Top 10 IT Booth Personalities

Posted: 3:45 pm
August 11, 2014
Events, Humor
1 Comment

tsWorking a trade show is a mental exercise in itself – but if you can see it as a form of free entertainment then even the slow times can be filled with fun. With that in mind, here are The Top 10 IT Booth Personalities for you to meet on your next event.

Swag Hearder – You can tell someone isn’t up for a conversation when they don’t even make eye contact or even look at the display or brochures. This beast is on a mission, two empty bags in tow, to collect everything that isn’t bolted down to the cement. Holding a handful of “Free at VistaPrint” cards with no real contact info, this collector will make several passes in your booth faking ever increasing levels of interest in “whatever it is you do that sounds interesting”.. hey, can I have that pen?

BO Man – You can smell this one coming from miles away. Literally. Cause nothing gives more street cred to an IT guy stereotype like not taking a shower since Microsoft launched Windows 95. This specimen commands space and attention like no other – perhaps because you want him away from your booth as fast as possible but also because his scent makes other attendees stand a few feet behind him in a semicircle. And just as the vinegar spiced aroma is about to knock you off your feet he starts to talk, revealing nothing but contempt for toothpaste and love of vinegar. I give up man, take anything you want just gtfo!

Sales Guy – Straight out of Toby Keith’s I’m as good once as I ever was this former copier/toner salesman doesn’t need a booth to sell, he just needs to establish rapport and get the contact information of people that are real movers and shakers in your business – cause he has the idea, the connections, the business and well.. he sold ice to the Eskimo once and he sure can sell anything to your boss. Oh, and btw, can you validate parking or do you know how to get some free drinks around here?

Antisocial Genius – Nothing screams “I hate being away from my monitors” like trying to read a trade show booth display from 30’ out. After they have sufficiently analyzed what you do, and no other attendee got shanked in the meantime, they cautiously approach your booth like a Zebra about to be eaten by a crocodile in a National Geographic movie. With the sound fidelity and volume of a broken 1980’s Walkman they gently ask how the whole thing works, mostly to see if you’re a booth babe or someone that may actually answer a technical question they have. As they get more comfortable the conversation turns into an MCSE exam.

Parallel Universe IT – This beast made it’s millions in car wash or appliance rental enterprises and bought the IT business looking to be the next IBM. He is here, with his henchmen/investors, to see how badly you want to be a part of the next mega MSP to shock the world and scale out. Because an IT business isn’t really that much different than a vending machine, it’s all about volume/turnover and we know how to build scale! Not really interested in buying a product or a service as much as they are looking for enthusiasm for figuring out the missing pieces in their otherwise brilliant scheme.

Broke Millionaire – “Fake it till you make it” to the core this dude opens up the conversation about how awesome he is. Don’t let the Folex blind you as you try to figure out if this is an actor doing research for his role or an actual schizophreniac – just play the game of numbers and watch them change every time you ask how many users, companies and endpoints they have along with how many they expect to have a year out. This one guy IT enterprise, in a vendor branded polo giveaway, may be managing 10,000 seats right now but they are on pace for quarter million next year!

Up Close and Personal – These dudes mean to seal the deal by any means necessary and if you’re uncomfortable with a conversation 5”  from your face how are you going to handle the abuse you get during a sit? Huh? Huh? Nothing spells meaning the business like leaning in for these guys, your only hope is that they aren’t a relative of the BO man or spilling their drink on you as they tell you about their big plans.

Professor and Historian – This guy was in IT before the electricity. Remembers the good old days and takes you on a journey in time, Knows everything there is to know about IT except the past few years, those aren’t on the radar at all – but it reminds him of this one company he knew out of Texas that…

One Man Theater – You may think you’re at a trade show to introduce a product or a service, but to a one man theater you’re just a captive audience forced to listen to a soliloquy of just how poorly this person perceives your product/service/industry. With an endless stream of “oh one more quick question” this bastard will suck up your peak traffic time with an incoherent stream of questions that make you wish you were a Benihana chef about to chop their business card into thousand pieces and light it on fire because the conversation is killing what you’re actually there to do!

The Squatter – Who doesn’t enjoy long walks on the beach and conversations about the weather? You know you’re dealing with the squatter when you’re in your booth fantasizing about ordering Taser swag just so you can kick these @#% out of your booth. The squatter has no objective other than taking up your time and small talk – with the conversation that goes nowhere. It’s like being forced to stand there and watch the worst sitcom ever made.

Life is all about little pleasures you get from people who don’t mean business – but act it 200% – but produce an eventful show and ability to draw a crowd. Let’s face it, without these characters it’s just standing in uncomfortable shoes on cement, have some fun with it.

How to deal with assholes

Posted: 11:54 am
July 25, 2014
Boss
1 Comment

Being on a vacation, both physically and mentally separated from work, allows one to step out of the daily grind and really look at the things that work and things that don’t work. Problem with habits is that they are hard to break and if you don’t get a decent long one (ha!) it’s usually easier to fall back to the daily grind than to really change your approach. The most important of those approaches comes in dealing with assholes. If you’re unlucky to be the boss, your calendar is likely filled with assholes that try to flush their frustrations off on you.

Here is how to deal with them. I don’t have the time for top ten so here is the top two.

Equilizer Jerks – These guys, for better or worse, are assholes for no apparent motivation other than they feel they have been wronged somehow and now they need to waste your time even though nothing will make them happy other than someone hearing them out.

Power Jerks – This specimen is unique in a sense that it’s trying to build status and rapport in all the wrong ways – by forcing themselves into a situation they otherwise wouldn’t be allowed into.

So what do you do?

Few people know this but most of the Vladville lessons that aren’t about me are about the jerks that line up to ruin my day. And my favorite compliment is when assholes tell me “I love Vladville but I don’t agree with everything you say” – which is a safe way of saying:

“Listen, I’m an asshole too. But I hate it when you call me out on shit I try to pull.”

Nothing but love, brothers and sisters, you’re among friends.

But fuck you – and here is how.

Mitigating Equalizer Jerks

Like I mentioned, the assholes who feel your company or you personally have wronged in some horrific way are just poor bastards that need therapy or a time travel machine for their mom and dad to slap the shit out them because they raised a pussy. These folks will just whine and complain all day long about everything that went wrong in their life as a result of one of your actions.

Who knew that your daily job was ruining peoples lives? It was a surprise for me as well.

So you can’t say anything because any apology from you will prompt another insult begging for another apology. The more sincere you get the more annoyed they get because they want an opportunity to vent. They don’t want you to fix it because their stunted mental development has made it impossible for them to deal with issues and come to a rational solution themselves. So god help you if you propose one – it will just make them angrier. And try to walk them to the logical conclusion even they cannot reject – oh my god will they get angry!!!

A while back we had a client who had a rollout issue with ExchangeDefender. And then a little bit later his same client, through a full fault of their own, had another issue. “Vlad, he is begging me to cancel this service!!!” But when he was pointed out by multiple levels of management that this issue was a fault of the client not on the service he came back with the unresolvable problem – he can’t tell the client that he is wrong! So what do you do to fix this – offer service credit? offer a free trial?

I told him in very few words to go fuck himself because if his client is incapable of understanding their own issues it’s like wondering why you can’t swim out of a lake with cement shoes.

Dealing with equalizer jerks in all the wrong ways is giving them an option to continue arguing. Don’t. Tell them to go fuck themselves.

But Vlad, they will tell someone else! Fantastic, let them tell people we don’t provide great psychiatric support service.

Mitigating Power Jerks

Power jerks, and we’re all a little bit of one, are ones that irrationally request that their problem be handled by god almighty himself. I demand to speak to your supervisor!!!! Yeah, you know you’ve said it before.

What these guys are really after is not the solution to their problem because there likely isn’t one. They just want to win even a little by shaming an employee or staffer that has nothing to do with any of it.

At ExchangeDefender we have a number. I don’t really want to say what it is but it goes like this and it’s drilled into every employee during their orientation: Nobody under $X revenue a month gets to talk to Vlad. I don’t give a shit if it’s the fireman here trying to pour water on Vlad’s burning body in the middle of his fucking office. Not sure if that’s the specific language.

How do you deal with someone that is just ridiculously irrational? You inform them of your process and policies. Take away one sword they have until they figure out what will actually make them happy.

Because here is a newsflash – they don’t know. They just want to complain as far up as they can until their irrational argument gains enough gravity through the involvement of people that know nothing about the original problem.

Case and point, I knew this dumb fuck who at Microsoft WPC took upon himself to write a 6 page essay to be escalated up to Ballmer himself. He looped in everyone he could grab along the way until everyone took a second to look around and say WTF?

Escalation has it’s place. But people whose first course of action is: I demand to speak to someone with a clue..  Should be reprimanded to the layer below that of an office receptionist. Hire an answering service and send them over to it. Ask them to bounce calls between as many reps as it takes until the motherfucker dehydrates and drops dead at his desk or runs out of quarters in the payphone booth and hangs his dumb ass.

Perhaps when they wake up, refreshed, they’ll have a better perspective of what they wanted to have addressed and if it was such a big deal in the first place.

How do I know?

Well, as the Chief Excrement-cleaning Officer, I get to deal with these assholes all day long. And sometimes, though rarely, I tend to be one of them. But every now and then you drink enough at your desk that you just can’t keep your head up on the phone and it falls forward fast and hard and the occasional idiot-induced concussion does wonders for the soul.

So go forth and fuck with them. Tell them Vlad sent ya, I’ll send them a tshirt.

How entrepreneurs fail into operations managers

Posted: 7:07 am
July 18, 2014
Uncategorized
Comments Off on How entrepreneurs fail into operations managers

Enjoying my vacation.. Been out for a few weeks now thinking about random stuff but mostly just trying to keep myself from planning to so something. And it got me thinking about one of the key qualities you need to have in order to succeed (or fail spectacularly, depending on your ambition): willingness to handle risk.

Everyone that goes into business on their own has a certain amount of tolerance for risk (or no other employment opportunities whatsoever) or they would take a job, any job, at the first sign of a gut wrenching failure. So you take on risk, you accept that some of the things you do are not going to work out, some employees will be duds, some clients are going to be unreasonable, some problems will be unsolvable. The key is to only take on so much risk that you have a chance to win or at least live on to fight another day in the worst case scenario.

This also explains why so many people fail in business: they become so guarded in their risk taking that their victories never pile up high enough to tolerate the shit that is bound to blow up for no reason at all. They freeze their ability to act, to respond to market changes, to deal with problems that they try to avoid them. It’s kind of like running out in the middle of the street half way and stopping, hoping that a car doesn’t hit you.

People become so self involved in their process and perfection that they barely take the time to actually build a business. I’ve been guilty of this at times as well, comes from losing perspective: it’s not about squeezing every bit of efficiency out of a very small system, it’s about scaling and growing your system so it produces exponential returns. But that is far harder and far more difficult than the safe and riskless process of being an operations micromanager that double checks everything and everyone, seeks third party review and approval, goes through every single scenario good or bad, tests things on a small scale, holds back, slows down… Basically marks time until the opportunity has passed them entirely.

Don’t be that loser. Having gone down that path at time, trust me, it blows. Because as gratifying as the feeling you get from achieving absolute perfection happens to be… The knife in your forehead when you realize nobody else gives a shit.. Well, can’t paint it any more painfully than that.

Experiment. Try. Do. Trust others and get the hell out of the way. It’s the only way shit happens – yeah, good and bad things will happen. But isn’t that what got you into business in the first place, the chase for the opportunity of what you could become?

#VladCamp Begins

Posted: 10:36 am
July 3, 2014
VladCamp
Comments Off on #VladCamp Begins

Summer session of VladCamp is in full force starting today. Here is the brief summary of it: Hong Kong, Macau, Amsterdam, Belgium, Copenhagen, Berlin, Talin, St Petersburg, Moscow, Helsinki, Stockholm, Belgrade, Athens, Cairo, Frankfurt, Seattle, Vancouver, Alaska cruise and then back to Orlando for a week of theme parks to sear it all in.

I am immensely thankful for my team that makes it possible for me to do this. Thank you guys!

I am also thankful for so many industry friends that serve as a constant bouncing wall for ideas, suggestions, complaints, frustrations and hopes. Whether you love or hate Vladville, I love how much I have gotten out of this blog personally and professionally.

Over the next few weeks I will be taking you along for the ride. Hope you enjoy it Smile

-Vlad

Real Truth About Overcoming MSP Problems

Posted: 11:11 am
May 28, 2014
Real
1 Comment

Have you’ve ever wondered why I don’t get murdered or beaten in public on a regular basis about the stories I write in public? It’s primarily because I have one rule here: If it can’t be made funny, I won’t write it. This is entertainment – we already have enough faux journalists and pretend experts dispensing their brilliance from a basement of their rented homes and Starbucks – I’m not that IT coach.. And I don’t pick people apart here (though many people have low self esteem and self-identify with the matters discussed here). Part of my job at ExchangeDefender is helping our partners position the cloud effectively (meaning: profitably) and far too often I get to hear rather sad stories about the struggles and issues that I too have faced in my career. So every now and then… I will write a “Real” blog post here and you’re welcome to skip it.. because everyone likes to laugh at a joke at someone elses expense – nobody wants to look at the mirror. So with the disclaimer out of the way.

axlIf you got the money honey, we’ve got your disease.

Business process problems? Buy our PSA.

Too busy doing manual IT resolution? Buy an RMM to automate it.

Not growing as fast as you want? Marketing toolkit, sales coaching.

Insecure about competition? Join our peer group.

How is it possible that so many businesses are thriving and so many others, year after year, seem to be stuck hopping from one solution to the next and never breaking out of the same pattern? Wouldn’t it be great if there was a program, a person, a product, a service… that could leapfrog you past the struggle and finally push you ahead of the market for once?

There is a person that understands what you are going through & sees thousands of people just like you each year. They can help and they have great results: They are the sales person at virtually every MSP and VAR vendor out there. Their chief service: Separating you from your money. In many, many, many instances they may in fact be very helpful. But if you’re having problems – it’s unlikely that the problem is external to the company (or that can be solved with external help). It’s quite likely just you.

I see some people, with perpetual problems, at 3 different shows each year. Just trying to stay on top of things, just trying to figure out what is next, just checking something new out. And how are you doing? Oh, it’s been a bad year.

Stop. Stop buying software and services. Stop purchasing advice and recommendations. Stop trying to figure out what you could be doing better and figure out what you are doing wrong.

No sane vendor will recommend this so I’ll do it on the behalf of our industry:

Pick the next event you were going to. Cancel it immediately. Book a few nights at the local Motel 6 or equivalent cheap motel and bring your books, your strategy, your problems, your issues and lots of pens, highlighters and paper.

Start going over what is working and what you are good at. Be honest about the problems. Come up with a plan and a strategy to maximize the good and fix the bad.

And if you find someone that tells you the above is wrong – run. Your vendors need you in the long term – people that are just going to rob you now and move on to the next victim have short term on their mind (like sales people and quarterly performance targets) and to them it doesn’t matter if you live or die in 2015.

You probably care a bit more than that.

If so, start acting like it.

No coach, no platform, no service, no software, no solution, no peer group, no event, no boot camp, nobody is going to care more about your business than you do.

And here is the hammer: If you think you need all that to make it, you’re probably not cut out for this. If you can’t focus and mentally support yourself to fix the problems you cause to yourself how in the world are you going to address the problems your employees cause, your clients pin you in, the neverending change.

In all my time working with partners I’ve seen many ways in which people in this business succeed. Yet I’ve only seen one in which they fail: They think they are special and that rules don’t apply to them. Tech business is no different from any other business – and if your ego is so big that you think there is a substitute for hard work and growth and problem solving – then the odds are against you.

Stop. Think. Work. Win. It’s not going to happen until you decide it’s going to happen.

Time To See The World

Posted: 11:01 am
May 16, 2014
GTD, IT Business
Comments Off on Time To See The World

As I mentioned over the past few months I have been scaling back my responsibilities at ExchangeDefender to only a part time affair (about 30 hours a week; and trust me, that’s part time here). I’m just a CEO these days – meetings, phone calls, clients and a few trade shows. I also started a new business this year so don’t worry, I’m not bored.

This summer – from late June through late August – I will be on vacation. Multiple continents, cruises, countries and so on. Timmy and I are packing our bags and doing what we do best – getting lost. And I’m taking you with me (virtually, sorry wifey doesn’t approve more adoptions). If you’re not following me on Facebook, feel free to add me / follow me.

Listen… Over the past 17 years I’ve built and sold multiple multimillion dollar lines of business. I have a great team that runs the show and makes me look good. I don’t owe anyone anything, I’ve got more cars and bikes than I know what to do with and I have made more money than I’ll be able to spend in this lifetime unless I decide it’s time to build a Ferrari collection. I get to work when I want to on what I want to and I apparently get to take a 2 month vacation.

I’m not gloating

laferrariGetting to this point wasn’t easy. It didn’t come without sacrifice. And most frustratingly: nobody cheers the workaholic. You don’t get to have a bad day, you’re working too hard and need to take a break. You don’t get to complain about problems, you’re working too hard and need to take a break.

Oh, and people tell you that your wife is going to leave you. A lot.

So listen.. building and running a business isn’t easy. It’s not without sacrifice, hard work, risk, worrying, mental anguish and emotional bullshit employees and clients put you through. But I am a living proof that you can make it without screwing people over, without winning the lottery and without an IPO. All it takes is time and persistence and the ability to filter out bullshit.

So if you’re struggling right now and trying to build great things.. hang in there, work hard.. I’m taking you on a vacation with me. Let it be a motivation that some day soon you’ll be in the same spot.

The Worst Employee Ever

Posted: 1:26 pm
May 12, 2014
Boss, Humor
1 Comment

I’ve worked with some people that whole HR books could be written about (heck, half of ours was written just based on actions of one person) but there is nothing worse than….:

The worst employee ever: Stupid employee not aware of how stupid they are.

This is not a typical Vladville post used to burn something idiotic. Instead, it’s hopefully a little bit of parenting and career advice all rolled up into one.

Now I don’t know how or what empowers and instills some folks away from a lifetime career in front desk or fast food, but every now and then someone gets a lot of misconstrued encouragement and the university testing system of multiple choice questions and overcrowding gives the wrong people advantage of grading on the curve. It happens.

And there is nothing wrong with being stupid. For some roles it’s a requirement. If there were no stupid people, sales and marketing would suck – marketing folks would figure out they are liars and sales people would turn themselves in for theft. Thankfully, the intelligence bar is lower in some places and higher in others – so folks handling engineering and development can come up with ways to deliver on the near criminal lies you promised the client. Organizational dynamics.

So there is nothing wrong with being an idiot. As long as people like you. But what if you don’t even know that you’re an idiot? Here is a simple quiz that can help you figure it out:

  1. Someone sent you this blog post.
  2. You think you’re the smartest person in your company.
  3. You can solve all the problems you see.
  4. You are the only one that can seem to notice all the problems.
  5. You’re a natural born leader that speaks when everyone else is quiet.
  6. You have a “I’m a smart person” award or were in a club.
  7. You seem to be treated exceptionally poorly by your coworkers who are jealous of your intellect.
  8. You seem to be constantly reprimanded by your managers and bosses who are afraid of your potential to take their jobs.

If you answered Yes! to any of these questions.. I have some bad news. Here is what should be in your orientation book at the next job (don’t worry, you’ll be there really soon):

“Listen..

You seem to know everything – so try figuring out why you work for me and I don’t work for you.

The best piece of advice I can offer you: If you just got here and think you know a better way of doing everything – do yourself a favor and spend some trying to figure out why things run the way they do. You just might be a genius with the ability to understand all business processes, personalities, culture and customer expectations – but you’re statistically more likely to be an overreaching idiot with an extremely high assessment of self worth. So instead of alienating everyone from the getgo, take your time and actually build a successful track record to stand on.”

We’ve had a lot of people that fit this model work for us and they are infuriating. Thankfully, they show their colors almost immediately: Before they even know what their job is they can tell you everything that they can do better. For someone that has never owned or run a business they sure as hell know a lot about yours. And then you had them a simple task and watch them hit the wall like a windup toy. There is a reason you don’t take marriage advice from friends that are perpetually single, career advice from the unemployed or real estate advice from the homeless.

To an extent, we’re all idiots about something… But most of us have the capability to stop ourselves: If you can’t possibly think of any way how your plan/idea can go wrong you either have little skill or little experience.

Would Jesus eat brisket on Sunday?

Posted: 10:43 am
May 5, 2014
IT Business
Comments Off on Would Jesus eat brisket on Sunday?

Conversation I often have with my wife:

Katie: What’s on your mind?
Vlad: I have to get this done by tomorrow.
Katie: Aren’t you the boss? Turn it in late?
Vlad: Nah.

What “Nah” actually means

Part of being the boss and being a part of the team is that it’s 100% on you to set the agenda and see it through. If you don’t feel like working, if you don’t feel like deadlines matter, if commitment is variable on your mood, if it truly doesn’t matter.. then perhaps you shouldn’t be the boss and moreover, perhaps you shouldn’t be working at all. Further question than becomes: Who would want to work for you and who would want to rely on the company that’s managed as a side hobby?

brisketFor example, I’m a creature of habit. I like to give money to people that treat me right. If I wake up on Sunday and I feel like eating brisket, I go to my favorite BBQ place. If that BBQ place is closed, I go to the next BBQ place. Guess what’s my new favorite BBQ place? Not the one who took their own personal needs and preferences over mine.

Business is about self-interest, you are in business to make a profit. But you will never make a profit without customers. While nobody will know how hard you work at maximizing the benefit on both sides of that equation, if you aren’t pushing the organization forward then who is?

Anyhow, that’s at least the lie I tell myself to keep on going.

Update on CompTIA’s Cloud Trustmark Progress

Posted: 11:07 am
April 28, 2014
Cloud
Comments Off on Update on CompTIA’s Cloud Trustmark Progress

comptiaAs I wrote here before, I am on CompTIA’s Cloud Executive Council and several of us are helping CompTIA come up with a Cloud Trustmark that would help IT Solution Providers determine, in a nutshell, how credible the cloud service provider happens to be. The following are my opinions and impressions and do not represent CompTIA, other members of the executive council or any other entity. I hope this information gives you a perspective for the hard work that is being done in our industry and encourages you to participate.

First a little bit of background – I originally objected to the idea of the Cloud Trustmark for the simple reason that the same executive council spent nearly a year just to come up with a well rounded definition of “What is the cloud” and creating a unified certification of the same would be either expensive or meaningless. The point of the association though is not just to sit and object to things that are difficult but to craft something that would be useful. Here is the summary of the major discussion topics:

Should we require a physical visit? Some felt that the certification would be neutered and meaningless without verifying that the physical location of the servers was not confirmed in person. The concern was rejected because the effort would be too expensive to execute, wouldn’t be relevant for a large number of cloud service providers that do not have a physical server infrastructure or had a very large footprint (multiple data centers).

Should we certify security or financial information? This was a broad discussion over what financial and security processes could be identified, verified and how they would be reported. For example, should the certification conduct a PCI-like scan and if so what would be done if the company had no PCI-requirement. Does a company pass or fail the certification solely on their extensive backoffice infrastructure or does lack of one create a liability? As you can tell, this was a long discussion that revealed the complexity of even CompTIA’s ability to effectively report on the credentials of a service provider.

What should the certification include? Should the certification be a pass/fail, a checklist of applicable criteria, score based or something else? The complexity of the cloud service provider business models lead us to the final question:

What would be valuable to the VAR/MSP/consulting community? The entire meeting included only vendors and CompTIA staff. While we know what helps us position our solutions, are those necessarily the same components that you would value? This is why it’s so important for IT Solution Providers themselves to be a part of CompTIA AMM and annual meetings and voice their needs (in part writing posts like these is to solicit your opinion and encourage you to). The decision was made for the CompTIA research team to conduct a poll of service provider members and gather some feedback.

I will keep you up to date as this develops further and encourage you to both send me your feedback and attend the CompTIA Cloud meetings and conferences. There are Cloud Café’s at major IT conferences this year, please get involved. Yes, it’s free.

My personal opinion: CompTIA has no footprint/legitimacy in the cloud so the Trustmark as an endorsement wouldn’t be meaningful on the same level as many other industry standards that evaluate security, credit card transactions, accounting standards, operations management and so on. Where CompTIA does have a foundation to build a certification on is it’s relationship with the IT workers and in my opinion the true value of the certification would be in helping IT staff compare cloud providers on equal footing in terms of which standards they comply with, which industry standards are being met and so on. Passing a trademark for the sole purpose of having another trademark that less than a few dozen people would be interested in only cheapens the value of other established trademarks and CompTIA’s reputation in the IT industry, if you feel that there is a need for this certification to exist and can clearly demonstrate the criteria that are important I implore you to join us and help us build it.

Next chapter: Dubai

Posted: 9:00 pm
April 18, 2014
Boss
1 Comment

IMG_1444As you may have heard, I have significantly reduced my day-to-day involvement at Own Web Now Corp and my sole position with the business is that of a CEO. Meaning, I will only be involved in strategy and international expansion of our products and services, less of day-to-day problems and staff issues. I still have a great passion for what we do at ExchangeDefender and Shockey Monkey but the services and announcements you will see from us over the next few months will explain the simple detail that…: We’re going to Dubai.

Every so often you get an opportunity that is so ridiculous it would be crazy to turn that down. In 2001, when I graduated from University of Florida, I should have moved to the valley. For a number of reasons and many excuses, I moved to Orlando (a move that I rerated professionally but truly appreciated personally as I have a wonderful family that will live on long after my business ventures). But now I am taking my businesses truly global and United Arab Emirates are key.

I love Florida, I love United States, I am proud to be an American. But in terms of international business, there is a new king. When I discussed this with my friends I often get looked at sideways but if you have just 30 seconds.. please watch this:

Fast forward to 4:20 and just give it 30 seconds.

If that doesn’t line up with your ambitions you’re not an entrepreneur. When the Sheik is asked “Why are you in such a hurry” the response is native to every aspiring business owner and driven person in the world: Because I want it now. I want to be the best. Not in 10 years. Not in 30 years. I wake up every day wanting to make sure my life, the life of people that work for me, the life of my family in the generations that live on is better and easier than mine was.

United States is undoubtedly the king of worldwide commerce, it will remain the headquarters of the global financial system, the land of freedom, the most consumerised economy on the face of the earth – but when it comes to opening the door to the rest of the world, our leaders are leaving us more and more isolated. Our overwhelming special interests are creating a more close minded, judgmental, business-unfriendly environment that is seriously threatening our future.

In my opinion, from what I have seen with my own eyes, the rest of the world wants what we have in United States. And they are no longer just happy to come for a visit, they want it there.

Seemingly, it all goes through Dubai. So that is where I’m off to.