Unicorn Sighting

Posted: 4:40 pm
October 30, 2012
ExchangeDefender, Shockey Monkey
Comments Off on Unicorn Sighting

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow! I’m very excited to go back to work tomorrow and talk about Unicorns.

Unicorn

Not signed up for the webinar? Please join me! I’m pretty sure you’re going to like what I have to show you.

Wednesday, October 31st, 2012

Noon, EST

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/358136920

I will blog about this in detail but needless to say things have changed quite a bit when it comes to IT business with the mass adoption of the cloud. What it hasn’t changed is the relevance of good technology advice, management, support and customer service.

While so many debated about what the cloud was going to do and how, many took advantage of it and built significant businesses on top of it.

To those that did it with our platform, worldwide, this is a way of saying thank you.

So tomorrow I will be talking about the Unicorn, I will be talking about Shockey Monkey 3 and I will be showing you what we have in the store for you during this final quarter of 2012. We want to make sure that you are ready for 2013 and beyond and that you have a solid platform underneath you – from the CRM to marketing to support to choice of different messaging, storage, server and colo options to build out a product and a solution for your clients.

Cloud is the most dominant business technology today – but it’s far from without fault – which makes the prospect of being a part of that business solution very profitable.

ExchangeDefender is only a piece of that puzzle. I hope you join me at noon tomorrow so you can see how we’re putting together the rest of the puzzle and just how much opportunity you have in it all.

Partnership Details

Posted: 3:54 pm
October 24, 2012
Boss, IT Business
3 Comments

Building successful partnerships hinges on work done on both sides of the vendor/VAR river. If you ever wonder how some people seem to love working with companies that may have left you with a bad taste, it’s probably because some people get better treatment than the others. But is that a matter of random luck or actual partnerships?

Yesterday I sent a very generic email invitation to our whole partner base. Here is what it looked like:

c1

Fairly vague, right? In fact, intentionally so. If you haven’t read our newsletters, Facebook, Twitter or seen us at an event this year – this would make no sense to you and you’d hit delete and walk away.

Which is exactly what we want you to do if you aren’t paying attention!

Bunch of people didn’t quite figure out what was happening so they took a moment to email me their outrage that I didn’t share the details, didn’t serve it up on a platter to them and didn’t make it completely easy to figure out whether or not this is worth their precious time. Sigh.

In my 20’s I probably would have posted their emails, comments and broken them down point by point. I probably would have even responded to their emails generating tons of back-and-forth traffic that would not have done any good for anyone. These days I neither have the time nor am I concerned because.. well.. people who aren’t interested in the details tend not to stay in business. That’s the harsh reality.

Clients affect the product as much as they buy it

Here is another harsh truth: We make far more money, worldwide, off people who barely ever talk to us. Many of whom I’ve never met and never had the pleasure of thanking them for all their money.

Here is the bitch: It’s the guys that work with us every month that make the most profit. Far more than random folks that subscribe their clients to stuff just because someone recommended it.

How the hell is that possible?

Well, when you experience the products for yourself and talk about them with me or one of my VPs that spend nearly all day long on the phone with our partners, you don’t just get my opinion but the opinion of everyone we work with. That happens to be the difference: You’re not just building your business on top of what some IT flunkie decides is the best practice, you’re actively promoting it in a way that very few people are. It’s kind of how the first movers in the MSP space went on to generate the biggest revenues and the folks afterwards barely made it outside of their zip code. Timing matters, message matters and effort to understand the details matters.

The rest is retail.

Success in business, at least the personal one that we all happen to deliver in IT, hinges on being able to close large profitable deals – not a crapload of little, low-margin, low-profit ones.

I don’t live day to day, month to month, quarter to quarter. Most successful businesses don’t. That’s the problem with VC, if you have to justify everything to your daddy and dress the numbers and the product up all the time by investing very little then you have to cater to the lowest common denominator of the client base.

Long term success in business is about the details, about the execution, about resolving problems and about looking at the long term. This is why the few smaller players will continue to be more successful over time than the few bright flashes in the pan looking for an exit strategy.

As much as that may reveal vendors standing – it also self-identifies VARs and MSPs – if you’re not willing to work with the vendors and actually build a solution then are you really that much better than the end user and even worse, why would that end user even need you down the line?

Food for thought. Know what kind of business you run and where you focus needs to be.

Unmanaged Management

Posted: 12:13 pm
October 22, 2012
Boss
Comments Off on Unmanaged Management

Employees spend so much time dealing with the “feedback” (or “blowback”) from their managers that they rarely consider the fact that both sides manage the relationship. This is true in business to business environment between vendors and clients just as much as it’s true between employers and employees or managers and reports. In almost all cases it’s a two way street (unless you work in a sweat shop… in which case you’ll be beaten severely for reading this blog in 3..2..1)

Here are few simple steps for a happier work environment.

Step 1: Know who you work for

Spend some time getting to know your boss, client, vendor.

You’ll find that most people are either polite or outright fake to your face because their interaction with you is purely political and business oriented.

I happen to feel that most people tend to be nice and just want to be happy and do what makes them happy underneath. They just don’t happen to broadcast it.

Find out how people respond so you can differentiate compliments from insults, encouragement from criticism and body language in general.

Step 2: Know when they are having a bad day

Management of time and resources is as important as management of your bosses, vendors and clients.

Know when to skip a step.

Fair warning.. this is about to get a little filthy. Smile

Step 3: Make it their fault

It’s never the managers fault. Ever. Ever, ever? Ever. Disagree? OK, Fuck you, you’re fired.

If you’d like to argue with the above from an employee perspective, consider the relationship between the vendor and the client. There is no situation, ever, under any circumstance.. where blowing the expectations of the client is a fault of vendors employees. The CEO (boss, etc) is ultimately responsible for what the company does.

There are no excuses.

Oh, you didn’t know what was going on in your company? You are an idiot.

Oh, your staff is incompetent and they made a mistake? Who hired them, who implemented controls, who reviewed or monitored te execution – you are an idiot.

<insert excuse> – … idiot.

Now that we’ve covered the fact that there is responsibility and accountability at every level and in every relationship, it follows that he who has the control over the job being done is ultimately the one that is responsible. Read that again. Since the receiving party has no actual direct influence over the deliverable, they get to feel happy/sad about what they receive from you.

Now.. that’s not really fair, is it? Your schedule might be packed. You may not have the resources. You might be feeling under the weather, problems at home, losing money in the stock market, found out the kid wasn’t yours, woke up in a ditch feeling sore, you adopted a dog that ate your car keys.. hey, shit happens. This is why you have to find a way to make it their fault.

GT_SILVER_RED-vi (1)But how? How do you twist a terrible situation into not being blamed for it? Simple: Get tons of feedback and make it exactly what they want.

Nobody.. ever.. ever.. woke up and said.. “You know what… I want a $60,000 Mazda Miata with a poop colored interior and 4th day of my period toned roof on top of a silver car.” – But Porsche sold thousands of them!

Friends.. simply put, it’s what the customer wanted.

As an employee, your job is to meet expectations. No matter how ridiculous those expectations and demands may be, your job is to make your boss happy. If they are happy, you’re happy. Yeah, from time to time it might make you want to cover your eyes or look away every few seconds as if someone tied you down to watch 2 girls 1 cup video.. but recognizing what your job is and the fact that you do not have all the perspective that your boss may have is what it takes to win and hopefully get promoted as far away as possible.

How.

Go through steps 1-3.

Solicit input. You’ll never know what is actually expected of you if you don’t ask. Ask for as many specifics as you can reasonably expect a clear answer to and pay attention to the details. Are they offering a lot of details about a particular aspect of your deliverable – that means they know exactly what they want. Are they being vague – they have no idea what they want.

Offer options. Everyone has an opinion. Unfortunately, most opinions are stupid. By providing lots of different alternatives you have a way of playing hot and cold with the boss or the client.

Offer revised options. Based on the feedback from the previous step – offer revised options. See if you’re going in the right direction or if they change their mind. Reasonable people often change their mild – wildly – when they are proven wrong. There are no geniuses, just people with tons of options and the luck to choose the right one. Some people make great choices. For the rest, there is a poop colored Porsche.

Make them choose and give them the alternatives as well. Once your boss and client have made their choice, spend all the time you’ve got into making their choice the best it can be. Spend 10% of your time working on the other options as well. You never know, maybe they will change their mind down the road – as much as you want to give them choices initially, you want to also provide them with a way to provide choices to whomever they are trying to sell their idea to as well.

Provide vague progress reports. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever be specific about what is going on. It invites micromanagement. Worse, it lets them know just how much of your time is spent taking what we at Own Web Now call “Frankcation at the keyboard” – an act of being at work but also working at such a slow pace that you might as well be on vacation. Or pinterest. Try to be a sales guy – they provide for a perfect shitstorm of vague information: lack of intellect combined with compulsive lying and D+ math skills. This is also known as downplaying your pipeline – you want the expectations to be so low that just the miracle of getting your job done is a positive. Instill confidence at the same time as you distribute doubt:

“Yeah, I’m almost done with it, I’d love to show it to you but Bob messed up my PC so I’m waiting for the patch.”

This bait and switch is terrific because not only does it make them feel good about what you’re doing but it makes them go and unleash their frustration on Bob who let’s face it, is likely on the shitlist to start with. So long as Bob isn’t an axe murderer this is known as a corporate win-win-win.

Only show it when it’s done. Never, ever, ever show your work in progress. It will only prompt more feedback, more ideas, more suggestions and it will give your boss/client a sense that things could still be tweaked. God help you, that project is never getting done. Only show them the finished masterpiece – make them ride that Poop Period Porsche off the lot with pride!

Conclusion

The few of you that are sensible.. or naïve.. might look at all this and find it completely defeating and sad. It is. Yet, this is the nature of how things get done among imperfect people, mismanaged companies, unmotivated workforce and diversity in general.

Maybe Poop Porsche isn’t for you? But it beats a Ford Model T “in any color you want so long as it’s black” any day.

I find that most people struggle and get demotivated by the things they cannot change – yet refuse to tinker with so many things that are in their control.

You can be happy and you can put out great stuff – so long as you are willing to put in the extra effort and be a part of the solution. World already has enough mindless drones following the management pyramid and most of them work at Foxconn and sweatshops where there are occasionally suicides.

The choice to do better starts with you. Happy Monday.

Designers Challenge

Posted: 3:02 pm
October 17, 2012
Shockey Monkey
1 Comment

This is not a sales/SPAM post but I do have to frame it for you in perspective: We’re working on the updates to Shockey Monkey which will soon be powering over 10,000 businesses worldwide. Design of the look, feel, flow and integration of elements for the total user experience is not an entirely random task left up to focus groups, it goes down to the core of business design.

Compromising On Goals

You can have it simple or you can have the details.

You can’t have both.

When you design something with simplicity in mind you cannot pack it with controls, input boxes, text areas, sliders and jam everything on a single screen. You also can’t embed it into 50 tabs because the user interface will look like a gorilla sat on the keyboard while Excel was open. “Oh, you want to see your sales performance? That’s in tab AAZ”

The case for simplicity is easy: When you have a small company (or staff it with small minds – think cashiers and point of sale personnel) you want to eliminate anything that can cause confusion. The goal is to make everything so easy and clear that nobody can make a mistake or take a long time to perform a task.

Small companies need to focus on simplicity first and foremost because the challenge of attacking a bunch of problems with a complex tool doesn’t solve problems – it just adds another problem to the stack!

But after you’ve gone through the process of accounting for the simplest of tasks, do you jam people into a complex CRM? (Hint: Remember what I said about small minds..)

You will always have newbies who are not familiar with your system – who are not familiar with the way you manage and run your business. In a nutshell, you will always have to chase simplicity and productivity. Always. No exceptions. Ever.

Yet when you get organized and have all of your information in one place, diving into that information for details or collecting additional information does something productivity improvements never could: it improves profitability and accountability of the organization.

Lot’s of inefficiencies and lost opportunities hide in the details. Yet without simplicity and getting your business organized in the first place you can never find out where they hide.

Challenge

As we’ve been drawing, redrawing, looking at user feedback, requirements, customer feature requests, bugs, our notes and so on I’ve had this in front of me:

Remember:

People love your software because it’s simple.

Every time I think of adding one more control, one more tab, one more popup, one more thing… I try to remember – nothing can be more than a few clicks from the login. Nothing should span multiple pages.

When it comes to design – be it for software or for stuff you present to your clients – it needs to fit on a single page. Ever wonder why trifold brochures never work or why nobody reads marketing collateral that comes as a book? Because it’s too much crap, all piled in and jammed onto as little of a space as possible because we can’t afford not to do what other guys do so we must mention it and talk about our stuff as well. In other words, Microsoft.

If you can’t fit it on a single page, you’ve failed.

If you can’t simplify it, you’ve failed.

But if you can’t effectively evaluate your process because you’re driving a car through the forest at 90mph.. then you either have to come to terms that you’re going to make mistakes.. or compromise.

In our case, compromise comes at the expense of inconvenience for some. I wanted to stress that because from the design standpoint, I won’t put out a product that is difficult to use – ever – because that’s already done. But if someone wants to be difficult and put their users/employees through some inefficiency because they feel they can gain better corporate performance – hey, I’m all for it!

Micromanage them to death, baby!

{Everyone that works for me just started crying, in unison }

Vladstradamus Part 2

Posted: 4:34 pm
October 5, 2012
IT Business, Microsoft
3 Comments

Yesterday I wrote a little about the stuff that’s currently bugging me about the overall state of the SMB IT Land and to sum it up, I don’t appreciate it when people don’t like the reality they see and try to argue it as some sort of a future event that won’t affect them. And believe me, I understand why the majority of our industry refuses to come to terms with it – it’s busy with the mundane tasks to pick up their head and see what’s going on around them.

So go ahead.. get mad at me if you will.. but I’m going to take you down the fortune telling exercise of consumerisation and what will happen over the next few years (unless you actually pay attention to the news, developments, CEOs and so on, in which case this is just history and common sense)

If you are partnering with your vendors, you are an idiot

Several years ago, when everyone got mad at me for pointing out the mess BPOS is about to make, I posted a very accurate picture of the New SBSC program.

In hindsight, I was nice. I had a screenshot of what appeared to be a sex act with the female SMB partner actress in pain and the Microsoft actor in heaven. Now the factual inaccuracy of that picture is that the female actress made 5-10 times what the male actor made – whereas the reality today is that the Microsoft partner (if still even barely alive) has to pay thousands of dollars to wash Microsoft’s car but the benefit is that you get to put a picture of that car on your business card. Welcome to 2012.

At the time I worked closely with a lot of Microsoft people and was actually among the many that praised what used to be a very good program. When I posted the picture and pointed out to the partners that Microsoft is about to screw them out of their business, one of the very senior worldwide Microsoft SBSC folks (no, not Eric) confronted me about it. Here is how the conversation went, paraphrasing:

M$ VP: You know, instead of criticizing it, you should help the BPOS team.

Vlad: You mean you want me to help you obliterate the channel by perfecting your poison?

M$ VP: I wouldn’t put it exactly like that but yes.

Those would be the last words that we’ve exchanged and she has since moved on to greener pastures because.. well, you see what Office 365 has done for you so far.

Every war front needs an idiot to carry the flag

I understand that. Because whoever happens to be dumb enough to pick up that flag is going to be praised by Microsoft and championed for being the most innovative and leveraging the new path of Microsoft success.

Why the rest of the morons are climbing the mountain of dead bodies to stand up there is beyond me. There can only be one fool at the podium presenting awesome fictional models of making money with Office 365 but all the folks that fell off that mountain will tell you the truth: Only Microsoft makes money, you’re lucky to be able to pull off a sideshow project.

The upsetting part? This is ju96st the beginning. This is what Microsoft is working on and they need your help to make you obsolete! So please, sign up, certify yourself as a sales person, let’s hurry up this consumerisation move and we’ll pretend to triple your margins on that single digit revenue product.

Those are not my words by the way. Or the IT Solution Providers. That is the vision offered to you directly by the CEO of Microsoft and everyone underneath him. For the past 5 years.

Do you really think you get to play in Windows 8? You think Microsoft Surface is going to make you relevant?

Listen, it’s Microsoft’s problem that they are too big, too old, too overinvested in stuff people no longer want and it’s their perogative to keep on pushing the same old thing with a different package.

What the hell is your excuse?

It’s not just Microsoft.

Nearly all the vendors across the field are looking to work directly with the end user.

So why are you stuck trying to be someone elses agent when you have the location, accessibility and customer service that almost always trumps just about everything except the price?

IT Solution Providers are thriving. Worldwide. But only because they are focusing on the Solution to the customer problems. The guys that are stuck, physically/financially/mentally, on solving the problems we had with IT back in 96 are in the same place as the guys back from ‘06.

All the vendors are pumping you down the road to consumerization. The consumer makes the choice.

Oh yeah? Then guess what, all my money and all my marketing will go to them spending it with me, not with you.

This isn’t the future. This is just common sense – if your vendors are not working for you and making you money then they are fired.

It’s that simple.

Vladstradamus Part 1

Posted: 11:13 am
October 4, 2012
Boss, IT Business, Microsoft
2 Comments

Comments like these have been coming in fast and furious over the past year or so:

Capture

… and to be honest they kind of piss me off because it makes me seem like some kind of a prophet. Like I foretold the demise of SBS, the end of SBSC, the Office 365 as the grim reaper of MSPs and that whole movement kind of going to crap.

I would like to remind you for a moment that I do not work for Microsoft.

It might be something I’ve said… but they don’t come to me for advice either. Just the check.

And while I’m being honest, you don’t need a crystal ball to tell that one man a business does not make.

The gurus, the experts, the masterminds and their universities? If they are even employed, they are in roles far from power or decision making responsibilities… because you don’t put a failed VAR in charge of business they have proven they can’t run, you put them up as a puppet to make it seem like you care. Which leads me to the most important point we can learn from the debacle of would-be SMB-IT:

It ain’t dead..

There is this myth out there that small business IT providers are struggling. We work with thousands of partners and I can tell you they are doing better than ever.

There is another myth that Microsof is somehow on a downward spiral in SMB without the partners.. quite the contrary: They are now charging what they used to give away for free, they have finally converted their products into annuities and they are converting all that inefficiency of inept computer repairmen into their reoccuring revenue.

Microsoft won. Partners won. The guys that lost out were idiots that argued with common sense – that’s not a prophecy, that’s just calling it like it is.

If I am guilty of anything.. it’s pointing out the trends, Microsoft CEO quotes, Microsoft product development, consumerization and other stuff any decent business owner and even middle level manager with 4 hours of community college economics would have told you: marketplace does not reward inefficiency.

Now for the really ugly truth

The death spiral of the SMB IT is just in it’s beginning. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disagree with you about technology, implementation, best practices, your resume or how savvy you happen to be. You’re not wrong. It’s just that it doesn’t matter. Sorry.

The companies that are thriving right now are not necessarily great at IT.

But how can it be? How can something inferior beat out something that is so much better?

Because purchasing decisions in SMB, midmarket and even enterprise aren’t made on 100% rational arguments and the academic correctness of your thesis. They are made on limited information, great service, flexibility and the faith that you’re getting something more than you’re paying for (aka “getting a great deal”).

This is something that has been driving ExchangeDefender and it’s partners since 2007. Recently Shockey Monkey has also gone in that direction, with nearly 10,000 companies building their business on it.

These folks are thriving.

We’re not the easiest to work with. We’re not the cheapest. We’re far from the biggest. Kind of like our partners – but guess what: we’re doing better than we ever have.

Why?

Because we’re constantly adding to what we do and we’re constantly talking about it. Not at the next release, not at the next event or party, not at the next quarter. When it’s done, it’s out there.

So while others are busy with partnerships and strategic alliances and trying to sell as much stuff before the time on the clock runs out and VC money dries up… we’re extending the time on the clock.

This is ultimately what made the difference for IT Solution Providers out there. If you were a VAR and you bet the entire house on Y2K you died in the boom. Or MSP. Or web design. Or social media marketing. Or whatever next cycle happens to be. I don’t care if your business makes tens of thousands of dollars a year or tens of millions of dollars, we are in business of selling technology that changes daily and you cannot stop evolution by peer grouping it up with the same bastards that are stuck heading down the same tunnel, trying to perfect the efficiency at which you’re heading towards the light. You have to constantly pay attention to what is going on and constantly evolve.

IT is not a very forgiving industry – and it’s not kind to it’s fortunetellers either – but you don’t have to predict the future nor do you have to be right: You just have to be agile and you have to stay informed.

And you have to react. Information is worthless if you don’t take advantage of it.

It kills me that so many of you are sitting around waiting, hoping, wishing.. day dreaming about blue oceans and what Windows 8 is going to do for you.. Snap the fuck out of it and start talking to your clients. Get more clients. Make sure they know what is going on and make sure they have the advantage.

I do the same for my partners. Not because I’m a prophet, but because I’m a CEO of a company they rely on. There is no $ in being right, but you will always get paid for a job well done. So get back to work and stop whining about what others are doing.

Love,

-Vlad

P.S. If you didn’t like this, now would be a great time to unsubscribe. Because what I got coming for you tomorrow is really going to make you livid.

iPhone 5: Week Later

Posted: 2:31 pm
October 1, 2012
Apple
3 Comments

There is no shortage when it comes to opinions and reviews of Apple’s latest iPhone. To sum it up, it’s the greatest thing to ever descend from heaven unless you use maps in which case you’re doomed. More realistically, it’s an iteration or two behind what Samsung S3 is putting out. I’m a big fan of the iPhone for no particular reason so I figured I’d offer my impression of it to anyone thinking about the upgrade.

Apple Is Annoying

First off, the device is great. Not one regret in getting it. I’ve upgraded from iPhone 4 so with all the discounts it was less than $300.

The biggest annoyance is with the new charger – in order to fit more gadgets inside the phone Apple shrunk it’s power connector and rendered all the existing toys I have obsolete. Fair enough, with every new technology you get some forced changes (Windows Metro ring a bell) and I can understand that I’ll have to shell out a few bucks for the adapter for my existing gadgets – except there are no adapters to be found! Apple mall store is sold out and the one I purchased online at the same time I got my phone won’t be here for another two weeks. So much for the “screen supply shortage”..

Keyboard takes some adjusting to. The phone itself is slimmer but taller so hitting some of the keys correctly every single time takes practice. My typing out of the box was pretty horrible but it has gotten back to normal now.

The Good Stuff

Battery: Even though I only have one place I can charge my iPhone, it lasts 2 days on a single charge. Not something I could say about my iPhone 4 and definitely not something I can say about the Samsung Galaxy android phone I use for work.

Siri: It’s kind of stupid but I’ve been able to use it for quick stuff while driving (setting appointments, alarms, sending emails).

Speed: It’s fast. It’s really, really, really fast.

The Flameworthy Stuff

Now some of you will say that this is all just a part of the reality distortion field (and you’re partially right) and that there are better phones out there (still right) and that I should check out Windows Phone 8! It’s the best damn phone with the most amazing faked camera ever! Put down your Zune phone and get back to work M$ drones.

I do own an Android phone that I use for business. I actually really like the new Galaxy S3. My problem with Android is about 30% technical – I have never met one that didn’t have terrible battery life. Look, it’s a phone, it’s not a PC – I don’t want to load it with battery optimization software, manage which applications are going rogue, worry about whether it will be fixed by a legit ROM released by Samsung or one I’d have to cook myself. It’s something that a phone should do on it’s own and I have no interest in “managing it”.

The other reason why otherwise reasonable people go with Apple, even though it’s clearly not the most advanced thing on the marketplace – has to do with comfort. I had to make absolutely 0 adjustments with the new phone. All the data, all the settings, all the look and feel made it from my iPhone 4 to my iPhone 5. I just unplugged one, plugged in another and I was back to my phone experience uninterrupted.

This is something that I think bares relevance for IT Solution Providers as well. Even though there are “better” phones on the marketplace, the pain of switching to something else is just too big. I don’t want to move all of my pictures, all of my music, worry about backups and battery management software – even if it brings me NFC and a bigger screen. There is also no real cost advantage, $100 here or there is not going to make me completely redesign my mobile life.

If I didn’t have an iPhone already, I’d probably buy the S3. But with my tablet also running iOS and being able to use the same apps I bought on it on my iPhone would probably play a part in it too. This gets me to Windows 8 – if it’s a major departure from Windows 7 that’s been relatively the same UI-wise since XP days (for over a decade)… interesting Smile

The best SMB IT conference you can attend this year..

Posted: 11:57 am
September 27, 2012
IT Business
2 Comments

Aeron2Is right in your Aeron.

I talk to IT Solution Providers all day every day and there has definitely been a shift in attitude when it comes to social stuff over the past year as our use of social media picks up and the days out of the office become more and more expensive.

Let me just say it out loud: You should go to conferences. Period.

But as someone who sponsors a bunch of them, I am always asking you which ones you go to. And why. Because there is a right answer (to make connections, to find out about product X) and a wrong answer (to get out of the office, to catch up with my buddies, etc).

Time out of the office, for successful IT solution providers, has gotten really expensive because it’s harder than ever to make significant profits with the compressed margins.

The Best Conference This Year

Most conferences last about a day or two.

Add another day on each side for travel and you’re looking at about 3 days out of the office for a conference.

Allow me to indulge you: Our most successful partners aren’t just selling ExchangeDefender. They are selling multiple tiers of ExchangeDefender, from the $0.50 / mbox replacement for Postini all the way up to double digit per mailbox revenue with encryption, compliance archiving and LocalCloud. They are selling hosted Exchange, SharePoint, etc.. all from us. I’d be willing to bet that half of you reading this blog post don’t know that we do all this – and I bet you don’t know half of what all your key suppliers can do for you.

Make a virtual conference where you flip the tables.

Make the vendors come to you instead of you going around to talk to us.

Get as much attention as you want and wait for the complete answer, not the “let’s catch up when I get back to the office” answer.

Here is how

First, put it on the calendar. Schedule a day or two where you’re only going to be dealing with the vendor stuff that’s going to move your business forward.

Second, if you really have to burn cash and you don’t think you can focus in the office or at home, pack a suitcase and go to the free Wifi hotel at a hotel an hour away from home.. It will give you the combo of burning money and time away so you can focus and think clearly.

Finally, break out your schedule. Book some time to watch webinars or sales or tech training. Book the rest to actually interact with the person on the phone.

Ultimately, book some time to sketch the implementation of what you’ve learned. Time to beta test something new, cost compare with what you already may have, etc.

Everyone Is Busy

We’re always busy.

Yet I see everyone on Facebook nearly all the time. Maybe you’re like me and you Facebook in the meetings when you should be faking interest in a proposal that you know is doomed to a certain failure.

The rest of the time we just don’t manage the clock as well as we should because we’re dealing with fires and distractions.

The real obstacle to success, unfortunately, is that we do not make the time to make things any better. Instead of organizing and consolidating, we just patch stuff with yet another miracle solution which in the end sucks up even more time and produces further inefficiencies.

Aim for simplicity. Slow down to speed up.

ExchangeDefender PSA Integrations

Posted: 8:29 am
September 25, 2012
Programming
Comments Off on ExchangeDefender PSA Integrations

If you happen to be using something other than Shockey Monkey to manage your business, I would appreciate some ideas on what we need to add to our ExchangeDefender integration set. The deadline for all ideas is October 15th as we have to have the roadmap put the requests in place by November 1st and transition the development.

Autotask – This is our most complete integration out there, as far as I know everything works. (if it doesn’t, please email me a screenshot of what’s broken to vlad@vladville.com)

ConnectWise – Reporting of some stats data is broken and will be straightened out by CW event. We’re kind of open to suggestions on how to help you out on this one given the reputation that CW reports have – but to be honest I am not familiar with the 3rd party report companies.

API – Everything here works as well, all data available to 3rd party PSA as well as Shockey Monkey portals is functional. If there is something you’d like us to open up please email me at vlad@vladville.com

Anything else? Let me know.

Before the conspiracy theories start and I hear from others that I’ve said something I haven’t actually said… here is the deal: We’re growing very rapidly and we have a very aggressive roadmap ahead of us for 2013-2014 – meanwhile the talent pool out there is extremely shallow.

This is something I’ve been discussing with my partners for a while now. For obvious reasons I can’t have the same personnel on Shockey Monkey and AT/CW.. and with 3rd party mobility integrations becoming more demanded by the partner base, what would you like me to spend my development resources on: Something that makes managing your job easier or something that you can sell / get $ for? Universally, everyone has asked for more features and things they could sell (Unicorn, LocalCloud, etc) but we can’t have broken integrations either so… if you know php/.net or have some brilliant way of digging out of this hole, let me know Smile

Dealing With Bad Days

Posted: 11:00 am
September 12, 2012
Boss, GTD
1 Comment

I have three kinds of days: Good day, bad day and #$!%.

I have blogged previously about #$!%, the reverse midas touch, days when everything I touch turns to shit and the best and most reasonable course of action is to end that day and try not to touch anything else.

Good days and bad days come and go, some people choose to quit while they are ahead on good days and take off on a positive note and do something they enjoy, others like to turn bad days into good days, I just kind of go with the flow.

Only exception

On bad days when I’m tired.. stressed out.. I should quit.

I don’t. I work on mundane crap – go over my to do list, review reports, send emails that I’ve had in the queue, follow up with people, update software.. basically deal with stuff that doesn’t require brain, concentration, skill.

First, it’s nearly a form of meditation. You don’t have to move much, you won’t get any good or bad news out of the process, it’s just time * effort equation.

Second, things can only get better. Bad day can only get worse if you try something ambitious and then have that blow up in your face. But if I work on stuff that needs to get done that isn’t going to cause further problems.. I can at least say that it was a bad day but I got a lot of stuff done so hopefully I’ll be less stressed tomorrow.

Third, I’m already stressed out and tired. If it’s 4PM and bed time is hours and hours away, there is no point going to sleep, or wasting the day by drinking. If I have nothing better to do and it’s already a bad day, I’d rather not have my bitchy mood rub off on anyone else.

Fourth… and perhaps most important, there is a reason I defer certain things. Mostly, it’s because I just don’t like doing them. That’s why I write them down and am disciplined to get them done… eventually.

My motto has always been, if something needs to get done I’ll get it done. Sooner or later. While I wish I was more disciplined, less emotionally affected by certain tasks, wish I could defer more things and a ton of other coulda/shoulda/woulda.. thing to remember about building a business is that it’s a process and that there are constraints (financial, time, common sense) and so long as you just see those constraints and work within your capabilities… it’s just a matter of choice to do the work or not do the work.