Philippines Web Design and Hosting,
Rick St. John Profile

Rick St. John
President and CEO

I had a pretty typical childhood growing up in a blue collar neighborhood in Nebraska. I was never much of a student; in fact my grades were rather poor all the way up through eight grade, as that is where my education ended. To this day I am certain that the only reason I graduated the eight grade was because my teachers just felt pity for me.

I worked as a laborer in a local restaurant for a year or so. The job paid ok for a high school drop out, but the hours were long and your efforts were not appreciated. I saw fellow workers on the job, older and just miserable with where they were at in life, and determined this is not what I wanted. I decided that there had to be something better, so I decided to go to college. I was able to do this thanks to the financial support of my grandparents, Gerard and Lori Spittler.

I never took entrance exams or the SAT when I applied to college; all I needed to get in was the cash to pay tuition. I was a different guy when I was in college. Maybe because of my long restaurant experience, maybe it was the thought of returning to the restaurants long hours, or maybe it was just because I matured a little bit — but unlike elementary school I did quite well in college. I had changed. In contrast with high school, I found myself eager to learn and study all kinds of subjects. I majored in pre-med, but after one year I stopped. Shortly thereafter I moved back to North Carolina, a place I had just fell in love with a few years earlier.

Once back in North Carolina, I went to work for a old friend who owned a network cabling company. My first day on the job was November 25^th, and I had found my destiny. I knew after just a few hours on the job that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, if possible.

I learned to use a computer quite by accident. It was May of 1988 and I was living in North Carolina and had my weekends free. Somehow I wound up with an Osborne Computer, it had two, five and a quarter inch floppy drives and a 3 inch green monitor in the center, it weighed 35 pounds. I used this computer daily, DOS was the operating system. I did all types of things with it, basically word documents.

Eventually I purchased an Apple computer (affectionately called a MAC back then), then replaced it with an Apple II Color Classic Computer. I would spend countless hours playing around with it, devoting most of my free time to learning the ins and outs of the operating system and programming language. Back then word, excel and a few other programs existed. My grandmother, Lori Spittler once told me that if you love something, it tells you all of its secrets. Because I loved my hobby as much as anyone can love a hobby, I learned a lot of little secrets when it came to my Apple Color Classic II.

During those days and like a lot of people, my hobby served as my education as opposed to any formal technical education (to this day I have no formal education in computer science). When the PowerMac came out in 1996, I borrowed $5,000 off my visa, and bought the PowerMac 66 megahertz, with a flat bed scanner and Epson’s first color printer, Photo Shop Suit and Quick Books.

I turned my hobby into a successful businesses and a career. In the course of working as a Network Cabling Technician I obtained a few fortune 500 companies seeking my services, companies like Nextel Communications, Cellular One now Verizon, Family Health International, Stone Heavy Duty and many others.

After several years in this business, I saw the writing on the wall for businesses like mine that did not diversify, I was becoming a dinosaur. It was going to go away. So I sold the company and moved to Manila Philippines.

When I started Manila Hosting Inc., I didn't do it to make money. I started Manila Hosting, Inc. to have something to do. Since 2006 when I started Manila Hosting, Inc., there was only one principle that I used to build the company. It's a simple one. Do the right thing for the customers and provide them with as good a deal as possible. No smoke and mirrors — ever. The whole idea back then, and it continues today, is to make a little money from a lot of people over a long period of time. This differs from many companies who have just the opposite philosophy.