I seem to be doing a lot of that lately.

I still haven’t read Erick’s book but if you’d like a preview of it, get that podcast and the book. Kicking myself about that one because its picking up a lot of positive commentary but I’m having trouble finding that 25th hour in my day.

Truth is, aside from the magazines, I have not read a whole heck of a lot. I have been doing a tremendous amount of writing instead. I know, I know, I said I never would write a book but one thing that has been painfully obvious throughout the Shockey Monkey development has been the fact that most people don’t know how to run a helpdesk or even a support business for that matter. From program to program, the solutions really are pretty much the same, but where people get hung up a lot is the process of implementing and managing what happens with the organization after you’ve uploaded your logo to the helpdesk.

Funny thing.. the leadership. You see a problem coming up and you try to fix it. So I’m letting the cat out of the bag, along with SM 2.0 there will be a lot more reading and I’m not talking about the manual either. Expect it in February.

This weeks Businessweek (page 17) is asserting that China must be over because there are so many books written about the bull market there. Apparently, a hot book trend is a signal of a “soon-to-burst bubble” or so they say. Truthfully, rarely has there been a get quick rich fad that has worked out for most of the participants. Biotech market in the 1980′s, .com bust of the 90′s, the housing market of 2000′s and so on and so forth.

Every time a message is repeated by enough people it leads to saturation and less people pay attention.

Which is why most blogs don’t get the traffic even though they report the same news as the larger networks.

Which is why your marketing, probably, has a sucky return.

Hitting the nerve yet? Ever wondered why 99% of the direct mail goes to garbage? Because we’ve all seen the same thing over and over and over again. Aren’t you at the point where you no longer even look at the message, you can tell what its going to say just by the wrapper or the sender?

While I can’t help you much about your direct mail efforts, both because I am not a marketing genius and because I don’t have a cup size to qualify me as one, I can help you a little with your marketing efforts to existing client base. Yes, you do need to market to the people that have already given you money. I’ve discussed the success of OwnWebNow here so many times by now you can probably recite it backwards.

We write the software and provide solutions that we think our clients want to buy.

We discuss what we are working on with our client, what we intend to sell.

Our clients tell us what they like about our solutions, what they don’t like about our solutions, and what they want to buy.

We go back and we make the products and solutions our clients want to buy.

Yeah, I’m that big of a genius.

But what if you don’t have the luxury of creating your own software or tailoring your own solutions for the people you already sell to? The easiest way to make money is to make it a reoccurring revenue stream. But most people sell like this:

Ok, so your server is now online and you are all set. We got the system powerful enough so we can upgrade to XYZ when it comes out.

<Zzz… nothing happens for two years>

Hey, XYZ is out, remember we talked about it two years ago? How many can I put you down for? Zero? Your current stuff is good enough? No it’s not, look at ..

And then you lose a client.

It is much easier to have happy clients with inbound marketing, and those leading to the word of mouth references, than it is to spam the world which doesn’t want to hear from you.

Repetitive messages bring desire. Discussing a solution, bringing up a point of view and potential use, highlighting industry trends… those all lead to forming a concept in the clients mind that something is going on, that they can rely on it.

It gives them time to consider how they could use it, so they can fit it into their thinking.

I guarantee you that you will NOT be able to sell Cougar when it ships later this year.

I guarantee that SBS 2003 is not just good enough, but we finally got it to work and that is just too much money for something that, yes, looks pretty.

You won’t be able to sell Cougar in September.

But you can start to sell it now. Marketing differentiation: quick poll, how many of your newsletters have highlighted a feature of Cougar that your clients might have a use for, that they need to start thinking and expecting now? And how many of your competitors are talking about it?

Erick Simpson Conference Call
First 20 get a free cane and a foam pimp hat. Learn how to sell managed services from the guy that not only sold it to his clients but a bunch of my clients as well.

Date / Time
Wed. Jan 16, 2008
9:00 AM Pacific Time
Dial Conference Bridge:
(319) 279-1000
(U.S. phone number)
Your participant passcode is 1024518.

Just because a project doesn’t make money does not make it an unprofitable project (especially if a project is a part of an overall marketing approach)

Just because you made money on something does not make it a business or a business line you should pursue (“I made a g today, but you made it in a sleazy way.” – Guess who said that and the random draw gets the “Mommy, Why is there a server in the house” book) particularly if it distracts from the business objectives, other projects or other opportunity costs.

Overall, building a sustainable and profitable business is not about making money (“I get paid for every OUNCE of my effort!“) but about making the right investments that pay off over the long term (“Pulled off a free weekend job in Y hours that lead to company visibility and X new clients“). The first one works great if you’re an apprentice to a plumber or an electrician, the second one builds a sustainable business.

One thing that I find impressive about Las Vegas is that every time I go back it seems to be a different city. The expansion and buildout is just incredible.

People change too. A few years ago you would walk down the strip and bump into Mexicans handing out stripper callcards just a foot or two away from an evangelical Christian throwing profanities at people passing by in short skirts, warning about the end of time, cause thats what Jesus would have done. The crazy Jesus guy has been replaced by the Ron Paulbots, which appear more mindless, antagonizing, insane and confrontational than even the Jesus guy ever was. The stripper mexicans are still there but they are looking more appropriate than ever.

But here are a few funny things. This was a convention going on at Mandalay Bay – PPAI. Promotional Products Association. This is a conference about SWAG! Huge too!

Then there was that other conference…

And finally, there was CES, perhaps the least impressive of the three. However, there was some funny stuff at the CES, courtesy of Microsoft:

This is a little childrens book that was given away as SWAG at Microsoft’s CES podium. As someone in our group mentioned, “Better get two, cause Windows Home Server won’t be around for long”, so I did. The book is just hilarious and I had to share the scans from it. “Big people have a server at the ‘office’. The ofice is a boring place where big people go and do boring things. Offices  are why big people get grumpy, and say bad words.” – Couldn’t have put it better myself, way to go WHS!

As a Microsoft fan, I have to admit, I was really downed by the whole experience. The Microsoft Zune section, which was huge, was damn near empty. The most exciting technology that people were gawking over was a table, at which a brilliant marketing person (yes, it is a double negative and it roughly translates to “moron”) pitched the table with the following feature of Microsoft Surface:

“So thats how you can learn more about the food and wine thats on your table.

But what if you wanted to be social? Here you can pull up your friends onli..”

Err, what about just talking to the people at your table? I guess thats in Surface 2.0. Talk about a divorcemaker. Can you imagine heading to a restaurant with your wife and in the middle of her story you start checking your email and the pr0n spam pops up at the same time as the 16 year old is putting food on your table? Now you’re being sued for alimony, sexual harrassment… Maybe Surface 2.0 could have a quick LawyerFinder hotspot, so you can immediately get representation from someone familiar with MS Surface.

Overall, the CES was very underwhelming. Frankly, major sections of it looked like Computer Pro shows that travel the country and sell offbrand broken/stolen second hand equipment to unsuspecting audiences at county fairs and third rate venues. CES did have better lighting tho. It also had about 200 booths selling carrying cases and stickers for your cell phone and iPod. The big crown of the event was the 150” Plasma TV. This thing was large, obscenely large, yet beautiful. The rest of the TVs… meh… They made them bigger and thinner. It was about as unpredictable as Steve Jobs wardrobe.

There was only one thing that really caught my eye for the most obscene, most useless invention ever that I just have to have it. They riced out a Corvette and put Saturn logos on it – four screens, one seat. Thats right, they destroyed a likely $60,000 car and put in a bunch of electronics but yanked the passenger seat.

Yay for progress!

On my way back to Orlando, gotta love free wifi and the new terminal at Las Vegas McCarran. As you may have read, I’ve been without net access for a few days. And without caffeine. And in Las Vegas during the biggest porn convention in the world. Fill in the blanks.

The few days in timeout really gave me some courage to drastically change the way I go about certain things in this business. One thing that has been on my mind for over a year is the subject of Vlad branding. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not an ego trip and I am not aiming at world domination or a box of Wheaties, just that if I put even a little bit more effort into what I present to you here every day I could make a much bigger difference for a lot of people.

The other side, the professional side, is going to be getting a huge makeover as well. You know that feeling that you get, when you are absolutely certain about something but have absolutely no data to back it? Over the past year or so of developing Shockey Monkey I have gotten to work with some 3,000 IT shops and figure out how they percieve and deliver value – far differently than we did, and far differently than each other does. So I definitely had some ideas but it really was not until November that I got handed a set of key performance indicators that really spelled it out loud and clear what needed to be done.

So I apologize in advance for what is going to be an unusually quiet period between now and Feb 4th, 2008. I’ve got a lot of work to do, so I hope you don’t mind if a day or two slips without a post.

The other day someone asked me a question that I didn’t have an immediate response for (yes, it finally happened) and I’ve been weighing it for a few days. Here it is:

Do you ever have a case of bloggers remorse?

Do you ever wish you could hit the unpublish button, take back your words, or at the very least profusely apologize in hopes that you can win the readers back? Maybe reconnect with the business relationships you broke off?

The remainder of the email goes in detail of this persons paralysing fear of blogging anything controversial, anything that may offend someone. So before I give you my opinion on what I think you ought to do, here is some soul searching that I did and what I came up with.

There are not many posts that I regret. Frankly, I regret more of my misplaced humor jokes and inappropriate / unprofessional posts than I do the controversial stuff. For example, at some point I put up a post of me hugging The White Rabit statue from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at Disneyland with one hand, and extending my middle finger to the people that keep on bugging me (software publisher) about deadlines. That apparently offended one british gentleman to the point that he confronted me about it and his inability to do business with my company if its lead with such attitude. I kept my calm and tried to reassure him that there is a certain joke behind it all. In this instance, I regret both posting that picture and the missed opportunity to tell him to go fuck himself and his sensibilities. On the other hand, we have many negative posts about Microsoft’s security, patching, shortcomings and more – and believe me, those have cost me far more friends than I’d like to admit to. I’ve written a lot about the dangers of unqualified small IT shops that pop up after every layoff. I don’t regret trying to keep my profession clean of hobbyists that took the wrong turn at the community college career night, but I do feel bad that so many people took the SPF term to mean I think every one man shop is unqualified to provide IT advice. Would I take back any of my SPF posts? Not for a second. How about the riff raff comments? That one even earned me a shirt!

But do I regret them? No. Do I feel like I will ever take the words back (you can’t btw, Internet = forever, and once you prove yourself to be an asshole there is just no Undo button)? No. Do I feel I was wrong?

That is the key question you ought to ask yourself if you’re going to blog openly and honestly. Can you admit your mistakes and move on? We are all human, we all make mistakes, we all have bad days and hopefully you live long enough to express remorse for anything you feel you didn’t do right the first time. Blogging too, gets a second chance.

But unlike real life, blogging mistakes need a justification. There is no blog jail. There is no blog rehab. There is no blog “unpublish” in blogging. There is reason though. This isn’t a bar fight, in which on pure emotion you made a mistake. This is a conscious conversation with people that choose to read what you have to say. Explain to them why you are saying what you are saying, it will be that much easier to correct yourself. There is a reason why you write these posts – you try to do something good for the fellow man. Whether you do it for free, whether you make them pay – you are doing something positive and people read your blog because of it. Or you’re a restaurant critic. 

In a nutshell, if you are going to be an asshole make sure you’re consistent, that you can justify what you say and can handle the consequences that will come from it. But you’re doing it for the common good and thats a small price to pay, otherwise why bother blogging at all?

Seth Godin is a famous writer behind many (damn near works of art) books on marketing, and one of his latest books, which you can read in an hour, is The Dip. Phenomenal book, get it. One of Seth’s things is to lay out the idea for you on the very first page of the book and then proceed to write for 50–100 pages explaining it and justifying the message he is just offering. The nutshell of The Dip is that successful people tend to know when to quit.

Successful IT people don’t know when to quit – as a matter of fact, the more attention and focus you can bring to a problem and solve it, the better you are as an IT person. But what happens if you start a company, and what happens when you apply the same type of intensity and followup to a dispute or a conversation that you shouldn’t in the first place? You end up with a long argument, going nowhere. This is not my idea, but I am offering it up for your consideration, if the person that clued me in on it would like to take credit for it, by all means, comments are open

“The Power of my Delete Key”

I follow this process in determining whether the conversation takes place or not:

1. Does this feedback make me money? If yes, read on. No – Delete.

2. Does this message get me laid? If yes, read on and respond. No – Delete.

3. Does this message get me free beer? If friends then yes, read on and respond. No – Delete.

Simple three step guide to a stress free life. Remember, not all conversations are worth having, not all people are worth talking to.

I unfortunately struggle from not implementing this as harshly as I ought to. I think you’ve all seen me struggle with this stuff when dealing with the negative public feedback from SM, SBS Show, OWN, etc. Starting today, this policy goes into effect.

In my many business and fun trips to Vegas I’ve had the pleasure of staying at nearly everything the strip has to offer, once even booking a stay at Excalibur on a two day notice.

I have to say that MGM Grand, one of the finest hotels on the strip, is also the worst one for the business traveler. If you can, avoid this hotel at all cost. Not only do they only have a single Internet feed, virtually guaranteeing saturation, but their customer service is the worst one I have experienced in Vegas. I have already been misinformed, lied to, and basically told to sit on my hands while they have absolutely refused to address an issue of their Internet access being down. They seemed quite content to shift the blame on Cox Hospitality and even CES, but acknowledged on the third call that nobody was actually working on the problem! The first complaint was answered by “We’re going room by room to help customers that don’t have access”, the second with “It’s a city-wide issue with Cox Hospitality” and final was just an acknowledgement that while they understand there is a problem, nobody is actually working on it.

I suppose it’s normal to not work 24/7, after all, not like any major trade show is in town (oh, except CES, the largest one in the world) and I suppose that you wouldn’t even consider opening the business center 24/7 if you knew your entire hotel was without Internet access and you were inconveniencing guests from all over the world.

My cost of staying at MGM just quadrupled as in the morning I will be out to get a 3G card, but in the grand scheme of things money is not that relevant because it can always be made and spent – horrible guest service and unwillingness to do anything about the problem leave a lasting mark of an organization not to deal with. In this case, MGM Grand and MGM/Mirage will be on my permanent avoid list.

It’s after midnight, I’m on my way to Vegas and I can’t sleep. Bugfix time. So I IM “the coder” and ask if we can work on some bugs in ExchangeDefender SpamMon.

Then I dragged a zipped solution over to the IM window and got the following reply from the developer:

“This is a little slow since I’m downloading like 20GB of warez”

“thus the reason i still can’t see my start bar instead of restarting”

Classy, very classy. It goes even lower after that:

Coder: when i asked you how i should address it you said “fuck it, leave it alone”
Vlad: damn, good memory
Coder: shock
Coder: well i remember that one because i had like 4 addresses and it was huge
Vlad: haha
Vlad: take up the whole screen
Vlad: block UI biaaatch
Coder: lol
Coder: system modal dialog
Coder: with no close button
Vlad: bind ALT+F4
Coder: man we really are geeks that we think that’s funny

You gotta love what you do…. Read Scott Adams “The Joy of Work” novel.

P.S. Before this becomes exibit 3A in the BSA vs. OWN, he was downloading warez to his home PC for his mother in laws PC. While I do not condone the use of pirated software, nothing makes free inlaw PC support disappear faster than sending the feds over to their house.