About the President and Founder

How I Built My Business

First let's set the stage of how I started my firm...

6 years ago I was a full time contract programmer. I consulted on programming work for such large companies as Ames Department Stores, Pitney Bowes, and Clean Harbors to name a few. I was a senior level programmer working for these firms full time. Over the course of my years as a programmer I picked up a couple of my own clients (not the ones the recruiting companies hired me for). I quickly proved my skills not only in programming to these side clients, but also my business sense, and marketing sense.

So my business began to grow. Those couple of clients grew into a dozen clients, and before I knew it, I had to incorporate and hire my first employee to help me with my work load. Within 1 year I had 6 people working for me, and now 6 years later I have 25 employees. But now my firm does more than just programming. We offer a full service web approach, offering web design, marketing ideas, SEO, programming, copy writing, and much more. We bring the FULL package to the table if someone needs a website that needs to hit a homerun.

Artifex's real strength lies in its diverse team of creative professionals, web designers, online programmers, project managers, technical writers, and usability experts. Artifex's hand-picked team of over twenty five web and software experts pass a rigorous screening and qualification analysis process to ensure that our clients work with only the best, most qualified professionals in the industry. We're committed to employing only the top one percent of professionals in the creative and internet fields.

My employees LOVE what they do for me and my clients. I motivate them to do the best they can, and the work products reflect the outstanding attention to detail and talent of my team. Also we have gone from an office in my house to 6000 square feet of commercial office space off the main drag in Lincoln, RI where ALL of our employees work. There is never any subcontracting of your work.

So why and how has Artifex been so successful and now have over 300 clients, including half a dozen Fortune 500 companies, across the country and Internationally?

Well first of all having a team that is in the top 1% of the industry really helps. Second, as the President, I always view things from the client's perspective. "What would I think is fair if I were a client? What would I want?" are always questions going through my mind. To this end the first thing I instituted was a NO UPFRONT PAYMENTS policy for most projects.

It is important to prove to new clients especially that we can really do the work and far exceed the expectations of our clients. I found a lot of clients came to me having been burned by another developer, so they were really cautious about choosing a new firm. By doing a good chunk of work upfront or doing the whole project upfront for these clients, I put my money where my mouth is and delivered every time. You will see a lot of these feedbacks in my guru.com profile. Artifex SAVED ME...Artifex delivered...etc, etc they would say.

I also find it important to stick to my word. SO many times I have lost money on projects because I have committed to a fixed bid fee and due to unexpected time to program, the cost of the project overran what I bid. But I deliver every time and do NOT go back to my clients and say, "Oh yeah, I need more money or I'm not delivering". I call this nickel and diming clients. I DO NOT do this. If we agree to something I DELIVER ON TIME AND WITHIN BUDGET. You will also find I go 110% on every project hands down. If I can do something better, but it is going to cost me more money to do it that way, I will because I want the client to be thrilled with the work we do.

Sometimes eating up a few hours makes a huge difference in really wowing a client. That's what Artifex does. We WOW our clients. And because of that 99% of our clients give us repeat business, and most of our clients have been with us for years. Oh and that original couple of clients I started my company with...they are still my clients and we do regular work for them 6 years later.

For a more detailed look at Jenna Schmidt, see her resume here PDF (304KB).