{"id":438,"date":"2019-09-07T22:01:40","date_gmt":"2019-09-08T02:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2019.jackson.wordcamp.org\/?post_type=wcb_speaker&#038;p=438"},"modified":"2019-09-07T22:01:40","modified_gmt":"2019-09-08T02:01:40","slug":"kim-smith","status":"publish","type":"wcb_speaker","link":"https:\/\/jackson.wordcamp.org\/2019\/speaker\/kim-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Kim Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I&#8217;m a third-generation entrepreneur; it&#8217;s in my blood.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve always known that I wanted to work for myself, but the &#8220;what&#8221; didn&#8217;t become clear until sometime in the mid-90s&#8230;mainly because the technology hadn&#8217;t been invented yet!&nbsp; As the internet, the world wide web, and websites started becoming a part of our world, I found my &#8220;what&#8221;.&nbsp; I knew this was what I was meant to do.&nbsp; I saw this as an amazing way to level the playing field for small businesses against their larger competition&#8230;and it could be done at an affordable price!&nbsp; My mission was set and I moved forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since there weren&#8217;t any classes or formal education on the subject at the time, I had to teach myself.&nbsp; I joined some listservs (email groups) of people just like me who were trying to learn from scratch.&nbsp; We would look at source code and help each other figure out how to code various things in HTML, which was all we had to work with at the time&#8230;yup&#8230;HTML and Microsoft WordPad!&nbsp; It was an exciting time in web development, as it seemed like something new was coming out every day&#8230;frames, tables, forms &#8211; and a bunch of nonsense like JavaScript code tricks, Java applets, autoplay MIDI files, animated GIFs, scrolling marquees, Flash, guestbooks before we finally got (angels singing) CSS! &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I took on my first client in January of 2000 and have been growing in skill, size, and services ever since.&nbsp; My clients know that I&#8217;m not a flaky web designer who builds a site and they can never reach again for updates or maintenance; I actually clean up messes those guys leave behind!&nbsp; Some of my clients have been with me a dozen years or more and they can trust that I&#8217;m available by phone, email, text, or Facebook Messenger &#8211; AND, they never have to press &#8220;1&#8221; for English!&nbsp; I talk to them in terms that they can understand and often draw pictures to illustrate difficult concepts.&nbsp; I teach them as much as they want to learn about updating their websites, including blogging &#8211; and most importantly, I teach them how to market their company.&nbsp; After all, who knows their company better than the owner?&nbsp; I enable them with free and low-cost tools that are easy to use that help them to reach their target market without breaking the bank &#8212; and I teach them how to effectively USE those tools!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m a third-generation entrepreneur; it&#8217;s in my blood.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve always known that I wanted to work for myself, but the &#8220;what&#8221; didn&#8217;t become clear until sometime in the mid-90s&#8230;mainly because the technology hadn&#8217;t been invented yet!&nbsp; As the internet, the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jackson.wordcamp.org\/2019\/speaker\/kim-smith\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"assistive-text\">Kim Smith<\/span>  <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9449600,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wcpt_user_name":"","footnotes":""},"speaker_group":[],"class_list":["post-438","wcb_speaker","type-wcb_speaker","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pagwAd-74","avatar_urls":{"24":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2bcd9df2b0766985d63ac148819b20e64e1ef5afb1711080e9d23f899f6ffc9d?s=24&d=mm&r=g","48":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2bcd9df2b0766985d63ac148819b20e64e1ef5afb1711080e9d23f899f6ffc9d?s=48&d=mm&r=g","96":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2bcd9df2b0766985d63ac148819b20e64e1ef5afb1711080e9d23f899f6ffc9d?s=96&d=mm&r=g","128":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2bcd9df2b0766985d63ac148819b20e64e1ef5afb1711080e9d23f899f6ffc9d?s=128&d=mm&r=g","256":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2bcd9df2b0766985d63ac148819b20e64e1ef5afb1711080e9d23f899f6ffc9d?s=256&d=mm&r=g","512":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2bcd9df2b0766985d63ac148819b20e64e1ef5afb1711080e9d23f899f6ffc9d?s=512&d=mm&r=g"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackson.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speakers\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackson.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speakers"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackson.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/wcb_speaker"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackson.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9449600"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackson.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jackson.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speakers\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":439,"href":"https:\/\/jackson.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speakers\/438\/revisions\/439"}],"sessions":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackson.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sessions\/553?_embed=1&context=view"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackson.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"wcb_speaker_group","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackson.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speaker_group?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}