About Biz-comm, Inc.

Biz-comm is owned by Stephen Wilson and Patrice Olivier-Wilson.

Besides corporate gigs working in the oil industry, Stephen's background includes working for several government contractors, writing to RFPs to gain lucrative government contracts. His writing freelance work includes magazine columns, including several years with Remodeling Magazine for marketing topics.

Patrice's prior experience includes working as a journalist at The Mining Journal in Marquette MI, founding and publishing the monthly Above The Bridge Magazine, editing and publishing a family monthly paper, publishing a quarterly business association paper, numerous freelance magazine articles and short stories. She also held a corporate communications manager position for more than five years with a company of more than 600 employees (Niagara Paper of Wisconsin). In that capacity, Patrice managed all internal and external communications, including company events, press releases, employee newsletters, corporate presentations, etc. When Niagara Paper was purchased by another paper company, Biz-comm was launched in 1996 in Kingsford, MI. Web design was very new and exciting; Patrice was drawn to the combined skill sets needed to design, code and write for the new media.

Stephen and Patrice married in 1997, combining their skill sets and expanding Biz-comm's business over the past 26 years. Moving from Kingsford, MI to Reston VA, to Asheville NC area, Biz-comm has a long list of clients from Maine to California.

We are a company's unofficial board of directors. We're here when you need to vent, bounce ideas, get our advice on running your business. While our core capabilities are in marketing your business, getting leads and closing sales, we've been around long enough to have learned from many firms what works and what doesn't. Our core competencies are in communicating our clients' messages to their target markets, using a variety of tool sets, whether that is corporate branding, direct mail, newsletters, websites, press releases, sales materials, ads, TV or radio spots, show displays... well, the list goes on forever. After all these decades, we've been there, done that, and have earned the t-shirt.

We don't take advantage of our clients.

We take the time to learn about a company before ever volunteering advice/recommendations, much less write a two-year marketing budget. We do not review a company's marketing material, tell them where it succeeds or fails, on the HOPE we could land a client. It's not only not fair to our time and effort, it is not fair to whomever did the previous work.

Why do we work in this field? It gives us a window into businesses and lives. There is just nothing so satisfying to have made a small struggling company leap up to big time. The emails that we get telling us how our work made them succeed are priceless to us. We are in a position to really make a difference and it is very intoxicating.

The established businesses are also impressed. One of our most passionate testimonials is from a multi-state, millions+ company who was with us for more than a decade.

We believe in NO SURPRISES when it comes to billing and work. Each project has its own Letter of Agreement (larger, detailed projects) or an email authorization, both of which spell out what the project is, how much it costs, extended third party estimates (printing, postage, etc.) NO project is undertaken without a signed OK.

All third party purchases are paid before the order is placed.

After a client has been with us a few years, knows how fast we are, etc, if they call or email us with a request, and we deliver immediately, it's on the hour at our contract rate. We only use this method for small, immediate tasks with long-time clients who trust us.

When we accept a new client, we exchange contracts. One is a general contract covering all aspects of our relationship, including privacy, etc. If web work is part of the scope, then a separate web contract spells out all the aspects of site hosting, including international laws with terrorism, child pornography, etc. (So no bad guys need apply! :-) )

After contracts are exchanged, we do extensive interviewing to determine what the goals are.

To recap: We are your partner, not your vendor. We help you get to where you are going, offer advice if we think your goal needs adjustment (ie, walk before you run), and provide you tools to grow and run your business. We are NOT vendors. We have no interest in a limited relationship where we have no "skin in the game" of YOUR success. Partners only need apply.

All projects require a 50% deposit, check or credit card. All projects have an expected delivery date, outlined in the project authorization or letter of agreement. If a client holds up completion, due to no fault of Biz-comm, payment is due within 30 days of start date. Payments accepted though PayPal: it's fast, free, and secure! (3.5% service charge.)

Third party costs are billed before purchase.