Perspectives on Invincibility

Posted: 1:27 pm
July 25, 2012
Boss, Vladville
Comments Off on Perspectives on Invincibility

I have a quick piece of advice I’d like to share with you.

Win big.

Lose small and often.

As you build your business or businesses and manage different strategies and goals you will inevitably fail at most of them. Not because you’re an idiot but mostly because when you don’t have complete control over all the factors and aren’t giving it 100% of your undivided attention and don’t operate in vacuum things can sometimes work against you.

The bigger things get the more often stuff will work against you. You can only juggle so much.

Those of us that fail a lot and often learn to put things into perspective – and that perspective is that there is no such thing as immortality and invincibility.

So when you win big..

Do this:

What would I have done next if I was wrong and I lost?

It will keep you from thinking you’re far better than you actually are.

It will reset your risk calculations as well. Success is hard to come by and money is far too easy to give away. You’re happy when you win so you don’t take the time to truly reflect on what it took to get the win – you only seem to think about it when you lose. So when you win.. be humble, be thankful, consider your next move like it’s the last one you’ll make.

Or drink so much that the walls start to move and hope you hit a soft target on your way down as you pass out.

It’s one of the few “secrets” I’ve had on my way up. It’s also remarkably inexplicable that it’s a secret that so many aren’t aware of – which is why so many successful people make remarkably dumb moves. Rappers, wall street crooks, gay bashing legislators and pastors getting caught in the airport bathroom stall with a man, etc.

Win big. Lose small and often.

Update on the NDA items

Posted: 2:43 pm
July 20, 2012
Beta, IT Culture
Comments Off on Update on the NDA items

Several people have followed up with me directly about the progress of the betas and other NDA software and solutions discussed at the few NDA webinars I held last quarter. Here is the official unofficial statement on those and just the statement of the obvious in case I may have mislead some with my optimism.

We have several huge pieces of software coming out over the next year.

Some of it will step on the toes of our vendors, sponsors or competitors in the marketplace. For obvious reasons we aren’t going to talk about these out loud until they are ready and we’ve got our partners ready to rock and roll.

That said..

First, this is a business and in business we’re going to go after the people that have the largest accounts with us even if they aren’t the most ideal test case scenario. If they are volunteering their time and paying us a ton of money, I will not tell them they aren’t good enough to play with my broken software.

Second, loyalty matters. I know many people are all about “right tool for the right job” and to that I say “I’ll get right back to you”; It’s no secret that no matter what the scenario (business or personal) you take care of your friends. So when I have people who are my undying supporters that sell and push me harder than I even do myself – yeah, they go way way ahead of the Microsoft and Postini fans. While I’m sure it’s in our better business interest to pursue our competitors clients and offer them exclusive stuff if they were to switch their antispam or hosting stuff to us.. I have a shitload of money but I don’t have a shitload of friends – so my friends come first.

Finally, we have limited resources and I’m tired of shipping crap. We don’t get second chances anymore. The stuff that we put out there has to be pretty much perfect and our partners are just as busy as we are with even fewer resources. We can’t afford to drag these tests out for years – so the way it works (and some of you have figured this out working with Chelsea) is as follows:

1. Vlad’s VIP list. Call them in sequence.

2. High rollers. Call them from top to bottom.

3. Everyone else. Call from top to bottom in order of MRR.

In most cases, we don’t even make it down the VIP list. These are typically the people that have been working with us forever and I trust their opinion. When we do – Chelsea calls down – if you don’t answer the phone that we have on the record your entry goes to the bottom of the list. This is why most people never end up on the beta. For what it’s worth – I understand, I am typically too busy to answer phone calls too – but those are the breaks. We’re essentially begging people for help here and whoever has a time and is willing gets a hit.

It’s a two way street

Being on a beta is not necessarily a huge benefit to the organization nor is it a critical piece to how you run your business. I think that way more than 99% of our clients do not participate in our beta (assuming that the crap we actually put out is called “release”) process.

The advantage is in hearing me talk about what the solution does and hearing all the other background behind it so you can better formulate your business plan. For example, what if you knew that there was a significant part of your service provider infrastructure coming for free if you’re my partner? Would it twist the way you market and position your product when you can do so on someone elses dime? Sure. Would it be any less valuable 6 months later? Probably not. But it sure would be more convenient knowing about it ahead of time.

That’s all I’m saying! Smile

Short Term Fads, Long Term Trends, Profit Both Ways

Posted: 8:18 pm
July 19, 2012
ExchangeDefender, IT Business
Comments Off on Short Term Fads, Long Term Trends, Profit Both Ways

As I’ve mentioned just about every chance I get, we’ve been at this for about 15 years. Every year or so I look at my lines of business and wonder if it’s going to make it around for another year or two. Most of them don’t. When we first started Own Web Now, I was wondering if we could keep on selling domain registrations. Then web hosting. Then ISDN dialbacks. Then reselling T1’s and circuits. Then web design. Then web and email hosting. Then security. Then email. Every time we make it into a new technology it takes 2-3 years before it becomes easier to obtain that the fad tide rides fast and then you either catch a new one or fade into obscurity.

Today, with the launch of ExchangeDefender CloudShare, I’m going to say something unusual that I’ve never said before.

I think that CloudShare – combined with all our other lines of business – has not just added another two to three years.. but at least 10 years to our relevancy in an SMB organization.

Shifting Paradigms

First we had mainframes and dumb terminals.

Then we went from mainframes to most computing being done on individual PCs.

With Internet revolution we started marching back towards the client-server model and now on to the cloud which in essence is pushing most of the storage, processing and intelligence back onto a mainframe like monster system.

I think the mobility trend is here to stay for at least another decade.

Small businesses are adopting it at a record pace. Our hosted mail products are smacking around on-site deployments – and soon there will be a time where nobody but the biggest shops will be building high end servers in their offices. Everyone thinks so, including Microsoft that just killed SBS.

Reality Check

As I wrote previously, we do not for a moment believe that businesses of any size blindly trust the cloud. The problem with software design and software industry is that you don’t design solutions for the edge cases, you design for the mass market – and the reality is that you cannot sell massive amounts of software to businesses that are paranoid of the Internet.

This is where I think they are wrong and I’m betting a lot of money against them.

Not sure if I placed enough emphasis on that one. Smile

Here is the thing, small businesses are going to keep on moving more and more stuff to the cloud. It just makes sense. It plays well with mobile devices. It’s easy to budget and it’s relatively cheap to maintain because it’s someone elses job to do all the nasty antivirus, backup, migration and so on. So the cloud + mobility stuff is here to stay.

The catch is that the cloud takes all the control out of your hands. It offers damn near zero compensation in the case of a data loss. Everything is at your own risk – and in business we try to minimize risk and maximize profits and remove uncertainty.

So how certain are you that the cloud won’t lose your data? Would you bet a $1,000/year business on the cloud? Sure. How about a $10,000 a year? Maybe. $100,000? Maybe, but I don’t feel comfortable. $1,000,000? No way. $10,000,000? Trust? What’s that?

I believe that our CloudShare extends our business by ten years. Simply put – cloud providers have no incentive to create a backup system for you. Absolutely none. They are better off spending $ on their own infrastructure redundancy and charging you more for more frequent backups that they manage. Play Russian roulette with your data, would you like to point a revolver loaded with 4 bullets or 1 bullet to your head? Go ahead, just squeeze.

We have always seen an advantage along the lines of common sense and low risk.

We’re rolling out a software solution (CloudShare) today. It will keep your files in the cloud and sync them locally to all your PCs.

This fall we’ll be rolling out a hardware appliance that will bring all the cloud files to your office. Then all of your email messages in the ExchangeDefender Hosted Exchange. Then Twitter. Then Facebook. Then other providers.

The better the cloud and mobility does, the better you’ll do.

And I think that makes a difference that no cloud will be able to bolster.

Differentiation. For a decade. Let’s spank this!

P.S. So my partners will make lots of bank. Now, here is the thing. This is the last time I’m begging you to join us at ExchangeDefender. If you’re not onboard and working with us, ExchangeDefender Partner Program will soon be going byebye in it’s current form and the entry fee and terms will become quite steep. Truth is, I need to put more resources towards Managed Messaging, Shockey Monkey and CloudShare so training new resellers for free is just not in the best interest of the business and our partners. More details on this later.

What if we’re all wrong about the cloud?

Posted: 10:59 pm
July 16, 2012
Awesome, ExchangeDefender, IT Business
Comments Off on What if we’re all wrong about the cloud?

The cloud fever has finally made Microsoft’s SMB channel too sick to get out of bed with removal of Exchange, joining virtually every other vendor that is only pursuing a cloud strategy. Many consultants, IT Solution Providers and even yours truly have chimed in on the fact that data retention is extremely important in the SMB world. The typical IT scenario for the cloud in SMB has been to offload some of the Internet-intensive workloads to the cloud: web hosting, email hosting, portals, shopping carts and so on have all gone to the cloud. Small businesses spend a small fortune counting on the cloud for disaster recovery and business continuity.

I think we’ve got this the wrong way.

Client behavior suggests so as well.

If you follow the evolution of servers to the cloud from the late 90’s to today you see that one technology after another has slowly trended towards being more expensive, requiring more redundancy and even more maintenance and upkeep. Each generation, in terms of overall cost for software and hardware, has gone up because client demands have exponentially gone up. I remember talking to many IT folks even in Fortune 500 about their 25 Mb mailboxes. Today, that’s an attachment.

The major concern for IT departments today is BYOD. That stands for “Bring Your Own Device” but what it really means is that another piece of infrastructure is ripped out of control of the IT department. Think about it, if you bring your own iPad with it’s own 4G connection and your 4G Android, do you really need anything from the IT department? Or an IT consultant? As both of those parties fight to stay relevant one ugly truth becomes apparent: The IT has lost control.

Years ago the biggest IT concern was proliferation of hosted services. IT departments didn’t like users using online applications for collaboration or team organization because it made IT departments irrelevant. Departments refused to wait for IT guys to get around to purchasing servers, vetting the vendor, testing the system, deploying it, configuring it and often not being able to support it. So the users went around them – opening up team sites and collaborating through the freebie systems. Today those systems – from Gmail to Facebook – are the norm an IT department cannot fight.

Once people figured out how flexible they can be without the gatekeeper they couldn’t get enough of it! Yes proxies and active directory restrictions could keep people in check for a while but even Microsoft killed ISA a long time ago. If even the biggest software manufacturer in the world sees no ability to make money on giving companies the ability to police traffic that ought to give you a big enough sign of what the businesses really demand.

In essence, it’s productivity.

So what do we have wrong?

I think we got the cloud file storage thing figured out backwards.

The entire cloud is racing towards creating a cheaper storage product. Amazon Web Services is battling Rackspace who is fighting with Microsoft Azure and they are all trying to figure out a way to split pennies. Meanwhile, they from time to time lose data and woops, thanks for playing, it’s gone.

How can they get away with it? Simple – their largest customers aren’t small businesses storing precious data. They are social media sites storing political cartoons and memes. Losing your tax records is no joking matter tho.

So what do we have in SMB? We have a ton invested in file servers and we’re spending a fortune to create business recovery scenarios with expensive offsite backups. Or we’re dropping it off into unreliable and unknown void of the cloud – with storage products that have no stated data destruction policies, no security disclosures, proprietary mechanisms that make it difficult to take data out and even some of the most heralded solutions happen to lose data.

This is a broken model.

Small business has to spend an insane amount of money to create reliable local infrastructure. First you need enterprise quality disks. Then you need RAID hardware. Finally, you need some sort of backup software/solution often paired with a BDR with an offsite provider. You need this.

So congratulations, for every bit of data you store you’re paying at least 4x (on your workstation, 2x on your servers mirrored hard drives, 1x on your BDR and 1x in the cloud). That’s if the data isn’t also backed up to a USB disk or using RAID10 or something more sophisticated.

The flexibility you get with that data to follow you from PC to PC if you work from home? None. Audit control over the server? Very complex. Access logs of what is touched when in the cloud? Damn near none. And that’s if you deal with reputable people, not Jimmy Joe Bob’s Bait & Tackle Cloud Storage Specialists (I miss my brother Chris Rue).

I think there is a better way.

If all the worlds vendors are hell bent on removing servers from SMB, it just doesn’t make sense to move your storage to the cloud. Seriously, would you keep your money in the worlds cheapest fee bank? Why do you pay for a safety deposit box instead of keeping your valuables in a storage locker at a 24/7 UPS store? Because you value security. And redundancy. You don’t want to drive up to a bank tomorrow and realize that it’s single branch has been turned overnight into the Waffle House.

It’s easy to build affordable and scalable stuff in the cloud. But you’re not going to trust the cloud with your data any more than you’re going to trust the Waffle House Credit Union.

So what if the cloud were merely a backend for your file exchange. Instead of keeping files in a web interface, you keep it on your hard drive and the software on your PC simply syncs it to the cloud provider. If they blow up… ah well, you still have your data. If you blow up, no big deal, just download it from the cloud.

In the meantime, your operations don’t change. Everything looks the same as before, works as fast as it did before because the files are local. The only thing that changes is where this data goes.

But you still can’t trust them..

So what if instead of spending thousands of dollars on file servers that you don’t need and can never pay enough to keep as redundant and as resilient..

.. you keep your data in the cloud but get a cheap appliance that just streams down the cloud content back down to you so you can always keeps hands on your data but never overspend to keep it safe?

It’s what users want. The cost of the cloud for the enterprise storage.

Only problem is, no vendor will want to build a system that takes them out of the service equation or perpetual service subscription. It’s easier to just keep on cutting a cent off the storage fees and hope the cuts are slower than the tumbling cost of storage density. Well, maybe there is someone crazy enough to do it.

The Only Thing I Know For Sure

You will never get it wrong if you deliver what people ask for. Smile

P.S. The comments are closed and you know why… If you have a comment please email me at vlad@vladville.com or tune in to your favorite news site this Thursday.

The wrong concerns everyone has about the cloud

Posted: 11:14 am
July 11, 2012
ExchangeDefender, IT Business
4 Comments

Now some of you clicked on this link accidentally or are probably wondering what kind of insane argument for the cloud I have. After all, your clients don’t want the cloud, don’t trust the cloud, will never want their data on the Internet and are just looking for a good debate. I’ve had that debate for years and this ain’t one of them so I don’t want to waste your time, just follow this link to the place where the folks that disagreed with me inevitably end up at. Sorry, but that’s the harsh reality of business in an emerging technology field and not liking innovation.

Why cloud file servers just don’t make sense..

There is that problem of broadband just not being broad enough for the large files we sometimes move around. Even in the small business with a 10Mb uplink that pipe can get not-so-broad during business hours while everyone is streaming youtube videos.

Then there is the issue of location, politics and regulation. Where is my data stored at? Is it in USA where the Patriot Act is going to authorize the government to see every single of my files? Aren’t all of the employees constantly opening my files just as they read all of my email and my attachments? Will I get sued if my data is not on my hard drive?

There are also questions about longevity – what if the service provider goes out of business? If you move to the cloud and the cloud explodes, are you going to lose all of your files? Since you have no control over it all, what if one of your employees or service providers employees just decides to delete all of your files out of malice?

REALLY: These are just a few of the reasons I don’t believe in the cloud. Yes, I Vladimir Mazek do not have blind faith in the cloud. I do worry that my bank doesn’t have enough deposits on hand and I might one day wake up to having new management there. I don’t trust my data center providers, that’s why I have more then one. I sure as hell don’t trust any of the hardware we use – that’s why they are redundant inside the box, spread across multiple boxes and the redundant across multiple data centers. Yeah, it’s not as profitable as say Amazon Web Services, but I don’t have a backup book selling business to fall back on should ExchangeDefender blow up one day. So while I’m awake (along with everyone here) we try to make sure that we wake up to the same stuff we went to bed with – a fully operational, redundant network.

So why in the world would you go into a cloud files business?

Because the clients are asking for it!

bullshitWait a minute Vlad, my clients are NOT asking for it! You are insane! Never in my five decades of being an IT consultant have I ever heard of a client wanting to store their files in the cloud. They don’t trust the cloud. They don’t want the cloud. They want their files where they can see them. On a server. In the office. Not everyone is living in 2020 that Vladville is, my customers view of managed print services is when Office Depot delivers typewriter paper and ink ribbon!!!

 

So the reason the above argument is bullshit is because your/our customers aren’t IT people. They are not going to knock on the door and ask for the cloud. But they are using it and loving it and if they have an iPad they do know the features these gadgets bring to them. You haven’t heard anyone say this recently, have you: “I hate cell phones. I hate how all my contacts that are in Outlook are also on my Android/iPhone and how I can access all of my stuff all over the place and don’t have to lug around a 8lb laptop.” They don’t know that they are using the cloud – all they know is that this stuff is more convenient and it just so happens to run through the cloud.

Screw the cloud.

Sell the features.

But don’t sell it like Microsoft. Sell it like Apple. Don’t sell them voice pattern recognition software that will offload their message to a data center in North Carolina and send back search results. Click on the button and show them what it does.

Here is how you sell it..

Here are a few slides that illustrate the difference between the Microsoft approach and the Apple approach.

What I want to make sure you understand is that this is not a glorification of Apple or a conviction of Microsoft. It’s the mirror of reality: consumers are making purchasing decisions. When it comes to understanding what consumers want, Apple has beaten Microsoft repeatedly, convincingly and decisively – to the extent that Microsoft itself is changing it’s model. Respectfully, so should we.

Appeal to what your clients want. Not to what they need. Because for the most part they are the same thing, but if you phrase it correctly it will appeal more. Here is what your clients need:

cs1

Sounds great, right? Except nobody outside of data center business and the accountants that serve them knows what SAS 70 audit is. The redundant data centers are great but it sounds like I’m just going to be paying for a lot of stuff I won’t be using. And as a consumer I am not sure if you’re telling me you’re going to destroy my data or not but I don’t like the idea of it at all.

Now let’s translate the above to English:

cs2

This is the conversation that is easier to have.

This is also a conversation in which you’ll easily overcome any objections. For example, how is business level accountability any better than Bob the IT guy that works for me? Well, Bob the IT guy probably has 15 other jobs and without reports, restore tests and ongoing monitoring is he really doing anything or just having faith that the backup job is doing it’s job? And where is the backup going, above his PC?

Besides the fact that backups are things that nobody likes and nobody cares about until they actually lose data. It’s the first time they happen to think about it. And they sure as hell don’t like to pay for it – but they will pay to have their work files on their home PC and their laptop and accessible everywhere.

They will also pay to know who is accessing which files. At what time.

They will also pay when the experience is exactly the same – your files are now on the M:\ drive.

As for the most realistic concern about the cloud that nobody ever asks..

… mostly because it’s a forgone conclusion: do you trust them?

The answer, for the most part, is hell no. That’s the correct answer.

With CloudShare, we have a better answer.  But I’m not going to give it to you here, for that you’ll have to tune in this Friday:

Please register for the event today:

Friday, July 13th at noon EST

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/635677224

People love the convenience.. but when you can’t trust them then the price, features and the offering simply don’t matter. They won’t use it for business.

We have figured out a way to solve this. I would like to acknowledge that some of these concepts are shared with folks like Paul Fitzgerald of the Microsoft SBS/WHS fame because they are a trait shared both by the small business and enterprise: even when we’re not in control we want an illusion that someone, somewhere.. somehow does what is in our best interest. In the absence of that, give me the new convenient features with the fond memories I have of the past.

ExchangeDefender partners… please tune in, I’m about to make your cloud different from everything else that’s on the market today.

SBS End Is The Best Move Microsoft Made In Years

Posted: 6:55 pm
July 7, 2012
SMB
3 Comments

SBS 2003 is probably the greatest product Microsoft has put out in the server space and it’s one that made us a lot of money. It has financed the buildout of other product lines which have done enormously well for ExchangeDefender, it has created a huge following and a community, got many places to embrace Microsoft technology and create sophisticated networks.

I will miss it. I am sure so will many of you.

However, this is a clear line Microsoft is drawing in the sand that will force many Microsoft partners to be smarter about what they are doing and just how they build their business, take a better look at their product portfolio and move beyond vendor roadmap worship and into building solutions and services with their name on it.

Microsoft has decided that there are two worlds: Consumer and Enterprise.

We kind of know better and look forward to working with you at ExchangeDefender because the world is not on the ground or in the cloud, it’s where the client pays the most.

I will post the followup once I make it back to United States on how you can take advantage of the news and emotions surrounding this announcement because this is the best thing Microsoft could have done for you (I know you don’t believe it right now but I will explain it).

Big changes take some time

Posted: 10:19 pm
June 25, 2012
Beta, ExchangeDefender, IT Business
3 Comments

I was reminded over the weekend by a few partners that I haven’t posted many strategic updates over the past few weeks regarding what we’re up to – I beg to differ, we have been rolling out our strategy since January with with half of the year gone we’re actually ahead of what we had planned.

The problem is that there is a difference between doing shit and talking shit. I can blog until the keys fall off but since I no longer own Dell laptops that’s gonna take a while Smile

If you are interested in what we’re up to (and if you have a signed NDA and if you’re actively reselling ExchangeDefender services) you’re welcome to join the webinar this Wednesday at 2PM:

June 27th, 2 PM – 3 PM

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/881838009

* NDA Required. Event will not  be recorded. Active OWN Partners only.

As for the strategy..

In 2012 we renamed Own Web Now to ExchangeDefender.

Not so that we can better focus our business around what is a dead business – that of selling antispam software to IT consultants that are no longer rolling out servers – but to focus our business on the massive transition that is taking place: end-to-end business IT integration.

Put simply, businesses are looking for far more than just email.

We have a massive user base and a massive partner base. All of whom are, respectively, doomed. If your bread and butter is overpriced IT maintenance then it’s not a matter of if but when you become irrelevant and replaced.

We have been adding things to ExchangeDefender and Shockey Monkey that go well beyond the realm of email or IT management. We’re after the whole pie with our partners. With the one thing that real businesses will pay for: accountability.

So we’re bolting on all the stuff that is typically costing partners tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars and saying – it’s free, go dominate your marketplace. Instead of paying and twisting your vendors arms into supporting one anothers crap while you bleed, we’re giving you a fully integrated solution pretty much free of charge – no, it’s not “the best” but you’ll find that “the best” becomes kind of irrelevant to businesses that do not value the service in the first place. If they value you, they’ll pay for your time and your advice, and we’re going to make sure that is as profitable as possible.

That’s our strategy. And we’re in this for the long haul.

That said, the time on the clock is ticking and we’re just a few months away from shutting down our partner program to the new signups. We have partners virtually everywhere and loyalty has it’s benefits – mainly the fact that it will keep the guy from Craigslist from getting the same stuff you’re able to offer. So hop on in. We’re not wasting money on events anymore, we’re investing it all in the process, tools and services and we’re out rolling them out ourselves around the clock around the world.

It’s pretty simple. Sign up. Attend the webinar. We’ve got a month long waiting list on the secret stuff and yeah – there is a time commitment if you want to be ahead of the pack – but your alternatives are far less appealing and trust me, you don’t want to act on this when everything we’re doing becomes public on this blog. Lots of people read this blog and act when I make it super easy – but by that time it will be a little too late.

And that folks is why I’ve been tired – we’re fully committed to seeing this thing roll out. So my timeline has left very little room for anything else. I’ll blog a lot more next quarter, hope this one has been as great to you as it has been to us!

DIY Lutherburger

Posted: 7:47 pm
June 17, 2012
Humor, Misc
Comments Off on DIY Lutherburger

Two years ago I blogged about a visit to a joint in Atlanta that was famous for lutherburgers and hamdogs. Since then it has been a frequent subject of discussion with fans and I’ve also had a bit of a lifestyle change so I figured I’d write this up.

First of all, happy fathers day! I hope you’ve had a wonderful one!

Second, if you haven’t heard about the lutherburger, it’s basically a bacon cheeseburger that uses a donut instead of a bun. It’s delicious and it’s a matter of taste – if you like cheeseburgers and you enjoy contrasting flavors (sweet and sour chicken for example) you’ll probably enjoy this.

Third, this is not significantly more unhealthy (given the context) than your typical cheeseburger – it’s only roughly 50 calories more. Please see nutritional discussion below.

Preparation

How do you cut a donut in half when you can’t even take it out of a box without deforming it?

Throw it in a freezer for about 30 minutes. Smile

It will give it the consistency of a stale hamburger bun. Take a sharp knife and slide it to the hole then work your way around. Do not stand the donut up vertically or press down with the knife (you’ll smush it) and don’t use a large knife (donuts are pretty small and it might be hard to cut across efficiently with a very big knife).

l1

After you’re done cutting the donut in half throw it back in the freezer.

Cooking

You have to cook the burger well. If you like your cow to moo as you eat it, this might not be for you – you don’t want juices trailing down over the donut as it makes it both messy and significantly less delicious. Your mileage may vary.

Throw the frozen donut on at the same time as you put your cheese on the burger to melt. Flip once. This will make the donut crunchy and give it at least some structure as you eat it. Do not overcook or cook over slow heat, it will just melt it.

l2

Eating Tricks

Take the donut off the grill. Put the second slice of cheese (cold one) down on top and lay the cooked burger on top. This does two things: it will melt the second slice of cheese and keep any juices from the hot burger from melting your donut bun.

Layer any toppings you want. I made my bacon crunchy because you don’t want to have anything you can’t swiftly bite in half on this burger – so no grilled onions, etc. Think about it, you’re eating a cheeseburger from a donut, if you start moving it around it will just fall apart.

Once you’re done with the toppings.. flip the burger on your plate. This is pretty important – your burger will be hot so you don’t want all that heat and juices melting the donut on the bottom. When you flip it the other bun will get the same heat/pressure treatment and give you a pretty unique flavor on top and on the bottom.

l3

Eating

Make sure your cell phone is fully charged. Turn off the power saving features on your phone. Disable security and add 911 to your speed dial. Try not to eat this during rush hours, give the ambulance a chance!

Bite into it! Enjoy.

l4

It’s amazingly delicious.

Nutritional Discussion

So this is not diet food. But it’s not as bad as you’d imagine.

As I mentioned previously, typical hamburger buns are 120-180 calories and Krispy Kreme glazed donut is 200. Even if you used a ridiculously light weight 100 calorie bun and put on some mayo on it, you’d be breaking even.

I also cheap out on cheese. I use fat free Kraft singles (25 cal a piece) and it tastes just about the same. I go with the ground chuck since the super lean burgers tend to be relatively dry. Here is the breakdown:

Nutritional Breakdown

1 Krispy Kreme Glazed Donut (200 calories)

2 Kraft American Fat Free Singles (25 calories)

1 4oz Ground Chuck Burger (280 calories)

2 Bacon slice (43 calories)

That’s roughly 616 calories.

By comparison, McDonalds Big Mac is 540 calories.

That’s four miles on the treadmill running at 6mph.

It’s worth it.

When do you sell?

Posted: 3:45 pm
June 15, 2012
IT Business
3 Comments

Own Web Now & ExchangeDefender’s success has been relatively public so most of the conversations I have with the older/larger providers tends to be about the sale of business and next steps. Personally I see most of it being driven by the sunsetting of the “IT management” business model more than anything else but I’ll walk you through my case scenario just for fun.

When do you sell your business?

– When you’re offered far more than it’s worth

– When you’re offered far more than it’s future growth potential

– When you have financial problems*

– When you have a better growth opportunity within a larger company

– When you’re just done with business ownership*

Unfortunately, most of the M&A activity I’ve seen has been a result of necessity, not opportunity. Whether result of buying 100,000 seats of an RMM tool without a client base or a PSA tool that the business was ready for or some poor technology bets (“we’re going to be a Health Care IT provider because nobody likes to spend money recklessly quite like people who went to college for over a decade!”) I know of far more financial issue stories than cash out success stories. The second most popular thing is when you realize you’re not cut out for business ownership – if you’re pretending to be an industry expert and spend more time on the road while blaming your crumbling MSP on the service managers you keep on firing every month then you really might be better off in a mid-management role that doesn’t get to live and die on important decisions. None of these are particularly shameful in my opinion, business ownership is not easy and it’s definitely not fun all the time.

My opinion

The following pertains to my business so feel free to judge accordingly Smile

Our business is profitable, with zero debt, no need to raise capital and has 0 external interference. Our business decisions are driven by us – not some venture capital firm that wants to cash out or folks that would rather do something more interesting.

We have a long term business plan and models. ExchangeDefender has a written 12, 24 and 5 year plan. Shockey Monkey has a more condensed multi-year plan. Our new Managed Messaging is taking off like a rocket and we expect it to make up a bulk of our revenues 2014 and beyond. We have relatively little room to act on whim.

We are a global company. If a hurricane blows through Orlando tomorrow and levels it, we’ll be fine. If our entire data center in Dallas blows up tomorrow, we’ll be fine. If Europe completely implodes financially we should be able to get by. We’re not catastrophically affected by regional issues.

Those are just some operational facts. I have always ran the business in a relatively conservative way – if we couldn’t afford to do certain things, we didn’t and if we couldn’t estimate the risk we couldn’t manage it so we missed some opportunities. The result is a significantly smaller business (than the hypothetical one) but it’s still a business as opposed to a pile of IT roadkill on the side.

I like to think we’re different from the norm but we’re also not alone in this, I know many businesses that are structured this way. Here are my reasons not to sell.

Why not sell?

I have enough money. The financial reward would not be as meaningful. I don’t need a bigger house (I do need a warehouse for the cars) or more toys (which I am reminded of daily by my wife and the kids) or boneless buffalo wings. It would be hard to come up with a sum that would get me to sign the line which is dotted.

I already have a plan. I don’t need external strategic management, having built this company for the past 15 years I (shamelessly, arrogantly) don’t find too many people that understand the market, solutions and the needs much better than I do. So parting with control of what we do here would have to come with a extra large side of blue ocean.

I am excited about what we’re doing. Call me crazy but I love what we’re doing. We’re growing our partners. We are growing our business. Across the number of business lines we have no competition. Can you get a free PSA anywhere? Nope. Can you find a hosted Exchange provider that will do all the work for you? Nope. Can you find the same pricing with the level of support we provide? Nope. Can you build what we’ve got and gain a huge economic advantage? Nope. Keep in mind that this only covers the aspects of the business that you see in public. The stuff that we’re working on in the lab is far more impressive. I am way ahead of my competitors in every major area and I no longer even look at it as a race, it’s more that we can do more stuff now than we could in the past and that is incredibly fulfilling.

We get to do something good. This is kind of corny but the work we do here matters to a lot of people. We get to impact people on security, privacy, give them an opportunity to do something great. We’re able to help people become MSPs without mortgaging stuff and that provides not just a loyal partner for us but also a possibility that they take all that PSA/RMM money and invest it in themselves to build another unique solution that otherwise would not have existed. While nobody handed stuff to me, I wouldn’t be where I’m at without the opportunity I got with so many partners – and being able to repay that is kind of at the core of who we are and what we do.

Should you sell?

I don’t have an answer to that one.

But go through the same checklist that I’ve gone through and figure it out.

I have spent a week at Autotask Live and TechEd and talked to tons of partners about what they are seeing and the questions they had – so I will cover it over the next few weeks on Vladville and on LooksCloudy.com so hopefully it helps some of you understand what is going on out there. Honestly, I am pretty optimistic about what is going on just based on our bottom line and partner activity. The low hanging fruit and the weakest players are out already or are on their deathbed, so it’s up from here in my opinion. ABP.

Next

Posted: 12:00 am
June 9, 2012
ExchangeDefender, IT Business
1 Comment

I rarely ever post internal messages I send to the ExchangeDefender staff on Vladville. I think between the announcements and details I share you have a pretty good idea about the kind of a place we run and why our services are so popular and why there are seemingly so many ridiculously successful partners and some people that probably build voodoo dolls of me in their spare time. But today marks a point of demarcation at which everything I set out to do in 2007 has been built (nearly 10 years into the life of Own Web Now Corp) and now I get to watch it actually take flight. It’s incredibly fulfilling. So without further delay, here is my message to my folks and hopefully it shines some light on what we actually do (between brewing beer, driving Ducati’s and killing SPAM).

…

From: Vlad Mazek
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2012 11:51 PM
To: orlando
Subject: Next

I wanted to bring you up to speed on what we’re up to and what’s next.

I’m sure most of you remember the many webinars that started with pictures of Ferrari’s and ended with “If you’re not banging Beanie, you have to get to work.” – and since just about everyone that has been hired since 2007 is still here today I’m sure you know it but I’ll say it again: nobody is going to just hand us shit. Everything we’ve built, everything we’ve got and everything we continue to make happen we do on our own.

If you look at this company on a year-by-year basis, it’s amazing how much it has grown and how much better just about everything has gotten. Mostly because this has been a total team effort: There are people in the office at all hours of the day and night and even when we’re not there we’re somehow connected to what is going on. That I believe is the difference with us: everyone that is here is because they need to work and they need these jobs. That pushes us to move faster and solve harder problems and put in more effort into everything. As different as we all seem to be individually, everyone I interact with is on the ball, responsible, accountable, prompt and fighting. This is why you’ll be here forever and why we don’t do typical big company BS of “working in fear” and total uncertainty. Loyalty is rewarded with loyalty, for everyone. What that means is that if you’re here for us, everyone will be here for you. Well, except Frankie, I’m gonna need to see you at ~5pm next Friday.

That’s how we got here.

Those of you that interact with our partners know the challenge they are facing. It’s not pretty. It doesn’t get prettier either and there isn’t a lot of time on the clock either.

Since late 2007 we’ve been working on building a communications business that earned it’s keep on a very simple premise: If we’re having this problem so are a lot of other people out there. And if the solution is easilly fixed just by throwing money at it then all we need is a money printing machine and we’re done. And since we couldn’t find a money printing machine and nobody wanted to go to jail for 10-25 years we did the next best thing: we designed the technology behind it. From the ground up.

Now we’re moving to the next step. We’re rolling up our technology, our partners, our services, our support and our expertise up and throwing it at the collection of SMB pins at the end of the alley.

There is also a change in the way we manage this business.

I have always been involved in almost all of the areas of our business because I knew what I wanted this company to look like and I just didn’t know how to explain it. You’re looking at the finished product. From technologies to workflows to the implementation. If you happen to read Vladville you know that I from time to time manage to stumble to a meaningful conclusion. This is very much that conclusion as far as OWN is concerned. I have taught you everything I know and I’ve helped you all get us to this point. Now it’s your turn.

With few exceptions, Hank and I will be working on the technology and the products.

Everyone else gets to take the output and implement it in a way that generates the most profitable opportunities for our partners and consequently all of us. You will be working together more and you will be leaning on each other more without my waywo’s and last minute flashes of brilliance that have driven most of you to obesity and male pattern baldness.

When it comes to our core business and to our extended portfolio, we’re now light years ahead of our competitors. To be honest with you, I can’t even think of another company that can do what we do, with the reach that we have, with the levels of partnership and at the price we’re able to hit. My best guess is IBM or Cisco. And I’d rather drive my Ducati off a cliff and hope to land into a sea of sporks and BBDs eyeball first than to work for that kind of a company.

I’m glad that the rest of you agree otherwise you wouldn’t have made it here.

Thank you.

We have a great 2012 ahead of us and things are definitely picking up on all fronts. So till you meet your Beanie, ABP. A. B. P.

-Vlad