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Angela Bassett and her husband Courtney B. Vance are one of Hollywood's power couples, but to Frederick Johnson, they're also a small business -- and an opportunity.
For the last three years, Johnson's company, Affluent Technology, has recruited entertainers and athletes as any other commercial customer. Similar to small businesses, celebrities have employees and other associates that need to send and receive e-mail and cell phone calls while other data needs to be accessed, stored and secured. It's a niche market, but one that can be very lucrative, and filled with fringe benefits, said Johnson, who has attended the Grammy Awards, ESPN's ESPY awards, movie premieres and other high-profile events courtesy of his celebrity clients.
He started Affluent Technology in late 2004 as a spin-off from his day job as president and CIO of Ross-Tek, a 10-year-old solution provider based in Cleveland, Ohio. Growing up, his parents worked for Don King's boxing promotion company and he had some access to boxers and other VIPs. A few years ago, he sought to find a way to meld his IT background with his celebrity connections. Affluent Technology was born.
Slide Show: Afluent Technology's Star Client Roster
"Basically, I wanted to leverage the relationships I've had in sports and entertainment industries from early on. It had never occurred to me that I could provide technology consulting IT type services to that industry. But it's a natural fit," Johnson said.
When he started out, Johnson recruited a few friends in the industry, business managers and attorneys, as an advisory board that helped him build the business model.
"When we first started out with Affluent, we wanted to be the technology consultant to that industry. A lot of people in the [entertainment or sports] industry have outside business interests, whether it's a restaurant, an Internet media deal or a production company. They want someone to be part of their team that has good technology sense, good business sense, who can lay out what are the pain points are from a technology standpoint and then fix those pain points," Johnson said.
For example, Affluent Technology has helped the Oscar-nominated ("What's Love Got to Do With It") Bassett and "Law and Order: Criminal Intent" star Vance with their personal IT needs as well as the needs of their production company Basset/Vance Productions.
"Courtney and Angela are independent, successful celebrities. But they also have a company, a staff. We're responsible for the assessment, procurement and implementation of the [technology]: mobile devices, servers," Johnson said.
The couple is moving into a new home and Johnson is working with the builders to ensure their personal and professional IT needs can be met efficiently and economically, Johnson said. "We introduced Windows Home Server so they could have better segementation of the work stuff and the personal things like photos, music and household-related data," he said.
