Being from a little rural town in western North Carolina, I learned to appreciate the simple life.  These same principles continue to guide my life and carry over into my work.  My name is Jeremy Philbeck, I’m a web designer, and here is a little about me.

As a 2003 graduate of Appalachian State with a BA in Communications and Marketing, I was eager to get started with my life.  I had met my soon to be wife at ASU and we were married soon after graduation.  We purchased a small 3 bedroom, 2 bath house which only meant one thing, I had to find a job.

The job market was tough and even though I had my degree, I was still unsure at times what I was meant to do in my career.  Therefore, I took a job as a welder for Robert Bosch Tool Corporation.  I had never welded before, but I usually pick things up fairly quick.  I worked this second shift job for over a year, still continuing to look for something in my field.

Then, one day in late July 2004, I took a chance and attended a small job fair at the local community college.  There I met two men who ran a local manufacturing business that were looking for an inside sales associate and also someone to handle their marketing.  I thought this would be a great opportunity to get started in something remotely related to the degree that I was still paying for monthly.  So I gave them my resume, received an interview call the following week, and the day after my interview, SPEC, Inc. offered me a job.

I started out with simple tasks and gradually grew into my career.  School teaches you a lot, but nothing beats hands on experience.  After a few months of settling into my new position, I decided that the company really needed a new website.  It wasn’t generating leads and it just wasn’t very pretty to look at on a monitor.  The only problem was, I didn’t know the first thing about website design.

In my spare time, I began reading books and viewing free online tutorials and videos about creating websites.  I began dissecting websites and creating HTML code using nothing but Notepad.  Now looking back on it, that was probably the best thing that I could have done because it taught me the basics.  It took me four attempts, but I finally created a website that looked respectable and one that started generating leads. This experience opened a huge door of opportunity for me.

I kept thinking up new and different ways to create web content.  I was constantly changing this and tweaking that.  It became my new passion and I needed another outlet.  In 2008, I found that outlet by taking over the position of webmaster for Anthony Grove Baptist Church in Crouse, NC.  This allowed me to create a site for a totally different reason and to work with a group on a project.  We completely renovated the site and turned it into a Christian networking tool.

The success of the church site brought other opportunities my way.  Church members who had seen my accomplishments with the site approached me with requests to create websites for their businesses using similar techniques.  On January 1st, 2010, after careful consideration and a fortune cookie that read “A new venture will be a success”, I started Philbeck Web Design.