We are Bill Millikin and Lou Green, owners of Bill and Lou, Inc. and this website. We have been involved with development of software since the mid-1960s and websites and email list serving since 1995. While we’ve never been famous or wealthy, we have been very successful at designing and implementing software applications for clients in over 20 industries from finance, to linen and uniform supply, mortgage servicing,. boat sales and wholesale distribution systems. In each case, we wrote the application software for our clients, and then, by excellent care and service, maintained our clients for as many as 30 years and as few as 5 years.
Our currently remaining software clients have been using our system for just under 25 years and still going strong.
Bill’s actual background includes:
I have been a business owner and operator for over 35 years. Most of my career has been centered around business accounting software for small and family owned businesses.
Since 2000, I’ve been almost totally centered on online marketing through websites, including ecommerce sites and shopping sites.
In 1996 we (my wife and I) became the owners and operators of one of the first online communities on the public Internet. We served as many as 800 members and successfully operated that community for nearly 5 years. In that time, though, we learned leadership, including how to foster community and communication among our members, and how to provide what the membership wanted. It was a very successful venture.
Over the last 10 years, I have been working more and more with clients helping them to market and promote their businesses through utilizing and exploiting assets they own in their businesses but just didn’t realize they could use for sales and profits. The outcome of these marketing tactics is more sales and profits without spending new, additional money on advertising or marketing programs.
Over the span of my career, I’ve worked with the owners of small businesses in over two dozen industries, and have learned a great deal from those owners about business, marketing, processes and success.
I bring all of that history and background depth to all my consulting and coaching as well as in writing about these topics.
My wife, Lou, and I have been very happily married since the fall of 1981. We love the water and are dry-docked boaters (we’ve owned 3 boats since 1980 but not presently.)
When I’m not working, I’m often reading about the principles of personal freedom and liberty, or free-market economics.
Otherwise, we can be found taking day trips to Lake Erie to make sure the water is still there for us when we get our next boat. (our actual” excuse” is to get a Toft’s ice cream in Sandusky, OH.
Specialties
RDBMS (‘Pick’) system design and programming experience, SQL knowledge including MS SQL, PostgreSQL and MySQL
Programming: DataBasic, RDBMS programming languages- multiple platforms, including jBase, OpenQM, Raining Data RDBMS, MVBase, etc.
Marketing Consulting – including developing Unique Sales Proposition (USP),customer retention, regaining customers, joint ventures, alliance marketing, community marketing, and online marketing for small conventional businesses.
