective and not let their technology bully them. We focus on organizing and developing strategies to deal with their technology foundation; email, files, calendars, and contacts. Get those things working well and everything else will fall into place.

I moved to Issaquah in 2012 and Luxcentric has continued to evolve and grow. What once was a simple “stay at home mom business” has become a sustainable and valuable business. I am so grateful for all my clients and networking friends who have made this business possible.