Are you the best?

Posted: 9:59 pm
January 6, 2011
GTD, IT Business, IT Culture
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Continued as a part of the New Year review blog posts. Out with the old, in with the new? Well, a year is a loooong time and there is a lot of old stuff that needs to be cleared off the schedule. If you run a small business, odds are you have people take on roles as the organization grows and not all the roles and all activities are in the best interest of the company. Even worse, some could be taking on too many roles while others are just hiding from the corporate axe. Finally, some could be doing a ton of mundane tasks with no value and can feel unappreciated for all their hard work while not understanding that it doesn’t matter.

I’m watching the Tim Tebow special on ESPN. Tim Tebow was a Florida quarterback, Heisman Trophy winner, 2x national champion, etc. The special follows him through the months leading up to the NFL draft and he is talking about his training session: Did I work the hardest? Did I stay the longest? A successful day is a day in which I become better than I was yesterday.

Businesses operate the same way. We’re only as good as we are this day / quarter / year. So this week we are running a special exercise that I hope brings more discipline into what we’re doing and how.

This week I asked all of my staff to send me a list of things they do. Office Space style: What it is you would say you do around here?

There are several reasons for this: I want to know what you’re wasting you’re the time on. I want to know what you’re doing. What is your primary responsibility? What is your secondary responsibility? What are some areas that you’re working on that I could develop into a full time role? What are some of the areas that I should remove from your schedule? Are you really spending that much time doing that?

 

Whose decision is it anyway?

What is everyone working on? If you’ve paid attention to e-myth, you wouldn’t need this exercise. Unfortunately, striking a balance between being an overbearing micromanager and inspiring leader that doesn’t make any decisions is very difficult.

If you have a good team around you, chances are that they have picked up some of the slack that you were not aware of. Or developed processes and means for dealing with the problems they encounter working with clients day-to-day.

In government that’s known as Form 114-A. In small business that’s called “I like working with Bob, can you transfer me to him?”

So here is where it gets ugly: Some employees will, from the most positive angle possible, waste a ton of your time and money. They don’t know that they are doing anything wrong – from their standpoint they are helping you. You don’t know any better either – from your standpoint they are robbing you blind. Reconciling the fact that someone is wasting their salary on mundane tasks goes across as well as “Ma’am, your baby is ugly.”

I’m particularly terrible about this. As a matter of fact, around the Orlando office I’m known as The Dreamcrusher. From the standpoint of my own ignorance, I always offered a honest opinion when I saw something heading for a sure failure. Most people tend to assume that the work just materialized out of nowhere and that the company with all it’s problems and solutions just appeared out of nowhere. No, motherfucker – I’m the big bang. I know where I’ve cut the corners, I know where I just got things to work and I’ve tried to fix certain things over and over again to the point that I’ve been where most people are when they propose solutions to problems that have existed for a while. Not all of our problems are caused by negligence you know ; )

So what are we doing different this year? Well, personal comment first:

I’m big on roles. Everyone has a primary role – whatever it is they are hired to do. Then there is their secondary support role – something that they are capable of doing to help the person that’s an expert / in charge of doing.

The greatest thing you can do in your primary role is automate it and move yourself on to the next problem. Some employees cannot grasp this concept. They feel like fixing problems will remove the reason for their employment. At McDonalds, yes. An automated drink dispenser has sent many back to the vocational school. In a professional organization – no. We value problem solvers. If you’ve figured out how to remove personnel (ie: human incompetence factor) from an equation you’re both worth more and likely capable of solving bigger problems.

Here is what I asked for:

  1. List of things you’re responsible for
  2. List of things you work on
  3. Your daily schedule

Let’s break it down:

1. List of things you’re responsible for – the only opinion that matters is mine. I want to know what my employees feel is their primary cause for employment. This is critical because if they are focusing on areas that I do not value they are not moving towards the goals that I have set for them. They could be the best damn fish slicer in the world but if their job is tweaking SpamAssassin rulesets, we both need to refocus.

2. List of things you work on – the only opinion that matters is mine. I want to know what you’re doing with the 8 hours you spend at work. Browse the web? Update Facebook? Build beta environments? Reboot servers? What? What? This is critical – most people in professional services firms do not know everything their employees do. Trick is, your employees know what you need to be doing better than you do – from an operational sense at least. What they do not know is how this fits into the solution you are trying to build. These two need to be on the same page – and it’s the sole purpose of this exercise.

3. Your daily schedule. This one is split down the middle: Your sales people shouldn’t be making assigned client calls in the morning – nobody is going to pick up the phone on the west coast at 9:30 AM EST. If they do, you’re in trouble! the name of the game here is optimization: are the tasks that fill up your 8 hour day used in the best possible way?

Optimization

Find out where your employees are wasting time – help them understand what they are doing wrong and fix it.

Find out where your employees have uncovered potential in operations – and invest in it.

Find out if your employees are making the best of their workday – and rearrange it until it’s perfect.

Find out if your employees are doing multiple jobs – document it and make them a manager.

Find out if your employees are halfassing multiple jobs – cut their responsibilities and refocus them.

Find out if your employees are slacking on their sole job – and fire them.

Realize you’re working with human beings. Most people really do try their best. But their best needs to be aligned with your best interests and their expertise. Some people are organized. Some people are driven. Some people are just full of crap. There is a role for everyone. But if you don’t ask, and don’t make it a point to guide them to what you want them to be doing, then it’s your fault you’re underutilizing or beating down your team.

Most people want to be good at their jobs. Most people want to do what’s best for the client. Unfortunately, what is the best for the client may not be what’s in the best interest of the organization. What wins? Well, depends on whether you like receiving your paycheck or not. That’s not to say that you’re fired if you don’t do it my way – but if I’m unable to convince you that you need to follow my plan (that a lot of other people are already aboard on) then you might not be a fit going forward. There is a middle ground between completely heartless and completely compassionate. But it has to be driven by reason and the agenda.

Your job as the boss is to make sure your team is the best they can be. If they aren’t, that’s your fault. Employees job is to get things done in a way that moves the organization forward. If they don’t, they aren’t employees anymore.

But if everyone is not on the same page, you’ve got a catastrophe on your hands. People feel overworked, underappreciated, underpaid, unloved and lose their sense of being a critical part of the team. Listen, if you weren’t valuable, you wouldn’t be employed. If you are employed, you need to kick ass in the direction that the guy with the corner office points to.

Business is a team effort. Get to know it.

What does this have to do with anything?

Posted: 2:07 am
January 5, 2011
GTD, IT Business
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Can you tell the difference between a detail and the big picture?

It depends on perspective.

I’ve gotten a lot of email over the past few days thanking me about writing the GTD stuff that’s helped transform my own performance over the years. But, I’ve also gotten the same amount of skeptical messages challenging me on everything from why I’m even involved in the business at this stage to what the role of the CEO in the organization happens to be.

Some of you may be reading the Harvard Review case studies a little too closely to get what they are really about:

CEO’s aren’t external facing creatures that don’t get involved in the operations at any cost. Successful CEO’s understand their industry and how the unique advantages their companies/services/products help them go from where they are now to where they want to be today.

To put it more bluntly..

The same guys that are stuck in this mindset that because they are the CEO / Owner / President of an IT solution provider are the same guys that are running into a wall on moving managed services.

That war is kind of over folks.

I often have this conversation internally as well. We don’t need to perfect the technology we should have released a year ago – we just need to get stuff up there and let the people catch up to us. Everyone wants to be a perfectionist, but if your entire business model is wrapped around the ability to manage a workstation or a PC.. Well, don’t listen to me.

Listen to CES: Expecting to launch over 80 different tablets.

Quick, how much do you make providing managed services against a tablet?

We used to have a world in which employees had a workstation and a server account. The more important ones had a laptop maybe. But then they got a mobile phone. Then a netbook. Now a tablet.

The answer is, you don’t get paid for providing managed services on a tablet. You provide managed services on a per-user basis which is easier to price than a complex breakdown of all the devices and services the people use.

Bringing it all together

The details of how you manage yourself let you see the big picture of what’s going on around you and give you a clear path to going where you need to be.

Much like athletes train for strength, speed, vision, coordination, balance – successful professionals train for accountability, meeting deadlines, not letting criticism get to them, ability to handle negative feedback, ability to continue working despite setbacks and so on.

The point, if I may be so obvious about it, of writing down your goals, milestones and processes is to keep on motivating yourself.

There are no cheerleaders in business. The sentiment behind those $20 Office Depot employee of the month plaques is so thin that it doesn’t even make people at McDonalds try to get your order done correctly.

If you can’t push yourself, nobody will. But everyone will line up to beat you down.

So the point, ladies and gentlemen, is that dealing with the details helps you understand the big picture and the outline of steps along your journey to the end result you desire is a set of motivational incentives to keep you working.

Bad day? Focus on the negatives and let it ruin your day. Or focus on where you need to be and keep on fighting.

That… is the point.

Maintenance (Continued)

Posted: 1:05 am
January 4, 2011
GTD, IT Business
3 Comments

Yesterday I wrote a blog post about Start of Year Maintenance cycle most successful businesses people go through. Fact is, unless you’re remarkably organized and suffer absolutely 0 external interference, you’ve got to dedicate some time to straightening things out.

Even if it works. Don’t lie, you know it doesn’t.

Fact is, over time we do find little kinks in our process or in our execution, despite of all the planning.

Success demands focus and attention has to be paid to even the smallest details. When you do that, you uncover tons and tons of efficiencies you could be enjoying.

Something as simple as cleaning goes a huge way towards organizing.

Typically I would never consider spending half the day just cleaning my office. But if you were dumpster diving today, you could have walked away with 4 Microsoft MVP awards.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the awards by any means, but over the years it’s made less and less sense to keep around my 2005 Microsoft Exchange MVP plaque. I’m not sure if the plaque didn’t mean much in 2006, nor if it rapidly depreciated between 2010 and 2011, but today it was just a day to get rid of it. I haven’t touched Microsoft SBS 2003 – but it took till Jan 3, 2011 to throw out half a dozen books about it. I even found books that I never even cracked – all in trash.

These are some of the things I worked very hard to earn. Now imagine all the other stuff that just came as a result of being in business – that somehow fell on my desk, then into my to-do pile, then into my filing cabinet and eventually in the archived items that should have been shredded in the long, long ago.

Important or Irrelevant

How do you decide if something is important or irrelevant? I have no idea, if you do – let me know.

I can tell the difference between actionable and inactionable: Will I do something with this junk or not?

Try it – now that you know if you’re going to do something with the item: Have I held on to it for over a year?

It’s hard to believe that you’ve had the best of intentions on working on something – something so important that it consumed office space – yet got untouched for 365 days.

We tend to hold on to stuff that we like even though we don’t actually do anything with it year in and year out. When you’re forced to look at it – you dig it – so it never gets thrown out. But if you’re not going to do anything with it, you shouldn’t keep it.

I don’t remember where I read this, but one of the sites had a story about how to clear out your wardrobe. Hang all the clothes in your closet with the hander facing towards the outside of your closet at the beginning of the year. As you wear/clean and rack your clothes back, face them towards the back of the rack. At the end of the year, look at all the stuff still facing to the outside (that you didn’t wear once) and throw it out.

We all have best of intentions – but only results matter.

The Point

Don’t rush yourself through this.

The more successful you get, the more “little things” creep up to cause big problems.

When I posted last week about people not dealing with external issues in January, many of you wrote in to say that was not going to be the case. One of my buddies even IM’d me earlier this morning to taunt me “Hitting the phones hard today!!! gonna prove you wrong!” and by 4PM he sent the following: “Not a single phone call today. Not one” – this is not a bad thing! This is a blessing.

Look at everything in your business that you don’t like and you’ll find a ton of them started with you. So look at what you’re doing and how you’re doing it and ask yourself one question:

How can I make this better?

Then write the list, put checkmarks next to it and get it done!

The more you get in a grove of making lists, reviewing your progress and improving your process – that much better you will be every year.

New Year Maintenance

Posted: 8:28 pm
January 2, 2011
GTD, IT Business
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If you’ve got any work ethic, it shouldn’t matter what day/date it is, you should be ready to kick ass any day of the week. But even if the calendar doesn’t matter to you, it does to the government, state and most people that operate on the calendar based system. Here are a few tips to get you started.

1. Move all your 2010 mail into it’s own folder.

Your inbox should only have 2011 / current stuff. But wait! Once your mail is moved to the 2010 folder, sort it by attachment size and nuke anything that you don’t think you’ll ever need to refer to again that has already been archived, backed up twice and otherwise put away.

Personally, I don’t allow any of my employees to create Vlad mail or move my mail to a “Vlad” folder. Maybe it’s indulgent, but as long as I’m signing your paycheck I expect you to give my email a priority. I don’t forward fart jokes or 419 scams, if I’m sending you an email I have a reason for it.. For one, because I don’t ever want to hear “Oh, I didn’t see that email…” and because we use Outlook and it’s easier to setup Search Folders than Outlook rules. Get in a habit of routing your receipts, automated mail, lists and other non-actionable mail to a folder automatically. Inbox is for the correspondence, and with 2010 over, it’s time to start fresh.

2. Review 2010.

Once 2010 is in a folder by itself, move on to your analog stuff: notes, drawings, whiteboards, notebooks, postits, filing cabinet, pile of papers in the to-do bins, so on and so forth.

What you do with it is very subjective. Some people are really good at catching up. I’m not. I recently threw out boxes of “Cool Marketing” that I thought we should be doing at OWN. Some of it had included launch collateral for Office 2003. Yeah..

Personally, if I think it’s important I’ll give it to someone else. If it’s really important, I’ll find a way to get it done in the bigger picture.

3. Set your 2011 agenda.

Get your important dates on the board.

Annual health checkups. Doctor. Dentist. You know you have to do it so put it on the board. Vacations – ditto. Conferences – same.

Once you have a better idea of when you’ll be in the office and when you’ll be out of the office, you can arrange the rest of your schedule.

4. Get the obligatory crap done first.

You know you have 15 days to pay unemployment taxes, 1 month to send out all 1099’s and W2s and less than 3 months to send your personal taxes. I am not an accountant so don’t take these dates to heart: instead focusing on what is most fun or easiest, focus on what’s required.

It’s fun to procrastinate. Until the time that something is due. Then you’ll have to do the task, the dozen tasks that your boss gave you and another dozen fires that you’re putting out. If you know you’ve got obligations, take care of them now! They will not get easier the closer you get to the deadline.

This is possibly the most important point because missing it means huge fines. Taking care of things now also gives you extra time to have things reviewed, audited, obtain additional information that you thought you had but don’t, getting information from incompetent people, digging for information in archives, etc.

5. Focus on the process.

I always get asked why working the last week of the year is so important. Isn’t that when everyone slows down? No, that’s when the losers quit. Let me put it to you this way – I have a girl that takes the last two weeks of the year off every year to go away and hang out with her family. Guess how much work she drops while she is out? Zip. Zero. Nada. Deals are being done all the way up to New Years Eve and they are always accounted for.

So if you work to exhaustion through the holidays – what do you do now? Well, there is a common misconception that you use the holidays to clean up, slow things down, rearrange, etc. Personal life, yes. In business, it works a little bit differently. Sales people will not be calling you this week – they have a new quota and they are likely in training and meetings. Good luck getting managements attention for anything – they are dealing with the books, audits, direction, reviews and the last quarter/year.

This is common knowledge. Nobody is calling you because nobody expects important people to have the time to pick up the phone. The only folks calling right now are the ones that made some lame New Years resolution and are looking for a job.

Get to work.

Mute your phone.

Do 1-4.

Stop reading this blog.

No, seriously.

Once 1-4 are done, get to designing your process. This is not a 5 minute drill or throwing a dart at the wall. This takes days/weeks to put together. For example: Which emails will you reply to and which ones will you forward. How do you set expectations of when you’re available and when you’re not. How can your clients contact you (407-536-VLAD)? Remember that 2010 review you did – did you write the same emails over and over – if so make them into canned responses or blog posts or KB articles. When will you be meeting with your staff? With your boss? With your clients? When are you available for phone calls? When will you be taking lunch breaks?

From basics to advanced, this is planning time. Don’t jump into things head first or try to make business goals without establishing expectations, review intervals, goals and objectives (if you don’t, how do you know if you’re on the right track or not?). If the goal is to make $100,000 off Service B then at what point in the year should you have made $20,000? When do you quit?

Process is the biggest part of the game because your ability to wing it diminishes in effectiveness the bigger or busier you get.

6. Save this blog post.

I’ll leave it to my buddy Karl Palachuk to write and sell you a huge checklist you can tape to your wall. I don’t have the time or the insight to give you the 300 steps that you need to take right now. Actually, if he writes it I’d buy it. But I will offer you this for free: Save this blog post and come back to it every month. Why? Even with the best of intentions, you’ll likely only act on one of the ideas you get here. We’re impulsive beasts – if you found this valuable print it out. It’s OK, pick a really small font and go hug a tree. Write down the notes or ideas that you got about what you should be doing this year. Then come back to it in a month and see what remains unchecked. Again and again, over and over.

Whether you’ve got a job or own a business, your success is ultimately dependent on how you manage yourself and your time.

Whether you’ve got someone kicking your ass or you need to kick your own ass, it’s up to you to become a success. Work ethic, planning, evaluating, execution, review and process are the way you move forward regardless of external issues.

It’s January. You’ve got the benefit of a bit of a breather before things pick up – use it to step your game up. I certainly hope this helps! Happy New Year!

Ironman Comeback 1.1.11

Posted: 2:11 am
January 1, 2011
ExchangeDefender, OwnWebNow, Vladville
Comments Off on Ironman Comeback 1.1.11

As some of you may know, I have been out of day-to-day operations of OWN during the last two months welcoming a beautiful new baby boy, Sam Mazek, to our family.

Today, I officially come back full time (and then some).

Now here is the really cool part: We’ve already announced what our gameplan for 2011 is going to be. Messaging: easy, cheap, managed, any way you want it we got it.

We’re going to make a lot of people a lot of money.

My part? Starting today, I will be working the next 90 days straight.

No weekends off.

No events / shows / road trips / seminars.

I can’t even begin to explain how excited I am about this. As many of you may be able to relate, running a small business is rough. You’ve got one or two good products and you’re trying to groom the rest and get them to catch up. I’ve spent a lot of time on ExchangeDefender, a lot of time on Shockey Monkey and a ton of time organizationally building up the bits and pieces like training, perfecting the partner program, perfecting our process and execution. Now I can count lines of business on both hands and the most exciting part – in 2011 I get to hook them all up together and deliver them in one complete package.

I.. am.. pumped.

Write. This.. Down… (407) 536-VLAD. I expect you to call me. I am focusing 100% of my efforts on executing the plan we’ve announced and I’ve got an agenda to roll behind ExchangeDefender too. I’m calling it ExchangeDefender 500 but more on that in a bit.

Happy New Year! Now let’s get to work!

Surprises in 2010 (NSFW)

Posted: 8:50 pm
December 31, 2010
Vladville
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I have been encouraged by a lot of my friends not to write this post because at times my honesty plays a significant detriment to my message / agenda. So I sat on it for a little while. Here is the thing: after 13 years in business I know how to make money and how to build a business. I don’t know how to sleep through the night or talk to business partners if they have to second guess just how honest and up front I am about what’s going on. Frankly, I know a lot of fake people in the channel that havel double, even multiple personalities depending on who they are talking to.

So here is the truth, the whole truth and the complete frustration behind some of the topics that are often brought up to me.

Big Mouth

If you talk a lot, expect to be punched in the mouth.

This is just the nature of the beast. People often ask how much of it I get; I always hear about how certain people find me scary. My Inbox begs to differ. I am brought up every issue that is or isn’t my fault, near and far.

For example, in 2010 I’ve been faulted for marriages collapsing, losing houses, investments, entire businesses going under because of one issue or another that we were even remotely related to.

Are the conferences/sponsorships worth it?

Unequivocally, no. Absolutely no. Hell F no! If you are looking to launch a product or a service in the IT channel, conference sponsorship is probably the last thing you should do with your marketing money. No, absolutely no, questions about that.

However, conferences are about a lot more than closing sales. They are about getting realtime feedback, about modeling your marketing through the eyes of your clients, about establishing long term partnerships and about old fashioned face-to-face business. It’s an investment, and when you invest in something you cannot anticipate a return in realtime.

That said, in 2010 we’ve seen the highest repeat rate of any year. According to my marketing reports, 18% of the leads we got in 2010 at conferences were from new accounts.

Then there is a vendor tax. Even if you don’t anticipate to make your ROI in 12 months on a conference sponsorship, if you don’t attend certain events the channel starts looking elsewhere. Presence is important while some presence is mandatory. Microsoft WPC for example.

“So you’re going to kill Autotask and ConnectWise?”

There is this negative vibe in the channel that anything remotely similar to an established leader is immediately it’s killer. Even when you share hundreds or thousands or partners. This is not how business is done and this is not how partnerships work.

Let me put it to you in one simple fact: multiple Shockey Monkey competitors were presented with it’s feature sheet and potential over 9 months ahead of it’s delivery. Only one of them approached us about a purchase ($3 million) that was far below the market value. If this was such a hardcore competitive product and a threat or a killer you never would have seen it live.

Direction of what we’re doing also couldn’t be further away from the way from where our partners are going either. We’re not out to dominate the IT vertical.

Shockey Monkey

Man this pissed off a lot of people. I mean, livid. Despite years in development, it seems to have caught a lot of people by surprise. They didn’t read my blog or watch the videos or hear the pitch – but boy were they upset. It sounded a little like this:

“How dare you introduce another product when you already have all these bugs in the software I’m already paying you for?!?!?!”

It’s called capitalism. We saw a huge opportunity in the portal space and we saw nothing on the market capable of delivering it for free and still making money off it.

At the same time, our entire messaging and support platform needed to be based off of something in order to provide backend services to our huge MSP client base. We couldn’t have based our solution around the other providers in the space because none of them provide for the purchase handling, PCI compliance and other nasty stuff we get to deal with as a worldwide service provider.

And here is the best part – the part of handling tickets, companies and contacts is actually the easy part. Billing? Reporting? Integrations? That’s where the costs explode and that’s not something we needed to be really sophisticated about.

So let’s review: There was nothing on the market that was capable of supporting our business model. We built it. Then we gave it away for free. Now that it’s free and that all our partners can have it no questions asked and no $ required – ever – we’re able to execute our actual business plan: Delivering better support and more integrated services that serve the client end-to-end.

While to some of you this may appear like we’re looking to compete with other companies, we are simply executing our game plan. The one that becomes even more profitable with everything we’re doing.

So no, we didn’t take people off ExchangeDefender to build Shockey Monkey as a competitor for anything else. We built it to support our business model.

As for our competitors – they remain our partners and we’re continuing to write software for their platforms.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, invests millions in dollars just to pick a fight. So please, drop it. This is my final comment on it.

Did you just say you’re not going to sponsor conferences in 2011?

No, but we will be at far fewer dates than we did in 2010, that’s for sure. We already announced what we’re doing in 2011. Managed Messaging. ExchangeDefender Essentials. CloudBlock. ShockeyMonkey. ExchangeDefender Storage. We announced it, we presented it.

Now watch us execute it.

What I will do, however, is put the money we would have spent on the road into more staffing and training. As you’ve seen by LooksCloudy.com, we’re going to deliver a community powered resource to give you an edge. As you’ve seen through Shockey Monkey, we’re going to lower the cost of entry into the MSP space. As you’ve heard about ExchangeDefender Managed Messaging, we’re going to make you remarkably competitive with professional services firms. And as you’ve noticed about CloudBlock, we’re going to give you an edge on pricing.

You’re also going to see a lot of personnel changes: More support, more account reps, better documentation and more calls.

As I’ll announce tomorrow, I will be working with ExchangeDefender 500 directly in Q1.

We’ll be on the road next year. We just won’t be everywhere. The priority is on you, not on us.

Surprises about 2010?

Lot’s of people speculated about massive consolidation in 2010.

It didn’t happen.

Most of MSPs are still a bit too small and many are struggling, loaded with large long term contracts, commitments, leases or just plain and simple debt and overpaid staff. This seemed to be the trend of 2010 that very few were keen to discuss – the MSP business model has started to show the pricing pressure points and $50/workstation, $300/server is just not growing many MSPs fast while the cost of getting new business is growing.

What I’m really amazed at is how poorly Microsoft BPOS transition (read: Microsoft’s transition away from partners) has gone. Microsoft had to pretty much rename the product as they realized midway through the game that their partners were not behind them or that the clients didn’t want partners to begin with. Lot’s of “we wanted to decrease our costs, not move them elsewhere” came up and it’s going to be far worse in 2011. Listen, Microsoft decided they are a consumer company – and the business doesn’t want to pay a software company anymore – and a networking company, and a MSP company, and a hardware company and a telco company and _____ for 80% of what comes with an iPad for free.

The key word here is free. In 2010, it disrupted a lot of business models and will ultimately take down even more than just newspapers and overpriced geeks.

So we’re trying to transition to managed ser…

Sorry, you’ve missed the boat. By a few years. At this point all you’ll find is bargain hunters, painful migrations and people too set in their ways to accept a proposition that sees you growing over 10 employees.

Anything else?

Even though we’ve faced a ton of adversity as a channel in 2010 (and it will get worse, quickly, if you don’t adapt) the business remains positive and opportunities are out there. No, not for spyware removal or antivirus license sales. Or for building first networks, helping people pick the first server / right server / last server ever. There are many areas where the expertise and business management are compensated very well and we’ve seen many people grow in double or triple digits this year.

Finally….

Believe it or not, I’m a good guy.

There are few CEOs willing to write about what is going through their mind and doing so honestly at times is difficult. If you find my conclusions or opinions tasteless or unappealing, you don’t have to read this blog or do business with us.

I, however, wake up every single day trying to make OWN a better company for it’s partners. I don’t wake up grumpy, kick puppies on the way to work or bite heads off pigeons for lunch. I look at this company a year and three years down the road – and I try to make it go from here to there.

The big question isn’t really what motivates me because I’ve been fortunate enough to travel around the world and work with partners in all time zones that have broadband. You know why I go? I want to know what you’re doing. That’s what keeps me going. Because at the end of the day, we’re one of the few channel-only companies left, and we work for you.

I wish you a happy and prosperous new year and I thank you for reading Vladville.

The Best Investment of 2010

Posted: 12:14 pm
December 30, 2010
Gadgets, GTD
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I’m often asked by people that are in growth mode just what the best investments and tools for making it big are. I too have unsuccessfully hopped from one piece of software to hardware through the years always in the search of something magical. 

photo

Truth is, managing and growing a business is a complex combination of always being available, keeping track of every interaction and idea, keeping everyone else on track. Oh, and one more thing: paying attention to social conventions. Pull out a phone in a middle of a conversation or look at your laptop during a meeting and people will assume you are not paying attention. Older generations may even consider the move quite rude. It’s a rough terrain.

Here is what made my 2010 the most successful year, ever. Not to mention that I executed my entire 2010 and even half of my 2011 agenda in less than 10 months. How? Louis Vuitton Notebook & Apple iPhone 4

Luis Vuitton Notebook ($500 leather cover; $75 paper insert)

Not to say that this exact same task cannot be done by a $2 notebook, but keep in mind that the level of abuse this thing has taken is nothing short of immense. You know what your laptop looks like, and it has an aluminum or hard plastic shell. Imagine what would happen to a notebook. Mine looks brand new and thankfully, it was a present.

This is simply the most powerful tool I’ve had in 2010. I laid out my tasks at the beginning of every week and spread them out across the workweek. I could track progress quickly and never forget a thing.

Problem: This applies to almost all business owners. If you aren’t completely ADD to begin with, you soon will be. The nature of growing and managing a business is being pulled in 10,000 different directions at the same time. If you’re lucky to complete one thing before you get distracted by another, it’s a slow day.

So how did I do it? We make quarterly goals. Those are broken down on month-to-month progress checks. I further broke down what I needed to do on a weekly basis. Every week I would have a big task to complete and I would break it up into smaller parts. When I completed each task, I would check it. When something fell in my lap, I would add it to the list and just keep track of it.

I spent A LOT of time on the road and in meetings this year. This gave me an analog way of staying on top of things. It also gave me an opportunity to sketch out my ideas, draw things up and be creative away from the keyboard and the whiteboard.

From social standpoint, people don’t react as poorly to a notebook as they do to a phone or a laptop in a meeting. They don’t feel like you aren’t listening to them or not paying attention.

Apple iPhone ($300 up front, $1200/year)

I can’t really say enough good things about the iPhone. I used to have high hopes for the OneNote but I just found the paper a lot more flexible. Sharing? Snap a photo with iPhone and MMS/Email/Facebook/etc.

It seems a bit ridiculous but the phone has become a camera, a training tool, a marketing research tool (video), instant messenger even video phone calls.

I have spent most of 2010 on the road and I would not have been as productive without the iPhone. The key to this has been the battery life. The iPhone goes a day or more on full blast – video, email, text, IM, etc.

I do not say this lightly – the iPhone has been more important to me this year than any of my PCs, laptops or iPad’s.

Conclusion

The most important thing to getting things done is managing yourself and your time. This is difficult on it’s own, but it’s made far worse when everyone else is after your time too. Get some basic tools to help manage your life and your work.

The Retraction

Posted: 11:03 pm
December 28, 2010
ExchangeDefender
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There are few business decisions that I look back at and think.. man, this is dumb. But hey, if the market demand is there who am I not to take their money.

Introducing ExchangeDefender Essentials.

What is it, Vlad?

ExchangeDefender Essentials is the core of ExchangeDefender – security, SPAM filtering, Virus filtering, corporate disclaimers, outbound mail relay, malware protection, mail queuing / bagging, etc.

All the coolness of ExchangeDefender without all the other stuff you don’t need – for half the cost! Still under your brand, still supported and centrally managed. Now go get paid for it!

What is it REALLY, Vlad?

Well.. So a lot of people don’t know how to sell or how to read product feature sheets or.. yeah. So we get a lot of calls that start with “Well how come this product is more than this other product that doesn’t include half these features?”

I burn money pay someone in my company to answer questions like that all day long.

There really are two parts to this story: 1) Partners are not capable of effectively selling the product and explaining how the additional benefits are necessary and 2) Some of the technology is redundant with what is already available in the business.

We have gotten a lot of feedback about how #2 helps partners close bigger MSP deals because ExchangeDefender eliminates other services and makes the managed service plan get signed fast.

But we’ve also gotten a lot of feedback from partners who are being asked to compete against lower priced alternatives and provide a barebone solution.

Obviously, I think that CloudBlock is going to be the perfect fit for the price shoppers and those that don’t understand the MSP sales process. But, we need to be able to compete better.

With over 50% discount off ExchangeDefender, this makes ExchangeDefender cheaper than Postini and all it’s other competition out there. It also keeps it under your brand, gives you PSA integration that no other antispam/antivirus can match as well the ability to mark it up.

Few important caveats: new accounts only, no minimums, no contracts, no volume discounts, no community discounts and not available against any of our cloud services (we know better than to have something on the Internet without LiveArchive).

You asked for it – and despite my objections – you’ve got it!

Insignificant Dates & Human Work Patterns

Posted: 5:02 pm
December 28, 2010
Uncategorized
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Last week of 2010. Things are slow, nobody is working, there is snow outside, it’s a week after Christmas and.. I dunno, insert your excuse for not wanting to work but this is possibly the only week on the calendar when that kind of attitude is acceptable.  “It’s Christmas, It’s New Years, It’s time you should spend with family!” Yeah, that argument only flies if you actively try to avoid your family 51 weeks of the year. 

But here is a little secret to the last week of December.

While seemingly everyone is slowing down, the important people in business are working harder than ever. They are enjoying their disruption free days where they can go over plans, close the quarter, review budgets and get some last minute things done to make it a successful year.

Here is the reality that is hard to swallow for many:

Winners count days till 2011.

Losers count days left in 2010.

It’s a slight difference. One group is trying to get as much time in 2010 to get things done while the other group is counting down the days, minutes and seconds left in 2010 like they are serving a prison sentence.

Allow me to let you in on a little secret..

You know all those people that you couldn’t reach the entire year – because they are busy working? Or on vacations? Yeah, those folks are in the office right now. Nobody dares run a marketing campaign the last half of December – not because they don’t think they’ll reach the boss but because they know that the secretary is out.

Consider this fact: My phone rings more during the last week of December than it does during the entire remainder of the month.

Why?

Well, because the first few weeks are spent on getting things together, cleaning things up, office parties, festivities, etc. You know what happens in January – taxes, audits, new processes, new forms and yes – fulfillment of what was sold the last week of December.

So if people had social obligations leading up to Christmas and they need to get deals done in tax year 2010, when are they going to make those deals? Forget about January, that’s a year away. Now is the time to pick up the phone and make that call. Think things are slow now and you can’t reach anyone – wait till January comes around and everyone is stuck in day long meetings, policy changes, new systems and other technical problems that come up after the holidays.

January 1st, 2011, New Years Resolutions, etc… they only matter to the IRS. And you can bet they are working overtime. Here is a little illustration of everything that’s wrong with the American work ethic, stolen from LifeHacker:

12-28-2010 3-20-13 PM

Let me break it down for you – 2 out of 5 workers don’t like their jobs. So when there is an opportunity to slack, you can count on them not to show up for work. They’ll be back next week – along with everyone else – wondering why they aren’t given more money / control / responsibility.

You don’t set yourself apart being marginally better than all the other lemmings. You set yourself apart by doing stuff that nobody else is doing. You don’t just get money / control / responsibility – you earn it by showing people you work for that they can trust you with it because you’ll work as hard as they have to give you your job.

Look, everyone wants to be the boss. Except me. I’d rather lay on the couch naked watching pr0n and eating M&Ms. You want their job? Find out what they are doing and do it better.

The PSA Carol

Posted: 6:44 am
December 27, 2010
IT Business, IT Culture, Vladville
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Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, young Vlad set out to write a free PSA. He failed, big time. The longer he kept on lying to himself about the next beta being useful, the further away the competition moved. Eventually, the goal of building a free PSA and a tool for IT Solution Providers died an uneventful death.

Now with the apologies to the British Empire, estate of Charles Dickens and the fans of A Christmas Carol, I proudly present a (hopefully) inspirational message of what happens when you follow the best in people and focus on doing something nice.

…

Our story begins in 2008 in Orlando. The trade show exhibit hall area is empty, nothing around but a few Freeman employees running around in forklifts destroying thousands of dollars of marketing material. Ebenezer is busy stuffing the marketing collateral and display booth in boxes where out of nowhere, the Ghost of CPA’s Past appears. He sits in the new IKEA chair and starts to tell a tale of what the life could be for the young Ebenezer:

“You know Vlad, if you tie in your billing together you’d be years ahead of the other guys”

Imagining the life of Maserati’s and someone else tearing down his trade show booth, Ebenezer opens up the window and asks his development staff just how far along the billing integration is. They look up at him as if he’s lost his mind; even in the API’s were there and we could do it, the mess on Ebenezer’s side is far too great. “When I come back to the Office, this is the first thing we’re talking about. Forget that PSA thing we’re working on.”

…

It’s a cold Nashville morning in spring of 2009 and Ebenezer is long over his PSA days now. Sitting in his booth, exhausted from handing out t-shirts and talking about LiveArchive, Ebenezer is visited by the Ghost of CRM’s Present. Dressed in a t-shirt and a suit jacket, the ghost tells an entirely different future – one filled with social media, interaction, looking beyond a town square and all it’s small trade.

“Imagine a marketplace filled with experts. I don’t know anything about building a VoIP system, but I can find one in the marketplace. We both use the same process control so we can sell a single solution professionally. Then extend that marketplace to the cloud, to Linux, to anything you can imagine.”

Ebenezer awakens in Orlando, looking at the blueprints for automating cloud services.

…

It’s spring time in Dallas and the land is green and orange. The Ghost of CPA’s Past is back and he’s bought every turkey in the marketplace. Everyone is rejoicing at the feast with the busy farmer working from before sunrise to after sunset to keep the villagers happy. Although the times are hard, everyone is working and trying to earn some more coal for the fire.

The Ghost of CPA’s Past sits down with Ebenezer again:

“I’m ready to blow this thing world-wide. Cloud is the real deal. I don’t know if you’re the guy or not, but if you tie in your cloud services to where we are going…”

Ebenezer calls the office and yells at Bob Cratchit: “Take all the gold off my desk and send it to Dell. We’re tripling the size of our network.”

…

Ebenezer triples the size of the worldwide network. Spends countless gold to get the system working with both the Ghost of CPA’s Past and the Ghost of CRM’s Present. Earns great praise in the marketplace, people rejoice.. yet.. there is little follow-through behind the festivities. It’s nearly fall of 2009 and neither of the worlds described by the ghosts are quite as nice as they have seemed.

Ebenezer sits down with Bob Cruchit, Tiny Travis, Fred and Mrs. Cruchit:

“Perhaps we are onto something else here. We’re now living in the world that the ghosts showed me. Yet, the marketplace I see is far broader. We meet villagers every single day who don’t have the tools – working with other villagers, other artisans, other crafts people that could use what we do every single day. Perhaps if we gave it all away, we could get them to use our cloud? Maybe if we started thinking about everyone else and what they could do with our software first, for free, we could make a true difference.”

…

Epilogue

It’s Summer of 2010 and Ebenezer is in Dallas at a huge dinner. It’s the launch of Shockey Monkey, the biggest turkey anyone has ever seen. And everyone is invited. Everyone gets a free meal.

The End? The Beginning.

Editors Cut & Deleted Scenes

Everyone needs a villain. Competition is an easy motivator and it helps polarize the parties so that the few really driven people can move the whole group forward.

Shortly after building Shockey Monkey in 2006 I realized that it is nearly impossible to run two businesses well. Even harder in the same house. It’s hard work trying to be the best. Best at two different things? I don’t know how GE and Philip Morris do it but in my 20’s I couldn’t figure it out.

One difference in the way the world turned in 2006, and how it changed as a result of the ghost’s visitations, is that my attitude towards what I’m building as the CEO turned into something positive instead of something competitive.

When the Ghost of PSA’s Past asked me if I was the guy to build the worldwide cloud, I jumped at it without hesitation. My team spent a lot of frustrating hours to make it happen because it benefited our partners. Our partners embraced us around the world, despite the problems, and we all benefited. Did I know that the ghost was also having that same talk with another guy from San Diego, only to see that deal die last winter and show signs of resurrection recently? Of course, but we pushed forward and built an even better billing tool for it. When the ghost chose my competitors product to protect his cloud and it crippled him for days, I offered to help for free. When he then invited that same competitor to speak for free in front of his user group and later asked me to pay for the same privilege, I still sponsored his party and still keep on developing for the platform. Business world is not about social justice – it is not about what others are getting that you aren’t getting. It’s about what you’re willing to do yourself, your effort, to earn the business.

No matter the roadblocks, you have to stay positive if you actually believe in what you’re building every day. Imagine the negative stance on all of these: They want to buy a different cloud company so we’re going to stop writing software for their platform! They are using our competitor, endorsing and showcasing them to our partners for free so we’re going to do something bad to them instead! Think about it, where does that leave you? Business is not a war in which you kill your competitors, there is no profit in that. Business is about building a better product so you can win your clients trust and business. Plenty of profit in that!

When the Ghost of CRM’s Present heard my presentation about giving away Shockey Monkey for free, he stood up in front of a whiteboard and started drawing up ideas for how my ideas may be able to grow. He broke down my dreams one-by-one and told me just how much effort went into building a professional quality system, saving us literally years worth of effort. This makes sense, this doesn’t make sense, this doesn’t turn the needle, have you thought of licensing that, how about this? I showed up in Albany with a few dozen slides of half baked ideas and I walked away with a business plan.

Both ghosts have been phenomenally encouraging and inspiring in my effort to bring something valuable to the marketplace.

There are plenty of negatives in every business relationship. If you focus on those, all it can do is destroy you. Sure, it makes for an easy motivator and a great story whenever there is public conflict. But how do you win? By focusing on running someone out of business? I have never met anyone like that in my time as an entrepreneur and I’m not sure how one even shows up for work if they are wired like that.

So given all the bad blood in the tragedy that is the IT reseller channel, I have given it the past 13 years. In that time, I’ve always focused on how do we make things better for everyone that relies on us. When we decided to look at Shockey Monkey again, we didn’t frame it in the IT world. We asked ourselves – how can this thing benefit any kind of a business out there. When you boil it down to the basics, all businesses struggle with the same problems so why can’t there be a single simple way of dealing with customer relationships, invoices, work orders, projects, tasks, communications. Delivering the service, charging people for it and then paying your staff is 90% identical in all service organizations.

We set out to build the simplest tool we could imagine.

We are now on a cusp of technical expertise not being a service for emerging technology or a professional skill needed to deal with technical pain points. We are now in a world of mature technology and simplicity, that partners us up with our clients on tying technology to process execution and vice versa.

I hope you find this inspiring. I’ve had every opportunity in the world to be angry, to feel mislead, to be jealous, defeated and feel like I was being lead on. Lucky for me, I failed myself at the very beginning by building a tool that I wanted. When I focused on the needs of others, Shockey Monkey was born and in the 5 months since it’s birth it’s been the most successful product I’ve ever had with the brighter future than I ever thought it could have.

Focus on the positives, take every bit of encouragement you can get and think about more than yourself.

P.S. All the characters, events and similarities to real world persons or events are coincidental. Again, sincerest apologies to Charles Dickens and Merry Christmas to all.