Bob Young has some big plans for his small business. The owner of Ideal Systems is growing to the point that he hopes to move his business from Farmington Hills to downtown Farmington to make room for growth and to scratch his cosmopolitan itch.
Young, a musician on the side, has his eye on a building downtown that would give his business space to grow as well as the ability to set up a coffee shop on the ground floor, taking full advantage of a vibrant, walkable urban center.
"That's very appealing to us," Young says.
And to his IT consulting business. Ideal Systems offers training and technical IT support for small businesses. Often they teach business people how to design and build the IT system and then provide them the tools so they can manage it. That usually entails putting lots of valuable information within easy reach.
"They want to push a button and have the information at their fingertips," Young says. "They want it to be available on the Internet and be secure so they can access it from anywhere. We make that possible for them."
And it's making life good for Young, who worked in both IT and accounting in past corporate lives before striking out on his own in 1992 with a dream and a little bit of borrowed money.
His business has since morphed into five team members that handle work for companies across the country. He hopes to add more local businesses in the near future, sell some of his company's software and expand his workforce to about 25 within a couple of years.
That would allow him to move forward with the downtown Farmington dream. The idea is the office space would let his company concentrate on work while the coffee shop would give an enjoyable space for meetings and even the occasional coffee house performance.
Just enough space to have a stake in one what Money Magazine calls one of the best places in America.
Source: Bob Young, president of Ideal Systems
Writer: Jon Zemke
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