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ABOUT TEAM GOODMAN

The Team Goodman Mission
Our Mission is to humbly serve the people of Troy and neighboring communities by sharing our expertise and experience with anyone who wants it

Who Is Team Goodman?
Team Goodman is Greg and Lori Goodman.

Greg has always been interested in how things worked. His mom sent him to kindergarten with 500 piece jigsaw puzzles to keep his hands busy and from taking everything apart in the classroom. After graduating from High School he earned a degree in Electronic Engineering and was hired by Hughes Aircraft as the youngest engineer on record in their Southern California location. He quickly became their top producer.

Lori, the daughter of top television advertising producer and national magazine column writer as parents was steeped in all things creative. Both parents were accomplished pianists and she played violin all through school. Her first creative endeavor was a summer job as paste-up artist for a highly successful advertising firm who created television ads for Nissan, The Lakers (LA), and other prominent clients. She graduated then enrolled in several fine arts classes, excelling in Production Art and Advertising Design. She was accepted into the prestigious Art Center College of Design and while the prospect of a career in the field she loved was thrilling, she surprisingly declined the incredible opportunity to marry and start a family. Her son and daughter currently live in Southern California.

Stepping Into The Business World
Greg continued for several years as top producing engineer with Hughes while working on electronic repairs out of his garage. That is, until the demand for his work became so great that he left Hughes and leased the original Van's Belgium Waffles building. When his lease was up he moved to a larger and more visible location on Pacific Coast Highway in Hermosa Beach. This was at the time personal computers were becoming mainstream.

He expanded his electronic repair business to include personal computer sales, service and building his own brand of PC's from scratch. As the Internet began taking off he built a small data center in the attic above the retail and repair shop.

Greg's talent for fixing anything that came through the door became known in the region. Soon, other repair companies, including service departments in major retailers and big box stores brought their "irreparable" to Greg, where he was able to repair the vast majority.

The computer hosting business expanded quickly and that was just about the time Lori arrived on the scene as general manager. She attracted many corporate accounts in the area and helped grow the business to include commercial accounts.

Hard-Earned Recognition
Greg and Mayor Riordan
Greg with LA Mayor Riordan
  Greg's attention shifted to computers as he outgrew his small data center and moved to a 13,000 foot expanse, the entire 11th floor of a building in historic downtown Los Angeles. He singlehandedly "lit up" that building and soon after was honored by former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan for providing more than 300 jobs within the Empowerment Zone.

In a short time he became known as "The ISP's ISP" due to his large number of clients who were Internet Service Providers themselves, reselling his bandwidth and enjoying the nearly 100% uptime unheard of elsewhere in the Industry. His clients included many Fortune 500 and a handful of Fortune 100 companies as well as hundreds of small-to-medium sized companies.

During that time Lori grew interested in learning web design. Her background in art and advertising and desire to become a contributing force in the web phenomenon made it a natural fit. She excelled in graphics, animation, copy writing and all the elements necessary for a successful designer. Her design clients began asking for referrals for web hosting so she started a small web hosting and company of her own and attracted small-to-medium-sized companies.

Greg was fully immersed in moving his business to a brand new location in the heart of Los Angeles. He built a state of the art data center in the financial district in downtown LA for much larger hosting clients.

Incidentally, Lori designed the layout for the build-out of the space to include reception, NOC Center (Network Operation Center), data center with space for more than 1,000 servers and related equipment and offices.
  Original Server
Back of One of Our Original Web Servers

The Fight That Lead To Troy
After a long marriage and raising a son and daughter Lori filed for divorce and it wasn't more than a year before she began dating Greg. They soon bought a home together and purchased two car washes then started a fourth business in Real Estate Investing. Nearly ten years later they (finally!) married and were inseparable ever since.

As most couples do from time to time, Lori and Greg had a major blow out and nearly broke up. Lori's dream to see Montana was a lifelong one and during the argument she told Greg about her plans to leave for Montana for a few weeks to "chill out". Greg said "Can I come too?" The argument ended and off to Montana they went.

They arrived at Glacier Airport in Kalispell, visited Greg's former Hughes Aircraft boss on his 50th Birthday, visited for a couple of days then set out to explore more of Montana.

They drove through many towns including Whitefish, Eureka, Libby and Troy and after casually looking at potential retirement land they found a property in Troy they fell in love with.

For eight years they commuted back and forth from LA to Troy until they were able to move to Troy and live their dream full time. "It is the first time since I lived in Minnesota that I felt like I was home" said Lori.

Greg's grandparents once owned 1000 acres in the Tehachapi Mountains north of Los Angeles and he visited often, relishing in the mountainous setting with trees, water and solitude. They hunted, fished and enjoyed the outdoors. Like Lori he had always dreamed of living in a more rural environment someday. Their collective wish came true and they moved to Troy permanently, embracing the people, the solitude, the change of seasons and the beauty of the place. It seemed like a natural fit and it wasn't long before Brady Marken of Trojan Lanes "lassoed them in" (as Lori likes to joke) to bowl on a league for the first time and they began meeting the people of Troy.

Sell Everything!
They sold all of the Los Angeles based business and settled in quickly, with Lori spending most of her time pursuing her dream of full-time writing while continuing to admin several personal web projects and reengage her artistic calling. Greg was working hard on commercial real estate endeavors while learning the skills of rural living including logging, hunting, and of course all the year-round outdoor activities Troy has to offer.

As they made friends, Greg began helping some of them with typical computer problems and before long word began to spread that Greg was a "virtual genius". Some started to ask about internet advertising websites and they helped out with thing such as websites, brochures, search engine rankings and coupon advertising.

Team Goodman Is Born
Several people asked them to consider going into business here in Troy where the need for a competent, reliable, reasonably priced computer repair tech was great. Lori says, "We never expected to get into this business again, and the last thing I thought I'd be doing is web design but we feel we have been called to it, we're really good at it and we made such a great team when we worked together." Team Goodman was born. The industry continues to grow and change and keeping up with the latest and greatest is a challenge for anyone, including those in the industry. Greg and Lori have embraced the challenge and are now looking for a suitable spot to set up a retail shop where they can meet face-to-face with customers during regular business hours. Their goal is to create an inviting, non-intimidating place to serve the people of Troy and surrounding communities.

"I can Fix Anything"
Greg claims he can fix almost anything and his history proves he means business. He started out fixing everything including VCR's, laser discs, televisions, stereos, CD players, then computers, routers and highly specialized, technical equipment. He designed and built nearly every one of the almost 1,000 servers on his network. He was Microsoft certified, and often served as a tester for them in advance of the beta-launch of their upcoming program and operating system launches. He is familiar with virtually every platform including Unix, Linux, Perl, CSS and Java. He is a wizard with email, database setup and maintained and automated many functions people do by hand. Over the course of his career he has accepted many special assignments like wiring medical offices and facilities in several states. A typical assignment would be to set up their wireless networks in conjunction with state of the art digital patient charting systems as well as troubleshooting and training.

Spare Parts
Lori still laughs when he says "I can fix anything!" because she has many of her own stories to tell. "He'd never seen a sewing machine up close or touched one and I have a fairly good grasp on how to use one. When I couldn't get it stitching right, Greg spent maybe 10 minutes with it and had it running perfectly. Another time, when he fixed our vacuum cleaner, to my dismay there were several large parts left over. It worked better than ever and I'm still using that same vacuum cleaner almost 10 years later. I nicknamed him 'spare parts' after that and never doubted his ability to fix anything again."

A Perfect Fit
While the Goodman's do not intend to push their technological knowledge and experience on Troy, they do recognize that the need for on-hand expertise is here. "People in town are already reaching out to Libby and beyond for help. We're right here and people are asking us to provide that help."

What's Up With the Hummer?
The H2 was originally purchased as a multi-purpose work vehicle to keep driver, passengers and sensitive eqipment safe on dangerous Southern California freeways. Greg was once rear-ended while stopped in LA traffic. The Dodge Ram that struck him was travelling 70 mph and was totalled while the H2 sustained minor damage. It was driven off-road in the mountains outside the LA basin and the Hig Sierras. In Montana it has proven to be a worthy offroad vehicle that can withstand a lot, including a large animal collision (which hopefully will not happen). Because it stands out it naturally became the logo for Team Goodman.

What Drives Us
"Passion, excellence, helping people and striving to be the best at what we do...need we say more?"


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