Things are gonna get easier

Posted: 10:45 am
April 20, 2012
ExchangeDefender, Shockey Monkey
Comments Off on Things are gonna get easier

If you haven’t signed up for this meeting yet, you should now. It’s our quarterly meeting and it’s also going to lay out the year ahead in terms of how I’m spending our money to make my partners more successful. If you work with us, you need to hear me out.. if you don’t it still might be somewhat insightful because I happen to talk to everyone – from the smallest to the biggest – so I do have the benefit of seeing the trends that your typical “bigshot I only talk to 8 figure accounts CEO” doesn’t.

What we are up to is certainly no secret, and I have talked to a lot of people about the potential that’s there. There is no size fits all solution and there is certainly nothing that is simple or easy – or everyone would do it at which point only the most efficient ones would survive (see Walmart, P&G, etc).

A few years ago I remember debating people over the clouds potential for small business. I don’t have those debates anymore because those people are no longer around to debate. Ditto for the Novell guys who thought Windows NT is a hobbyist networking system. One thing to remember about our industry is that for the most part, we’re smarter than most others out there. So everyone isn’t sitting around trying to maintain status quo and protect their turn – most are trying to build, innovate and solve problems. As they do, they change the business itself and transform those around them because fundamentally, people do not like to pay to prolong indecision and problems (government aside).

That said…

You’re all very wrong about the cloud.

And I say this in general terms when I hear you bitching and moaning about the cloud issues, not as the smartest man on the planet. When I hear complaints about the cloud it sounds like a support issue – latency, bandwidth, uptime, SLAs, change management, etc. Respectfully, those are the issues that have a lot to do with technology in general and where would you rather be – selling people what they want (cloud, services) or trying to figure out a good lie for why a business needs to upgrade their PCs to Windows 8? Microsoft is advertising Internet Explorer 9 right now, burning millions of dollars advertising a product with 0 competitive advantage and 0 recognizable technical differentiation from all other browsers out there. Is that really what you want to bind your value proposition on? Come on.

Here are the real cloud issues:

– It’s still too much work. Some partners spend days to close deals and then take weeks to do rollouts.

– The point above makes the cloud solution too expensive. By making it look like a server purchase that just doesn’t happen to be in their office you’re eliminating the single biggest economic advantage the cloud provides.

– Many find it hard to surround the cloud with their services because the IT space is still stuck trying to move worthless hardware. For the love of god, stop.

– Biggest challenge is credibility. It’s hard to be a middleman with no control over the solution. You get absolutely no praise because it’s someone elses service and you get all the blame when it blows up because you’re the one that recommended it. Talk to Aussies about how their relationship with Telstra is going and you’ll see reasons 1-10 of why you should never touch the cloud, ever.

If you only managed to read the bold faced text you’re good.

Now on a personal level, there have been many rumors about what I’m doing, how I’m doing it and blah blah blah. I’m surprised people still give any credit to the rumors considering how long I’ve been saying the exact same thing and how long we’ve ultimately delivered on what I’ve been saying. If we were going to (as I heard recently) kill our partners we would have done it long ago. I sure as heck wouldn’t be writing this blog to convince you otherwise.

We have to do something about the cost, complexity and onboarding.

Most importantly, we have to provide options. I cannot have ExchangeDefender running like turn of the century Ford.. there needs to be a variety and there needs to be a way and means for our partners to move on to that next step and figure out the long term value proposal.

For the moment… let’s just all get on the same page and figure out how to get each other into as many f’n accounts as possible.

To my ExchangeDefender partners: On Tuesday I will announce how I will make this possible. Yes, it’s going to piss off a lot of my competitors which will in turn launch a lot of backchannel smack talk about how we’re the devil and how I’m an ass and how what really matters is (something other than cash). You know what, fuck em – so I won’t win the Miss Congeniality contest – I’ll be fine. I don’t show up to work each day trying to make people like me, I show up to work to feed my family and the families of thousands of my partners. So yeah, I’ll commoditize anything and everything I see no discernable value in so you can get more business faster. We’re competing against companies with billion dollar marketing budgets and it’s time to stop bringing toothpicks to a knife fight. I know this is going to suck at first but if you stick with me and what I’m building – historically – you’re likely to have a really awesome product and far more $ in your back pocket.

See you on Tuesday, let’s go.

The second dumbest thing I ever did

Posted: 10:32 pm
April 10, 2012
ExchangeDefender, IT Business
Comments Off on The second dumbest thing I ever did

One of the biggest failures you can have as a software business is not offering a product that the market demands. This is quite possibly one of my biggest mistakes and I’ve written and deleted thousands of words in this blog post to sum it up simply with: I was wrong. It was stupid not to offer an affordable product. But fixin’ stupid is what I do:

ede_pic

We have been offering ExchangeDefender since roughly 2001 and we’ve kept a pretty simple goal in mind: keep the users secure. My mistake was in the difference between the users and the business owners. Users are stupid, they will click on anything that comes into their email, provide sensitive/private information to a complete stranger and at times demand to be placed in danger (“I absolutely must receive .exe attachments, we ship everything through UPS and they would never send me anything dangerous!”). Users need a shutgun when they could be easily defended with a toothpick. Business decision makers, however, only consider business factors and try to guesstimate the cost of a security breach and data loss based on prior experience (which is typically none as most companies without a security plan tend to be gone within a few months of the catastrophic loss).

For years I refused to compromise on the price and features, for years I had one product and that one product was at times more expensive than the market competitors although the depth of the offering was far greater – but in realistic terms only the invoice amounts matter.

Last year, after we have gone through our growth pains, I approved the creation of ExchangeDefender Essentials and licensing of our technology (primarily through CloudBlock).

We built a good product that matched base offerings in the marketplace – spam filtering, virus protection, 1 week of realtime email archiving and business continuity, DDoS protection, partner branding and so on – and absolutely crushed our competitors on the price – At $0.50 per user per month it’s by far the most affordable mature email security solution.

This brings me to the other thing I was wrong about.. I assumed this would be a sideshow product that would only appeal to budget conscious providers that did not want to profit from ExchangeDefender’s immense solution stack. Wrong again. It’s the most popular product we have today. While this is in part due to our partners migrating from other solutions, it’s also the reality that marketplace is always right – people would rather buy what they want than what they need. I confused the two and I’m sorry.

double_facepalm

Revisionist history – While I do wish I wasn’t stupid.. live and learn. Looking back though, we couldn’t have provided this product years ago. Not with the level of infrastructure, not with the product maturity, not with the technology we had at our disposal and certainly not with the organization as it was structured back then. Today, we do. What’s even more relevant is that this is the first and only product that anyone can buy at any time for whatever purpose directly at www.ExchangeDefender.com – and we’ll even help support it over the phone, web, support portal and live chat.. around the clock. With reduced complexity come easier deployments, with easier deployments comes less support and when my partners looked at Essentials, they looked at something they did not want to be on hook to bill or manage.

Fragmentation – So now that anyone can purchase ExchangeDefender Essentials, how soon are Exchange + SharePoint, Offsite Backups and Web Hosting coming along? They aren’t. We have a phenomenal amount of data on who sells what and how – thanks to Shockey Monkey and our ridiculously successful partner program. I think the MSP and VAR community is at an interesting injunction. You can either sell a commodity product and make it up on the volume or associated sales or you can make a killing on an implementation.

When I talk to partners I always ask this question: Are you making money with our stuff?

If the answer is no then why are you doing it? If the answer is yes, pimp on player. Pimp on. Because here is what I know about my partners – nobody charges less than $5/month for ExchangeDefender and most make far more when they integrate things along with it. Don’t forget that ExchangeDefender comes with web filtering, web file sharing, encryption, and a year worth of business archiving. Top that off with compliance archiving for 10 years (at under $4 a month) and you can pull revenues off the flat fee product in dozens of ways. I have partners that have built entire business lines off what we do and storage and social enhancements we’re building into the product are going to knock your socks off this year!

The biggest development in 2011 is flexibility – can you offer multiple things at multiple price points and make money? You can no longer go to clients and offer them ultimatums. You need partners that give you the edge.

To those of you reading this, I hope you choose us as we’re undoubtedly giving you plenty of options on how to best reach the massive marketplace out there that may not fit a simple filter. I have built the company on the premise that you can have any color you want so long as it’s black. Now we’re adding a rainbow.

The game of IT monopoly is picking up and large manufacturers and software companies are done with buying properties – now they are buying houses and hotels and patents and SonicWall’s and MSPs. You have to make a decision now if you’re going to walk away from your business for 3 months of rolling revenues or build something that can sustain itself for years.

Take it from my stupidity – and luck – even when you’re wrong you do get rewarded for making the right choice in the end.

Final day to fill out the Shockey Monkey RMM Survey

Posted: 3:40 pm
April 5, 2012
IT Business
Comments Off on Final day to fill out the Shockey Monkey RMM Survey

Today is the last day to win some beer money from me, just hit this link:

Vlad the Imp Aler Survey

http://www.surveymonkey.com/smrmm

We’ve gotten a lot of responses and some really surprising data and every little vote and piece of feedback counts.

Now there is a lot of speculation over the Shockey Monkey RMM and I have certainly spent a lot of my time talking to my partners about what we are doing and how things fit into the business model. Some less informed people have suggested that we’re building a free RMM and I think that conclusion is somewhat misguided so allow me to lay out my cards on the table and let you figure it out.

First, we owe our business to our partners. Every dollar that comes in comes through our partners and we have constantly put money back into the products. Yes, I know some of you have been burned by ExchangeDefender bugs or delays or issues in the past but one thing we have always done is taken as much money as we can and spent it on commoditizing stuff within ExchangeDefender while other solutions outsourced and made you pay through the nose for things like encryption, business continuity, compliance, web filtering, etc. With us, those pieces are free. That represents an ongoing investment back into the company.

Second, the dynamics of our partners businesses are starting to change. Many service providers out here wouldn’t have a cloud solution if it were not for us. We’ve spent a lot of time building, scaling and reassuring server rollouts over the past few years. Now we find ourselves in a spot where we can help a lot of our partners scale their business by just having us as an entire independent unit in their organization. As in, we’re pluggable. If you want to offer Hosted Exchange you need to read manuals, create agreements, manage billing, manage support and the pain of migrations and data imports. Don’t get me wrong, none of it is rocket science but it’s time consuming and we’re can take care of the whole thing for you, down to answering the phone and connecting to the remote PC and helping your client.

Finally, service providers are starting to reevaluate their business models. I’ll leave this part of the explanation up to you, answer it according to how you see the future.

Finally, where does this put the Shockey Monkey RMM

First, there is no such thing as the Shockey Monkey RMM. We started the survey so we could figure out how you rely on your RMM software and what you primarily monitor, how many alerts you generate, what kind of reports you expect out of it and how they are used. For two reasons:

1. Research helps us identify what is relevant in the sea of data that RMMs collect. By being able to extrapolate this data inside of Shockey Monkey we can give better integration experience for the RMMs that chose to sponsor Shockey Monkey.

2. As we offer the managed services on top of our cloud offerings, we still need a way to get to the users desktop. So we could either build the thing ourselves or we could risk offending one of our integration partners that sponsored Shockey Monkey by signing up with their competitor. Not a good recipe for success.

Will the real Shockey Monkey RMM please stand up?

First of all, there isn’t one. Not saying we’re not working like crazy on a monitoring solution but it’s not something you’re going to put neck and neck with the RMM industry.

The remote access, logging, inventory, desktop and screen sharing tool we are developing is for our ExchangeDefender partners. Yeah, those dudes and ladies that helped us build this big company. It’s payback time! We are playing with a concept of offering a free RMM-like product that our partners could go and deploy in their clients offices or prospective leads/clients offices. “Here you go, just install this on your network and it will give you all sorts of useful info and ability to look at your employees desktops, interact with them and get alerts when something goes wrong. It’s free and it’s on us.” What happens next? Well, when something breaks, you can pick up the phone and give them a call. You can alert them when their warranty is about to expire, when their systems aren’t patched, call them right as they are failing to print because their print spool service keeps on crashing, etc.

We are looking at a way to take this commodity of IT, connect it with the efficiencies gained from Shockey Monkey, and tie them together into one massive, inexpensive, overly efficient IT service demand generation engine.

Shockey Monkey + Sponsor Solutions + ExchangeDefender = $$$ for everyone.

It’s really that simple as far as I’m concerned. I want to make it dead simple for you to generate profits from solutions and stop wasting all of your time trying to figure out what your business is going to look like and how little bits and pieces of it are going to connect. Because if you are a business, wasting time managing your vendors crap all day is a profit sinkhole. You should be spending time on your clients systems and getting paid, not being your own janitor.

Arguments With Idiots: Part 1

Posted: 11:03 pm
April 4, 2012
Boss, Friends, IT Culture, Legal
1 Comment

There are a lot of stupid people out there. Most of us are stupid about something – and there are plenty of legitimate reasons for it. Every now and then you will encounter a select subsection of people that are stupid about the very subject matter that is their professional occupation. These people are not just merely stupid due to under education or ignorance, they are outright idiots that are immune to knowledge and reasoning.

Over the next two posts I intend to teach you one of my other superpowers: How to spot an idiot. And how to get naked pictures of Alex Rogers.

Causation Loop

You may ask.. Vlad, what is the difference between someone that is just stupid and someone that is a complete friggin idiot? It’s quite simple.

Stupid people that do not realize they are stupid are idiots. Even when you prove it to them that they are stupid, complete with footnotes and references, they will still maintain that they are correct.

Hint #1: Idiots tend to be angered when you attempt to educate them.

Anger Fueled By Frustration

Now you might wonder.. But Vlad, how can I tell if someone is just frustrated due to miscommunication rather than their own inability to read, write and communicate effectively?

Byproduct of transition from stupidity to enlightenment is shame. When you find out that you were wrong about something you get this shameful, humbling feeling. Well, that was pretty stupid of me, I wish I had read that manual. Idiots are incapable of being ashamed or humble, instead they get angry in attempt to make you feel bad about pointing it out to them.

Hint #2: Idiots will be frustrated when you solve their problem and in the process make it apparent that they were wrong from the start.

Haphazard Misdirection

Now that you know the cause and the reaction, what if the frustration from the original issue results in another assault of anger, frustration and mental incapacity?

Idiots are the last ones to know it but incapable of admitting it. Think about it, when you’re out with your buddies and you say something stupid (“Whale is a fish. Dolphin is a mammal”) you will get corrected. You will then pull out your smartphone and a few seconds later Wikipedia will paint your face bright red. That is how normal people react to it. Idiots will argue that the Wikipedia is a flawed resource that has been proven wrong in the past. Idiots will claim that the research is inconclusive. Idiots will claim that you purposefully edited Wikipedia and will offer to bet an inordinate amount of money that they are right when all the facts point to the contrary.

Hint #3: Idiots will blame everything but themselves for the problem.

. . .

There is hope.

My superpower is based on a patent-pending 3-step process for identifying an idiot and getting out of their way.

Why? Ever notice how idiots never seem to be busy? Wanna know why? Because normal people are busy reading, studying, experimenting, testing, dealing with problems. Idiots don’t let that stuff preoccupy them, they use their ample time to argue with anyone that will listen.

If you are in a corporate environment and you get stuck dealing with an idiot through no fault of your own, the inability to properly filter out an idiot could negatively impact not just your company but your own career. All the time these folks save by not reading the manual, not watching the video, not attending training and not reading anything in general or dealing with people that are trying to help them… is instead funneled into endless Google and LinkedIn searches for your manager/supervisor. Whom they will go to blaming you first.

Your boss will not know the background. They will likely not even know the nature of the complaint. They will just be stunned by the complaint and the frustration that this poor client faced dealing with the company and would naturally assume that you’ve dropped the ball somewhere. My god Travis, do we suck so bad that we’re driving these people to threats of physical violence? WTF did you break?

Stop. Before you actually hit Send on that email or IM, take a moment to run through the Vlad Idiot Filter:

VIF:

1. Is this person irrationally angry about a routine process?

2. Is this person attempting to place overemphasized, irrational blame on someone or something?

3. Is this person unleashing their entire arsenal of abusive language on a multitude of targets?

Let’s face it, it’s likely that your company sucks at something.

It’s also likely that some key process wasn’t implemented correctly.

It’s possible that the client encountered a bug in the system.

It’s understandable that you may have failed to deliver the service at a level the client expected.

It’s possible.

It’s impossible that your company sucks, is ridden with bugs, rude people and performs constantly below the norm. It’s impossible because you’d be out of business. Hell, even Microsoft and AT&T are multibillion dollar industries that get awards for product design and customer service (respectively). The odds that you have managed to fail in such an epic and spectacular way may be remote.. the likelyhood that you’re dealing with an idiot though.. well, read on.

How To Manage Idiots

Personally, we have a no a-hole policy. You yell at my staff, or are in any way abusive, you can take your business elsewhere. We have the same policy internally, if you yell at a client you’re fired. But this may not be practical or easy to do in your business, particularly if you are dealing with a big client or important account (though you’ll find it that this is typically not the case, idiots tend not to be successful or at least not allowed to interact with anyone beyond the security gates of your local Walmart.

So here is how to manage idiots. You want to follow the DARP protocol.

Disarm – If you are confronted by an angry idiot, the last thing you want to do is justify their behavior or encourage it by a quick response. Let them cool off. Create a folder that says “Tomorrow” and drag the email there. If they are insistent on an immediate response tell them you’re researching it and look forward to helping them but want to make sure you provide the correct answer. Never, EVER, argue with an idiot.

Apologize – Offer an apology or sincere note of sympathy. Especially if it makes your eye twitch while typing it. Remember that idiots are reinforced by confirmation of their behavior because they act on impulses, hunches, gut feelings and anything that doesn’t even remotely resemble facts. Who knows, they could even be right! Apologies, sincere or otherwise, give people a sense that they have at least been acknowledged. Statistically speaking, most people do not thrive or seek out confrontation, if you truly failed someone they would just do business elsewhere, not trying to fight it out with you in the steel cage. Apologize and ..

Redirect – Remember how idiots are never to be blamed for their own stupidity? Just because you may be able to prove them wrong and tell them their behavior is not appropriate doesn’t mean they will respect it. Redirect the anger somewhere else, so when you bring back the bad news (after you confirm you’re not actually at fault) the frustration pushes them aside. For example.. “That does not sound right, I am sorry. I am going to get my team on it and figure out what may have happened.”

Point to resources – Idiots will not be happy with the answer unless you offer them a way to disengage the confrontation. Instead of simply solving the problem that in fact does not exist.. offer them a resource. For example, point to a blog or a knowledge base article and ask them if they had attempted to run through that. Point out that the resource has been useful in the past and ask them to give it a shot.

Other Helpful Tips

Keep in mind that idiots are not plentiful and often act as unicorn ninjas. You will not know that you’re dealing with an idiot until you’re way into an argument that you shouldn’t be having in the first place. So no matter what you do, always triple tap.

Triple tap is the process of checking off the boxes that point to a suspicious idiot. I reply to all the email that I get. But every now and then I get something that is so ridiculously unbelievable that I just have to check. If I don’t know you and I’ve made you so angry at me personally, something is wrong. If we suck so bad and you’re trying to give us your hard earned money, something is wrong. If you’ve tried to get us to help and we’ve been terrible.. well, I kind of know the people that work here.. something is wrong. Count to 3 then hit the Forward button and dispatch it to someone else.

Finally, send the drone. At ExchangeDefender we have this acronym PUTPAGAGAC.. It stands for “Pick up the phone and give a guy a call”. We all somehow manage to write emails that sound like we just lost a world war. You could be sending a funny happy birthday card to a friend and because he’s in a bad mood he reads it and thinks “What a dick.” It happens. For ages, men handled things like men. Really f’n dumb. If they left you a nasty voicemail, send them a polite email. If they sent you a nasty email, pick up the phone and give them a call. I can count the number of people on my hands that I’ve had to fire because I had an unpleasant phone conversation with them. Given the option, I probably would have punched them in the mouth or worse. But that’s the beauty of the modern communications – things are rarely as bad as they seem.

For example, if you’re reading this blog post and aren’t laughing your ass off or saying “Oh my god, I know the dude that is just like that!”, you’re missing the point (and of Vladville in general). Real people, real business disputes, real problems are rarely so serious, so critical and so bad. But you know what, every now and then you’ll find an idiot or a crazy person. And as you’ve heard by now: Never argue with an idiot. They’ll drag you to their level and beat you with experience.

ROI Case for Investment In Community

Posted: 12:50 am
April 1, 2012
Awesome, IT Culture
1 Comment

I’d like to clear up an apparent logical conflict I have made on Vladville about blogging. In past I have told many of you that consider blogging for business honestly is a terrible idea. Meanwhile, I continue to write three different blogs on a weekly basis. That doesn’t add up! No, I’m not misleading you but to understand it you have to expand you concept of value.

Do Not Blog For Business

There are in fact two major reasons why you shouldn’t do it and liability isn’t even in the top ten.

Free advice has no goodwill value. It’s true, I’ve made a lot of money for ExchangeDefender through people that have found out about us through this blog. It generates a tremendous amount of leads and awareness for our products. However, it does not generate sales. I have gotten far more “I appreciate what you do for the community… but we’re gonna go with the other guys anyhow” than I have gotten sales. Not only will it not get you sales but people will actively punish you for it “I love the blog but I don’t like that the CEO is writing it, I’d rather see you on the road”

Everything is offensive. If you’re going to start editing yourself you will only put out trash nobody will want to read. They’ll all agree that it’s valuable, they’ll all sign up for your blog and tell you that they are reading it – but trust me, they aren’t. More people will read soap operas made up at MSP Mentor than useful information – so unless you’re going to cater to your audience why bother? Therein lies the trap because no matter what you write, you will offend someone. For example:

You: Why are all the servers black and beige? What happened to the days of SGI and Sun? I want a server with a blue or purple beazel.

Reader: Screw you, a blue car ran over my dog. I hate the color and I hate you.

So if you’re smart and have a low tolerance for pain and difficult people.. this is a good time to stop reading.

Why You Should Blog For Business

This is going to take a while to explain but stay with me please…

Considering the top two caveats (and also accounting for the issues of liability, putting yourself on public record, having your competitors aware of your weaknesses and opportunities, privacy and compliance issues) there is still a tremendous value in blogging and it goes beyond the “shameless drama for clicks” and “fanboy fodder” that dominates blogging.

fat-goth-760396It builds a fan base. Depending on the industry, this likely won’t do you much good on the romantic front. In all my time writing this blog I have only had one attractive girl my age tell me that she was a fan. I’ve lost the count of dudes that are in love with this blog and me. Merry Christmas Chris Rue. I was gonna write something about how nobody has tattoed themselves with my face yet but now that I’ve mentioned it I’m sure there will be a temp tattoo available at some future event.

Fans are good. Whether they like you or hate you. I’ve met a lot of folks that are genuine fans of Vladville. I’ve also met a lot of fake fans of Vladville. They literally look like they are throwing up as they say “I like your blog” – they choke back, look up to see if the lighting is about to hit them then down to the left to see if there is a good spot to projectile vomit. I imagine a normal person would be offended by such a thing, I however take pride that someone hates the blog so much that they are willing to lie to me to my face at great personal physical discomfort because they are afraid I’ll write something about them (hint: Relax. I don’t write about stupid people, only about stupid actions stupid people make; and if you’re stupid I should be the least of your concerns)

Good fans build connections. This is the ultimate payoff. Building connections with people through any medium gives the target audience a sense of familiarity. It opens them up. It warms them up. It makes them honest and it prompts them to communicate back.

This in turn creates an enormous community and an even bigger, compounded chain of feedback. Think of your Facebook friends. Now your Facebook’s friends friends. Ever see a picture from a third party or a comment? That’s what blogging gives you – deeper visibility through people that are genuine fans of what you do.

As a result, I get an email or a message whenever there is something going on out there that even remotely impacts me. And getting good and bad news ahead of everyone else is so materially precious that it’s in fact so illegal they locked up Martha Friggin Stewart for over a year for doing it!

This is not something you get by having a large company, or by sponsoring tons of shows, or by doing business with a lot of people. As much as folks like to gossip, they tend to do so behind your back. Thanks to Vladville, I get it right between the eyes.

Fans alleviate work issues. That one is kind of self explanatory, as much as blogging is a means of cheap therapy it also creates a sense that what you do is bigger than series of SPAM filters, Exchange arrays and dying hard drives. It illustrates personally how what we do makes it possible for others to do something that truly matters.

deloreancarFinally, it fuels the Delorean. Feedback and commentary is what makes the Delorean go to 88mph and back to the future. Have you noticed how stuff you read here just so happens to eventually become reality? No, it’s not time travel (cause let’s be honest, I’d be playing lottery instead).. it’s the fact that I get real feedback from real people. Free feedback from real people is remarkably much more accurate than the polite feedback from people that are being fake to answer the survey correctly. This blog enables people to not give any consideration for my feelings, whatsoever.

There you have it… If you’re quick and you’re honest and you genuinely like people – good or bad – the activity won’t make you rich but the insight you will gain from it will give you an advantage others do not have. And if that doesn’t make you rich you’re better off picking a religion and playing the lottery for a living because you’re doomed.

So, should you write a blog?

If it’s about the money.. No. Don’t bother wasting your time.

If it’s for the sex.. aim your blog posts at attractive people with low moral standards. Write about pharmaceutical sales or a site about how to get acting roles or how to feel better about plastic surgery “When he say’s no..”

QlPluIf it’s about personal fulfillment for having a shared a thought that will change the world.. First, put the joint down. Second, your very idea that you’re so brilliant to have figured out something nobody else has – and you’re about to post it for free on a blog site that will likely put up Google AdWords for fake Viagra next to it – is so moronic that the level of stupidity in your head and words explaining that stupidity on the monitor in front of you will collide creating a black hole that will completely consume you. Ok, not really but I bet I just made some stoner freak out.

If it’s for personal relief.. Because you downed 6 cans of Diet Mountain Dew after midnight and spent the last two hours hunting for a missing semicolon in a file with 3,000 lines because you started writing the damn thing when you were 20 and had 2 servers and the friggin thing just took off but you copied elseif{} blocks because you didn’t want to deal with the pain of switching to switches? For the love of god don’t do it, get back to work and hire someone else to go through the process of cleaning that nightmare up. You’re really gonna have to trust me on this one.

If it’s for any other reason, and your CPA and managers assured you it won’t get you fired (oh yes, you will), and your IT department won’t lock you away from the site once you offend them (oh yes, you will), and you’re not mortified by a thought of going to an IT conference where 3 of your biggest fans walk into the elevator with you and your mind starts doing the math on the weight safety range of the elevator… then go for it.

If for no other reason, it makes it seem like you’re working. Smile

Squirrel

Posted: 12:41 pm
March 30, 2012
GTD
3 Comments

squirrel-300x287

One of the more memorable lines from the Steve Jobs biography is “I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.” I don’t think this is as apparent to those of you that don’t design software for a living so allow me to offer my perspective and how the dreaded “squirrel” affects pretty much all white collar workers. We all get distracted. But only some of us are capable of filtering and managing them.

Today, I will teach you this superpower.

Harvard Business Review recently showcased a study that indicates it takes 25% longer for a multitasker to get the job done. This is perfectly logical – when you dedicate all your attention and focus on the problem or task you can solve it faster than if you’re interrupted by other things. In the workplace this comes down to phone calls, text messages, instant messages, chat, Facebook posts, Twitter posts, LinkedIn posts.. everything except this blog.

To be clear, those are distractions you cannot manage. Unless you want to paint a huge banner that says “I am an asshole” and send your incoming voicemail/email/etc a note saying something along the lines of “My time is more important than yours. To minimize distractions I only check voicemail and email twice a day. I’ll get back to you later, trust me, it’s not an emergency.” While this is not an effective way of dealing with people, it is an effective way of getting rid of those pesky customers and their distractions.. I wouldn’t recommend it.

Managing Distractions

Managing distractions is the same as managing your agenda. I’ve written tons of posts about my Louis Vuitton notebook and how crucial it is to my day-to-day management.

I plan things years in advance. I manage them one year at a time. I get them done one day at a time, one task at a time. Every day I have things that I absolutely have to do or the company will explode (think corporate life/death events like payroll, taxes).

I also make a list of things I’d like to do.

This is key.

It’s easy to get lost in the corporate optimism, entrepreneurial smoke and all the brilliant ideas. It’s even easier to dream big! But you have to come to terms with the fact that you only have 24 hours in a day. That you have finite time, finite resources, finite cash, finite opportunity and possibility to get things done. So you manage.

Mind mapping is a great tool to use if you’re not great at drawing and connecting the dots. Just start with something that needs to be done.

Now break it down – what are the absolute top goals and what are the peripheral “nice to have” things.

Now break down the absolute top goals.

You get the idea. It looks like a Christmas tree after a while and while you’d really like to do everything you focus on the stuff you can do and do it well.

What is unrealistic?

The reason I write things down is because it gives a certain level of finality to an idea.

I star the page once I flip it over if I need to go over it.

Then when I have the time and am sitting in my office recliner shopping for cars on eBay (and it so happens to be a Tuesday afternoon).. I grab my notebook and go through the things I haven’t done.

Maybe it’s just me – but having it written down gets it off my mind. I don’t spend the rest of the day thinking about it.

It’s also a good way to categorize your poisons. I constantly do stuff that I shouldn’t do. It’s so bad that I’ve had to give up certain things at work like a person getting over cocaine – forum discussions. I used to waste monumental amounts of time arguing with unemployed people about the future of the Internet. It did nothing for my business or their unemployment, it just killed time and bandwidth. I couldn’t control it so I deleted the email address and asked my staff and friends not to forward me stuff. While I’m sure I missed out on some stuff, I was able to focus on the work and what was important.

Think about all the crap you do at work that you know you shouldn’t – Post all day on Facebook. Debate politics and religion. Sell drugs. Plan vacations. Check your retirement portfolio. Shop for a 1967 Ford Mustang. If you aren’t actively acknowledging that these issues are impacting your performance, you won’t be able to deal with them.

squirrel

So manage your tasks. But manage your distractions too. Pretty soon you won’t be distracted by squirrels. They will be distracted by you and you’ll go to dinner with them.

Freestyle Friday is a fan suggested topic, if there is something you’d like to read my take on please email it to vlad@vladville.com.

Angry Birds: The Microsoft Partner Edition

Posted: 9:58 pm
March 28, 2012
Microsoft
5 Comments

I’ve been in this business for roughly 15 years. Throughout that time I have been a Microsoft Partner (various levels), Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (various levels and specialties) and overall based a large chunk of my business on the Microsoft platform. I have many friends around the world that work at Microsoft and I’m also a shareholder. In short, I’m familiar with their business model.

Some of you seem to be new to this so I’m going to help you out.

Over a decade ago Microsoft was an arrogant company that was prosecuted around the world for the criminal abuse of their monopoly. Thankfully they had enough attorneys and money to wiggle out of many steep penalties and restrictions but in a nutshell Microsoft thought it was well within their right not just to demand their software be installed on the new PCs, but that no competing software be installed. It undercut it’s competitors on the commercial side, gave software away for free to squeeze others out and launched many misleading and false campaigns (Google FUD) in order to discourage people stuck in their monopoly from even considering everyone elses software. Thanks to the global prosecution at the time, Microsoft couldn’t do the ultimate Hailstorm hat trick: force the Internet into Microsoft’s proprietary formats, protocols and authentication standards. So the Hailstorm died and Microsoft is a better company as a result of it, right?

Well. Sort of. Sort of the exact opposite. The exact same people are still managing the company.

Microsoft, for as long as I’ve been following them, takes on it’s competition in the most infantile way as possible.  They don’t do this out of lack of respect or maturity, they still own nearly 90% of the market and majority of the browsers, game consoles, office software (the list goes on). They view every bit of innovation as a threat to their immense monopoly on business computing and rightfully so.

Now, if this is the way they have behaved for years, do you think they have learned something valuable over their insistence of eliminating any potential third parties from their ecosystem? Or do you think they act like a little kid that got beaten on the playground and is trying to come back years later seeking revenge?

Microsoft 4.0: We’re all in… and there is no room for you.

When Microsoft launched BPOS, many of the partners took great offense to being nearly completely cut out of the pie. You can play in the Microsoft cloud, but you only get 6%.

Then Microsoft cut the cost of those services. Woops, so much for making money with Microsoft’s cloud.

But it get’s better – some of you were delusional enough to go on with the illusion that you may one day be able to bill the customers.

Folks… this is why you need to go to Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (or at least watch it on the web) if you want to hear the direction of the Microsoft business straight from the horses mouth. In this case, Steve Ballmer characterized the importance of Microsoft Partners concerns about the cloud as eloquently as he usually does “And I’m sure I will be hearing from you this week about the comissions, billing, account control, blah blah blah”

Dig to find the least effective liar

I am not necessarily the CEO of a company because I am the most skilled manager or the most skilled developer or the most amazing leader.

I am the CEO because I can speak for 2 hours and say absolutely nothing.

It pisses my staff to no end. They get called on every mistake or statement they make. I speak for 2 hours, promise stuff (that I later find out doesn’t exist) and have people apologize to me when they can’t find it. It’s a superpower, OK?

You get your feet put into the fire enough times and you learn how to avoid it.

CEO’s, COO’s, CFO’s and other CxO officials are phenomenal liars. At some point in the past they were honest – and man, people HATE getting bad news. So to find out what is really going on, you need to dig deep. Find that binary sales idiot that is just repeating whatever they are fed by the upper management and there you finally get some clarity about what is truly going on.

Wired has had spectacular coverage of recent Microsoft missteps.. First about how Microsoft is blatantly violating it’s own licensing agreements to help former managers that ultimately sell the businesses back to Microsoft – if you look back at the history of Microsoft, they took a lot of flack for giving away Internet Explorer for free. So a former executive branches out, violates Microsoft licensing to gain VDS popularity on the iPad until Microsoft get’s to publish it’s own Office for the iPad. That’s not anticompetitive, that’s downright genius.

Wired followed up the post with more angry partners (please read the whole blog post here):

I was recently at a conference for technology solution providers, put on by an industry association. There I was sitting at a roundtable near the front. To my left and right were executives of managed service providers (MSPs), internet service providers (ISPs) and others, but the real action was directly across the table, frothing at the mouth. It wasn’t a rabid dog, it wasn’t a sports fanatic describing a huge loss — it was a Microsoft sales rep.

After listening to the backlash from the executives, the rep finally reached his boiling point, when the question was asked, “When are we going to be able to start billing our clients directly for Office 365?” His eyes glared back at us, his face turned red in anger, and with a firm voice, he blurted, “never, it will never happen.” Emphasis on the never was hard to mistake.

Any questions about where partners exist in the Microsoft cloud?

We have a saying in Texas.. Fool me once.. shame on me.. Fool me 8 million times..

{ Note to self… Vlad, come back to this part of the blog post and find better wording for “complete morons”.. something like “cloud specialized Microsoft partners”. }

Still, shame on you.

But we can make money in integration…

Shame on you.

But we don’t really like to bill anyhow, or the liability, or the support..

Right, because your clients are going to love you so much as their advisor when the stuff blows up as it does nearly every quarter? Shame on you.

But the money is not really in the licensing, it’s in the support..

Shame on you.

I really don’t know any more insulting words that I can share with you than those that Microsoft is apparently shamelessly issuing from Ballmer all the way to regional sales guys.

The shame really is on you – because Microsoft should not be blamed for any of this, not one bit. They are just trying to provide the best product at the best possible price and they are quite clear that they do not want you in it.

Any illusions you may have towards any future you have in the Microsoft cloud is your own fault, not that of Microsoft. Microsoft is responsible to it’s shareholders, not to you. And whatever amazing value you think you bring to the equation – well, it’s just facilitating your death faster. Because whereever you think you have an opportunity in the Microsoft ecosystem, you are dealing with a Microsoft client that they want to control – like Apple does – from the way they do business, sell you a mouse, phone, songs – everything your clients digital paws touch.

That’s it. End of story.

For my American fans.. Much of our disenfranchised population believes that we are slowly sliding down as a society and an industrial power because we don’t make anything anymore. We just outsource and import. This is the same thing. If you are making a solution, the most recognizable part of that solution better be you. Everything else should come secondary.

Or you can just pick better partners.

I work with Microsoft. I do so because they have the best software. But when I sell my products and solutions, Microsoft isn’t even in the top 10 reasons why they ought to buy my stuff. If you cannot differentiate yourself enough it’s a good indication that you will eventually be displaced by your partners. So pick your friends better and plan your business to be something more than an easily replicated service.

Results Are NOT Typical

Posted: 10:14 pm
March 26, 2012
IT Business
2 Comments

Have you ever been up late at night and turned on the TV just to break up the silence a bit? There they are, newfound millionaires who bought houses for no money down, made it big at car or government auctions and even got free money through government grants. And if you call right now, they are going to share the secret with you straight from their $5 plastic lawn chair special. Nothing screams millionaire like sweatpants and no-name polo shirt.

I mean, you can’t argue with the numbers. Especially when their riches are smudged with a drying highlighter at the bottom of the cheap copier paper.

investinit

I’m about to share an equally earth shattering secret with you. That secret is that there are really no big secrets when it comes to building an IT business and if there were these ridiculously profitable business models that somehow nobody else has figured out.. trust me.. no businessman with more than 2 brain cells would share those tips with you. They would be an idiot to do so.

Vlad’s IT VAR Gold Mine

I recently bought 4 acres of land in downtown Dallas on the edge of Trinity River to build a data center and while digging out the foundation we found a huge deposit of gold! Now, I’m already too rich and instead of hiring $5 day laborers I’m going to give you the chance to make billions – it’s just going to cost you $1,000 so I can train you how to dig properly. Well, I won’t be the one doing it, but I will have special CEO golddigger sessions in which you can learn how to buy your own property full of gold. Those are $10K though.

Not interested? It’s probably because you’re a loser. Call me when you become serious about becoming rich.

Now most people are intelligent enough to know that the above is outright fraud.. but some folks skipped school the day they were handing out IQ points and are probably doing the math right now.. “Well, it’s only $1,000.. Even if I dig out 1oz of gold…”

Aaassssssssssss.

Advice as a service.

I am going to break protocol here and give you some advice for $10,000. But it’s worth at least $100,000.

Well, because I like you, it’s gonna be $10,000 but only if you promise to read it now. Ok, $5,000 but you have to vote for me. Tell you what, since you’re a fan of Vladville, it’s gonna be $1,000. You know what, I like your smile. It’s free but you have to share this post on Facebook. OK?

The hindsight of successful business owners is that they should have invested more money into the business back when they weren’t making a lot of money.

Every single person (that is trying to sell you some advice) will advise you to spend money.

Oh yeah?

It’s like the newspaper business. Gotta spend money to make money. Ok, well if the ads work so great wouldn’t they sell them like crack – first hit is always free. Oh, it’s not? “Wait, you want how much???”

If you want to make more money you need to buy an RMM. No, a PSA. No, you need a BDR. No, you need to get at least 100 seats of ExchangeDefender. Any guess what a marketing business sales guy will tell you you need to spend your tight budget on?

So the secret – you should ONLY spend money on getting more business. Everything else should come free unless you can mark it up selling it to someone else.

Yes, looking back I probably should have changed just about everything about my business in every way. But guess what, I don’t operate a web design business in 1997. So my ability to offer my 1997 self is as good as advice some of you feel like you should take from people that have not operated your business in years.

You were so awesome at being an MSP that you aren’t one today. Please teach me how to be just like you! I want to be an MSP millionaire just so I can try selling other MSPs my brilliance instead of sitting at home stacking cash.

You can be a Go Giver in your community. But when you want to be a Go Giver in business and the guy on the other side is asking you for a check – you’re a Go Sucker. And if you get sold, you only got yourself to blame. Because nobody knows what is best for your business more than you do. And the number one rule in business ownership is:

Will this make me money? If not, pass.

If you can’t quantify the benefit of something, and have a historical pattern of your capability to do it, do you really want to try juggling knifes with stacks of your businesses cash?

Stress Relief for IT Staff

Posted: 2:12 pm
March 21, 2012
Boss
2 Comments

I don’t think that anyone working outside of IT can ever understand the amount of stress your average technology employee deals with. Some roles – such as working in support or network operations can at times make you feel like you’re being paid just to be abused. To a certain extent, that’s exactly why there is a premium – people don’t get angry at machines, they get angry and take it out on other people.

This is particularly bad in small business, where people are too cheap to buy what they need and then get mad at you when it fails to meet the speed or reliability they wanted but wouldn’t pay for. It’s your job to make it work and bring it back up or they’ll just take their business elsewhere – because not only are you incompetent and overpriced, you’re also easily replaceable.

The stress in IT is the same as the stress with virtually any other job. It’s just compounded by the realistic expectation that while you do the said job you also perform daily fire drills, do jobs of 3 other people, sacrifice sleep and personal fitness, backup and document your entire role and stay on top of the industry that changes everything about it daily. GO!

Dealing With Stress at ExchangeDefender

First I’m going to explain some of the stressful situations at Own Web Now but if you’re looking for funny stuff, scroll down.

2008-2010: These were rough years both personally and professionally for me both because I was dealing with crap on 3 different fronts. Newborn meant no sleep. When I could potentially sleep I was on the road apologizing for one issue after another as we struggled to get ExchangeDefender to where our partners needed it to be. Ultimately, this was the end of the “SBSer” era, and the amount of pressure and demand to switch from an enterprise-ish business to a consumer-ish business was putting all kinds of strain on the business in terms of juggling objectives.

What was particularly disheartening was that we were profitable and were growing the business far faster than we could support it – which meant we hired everyone we could and ended up with some pretty toxic people. Nothing like going to work with people you don’t like dealing with stuff you don’t want to and constantly being put under pressure to deal with it all.

Dealing with it: Even though the business was growing incredibly and generating obscene amounts of profit, I had to keep my team together. Every single day we would go out to lunch – no questions asked – all on the house. Drinks, booze, whatever it takes not to kill each other. Now academics and doctors will tell you that this is the worst possible way to deal with stress but it helped on several fronts:

#1 When you’re pressed for time, you have to work with the team you’ve got not the team you want. Nothing kills productivity like training new employees.

#2 When you get people together, no matter how much they hate each other and what is going on, there is a bonding process that eventually takes care of itself.

#3 When things aren’t fun, everything pisses you off. The walls, the paint, the smell, the temperature. Getting out of the office and being able to reset and go back in for another 3-4 hours got us through it.

2010 and beyond: After what is affectionately known as the “dark ages” around here things got much better. We got a much bigger office, more light, less walls and have some really great people working on things. But every day isn’t exactly paradise – we still have a punching bag in the office along with enough places you can crash if you want to. We are smack in the heart of downtown Orlando where everything is nearby – and there are few things that bars and ice cream can’t fix. For everything else there is Five Guys.

Vlad Stress

I honestly believe that I’d be a much happier person if I were drunk all the time. Every time I have a rough day and have a drink at lunch or after work I beat myself up for not doing it in the morning. Mouthwash <check>. Shot of whiskey <check>. I could be the Jack Sparrow of email. Unfortunately, I don’t have the discipline to be an alcoholic. Sad smile

Writing it down – I’ve written extensively about my LV notebook, I carry it around with me everywhere. I doodle UI designs, write down project descriptions, reminders, tasks. Every week gets fresh two pages of important tasks and every day has it’s own important things to do. So when I come to work, I know there is a truckload of stuff I have to get done or there are going to be issues. Whatever is pissing me off and causing me stress is secondary to what I have to deal with in order to move the company forward. My first job as the CEO is to make sure the company moves forward, everything else comes after that. Writing it down allows me to deal with it later, if I have to deal with it at all.

Walk away from a fight – Stressful situations tend to suck you in and I’ve learned that whatever my first instinct response happens to be tends to be correct roughly half the time. Which means that dealing with a stressful situation while I’m stressed out is making it worse half the time. Which then leads others to think that it’s something else that’s wrecking my mood and not the billionth time they’ve failed me in the exact same way. Stuff happens, I’ll fix it, just give me a second.

Drink, eat, go to the bathroom – Did you ever get pissed off at something completely random and couldn’t even explain why it was an issue? Me too. Maybe I’m just tired because the kid woke me up last night? In reality, it’s that I haven’t had anything to eat, I woke up early and have been pounding Diet Coke all morning long. Whenever I’m upset at something that doesn’t make sense I try to run through my biological checklist: “Why are you being a bitch? Thirsty? Hungry?”

Making it portable – Through the years I’ve done a lot to make my life less stressful. I have delegated a lot of my stress inducing responsibilities – from home to work. Now I know you’re probably thinking “Yes, it must be nice to be King Vlad, I can’t delegate my job or I’d be out of one!” but you’d be surprised how helpful people are when you tell them you’re having a problem.. “Listen, I suck at this, can we trade some stuff?” – Folks are understanding, it may not work at McDonalds but it works in smallbiz and in IT. This doesn’t mean I get to wake up whenever I feel like it, go to the beach and phone it in – but it does mean that of the 24 hours I have in a day not everything is ultra urgent and meant to be done as soon as possible. This step is probably the most difficult one because it takes a lot of discipline, lot of planning and organization – because all the goodwill is out the door the first time you drop the ball.

Fun Stuff

DISCLAIMER: WE DON’T DO ANY OF THESE AT WORK TO OUR PARTNERS. THOUGH THERE ARE TIMES WHEN I WISH WE DID.

#1 As soon as you pick up the phone with an angry customer on the other side tell them there is maintenance being done on the SIP server.

#2 Play salsa or merengue music in the background and turn up the volume when they are speaking. Apologize that you can’t help them and ask them to turn it down.

#3 Pretend you’re an Indian and keep on arguing with the client about their name and physical location.

#4 If the call queue goes up, start transfering them to the conference bridge. Then hop into the conference and try to get them to help one another.

#5 When working with tickets, ask for more information. Then change the users password. When they call you, tell them you can’t help them if they can’t verify their password.

#6 If the client is particularly angry tell them you’re getting a manager and put them on the hold. Take a short bathroom break. Answer the phone again, pretending to be the person you like THE LEAST at work. Here you can just be rude and tell them to take it up with the CEO… or just promise them stuff that are ridiculous but likely. Then when they are even angrier, the next person up in the food chain has to deal with it.

#7 If there is a known issue at the moment AND YOU KNOW ITS YOUR FAULT, ask them to reboot their computer or server. Claim it’s a company policy and you can’t go to step #2 until you confirm it’s not the PC – but it has to be done while you’re on the phone, doesn’t matter that you already did it (I had this one served to me by AT&T and it made me angry enough to punch the phone through a desk)

#8 If something IS your fault but you don’t want to admit it, make them do some quick troubleshooting crap that will go nowhere. Then fix the issue, ask them to check again. When they confirm it’s fixed, break it again. Tell them you did nothing to fix it or break it. Repeat this process a few times until you’ve got them believing that it’s an issue on their end, not yours.

#9 If they call in with an urgent issue that is really critical and needs to be handled immediately, ask them if it’s OK to put them on hold while you research their issue. Only pretend to put them on hold – and then act like you’re ordering dinner for the entire office or trying to price a vacation.

#10 Bonus for the road folk – Now some of you are reading this and thinking… I’m a road show monkey, what can I do? Go to your competitors table and ask for a tshirt. Take a whole stack of their business cards. Put their shirt on and go around the trade show trying to sell the product to complete random strangers. When they refuse (obviously) dismiss them in as vulgar of a way as you can get away with, without getting punched, and just hand them the business card you stole and tell them to call you when they get serious about their business.

In closing..

Remember that you get to call yourself a professional because you’re getting paid to do a job. Your personal problems with that job, it’s employees, customers, stakeholders and so on are just that.. your personal problems. Man up and find a way to deal with it, even if the only way you can cope with it is daydreaming about how to mess with people that cause your problems.

Or start drinking. Heavily.

How to build the next great IT business

Posted: 6:19 pm
March 14, 2012
Boss, IT Business, IT Culture
1 Comment

I was recently asked by my friends on Facebook (www.facebook.com/vladmmd) and Twitter (@vladmazek) about how to build a great technology business. As I was told, I spend a lot of time explaining how the doors to opportunity are being closed and not enough talking about what to actually do. Honestly, I spend a lot of time talking about our own businesses (Shockey Monkey, ExchangeDefender, CloudBlock, Looks Cloudy) and how those are being managed/promoted/built but those posts tend to get very skeptical commentary because even after years and years of documenting my every move on this blog people still somehow can’t trust me (why you’d value my opinion on this post then is beyond me but I aim to please).

So first a couple of disclaimers: I am not now nor have I ever been an MSP. The following is an opinion, not an advice. This opinion is only appropriate for a 30something looking for a business that has a medium range lifecycle (5-10 years).

Objective: To build a fast, scalable and inexpensive business that profits from the growing commoditization of network services and consumerization of IT.

Assumptions: Low startup costs, low barrier to entry, low level of skill or work ethic (otherwise you’d make more faster working for someone) and preferably a business activity that the attorney general would choose not to prosecute.

Business model: Look at the most successful technology businesses and find a way to wiggle in between them and the decision maker. Commoditize the most expensive component in the service delivery.

The Broken Model

The “technology business” model as exists right now is extremely expensive. It requires huge up front investments and huge operational expenses. All for extremely low returns met with extremely high risk.

For example, you’d be insane to start building Exchange clusters right now. I never built a voice product at ExchangeDefender and looking at the marketplace demand right now I wouldn’t even humor it. Everything “expensive” is on it’s way out – there are way too many substitutes for something big to work and work well enough.

Likewise, talent is extremely expensive, forget building a business that requires big salaries. Look at solutions like www.thirdtier.com and tell me why you’d ever create a single point of failure in your business given the price tag?

Finally, there are two huge challenges to the existing business model: consumerization and commoditization. Everything that is huge and expensive is being beaten by smaller and simpler solutions that don’t require an army of people to build and maintain.

The Opportunity of Viable Threats

The opportunity of connecting the technical dots out there is huge.

The only issue is that nobody has a huge interest in promoting them because if you’re already selling stuff you naturally want to sell the most expensive (highest margin) stuff you can get away with. Smaller and cheaper stuff, while it works just as well, is something as threatening to you as it is threatening your suppliers. But with your suppliers starting to compete with you… well, it’s time to make difficult decisions.

Make yourself the product and associate everything around you as a service or a tool that can be sold as a subscription.

Don’t do any actual work – resell services, service contracts, support, tools – set yourself up as an uncomissioned salesman that is collecting a margin but do so without liability or responsibility for what is being sold.

Outsource everything except management. You cannot run a modern business as an SPF, there is a long blood trail out in the industry as a proof. But forget about working 9-5.

Embrace working with people. The ones that make around $10/hour.

Redefine what you offer. Expertise, not grunt monkey work. The two need to be separate entities because if you try to balance both you’ll eventually be an expert grunt monkey making $10/hour for a job that others would charge $110/hour.

Be loud and annoying. Forget about a marketing budget.

What is it you do around here

Look at what’s expensive and commoditize it – training.

Look at what’s being consumerized and connect it – mobility.

Businesses are spending boatloads of money on consumer gadgets that they are barely managing or having any idea how much of their staff time is wasted on them instead of going towards “productivity” benefits they bought them for in the first place.

Do you go into business of managing mobile devices? Hell no. That costs a ton of money. You need skilled engineers, ridiculously expensive software and you can only be assured of one thing – it’s always gonna be a step slower than the stuff that’s coming out.

So what do you sell? If I had nothing better to do, I’d sell a low flat-rate training technology service. That is layered with a sales component on top of it. You could even sell managed services – just be sure you’re not the one stuck delivering them at 5 AM on Saturday.

This is something you don’t need a lot of resources for – you don’t even need an office. A virtual office with an impressive meeting space (leased by the hour) along with some admin assistant time for marketing, followups and scheduling.

The way to lead and ride the wave of consumerization of IT is to be a user, an expert – and leverage that to others that want to make it work. All that’s in it for you is 10-25% commission along the way.

Conclusion

There is no doubt cloud is huge. There is no doubt that big network infrastructure stuff is in pain. There is no doubt all of the techical stuff – from equipment to skill – is being commoditized. It’s also a fact that consumerization is taking the IT departments and technology companies out of the loop.

It’s also a fact that these companies have a ton of money and massive infrastructure in place to do what they do. Some of which they will spend on you if you can connect them to the base they are losing so rapidly.