{"id":543,"date":"2019-06-22T21:43:18","date_gmt":"2019-06-22T21:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2019.grandrapids.wordcamp.org\/?post_type=wcb_speaker&#038;p=543"},"modified":"2019-06-22T21:43:18","modified_gmt":"2019-06-22T21:43:18","slug":"kim-smith","status":"publish","type":"wcb_speaker","link":"https:\/\/grandrapids.wordcamp.org\/2019\/speaker\/kim-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Kim Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m a third-generation entrepreneur; it&#8217;s in my blood. 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! As the internet, the world wide web, and websites started becoming a part of our world, I found my &#8220;what&#8221;. I knew this was what I was meant to do. 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! My mission was set and I moved forward.<\/p>\n<p>I took on my first web design client in January of 2000 and have been growing in skill, size, and services ever since. 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! 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! I talk to them in terms that they can understand and often draw pictures to illustrate difficult concepts. 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. After all, who knows their company better than the owner? 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. 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! As the internet, the world wide web, and websites started becoming a part of our world, I found my &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/grandrapids.wordcamp.org\/2019\/speaker\/kim-smith\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Kim Smith&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15622856,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wcpt_user_name":"dramaticdesign","footnotes":""},"speaker_group":[],"class_list":["post-543","wcb_speaker","type-wcb_speaker","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pagwAF-8L","avatar_urls":{"24":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/36490566950d73cca9de5e4219de1b3e61a1979592337826f5d653ca586e3850?s=24&d=mm&r=g","48":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/36490566950d73cca9de5e4219de1b3e61a1979592337826f5d653ca586e3850?s=48&d=mm&r=g","96":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/36490566950d73cca9de5e4219de1b3e61a1979592337826f5d653ca586e3850?s=96&d=mm&r=g","128":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/36490566950d73cca9de5e4219de1b3e61a1979592337826f5d653ca586e3850?s=128&d=mm&r=g","256":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/36490566950d73cca9de5e4219de1b3e61a1979592337826f5d653ca586e3850?s=256&d=mm&r=g","512":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/36490566950d73cca9de5e4219de1b3e61a1979592337826f5d653ca586e3850?s=512&d=mm&r=g"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grandrapids.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speakers\/543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grandrapids.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speakers"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grandrapids.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/wcb_speaker"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandrapids.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15622856"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandrapids.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grandrapids.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speakers\/543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":544,"href":"https:\/\/grandrapids.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speakers\/543\/revisions\/544"}],"sessions":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandrapids.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sessions\/552?_embed=1&context=view"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grandrapids.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"wcb_speaker_group","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandrapids.wordcamp.org\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speaker_group?post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}