Vlad, tell me how you really feel.

I’ve been bombarded by requests both by phone and email about how everyone is doing. If I can be forward enough to guess, it’s because so many are seeing news of things going great for large software/ hardware – yet their businesses are not seeing anything near those numbers despite the increased interest.

I’ll make this brief because I am in a line for an ipad with a few hundred people and indeed, things are better – just not for MSP’s.

I’ve covered this before, but I’ll say it again: “Economy is never bad for things that people want to buy.”

In 2008 we started seeing a huge push to the cloud as customers rejected large and long term investments. The cloud opportunity was awesome. People downsized, cut spending – and yes in 2010 they are interested – just not spending at 2008 levels. And don’t kid yourself, they won’t again.

Now we are in 2010 and the clown truck has pulled up – your usual trunk slammers and experts are all knowing cloud experts now and the competition is fierce there now too so there goes another opportunity.

The reality of the business is that only first movers and eventual efficiency (read: low cost) survive and thrive. The rest (and I’m assuming that IT services are not luxuries or highly specialized/ skilled things anymore) die a slow or mediocre death.

2010 cloud expert is the 2008 MSP expert which is the 2006 SBSer.

What’s next is the big question.

One that you likely won’t find on a blog. Unless it’s yours.

And frankly, for many it doesn’t matter – you could still make money in any of the lapsed technological evolutions – the mirror match is just the question about how long you will be willing to wake up and go to work as an underpaid dinosaur.

No Vlad, tell me how you really feel…

Arnie recently told me that most people see me as an angry guy by reading the blunt comments on this blog. I get this in person all the time – “Vlad, you are nothing like I expected you to be.” Perhaps I’ll start a blog to blow sunshine up my fans asses as they march their way out of business – there are enough people out there that do that already though.

The reason people keep on coming back to this blog in such massive numbers is because there is very little veiled or shielded or polished or otherwise politically correct stuff to entertain you on Vladville. Every word you read here is exactly what I have on my mind. Really, really. And at the end of the day, if you find this abusive, I truly feel that you are the person in control of your destiny (life, business) through the decisions you make. If you read this blog, feel like it’s written to beat you down, you ignore it and you fail – thats your choice. I don’t write it to beat people down. I write it because I honestly believe that what I write here and so many people pick up on it and recognize the stupid things they do in their life/business. Do you REALLY think that with over 40,000 weekly visitors I am really writing it to you, yes you?

Either you’re in charge or you’re not. Either you’re going to do something about things or you’re going to sit back. Leadership is not something assigned, it’s something you just do and what you are. So love it or leave it folks, in the meantime this is one of the few places you can actually listen to a CEO of a multimillion dollar company and see how it’s done – even if I’m dead wrong about it.