The Meaning of Work Life

Posted: 9:47 pm
October 30, 2011
Boss
Comments Off on The Meaning of Work Life

It’s Sunday night and I’m sitting on the couch hanging out with the family, catching up on TV and work, planning a week ahead, a month ahead a year ahead.. and I figured I’d offer you this insightful observation: You can’t be emotionally detached from what you do for a living if you’re a business owner or manager.

Most of the moderately successful people I talk to often express their desire to treat their business as an ATM that they can rely on to fulfill their dreams all while not having to have a job in the said business.

The rest of this is not really for folks who have jobs, it’s for people who own companies.

Right now I’m working on getting ready for a huge week.

This huge week is really just a matter of lining things up for a huge November – without this baby step things just stay the same.

With a huge November, Q4 will look great again and as the complexities and frustrations we face now get solved the 2012 will look even more incredible.

The more successful this week, this month, this quarter, this year become the better next year will be and the less problems we’ll have.

Slow down..

This entrepreneurial trap of reducing problems in a growing company is a moving target:

The more successful your business becomes the smaller your current problems will become. If your issues are related to the infancy stage in which you’re lacking talent or funding or time, growing business revenues and profits will certainly eliminate a lot of your current problems. Don’t worry, you won’t get nostalgic or start writing a book about how great business success is because you’ll have brand new problems to deal with that will be tougher than the ones you’ve had to deal with before.

Back into the wheel little hamster Smile

The bad & good news..

The bad news of course is that the business never quite becomes an ATM so long as you’re in charge of making sure that ATM has cash in it to spit out at will.

The good news is in realizing that and being realistic about it.

As the carnage of SMB IT consulting and SPFs has taught us, you can’t stay small or think small and build a successful business. There are no mythical blue oceans and you’re not necessarily any more brilliant than the next guy so the challenge isn’t in trying to build a better tool but challenging yourself to become as good as you possibly can with your existing toolset and managing risk correctly as you grow along.

You cannot separate yourself and your ability to manage/control the company. You cannot stay on top of things and become detached. You can’t be in charge and on vacation. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

This shouldn’t be depressing at all. If it is, then this is probably a good sign that you don’t really love your job/career and you need to sell the business and move to something you enjoy. Or you can completely divest yourself from the business emotionally and make someone else run it, at which point your say and your job there are done. It’s a potential means to an end.

Alternatively, you can learn to love what you do and relish in the challenge of solving tougher and tougher problems. That seems like a lot of work though. I suggest taking up blogging to let off some steam. Or MMA classes, but don’t let them lie to you and tell you it’s a great strength and cardio program because they will hit you and it will hurt much worse than your typical muscle fatigue. Overall, expect a huge toll on your ability to focus.

Now, alternatively… You can become the core of your business that is simply there in an advisory role while not really being a part of the direct output of the business. You may be able to help refine processes, give your opinion on them and how they are implemented.. but you wouldn’t be the one proposing them, implementing them, controlling the quality, execution management, tweaking, revisions and so on.

This is kind of like having your cake but licking the icing off the side of the cake you can’t see. Smile In my opinion, it might be the best.

Personally

Above is kind of wishful thinking on my part, what I’m working towards. I still love what I do and love being engaged in being the actual part of the direct input. I’ve always figured that once the day came where I didn’t care enough to think about work someone else would do a much better job, easily.

The beauty of having a small business is that it becomes what you want it to be. You get to enjoy (afterwards; in the present tense it’s a series of calculated risks, long hours and putting up with crap) the journey and if you’re good and lucky it can eventually just become a chain in your investment portfolio that is that emotionally detached cash spitting box in the corner.

In the meantime, I’m the 0.1% and fortunate/motivated to move to 0.01%. Wouldn’t trade it for anything.

ABP

So apparently conferences suck for you too

Posted: 9:50 am
October 25, 2011
Events
1 Comment

Wow. What was meant to be an explanation of why we’re dropping a lot of our road schedule in favor of more digital and partner focused content sure resonated with many of you. I’m always humbled by the number of people that read this blog and I’m thrilled that so many of you can make it through the grammar/spelling carnage that is Vladville to consider a point that I’m trying to make.

P.S. (skip this part) Yes, I went to college. No, I’m not illiterate. Sometimes as I write I think of another great point and go back and forth to edit stuff as I’m writing it – so sometimes you’ll see misplaced punctuation, verb tense mistakes, plural misuse and in general sentences that look like they were written by two different people. Sometimes my hand slips on my Macbook air and I notice later that I’ve been writing in the wrong paragraph. The only time I’m actually in my perfect and real form is when you see a gigantic runon sentence because that’s how I speak in real life – until all the room in the air is sucked out and everyone drops to the floor unconscious.

First, Thank you so much for reading my blog. I’m floored by the number of you that not just read it but have an opinion that you share with me through Facebook, twitter, email and so on. Folks, if you consider social media important and you have your Facebook chat turned off… you’re missing out.

Second, The conference situation is clearly much worse than I laid it out to be. Not that all conferences are bad, but that so many of you want to have a better experience at them – be it as a vendor looking for ROI or as an attendee looking for content and engagement. Unfortunately, I’m not the guy to fix this as I’m not the guy running conferences, I just pay to sponsor them.

Finally… Some of you misread my post as a conviction that all conferences are horrible and shouldn’t be attended or sponsored. That is not what I said. I just laid out the many problems that I saw with many of the conferences that we’ve sponsored and explained why we needed to step back from pursuing diminishing returns and focus our money and attention elsewhere. I am pestered each day by event sales people to sponsor stuff and since that was not my job anymore.. and more importantly because I don’t believe in just walking away from business relationships without explaining why we are changing our focus, I decided to lump it up into one blog post because I don’t have the time to have a 1 hour exit interview with every conference organizer and every new sales staffer they hire for the next 5 years.

Many of you agreed. Some of you disagreed. One of you (and it had to be the nicest guy in the bunch) actually got offended.

I think having these opinions out in the open is worthwhile because this is the way things end up improving.

If you stay quiet, things only get worse. If you don’t stand up and say that there is something wrong, it won’t get fixed. I’ve always championed this for us through this blog and that’s why we have such awesome products – because our partners have always openly and at times harshly beat us up over stuff that was wrong. I’m not going to lie, it’s hard as hell to look at and have people tell you that you suck. But once you fix it, there is no greater satisfaction and there is no other product/company I’d rather be the CEO of (well at least in Software. If Playboy or Hustler are hiring I’m one.)

So that’s what I have to say. However, since many of you don’t read comments I wanted to pick out a few here for your enjoyment and consideration.

Folks, if you don’t like the content and what you’re spending your money on, just stop. Otherwise the situation gets even worse. We live and work in an opportunistic environment with a bunch of entrepreneurs. So long as people get away misrepresenting the audience there will be vendors willing to roll the dice and sponsor an event because everyone is trying to make money. But.. don’t talk to me, I don’t run a conference. Talk to the conference organizers you like and tell them what it takes for you to attend/sponsor again.

Now, on to your comments.

Jeannine Edwards, ConnectWise. Interesting feedback because she’s not only in charge of one of the largest conferences out there but also one of the largest show marketing budgets as well:

I think this is an interesting post…I actually appreciated it. I needed to rethink my event spend in 2011, while at the same time work hard to plan an event that brought the best ROI possible to participating sponsors. So I had a razor sharp focus on where I felt real ROI was to be had… and also made sure I baked those deliverables into IT Nation.

I also appreciated the importance of the unbiased perspective. I think it’s important to remember why we’re spending the money we’re spending – to spend time with partners and potential customers, not our friends – that’s a nice to have when the opportunity presents itself, not a must have.

Net net, I do still find the face to face community the best place to engage with our partners, and potential partners, so I’ll spend the money – maybe less of it, but I do see value in the conduit.

Bold and interesting post pal.

Matt Makowicz from VARTrek blogged at length about this. His point is interesting because he was with SMB Nation until recently.

When I turned on my PC this morning, I logged on to Facebook and saw something different.  My friend, Vald Mazek, with his sometimes controversial and always “in your face” vladville blog, expressed concern that he was about to offend some folks out there.  Well, that’s not news, although the concern may be.

After reading Vlad’s blog (www.vladville.com) I found it thorough, informative, insightful, and a wee bit of “what no one else is saying.”  Great blog, Vlad – as usual.

I have a bit of a unique perspective on the subject of the industry events and particular the vendor side of conferences having worked for clients on both sides of that fence.  In fact, I chuckled at some of the “value statements” Vlad cited as I know I have uttered some of them myself and some to Vlad’s marketing team.

Vlad was wrong about one thing:

Where Vlad got it wrong, in my opinion, is that the attendees don’t see the vendors as a “vital component of the event.”  Attendees I have spoken with have consistently responded that a given event’s expo hall, or an introduction to a vendor is in the top 3 reasons they either chose to attend the conference or found value from doing so.

Especially, with the change(s) that are sweeping the IT industry, and in particular with the SMB focused Partners, integrating vendor solutions is the only way to stay in business much less be or remain competitive.

My own $0.02

I have “seen” behind the curtain of the conference business in chatting with several conference organizers as well as my own work experience.  I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the bullshit.  And for the most part, Vlad is right – it ain’t pretty out there.

In fact, the entire reason I am building a consultancy around helping vendors with their Channel Partner programs is I see tremendous opportunity for improvement.  I’m amazed at the Channel Marketing budgets of some vendors.  Of the 100 plus vendor Channel marketing programs I’ve been closely involved with in one way or another, I am shocked at how few really focus upon ROI on an event by event basis.

Of course, there IS something to the goodwill, community, or the impact of “not being there.”  While real, these intangibles should be used to sway “on the fence” decisions, not be at the core of decisions that involve precious marketing dollars.

Regarding attendees and their “quality” as it matches (or doesn’t) to any particular vendor I suggest a few old, but solid techniques for flushing this out.  I suggest the following:  1) Simply attend the conference the first time you hear of it and use that “scouting trip” to help in determining if the event should be sponsored next year.  Do this for the events seriously being considered but aren’t absolute certainties.  2) Share with the event sales rep what your “A” Partner and “B” Partner look like and get a number of each that will be in attendance.  3) Most importantly, question that number.  Typically, as it was in my case, the sales rep believes what he/she is saying.  Look at the history of the event.  Ask about what marketing activities the event organization is doing to generate the promised number.  Look for or negotiate a guarantee.  Find a bottom number that the sales rep sees as worst-case scenario and base an ROI calculation on that.  4) Finally, strategize on how your firm can stand out at the event.  Approach the buying decision like buying a boat or bigger house.  There is a lot more than the purchase price involved to “do it right.”

Last thought:

I disagree with my friend Vlad on another point as well.  It’s not necessarily true that there are too many events in the industry.  If attending these various events has taught me anything, it’s that each has its own ”community” following and unique audience.  Vendors, however, seem to limit their scope and marketing budget to the event’s they know of or their competitors are sponsoring.  I know of an event that only two vendors “in the circuit” have ever sponsored and it’s a goldmine.  But beware, it’s a different event that requires a different strategy.  Email me and I’ll share, plus it’s more fun than my looking at “view” statistics.  :-)

Happy Hunting!

The following is courtesy of an exchange between Kate Hunt (who works for us at Looks Cloudy) and Ryan Morrison formerly of IPED and perennial keynote eyecandy for the 3 ladies at an IT conference:

Kate:

the real problem, in my estimation, is that an event that actually serves both the solution provider and the vendor, and justifies the time away for both parties, is an impossibility. why? because in order to do so would require the event hosts to accomplish something that’s impossible: serving two masters.

Ryan:

Perhaps two masters, but one purpose: creating profitable business partnerships. I mean, no one is naive enough to think that vendors are there to do anything other than recruit, but solution providers also need to refresh the portfolio. If you dispense with the pretense that the vendor is just happy to sponsor lunch because they care about the community, is there a way to bring people together on a logical basis that serves the basic purpose of business development?

Amy Babinchak, who is often the main content at the technical conferences and currently on the SBS MVP tour with Microsoft/HP. Show stuff aside, Amy is the CEO of Harbor Computer Services and the kind of person folks like me pay to meet at these events:

I like small conferences, the smaller the better. I’m there to connect with vendors not to be sold to. If you want to sell to me send an email. If you want my feedback and input and to hear how the market perceives your product be present in the vendor hall and the hallway of a small conference. Vendors should not see these events as sales opportunites but rather as product development events where you can really reach out and get real information.

Update: Here is another from Arlin Sorensen who runs HTG peer groups:

Very thought provoking and solid post. As someone who tries very hard to put on two solid vendor events each year, you have nailed some of the realities in the marketplace. There are too many shows, at least from the vendor perspective, because you are expected to be at all of them.

Solution providers and MSPs belong to a variety of communities and groups and aren’t faced with the literally hundreds of shows that are available to the vendor community. I agree, even though most SPs and MSPs have a more limited menu of options than a vendor does, they should not attend any event just for the sake of something to do. If it doesn’t drive their business they should stay home and be working on it.

We at HTG are completely focused on driving ROI to our sponsors and supporters. And equally important, providing real tangible value to our members. If those two aren’t in alignment we have to make changes to make it so. Our goal is a quality set of vendors and members who are willing to build relationships and have conversations. That is what we focus on – creating an atmosphere where people can succeed on both sides.

Running trade shows is a challenge to be sure we stay fresh and continue to add value. We are evaluating ideas and will be piloting some ways to increase the interaction, and relationships, in 2012 and beyond.

Thanks for the thoughtful and very insightful post. Great food for thought as we make plans for next year.

My advice to solutions providers and MSPs – know why you are going to any event – have an agenda ahead of time and a list of people you want to connect with. Spend your time doing that. Relationships are the real value of these events. You can get content lots of places. The face to face opportunity is the real value.

– Arlin

 

If you’d like to read more there are additional comments on the blog post as well as my responses, or you can check out the few threads on my Facebook wall at www.facebook.com/vladmmd – my only suggestion is to get involved.

It’s clear that this is not worthwhile for many of you, vendors and VARs alike. There are many great events out there and they only happen with the participation of vendors (like us) and we only spend money if great attendees show up willing to work. This community is what we make of it and sometimes we have problems that aren’t pretty but we work and we work and we make things better and almost everyone benefits. Finally, I am truly sorry that I have offended folks. But give me a break – if these problems apply to you – I’m not the one you should blame. And I would never publicly disparage you, your brand or your company – but it’s better you hear it from me now than from further decline of what could be something great. Love it or hate it,

The beauty of small business and entrepreneurism is that we are the masters of what we create – and none of us wake up to create garbage. So if this is a wakeup call for some of you, take your attendees and sponsors feedback – the real feedback, not the polite non-confrontational crap.

Update: Just an update on the potential conflict of interest some of you asked for. Some of the names listed here are in fact shows that my company, Own Web Now Corp sponsors – SMB Nation, Connectwise, HTG and the HP/Microsoft show all contain/feature OWN as a product or we’re a sponsor. However, much like I said in the first post, I will not take anyone down by name and the opinion is just mine about the problems out there in general.

If you want to see us, call us anytime

Posted: 10:40 pm
October 23, 2011
Events, Pimpin
13 Comments

I’ve had this on my mind for a while and seeing how it’s the time of the year for trade show sales I figured I’d write one post both and lay out my opinion for the event sales and the IT pros alike. I’m no longer in charge of OWN’s marketing budget so everything you’re about to read here is just my opinion – and you’re welcome to disagree with me since I’m not the one choosing what we sponsor. I’ve also been quite careful to avoid using any names because while trade show circuit is a business like any other, I do have friends there and some of them are really trying to do things that are in the best interest of both the vendors and the partners.

Problems (Law of large numbers and diminishing returns)

There are way too many trade shows aimed at the IT Solution Provider, VAR, MSP. Everyone with an audience has an event – and more of them – with seemingly no purpose other than to bill vendors.

Content at most of these shows is pedestrian at best – expert panels made up of sales guys masquerading as content. Some shamelessly hold a bucket of cash up just to keep the audience in their seats until the end of the day.

Audience is unqualified. At some events you’ll meet college students attending the event for extra credit, at others you’ll meet end users while at some you’ll just stand there and be pitched by other vendors who didn’t spring for a booth.

There is seemingly no point for vendors to be there. At some events even the show floor layout reinforces the vendor carival boardwalk games as the attendees go from the entrance to the main location. “Step over here ma’am, I can guess your weight or you get a free tshirt!”

Engagement is difficult. Most shows never tell you who will actually be in attendance. Some tell you a day or even a week ahead of time giving you little time to get in touch with anyone.

There are way too many vendors. It’s quite clear what the objective is when you see 40 vendor logos with a show that promises 300 people to be there (which is likely including the 120+ vendor staff, show staff and the valet out front)

Biggest problem: Vendors are an accessory – that pays for lunch, venue, maybe a party, parting gifts and whatnot. They are not seen as a vital component of the event (“Hey, connect XYZ from the booths and charge $X for it”)

Our Story

I don’t want to sit here and lie to you by saying that the show circuit is useless. Far from it. We’ve managed to build an extremely successful company that had the shows at the core of our marketing.

The return on investment over the years has been heading south and it nearly fell off the cliff recently.

I had two options: double down or walk away. In 2011, we walked away from tier 2 and tier 3 shows. There are several reasons:

1. I kept on seeing the same people everywhere. I know some small shops have a demented illusion that the CEO’s job is to deal with strategy, not to build a business – but when you’ve got less than 10 employees you’re spending more time with me than your clients it’s pretty clear where you business is going.

2. I got the wrong sales guy. When I’m told “But we’re the best, all your competitors will be there” that only tells me I’m about to burn a lot of money on a lot of leads that won’t go anywhere. No thanks.

3. I asked my biggest partners where they were going. I sponsored their answers. If you can’t tell me why you are going to an event (or if the answer is to play golf, party, got a free hotel room, etc) then I see no reason to interrupt your vacation with my spam.

4. Lower ROI. I don’t run a business for the sake of sustaining the employment of my marketing department. “But people will think you’re dead” is not a valid reason to spend marketing dollars. When we pulled 40-50 shows a year we were barely breaking even on some.

5. Lower purpose. I’m “connected” to 1,300 of my partners and their staff in realtime, every day. I can touch base with the rest of them through email, newsletters, our portal, support services and so on. So why should I go to an event?

The result? Higher ROI on marketing investment, more focused marketing and sales staff, better mood around the office.. I can go on but reducing the travel schedule helped us out a lot – and we have more partners now than when we started 2011, with better revenue/profit.

I don’t really have many encouraging words to share regarding the problem however – If I were an IT Solution Provider I don’t know which trips I would spend $ on or even if I’d take a half day at work to attend one of the local ones. It’s gotten so bad that you can learn more useful stuff from blogs and your vendors marketing collateral than you can at the average industry event. The only downside is that you won’t get any swag and beer will be exponentially more expensive.

2012

I don’t know the exact layout of 2012 yet but I’ve heard that we’re even taking a razor to our tier 1 sponsorships. We’re only going to events where we’ve got a strategic relationship with the event and can squeeze something else out of it (video, case study, etc). It’s strictly business.

To my vendor brotherin that are facing the same issues I’ve outlined here, do what I’ve done and shift the entire responsibility to an unbiased person. I have many friends, alliances, etc, etc and we’ve in the past sponsored stuff just because the folks were nice or we did really well at the show in the past or I knew they were doing something good for the community even if it didn’t directly benefit me. Let someone deal with the numbers, returns and the investment objectively. The downside to that is that your mommy and daddy may decide that the party you want to go to or a playground where all your friends will be at is a ginormous waste of company resources and your time.

To everyone else: Don’t let this discourage you from creating great events and attending great events. This is by no means a conviction of the channel or the showmanship – all I’m offering is the reason why we’re going to stay off the road in 2012 and focus on our partners more instead.

Frankly, I think this is something our partners deserve more than tshirts and I’ve seen firsthand how much the content we’re now generating is being used by our partners and how they are transforming their business with it. If I can pull a large 6 figure budget from the road and apply it to more of what we’ve done this year, I think all of my partners will be happier – and hopefully recommend us to those that haven’t heard of us before that I’ll miss on the road.

As far as I can tell (and this is a separate blog post) the IT business is getting much better in 2011 but it’s certainly not a tide that’s lifting all boats – the good are getting better and the poor are getting jobs. Every day you wake up you have an opportunity to either slide by or do something great – it’s really all up to you.

P.S. Every year around this time folks call me to ask what I’ll be sponsoring next year (as we all seem to have more options and all wonder if the ROI is as bad elsewhere) and I also get calls asking for money. Hopefully this post explains it in some context – Yes, the ROI is terrible with a few exceptions and if we want to sponsor your event we’ll get in touch with you.

Vision Deconstructed

Posted: 11:48 pm
October 19, 2011
IT Business
Comments Off on Vision Deconstructed

My inbox is flooded, my cell has 3% battery life and the housekeepers organized all the charging cables… somewhere. So instead of doing something useful to make up for taking a 2 hour nap at work today – hey it’s good to be the king – I’m going to answer something that people desperately beg me to teach them every day.

PD*27494816

Vision

Overly simplified, it’s not much more than an easy punchline for Scott Adams to throw in the Dilbert comic and help disaffected middle-level management cope with their inability to come up with a better lie than the one they are copying from someone else. Quite simply:

Vision is a process of buying into the lie that someone else has figured out an answer to a problem that nobody else has figured out yet. When you see your bosses talk about the vision, company mission, agenda and even something as routine as promotions and company rank it’s all a plea to have you believe in a lie that might come true if we all wish hard enough.

But what if you haven’t completely given up on life and work?

Over time people become bored with their jobs, companies and lives and decide there are better ways to spend time. For some it’s drugs, for others it’s vacations and for some it’s spending 2 weeks fishing. Whatever it is, some people never see their work through to the eventual success and decide to quit without actually walking out the door. It happens to every mediocre business out there.

But it doesn’t have to.

Allow me to simplify this vision thing, at least in the way that I see it. I spend most of my time emailing, chatting, Facebooking, conference calling or just shooting @#%^ with my partners. When you talk to enough people you start to hear some common problems and you start to pitch different solutions or proposals – either stuff you’ve failed at or seeing what they have failed at so far. Then you think of a solution. Then you wonder if it would work. Then you do some quick math in your head and figure out if you could sell it and…

Voila.

Done.

I know the problem. I know the solution. I’m pretty sure I could make $ marketing, selling and delivering the solution. The vision is the process of getting from where I’m at now to people using it to solve their problem.

It’s actually quite simple. It’s the process that’s troublesome.

The Foolproof Vision Making Process

In the past year we’ve launched three different companies. Two of them are already making money and the next one will in a few weeks. So allow me to share some tips.

Every day I talk to people who have no creative way of figuring out their way out of the box they’ve taped themselves into. It’s probably because I spend most of my time talking to people with technical backgrounds whose job it is to forsee potential problems instead of creative ways to get around them. If you’re one of those take a tennis ball and go hang out in your sales guys office. Keep on bouncing it against the wall behind them until they either jump up and catch it with their teeth or challenge you to a game of phone-handset-tennis-ball baseball world series. If you have more than one sales guy you can either start a fantasy league, betting pool or have the others play the outfield. No matter the process, once the first tie hits the ground you’ll be in the right mental state to work on your vision.

First: The first person you need to sell the dream to is yourself. One of the biggest problems small biz IT folks have is thinking that someone else has figured it all out. They haven’t. So start lying to yourself about the thing you’re about to produce – this way when you lie to your potential clients it will seem extremely genuine.

Second: Understand that your idea is stupid but hopefully nobody else can figure that out until they sign the check: market test your ideas. Call your clients, partners, colleagues, have a staff meeting. Lie until something strikes you down. If it doesn’t it’s safe to say you’ve got the divine go ahead!

Third: Stick with it. It’s easy to point out problems, it’s hard to work around them and actually build something. Everything is dumb, stupid and idiotic when you’re looking at the first draft. Revise. Refine. Redo. But the process of the lie becoming reality is what the vision is all about. This is the hardest part because it involves the most work and time.

Finally: Give it time to fail but have an exit strategy before you even start. I cannot stress this enough. Just because nobody cares about what you’ve done right away or people dismiss it doesn’t mean you’ve failed.. yet. Give it some time. Try to revise it, play with it. Some of the biggest opportunities I’ve missed aren’t in the projects I’ve lost to others, they are in projects that I was too impatient with and didn’t stick with. It also speaks a lot to the maturity of what you’re doing – if you have a 6 month horizon then who would ever sign a 1 year contract with you?

Summary

It’s easy to criticize, it’s hard to work. Before you can convince everyone else that you’ve figured something out you need to convince yourself. The process of selling the idea starts with the idea itself. Vision is the process of lying to yourself hard enough to believe you’re telling the truth to everyone else who is going to lie to themselves in the process of making you an honest person.

ConnectWise IT Nation, State of Vlad, Cheap Xerox

Posted: 9:40 am
October 9, 2011
Boss, Cloud, ExchangeDefender, IT Business
Comments Off on ConnectWise IT Nation, State of Vlad, Cheap Xerox

It’s been almost a week since the last blog post. I’m ashamed not only because it’s been a week since the last post but because I’ve written dozens of them in that time but just haven’t hit publish… yet. On a certain level I’m starting to wonder if certain things need to even be said anymore or if anyone is listening. So if you are, feel free to scroll down to the part that says ConnectWise. Otherwise, here is some stuff that I can’t figure out.

1– Screw Karl Palachuk. Not the guy himself, he’s awesome and I’m proud to count him as a friend that knows the real Vlad. But his work pisses me off at times, particularly Relax Focus Succeed. I’d say go buy the book and read it but I know you won’t. I did. The big idea is that workaholics tend to be less successful and probably cause a lot more problems for themselves but not being able to distance themselves from their work or enjoy their life. What pisses me off is that he is right – or perhaps the fact that I’m just not like that. I don’t “relax” – I just think of something else I could occupy all my time with. Then I look at some of my friends who seem to be on vacations more often than they are at work and how their businesses are crumbling.. I just haven’t found a substitute for hard work (and lot’s of it) and the suggestion that relaxing instead of cramming is better just bugs me.

2– Things sure seem easier. I don’t really have any posts in the queue or additional thoughts on The death of a MSP salesman or where the VAR/MSP businesses that focus on dying infrastructure are going. I have less and less of those discussions with partners these days and things played out pretty much exactly how I wrote they would play out here for for years. My day-to-day is about taking great ideas and figuring out how stuff we’re already doing fits the mold, there is no massive paradigm shift.

3– I have run out of people to be angry at. I used to be disappointed when we lost business to a competitor or when partners told me about how much better solution X was than us. Now I just kind of feel sorry for them all. I think a major factor here is just how successful we are and how much money we are making – individual features and lost deals are so small in context of how big everything has become. I used to talk to folks that just didn’t get it or never acted on something that would be great for them and their clients – now I just feel bad for them. I feel even worse for my competitors – from seeing just how hard they have to work and travel and how many stones they have to turn to find that next person… to the ones working for my large nameless competitors that seem to have figured out they want to kill each other on price but all they seem to have managed to do is completely dishearten their employees. I no longer work on the guts of the solution so I don’t take it personally; I no longer face competition that isn’t a step or two behind us and that is making it difficult to be mad at someone and work with incredible passion that comes from competition. I’m only focused on making everything I’m making better every day – and that generates a lot less blog therapy.

All in all, I am feeling pretty good and extremely fortunate and thankful for what I’m doing, where I’m at and all the awesome people and partners we have in this business. I don’t really feel like I need to put up Vladville scarecrows up and make scared partners talk to Andy Goodman first 🙂

Now.. ConnectWise

I’ll be there next month for HTG and for ConnectWise when the big show kicks off at the beginning of November. ExchangeDefender will be there officially as a sponsor and we’ll have a booth and a golf hole and all that usual stuff. Be nice and don’t ask about Shockey Monkey, my team will have a lot of stuff to talk to you about when it comes to our new ConnectWise integration. As a matter of fact (and respect) we won’t even discuss all the changes with Shockey Monkey until the ConnectWise IT Nation is over. I know you’re curious but if you can’t find enough stuff to be excited about at the IT Nation there is something wrong with you.

I probably will not be at the event in a very official role.

Last year I wasn’t scheduled to be at ConnectWise at all – my second kid was about to be born and I didn’t even bother asking for a show pass. But whenever I could sneak out I would go and spend a few hours at the bar talking to partners about what we are doing. It was the absolute best thing I ever did.

I showed up at the event and sat at the bar. I sent out an email to our partners and asked them to send me appointment requests.

Then as they sat down I handed them a cheap xerox copy of the features we’re thinking about working on and asked them to rank it in the order of priority. It had everything from stuff we had nearly finished to the sci-fi features we didn’t even have on the drawing board. I sat there, chatted with my partners, got a sense of what we should focus on and for the most part just chatted about business in general and where we’re collectively going.

Now don’t take the “sci-fi” to mean things that we had no intention of developing. Some (honestly – most) of my more ambitious plans are really just good and well intentioned ideas – but without pitching it to people and getting the feedback and ideas and help I don’t really know how to go from point A to B to C and so on. We figure it out collectively.

I’d like to say just one thing – A year after that initial survey, all but one feature that was on the list has been finished and by IT nation, 100% of that feature list should be done.

This is why I always talk about the importance of our partners to our business. I could take that list and give it to the people that work on these products and services and tell them – Hey, I know you’d rather get A or B or C done. But our partners need K sooner, shift gears and work on that – and as much as everyone that works for me likes to argue with me and play me out to be an idiot with a thick accent, they take your opinions and demands a lot more seriously. It was evidence of what we needed to do – and I look forward to doing that again this year!

So there you go folks. Life is good. We delivered. You made us extremely successful. I don’t even feel compelled to link to the partner application or pimp anything in any way – just thank you from the bottom of my heart and my money bin, look forward to all the awesome stuff that’s coming.

P.S. I’ll be in Scottsdale, Arizona this week for the nAble conference. If you’d like to meet or have a drink or see any of the cool stuff that we’ll show off next month – drop me an email.

Allow me to introduce you to Arnie

Posted: 8:43 pm
October 3, 2011
Shockey Monkey
4 Comments

As I have mentioned before, Shockey Monkey Pro is going away, as is Shockey Monkey Free and Fro. With Shockey Monkey just over a year old, we’re stepping up our game – as a matter of fact today we got our GFI Max integration figured out. But more about that later, allow me to introduce you to Arnie:

big_client_2

Arnie is a Windows desktop application (“fat client”) for Shockey Monkey.

You can download the beta here.

What? It’s a fat client giving you fast access to your tickets, contacts and companies.

Why? We got a lot of users that were used to and wanted a fast desktop application where they could open a ton of tickets and work without the distractions of a web browser.

How much? Free.

Now, this is not a beast of an application that is going to take a lot of horsepower or replace the ShockeyMonkey web portal – and that’s the point. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s local and it’s meant for the folks that need to close tickets down fast. (You doomed, doomed sons of bitches. Quit now while you’re ahead and go to ITT or DeVry and learn how to do something…anything but tickets.)

Download it. Use it. Remember it’s broken beta so if you find something that’s not working please log the bug at https://support.ownwebnow.com under Development > Bugs.

P.S. That’s not really the name; It’s just us paying homage to the pioneer of the SMB PSA’s who helped me figure out the strategy behind the next Shockey Monkey.

Don’t buy the Monkey

Posted: 2:26 am
September 28, 2011
Shockey Monkey
12 Comments

Greetings from France! Things have been crazy at work over the past two months and to be honest, I’m just not one of those people that can unplug. IT is very much who I am and it’s far more than a job or a career for me – it’s just the way of life. So since I can’t unplug the next best thing is to travel to a place where I can’t plug in a laptop.

IMG_2922

Over the past few months we have been really hard at work on Shockey Monkey, coding and bug fixing, wheeling and dealing. And now that work has been completed I have only one recommendation:

I wouldn’t buy the Pro. Just sign up for the free one. But that’s just me.

A year ago we shocked the MSP world by giving away Shockey Monkey – an MSP service management platform – for free. For some of the more advanced and more vain features we offered a commercial platform as well (Pro) to folks that wanted to help us fund the development and get support along the way. It has gone far, far, far, far, far better than I ever thought it would.

The problem with all great things is that they all come to an end and most of the time it’s due to the arrogance of the people that confuse success with invincibility. Europe is littered with empires that conquered the continent, just to end up confined to a tiny fraction of itself when they didn’t recognize the change or became too greedy. Even the mighty empire that built the massive victory arc behind me in the picture once covered nearly all of Europe – before deciding it would be a good idea to attack Russia. In Russia. In the winter.

But in terms of my own empire, Shockey Monkey has been more successful and became bigger than I ever thought it would. We’ve been busting our butt to bring the new one out and as we’ve been working with a ton of new partners one question that always came up was: “So when are you going to jack up the price and eliminate the Free/Fro versions? It would instantly put you on the same level with your competitors and be a no-brainer.”

The answer to that comes in October – but I have to stress that the following is my opinion, my opinion only and does not represent the views of the employees, shareholders or anyone even remotely connected to my empire – I wouldn’t buy the Pro version of Shockey Monkey.

Stay tuned. Smile

Investments

Posted: 4:48 am
September 19, 2011
Boss, SMB, Work Ethic
6 Comments

Over the years my company has managed to keep it’s most gifted, albeit at times difficult, talent while most of the bad hires fell off the bus rather easily without too much pushing. I firmly believe that it’s employees that choose their path, not their bosses – though bosses are easy to blame for it.

Shaquille-ONeal-Dunk

Which brings me to the topic of investments that you’re never going to read on a self-help career site. Also something your boss is unlikely to ever say to you because.. well.. if you need to hear the following from your boss it’s probably time to move your career elsewhere.

The Beginning

In the beginning you go through the typical hiring process. If the employer chooses to hire you and you choose to take the job you agree on a set rate and benefits and start what is a mutually beneficial relationship together.

Employee is thrilled for the first few days because they have a new job, new opportunity, new money.

Employer is happy as well. However, this is the investment stage for the employer: Unless you’re at McDonalds, you are not worth the salary yet. You need to be trained, you need to be oriented, you need to learn how to do your job.

The Honeymoon

Once the employee has learned how to do their job their supervisors are happy because their workload can be spread over more people now.

Employees tend to be happy as well because they have the confidence that this will work and they can build their career here.

Then it all kind of goes to shit. Or you get a remarkable employee.

The Standoff Ladder

Over time the employee will start to feel like the salary they initially agreed to isn’t enough to make the ends meet. Something that was amazing at the beginning is suddenly unfair. The job is more difficult than it seems, the boss is a much bigger ass than he was before, the hours are longer and there are other people who make more money than you do even though without you the whole company will collapse.

This is true if your name is Shaquile O’Neal and it’s the late 90’s or early 2000’s. If that’s not your name and the calendar says otherwise, you’re out of luck. Time to start climbing the ladder.

Here is what you need to know as an employee: You are not as valuable or as irreplaceable as you think you are. In the eyes of the employer your replacement tradeoff isn’t in the job tasks (that someone else can be trained to do) but in the likelyhood that they can easilly replace you with someone that is willing to work just as hard as you do. And if you barely string together 40 hours a week in an economy with more than 10% unemployment things just are not in your favor.

This is where the standoff begins.

The employee is unwilling to do any more work than 40 hours a week.

The employer is not willing to promote or train the employee because it makes no sense to invest in something that will not produce more than has been put into it. When you consider the overhead of perks/benefits, the initial underutilization of the employee and the typical shrinkage of work appreciation (longer lunches, late to work early to leave, spending time dealing with personal items) the employer has no incentive to further invest in the employee.

The Balance

This is where you as an employee get to choose which way you are going.

For most (and in my experience, just about all) employees there is really little perceived incentive to do anything beyond what they are paid for. This is the entrepreneur trap that bewilders business owners who are on the eternal quest to find someone as stupid as they are and is willing to believe in the dream of the possibilities instead of the reality of the present. Hard working business owners dream of finding people that are just like them but the problem is that those people own companies of their own. The stalemate is that employee-employer relationship always goes between the honeymoon-standoff stages as employees progress through their careers.

Employees want more money.

Employers want employees to do more work.

When everyone has a job and economy is doing really well, employees have the advantage. Otherwise, employees have a choice: work hard and get promoted or just work and hopefully not get fired.

Almost all the employees out there live in this balance where their role is constantly threatened by the economy, marketplace or office politics. They aren’t thrilled with their job or their pay but it beats unemployment. Employers aren’t thrilled with their employee utilization or performance but it beats training new people. Hence the service you get at the DMV and virtually every other branch of government.

The Invested (crazy)

There is a very minor chunk of the employment base that is willing to work harder than they should but not stupid enough to undertake the task of running their own business and living in poverty while the new business takes off. Yes, indeed, there is a group of people who are stupid enough to put in long hours but not quite stupid enough to do it for $5/hour. Every employer wants these.

Unfortunately, due to their insanity, these are typically not the most pleasant folks to work with but there are no shortcuts in life.

Your star employees put in long hours and actually invest in themselves. Yes, these folks go home and don’t stop working. They invest in themselves and don’t wait for you to push them in the direction, they map it on their own. They don’t sit around and bitch about how nobody is training them – they go out and learn on their own. They see the problems and work on the solutions without being asked to do so. They see an opportunity in solving the problem instead of treating problems they haven’t caused like they aren’t theirs.

They are damn near impossible to manage because they have their own agenda but if we are to be honest, the whole concept of management is the impossible task of getting a full time employee to do close to 40 hours worth of actual work. Here is a quick summary

Ideal Employee

– You consistently work over 50 hours a week.
– You do projects that benefit the company without being asked to.
– You aren’t constantly asking for the 1:1 compensation for your time.
– You don’t bitch and complain about work. (you actually like it)
– You aren’t destructive (trying to get other employees, projects fired)
– You aren’t difficult to work with

Now, if you’ve read that and thought it was unfair you’re right! Sadly, you’ll never make more than teens per hour because business isn’t a fair game. Only the hungriest and most competitive folks win.

There is no shame in not being an ideal employee. Almost none are. But those that are make a significantly higher amount of money than the ones that work the bare minimum. Unless you work in the government, I can’t understand why you wouldn’t want to work 20-30% harder for a 50% higher salary but that’s why I’m not an employee.

Advice

If you’re an employer and have star employees, overcompensate them. Stop trying to find someone to replace you because you will not find someone that is exactly like you yet dumb enough to make less than you and doesn’t have your personality (which would make you want to kill them)

If you’re an employee, understand that it is not the employers role to turn you into an ideal employee. In most places it’s actively discouraged: imagine ordering a Big Mac and getting two cheeseburgers stacked between a Fish Filet (sorry, it’s 4:30am and I’m hungry). Don’t pay attention to politicians that are trying to appeal to the masses of idiots – “We need to modernize and train our workforce for the new jobs” – no, we won’t. We’ll just outsource that job to someone that can do it. Welcome to the new economy in which you only have a job if you know how to do it and unless you are willing to earn the next one you likely won’t get it.

This takes most people a long time to figure out but you really can’t push people – they are either wired to overdeliver or they just do the bare minimum. All the management books I’ve ever read embrace this idea of incentives that are basically the carrot for the stupid sales people pulling a truck of manure – all you are doing is trying to shape the 1:1 compensation model that is constantly unfair to one party. I outright refuse to do it. You can’t incentivize selflessness. Most small business owners refuse to do it too because of the mindset:

“If you want something, prove it to me.” Otherwise there is a whole office worth of people that are in the exact same position and millions of people that would love to have your job.

You cannot incentivize people to be selfless and do more than their job asks of them. But you can over-compensate them when they demonstrate that trait.

Over time you will get to the nirvana of a crappy situation that is unfair to both the employer and the employee: The employee will be getting paid more than they could make anywhere else and the employer will be paying the employee more than they are worth but won’t fire them because the replacement cost would be high. So the employee is unhappy about some aspects of the job and the employer is unhappy about the cost – but everyone is making money and at the end of the day that’s why we all go to work.

Remember: work is not about fairness, it’s about performance and results. If you can’t deal with that, I hope you can dunk! And even that’s not too bright because the NBA is in a contract dispute (the ladder stage) – so really you only have one option.

Vlad’n’the’Cloud

Posted: 11:19 pm
September 9, 2011
Uncategorized
1 Comment

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

So yes, I’m alive. I’ve been buried in financials and project planning as we both have some huge announcements this fall as well as stuff that will come down early next year. But more on that later, I’m really writing the post to address the many comments I’ve gotten over the past few days that I can only judge from scrolling through the subject lines.

Yeah, how about that?

Many of you are interested in the commentary that was generated from the last two posts. What amazes me is the magnitude of people that are willing to ask in private but don’t want to comment in public or even on Facebook or Twitter.

I’ve blogged about this a billion times and am not about to make it a billion and one. What your religious belief towards the change and progress of technology happens to be is irrelevant. Over the course of building a business you make investments and hope that new ventures mature faster than the currently mature business lines die off.

Office 365

I don’t really have the time to celebrate Office 365 going down. Everything goes down.

What I find quite surprising is that there are folks out there celebrating this yet another outage as the reason their obsolete business model stands a chance. It doesn’t. You see, every time a client chooses cloud they choose not to buy a server from you which eliminates your highest margin product and your highest project generator.

The adoption of new, more affordable technology will not stop just because it sucks.

I know it defies common sense but the technology evolution to the cloud will not be stopped because of a few outages. I look at some of these hypocritical arguments all the time and about the only thing I can explain them away with is that the folks arguing either have no experience or a very short memory span. It was not that long ago that we dealt with tiny hard drives, BSODs, failing backup jobs, failing antivirus updates that brought the network to a crawl, broken service packs that interrupted services, migration paths so broken they required books worth of hacks to get done and Windows services getting pwned left and right with 0 day exploits.

Your clients made it through all that and they paid a heck of a lot more than a few bucks per user per month.

It’s OK to admit you don’t know how to make money with the cloud or that it’s going to require scale and a different level of marketing and promotion. But if it was easy everyone would be doing it and that’s why we have OnForce and Geek Squad.

Don’t let cynicism and complacency hold you back from taking advantage of the biggest opportunity you have to grow your client base. The days of a few clients making a good paycheck are over, time to get serious and spread your wings.

But what the heck, maybe Apple, Microsoft, HP, Dell and Google are all wrong and the cloud thing will fail. Right now – statistically – that is not what’s happening. Within ExchangeDefender, the cloud is whipping on-premise by a margin of 14-1.

Look at the opportunity this way – if you really like shifting boxes, maybe the cloud offering will introduce you to folks that will need a hardware refresh.

September, Finally.

Posted: 6:14 am
September 2, 2011
Boss, ExchangeDefender
5 Comments

Boy am I happy to see September! Oh, and check this out: www.exchangedefender.com

There are still a few bits and pieces along with the documentation / training collateral coming together slowly. But it’s a step in a new direction leaving the platform of a software company catering to IT providers to one trying to help consumers and business decision makers get their stuff together. (in case you’ve misread that let me make it clear: NO, we are not going direct or competing with our partners).

Epiphany

The cloudpocalypse of August 2011 has been godsent. It, along with the soul crushing conversations that I’ve had with many of you and some of your clients, gave me the resolve to finally push in this direction. Hiding behind the partners is just not working anymore.

First: You can’t blindly point at someone else for the problem because that makes you look incompetent. As I recently told my staff, “I am not paying you to tell me who broke it, I’m paying you to tell me what’s being done to fix it”.

Second: When we talk to your clients in the same manner we talk to you, it doesn’t come off right. There is a different language shared between IT professionals and ordinary humans and even this description is borderline insulting.

So the obvious question becomes – why the hell are you talking to end users anyhow? The answer is equally blunt – because you aren’t doing your job.

That is something I wanted to say to everyone I talked to in August but I couldn’t. I dropped the ball. I know. I’m sorry. But when I took the time to talk to people below the CEO level and to the end users few things became apparent:

  • Your staff is either unaware, uninterested or uninformed about the solution, they only know the bits and pieces they were told or stumbled upon accidentally.
  • End users are even more confused about what you do, what they are paying for and what their alternatives are when things go down. Not one of the users I spoke to knew about LiveArchive. Not. A. Single. One.
  • There is no incentive for staff learning or end user training, roles are seen more as a fireman than a solution provider (hint: put the effort or stay at the same pay level forever; do your job only and you might not be replaced by someone else).
  • End users #1 complaint: IT provider communication.

Now it’s going to take some time to address all of the above but I have to admit that I’m a large part of this problem as well. I deal with some really, really smart people that have their stuff together. So when I get feedback (“Vlad you suck.”) I both take it personally and am very passionate about our product and the approach. My job has been to make sure things are perfect here without bothering with what you do.

Well, over the past month I’ve been confronted with the fact that your users want and need more than that from the solution they rely to. We’re here for our partners, always will be.

But.. we’re going to spend a lot of money on the user facing stuff going forward too. There are two things you can do. 1) Ignore it completely and take a chance that they fire you. 2) Figure out a way to offer some of this stuff and risk the client knowing that a 2 person IT shop isn’t managing thousands of SPAM filtering and Exchange servers out there.

Looking forward to showing off what we’ve been building over the past 2 weeks over the course of the next month or so. I hope you like it. I know you need it. Your clients are asking for it. Are you going to give it to them?