Over the years I’ve used Vladville to put up as big of an a@#hole act as possible because nothing turns away abusive and rude people away quite like another one of their kind. In reality, I’m actually very nice and considerate especially to the people that treat me right but every time I encounter one of the folks above I go the other way. Life is too short and money is not so critical to turn your business into a punching bag for frustrated IT people. There is a way to treat companies and then there is a way to treat people.

Companies

Pretty much anything goes, especially when it comes to being critical of the process, implementations, business models, pricing, support and so on and so forth. Companies are made of many imperfect people who even with the best of intentions tend to do imperfect things from time to time.

Negative and critical things written about companies will actually get you somewhere because people that work at these companies tend to be proud of their work and they appreciate external observations even when they disagree with them.

Sometimes even bashing a company can be the only way to get attention.

People

Take the section above and reverse it. Why? Because corporations don’t throw chairs. People do.

You can talk all the trash you want about the company but once you go after it’s people don’t be surprised if those people don’t want to help you.

As a field exercise, the next time you see Arnie Bellini or Steve Ballmer, tell them their companies and products suck. They might ask what specifically you had a problem with and offer to help or hook you up with someone that can.

Then pick your favorite expletives and string them together about them personally. Note the difference.

Being abusive in general won’t get you far. If you’re in the IT businesses you’re dealing with professional companies, not Subway. You don’t get to yell and holler out loud until someone asks you to come to the counter and remove pickles from your sandwich.

Being abusive and personal, in public, will get you punched.

Frustration

I understand and appreciate the frustration. I really do. It’s normal and it happens.

Business disagreements happen. Business models conflict. S@#% breaks all the time.

You have the right to be frustrated and to be angry.

You pay for the service.

You don’t pay for the right to be abusive when the service doesn’t meet your expectations.

So if you’re pissed off about the server being down or something not working right or not making enough money or not getting the vacation you wanted or not winning the lottery – that’s your personal problem – you still have to work.

And when you’re working with people, keep in mind that you’re not the only one out there they are trying to help and do business with. They are dealing with the crap too. So if you’re nice to them, they will try to help you.

Personally

Ever worked in a company where you’re always being lied to? Under constant fear that your job, department or entire company will disappear if the next round of funding, sales, product release or government grants doesn’t come through? I have, it’s not fun.

When I decided to make OWN a serious business, I promised that we will never be that company. That’s why I answer the phone, give away my cell phone, help my partners when they need help – be it advice, be it financial, be it technical even if I don’t stand to gain anything.

It’s gotten me thousands of great partners that I love to work with and that’s something that doesn’t make us the most profitable company in the world or the most aggressive one. But it’s fun and it’s the best place to work. I can actually go out with my employees every Friday and take them out to dinner and drinks because I genuinely don’t want to kill them. I can also take my partners to dinners and party with them because I really enjoy their company.

There are perfect relationships out there. I married mine. For everyone else, just be nice. If you’ve got to find an outlet for your misdirected rage, go to wordpress.com or better yet – join a gym. At least that way you’ll be better prepared when you say the wrong thing and someone throws a chair at you.

P.S. I credit Karl Palachuk and Andy Goodman for enlightening me on most of this. Back before we were a real company, we took money and abuse from everyone. At the time, that was just business and there were difficult people out there and you don’t want to piss off your clients because they might tell others about it and it will cost you money. Andy and Karl reminded me that I make more money than a McDonalds employee and that all the chairs at McDonalds are bolted to the floor for a reason. As Karl puts it: “We only work with nice people.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slow down..

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

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

Back into the wheel little hamster

The bad & good news..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Personally

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

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

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

ABP

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

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

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

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

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

Now.. ConnectWise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Beginning

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

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

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

The Honeymoon

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

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

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

The Standoff Ladder

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

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

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

This is where the standoff begins.

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

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

The Balance

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

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

Employees want more money.

Employers want employees to do more work.

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

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

The Invested (crazy)

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

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

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

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

Ideal Employee

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

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

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

Advice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Epiphany

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last Wednesday, our main data center in Dallas suffered a catastrophic power failure. While the inbound ExchangeDefender service went on as expected without skipping a beat, the less redundant services didn’t fare so well – Exchange 2010 was out for about 4 hours, Exchange 2007 for about 6 and various other services between 3 – 12 hours.

At this point it’s Tuesday and I’ve been pulling double shifts since last Wednesday evening working with partners, our partners clients, our vendors and everyone in between because I’ve taken this issue quite personally.

I’ve spent nearly my entire adult life building a reliable email business. Call me crazy, but I expect it to be up 100% of the time. That’s what it was designed to do, that’s what it’s built for and that’s how we manage and scale it. This isn’t some sort of a thing where a startup cuts costs here and there and hopes nobody notices – this is a major product in it’s 7th revision and some of the newer stuff (LiveArchive, outbound routing, apps – web sharing, encryption, etc) didn’t respond the way I had expected. So I’m fixing it.

We deal with crap every day. Power outages happen a lot more often than you think – not big catastrophic ones but isolated ones – blown power supplies, malfunctioning UPS and battery packs. Hard drives die far more often now than they did 10 years ago while the RAID cards and the amount of data they manage are exponentially higher. It’s not an easy business but it’s a fulfilling business. I would rather have this job than anything else in the world.

Here are a few takeaways.

Positive

The data center staff did an amazing job, in as short of a time span as they did.

I have by far the best partners on earth. Honestly, the feedback from you guys during this episode is what’s been keeping us awake.

Redbull & Monster Energy. Personally, Pirelli tires, Ducati and Aprilia.

The few issues that became apparent during this experience are going to be fixed within the 30 days and then we get back to the domination with the features.

Personally, learned a lot from our partners and just how well our service is received out there – it’s far more positive than even I thought but then again, people always bring me problems so I definitely had a wrong impression. Definitely makes me want to work harder.

Negative

Assholes. We all have asshole clients but you’d think people would be smarter than to try to kick someone while they are down and while they are trying to help them.

Irony. This was caused by a power failure in a piece of equipment that is supposed to switch the power from the utility to power generators.

Two Big Lessons: Shedding and Perspective

Shedding is good. This is particularly true for me as well as for many of you that have been in touch with me – in the grand scheme of things, a few hours is not a catastrophe – not to marginalize it at all but let’s face it, typical hardware outages last far longer. Compared to other big cloud services that are riddled with privacy concerns, questionable financing/management, days worth of outages and eventual data loss, for the most part all this did was reinforce just how important redundancy and failover and proper training are. Yet, it seems that the hardest hit folks are micro clients with a few seats here and there whose businesses apparently barely made it through the few hours without email. Here are some comments:

“Frankly I don’t want a client that is ready to jump ship on one outage, just had to share.“

“Ray of sunshine: Lost a 3 seat client that has been on my to-fire list for months.”

Perspective is good. Every single day I have conversations with partners who are scared of the Microsoft/Amazon/Google Apps business model. They don’t take it too kindly when I tell them to position the comparable products against it and if you lose to Microsoft or Amazon you probably don’t want that type of a client.

I’ll let you imagine the fireball response I get to that one.

But here is the perspective. If you Google for the kinds of outages and downtimes and other horror stories you get with Microsoft/Amazon/Google, you’d be insane to accept that kind of a compromise. But there are people that will – and you really don’t want them as your clients, trust me.

The initial reaction to any outage is – what happened? can we switch to something more reliable? I won’t lie, I thought the same thing last Wednesday until I realized that the reason we based our core operations in Dallas is because this is by far the best data center in the world. And while the initial reaction to downtime is always going to be tough, since Wednesday the feedback has been good and with the changes we are making our partners will be more successful.

Some will leave. That’s inevitable. And I’ve even been forwarded some folks celebrating the event on the newsgroups. I understand, enjoy it.

But what really matters at the end of the day, the big picture, the perspective – is that a whole lot of stuff rides on email and that this is a great business to be in. While the demand for the cheaper more compromised cut down product will be there and will be appealing to those that don’t know the risks, more often than not, people will choose a premium solution – which is good for us and good for our partners. You have our ongoing commitment to make the most scalable and most reliable offering out there and I look forward to bringing it to you.

…

P.S. Since last Wednesday I have been working with partners, partners clients and I’m pretty sure that I’m getting an ear blister from being on the phone all day and night. To all those of you who have spoken to me and those that have sent encouraging emails, I can’t tell you how much it means to me. Everyone from our biggest partners to the smallest partners to even the competitors that have gone through this – I appreciate the kind words and keep on forwarding them to my team. Absolutely everyone here cares about this stuff and what we work on every day. My message inside my company is that the bits and pieces of what we do are inconsequential to you – it’s the service that matters and whenever we make our partners win, we win. There really are times when I wish I didn’t care – wish I could shut down my laptop and let my management just deal with the problems. But my management, their staff and everyone involved has for better or worse sold themselves to you as your data center backoffice and we don’t quit.

To everyone that faced any bit of inconvenience as a result of all this – I am truly sorry. As you can tell from this blog post, I know how it feels. Stay strong, stay focused and remember that this is the difference. Most people in tough situations quit, switch, look at the greener grass on the other side and.. well, eventually you come to that sad realization that the only consistent thing in all your failures is you. The alternative is to just work harder – turn those negatives into positives, learn from the mistakes and show that work ethic trumps any inconveniences and “shit happens” moments that are just a part of life.

Here is the comment from one of my partners that literally had me smiling for hours this weekend. His client complained about the outage and the ABP muscle flexed:

Client: “Dude, WTF, it’s been two hours!”

Partner: “Yeah, and remember that $6 thing you wanted me to try and beat because you thought our stuff was too expensive? Well, if you think you’re crippled now what do you think will happen when your production system collapses without a managed backup or you finally get that audit?”

The pimp turned around an outage complaint into a $16,000 reoccurring monthly managed services deal. My response: “Sounds like you just earned your Ferrari payment!”

ABP.

At a recent conference I was asked if I’d consider doing the ironman push again.

For those of you that aren’t devoted Vladville followers, I worked 90 days straight from January 1st – March 31st. No breaks, no vacations, no days off, no Nyquil. It was a brutal schedule that allowed me to break through some crazy personal and professional obstacles and reach new milestones.

I’ll never do that – but allow me to offer some perspective. If you’re squeamish you might want to skip the next section. Scroll down to The Business Design Challenge.

The CEO

Best job in the business.

Flexible hours, obscene pay, minimal supervision and unlimited opportunity.

Then you kind of wonder how shit like this happens:

To all my friends in business and those who want additional responsibility: be careful what you wish for. While it’s easy to only see the nice parts of the job, there are those emotional aspects of it that you don’t get to leave at work at 5:30. Most employees think their bosses are awful and that work can ruin their day. Then again, most employees can find another job in a few months and they are only accountable to themselves.

Slightly more pressure on the management. You see, a crappy toxic employee not only sucks at their job but also happens to antagonize everyone else they come in contact with – both employees and clients alike. In a way that would affect that business for a while. It’s a domino effect that affects the performance of the entire organization – if the manager has a bad day, so does everyone that works for them. And everyone those people touch as well.

The job of the CEO is two fold – deal with the employees and deal with the customers. Defend your team, listen to your customers. Represent your customers and argue with your team over the right direction of the company. Empower employees while guiding them. Guide them while attempting not to lecture them. Take their feedback while dismissing their concerns and opinions of the overall direction. Line up the marketplace demands with the client expectations with the employees ability to do their job in the goal that the company delivers on it’s promises at a scale that generates a profit.

Oh yeah, try not to offend anyone while doing it.

Maintain composure throughout this process while that nagging little voice of no confidence and risk aversion keeps on whispering: “If you fuck up, you don’t just fail and move on – you affect thousands of jobs, companies and business relationships that have taken a lifetime to built.”

The Business Design Challenge

Every small business owner has an idea and a passion. That’s how it all starts.

After you reach any reasonable level of success the ideas you’ve had as the entrepreneur take on a life of their own, different employees take on the vision and drive the delivery of those ideas and solutions to the marketplace. But because you’re so disorganized and relentless in pursuit of your dream in it’s early stages, little cut corners and “problems that will be fixed later” snowball at this stage: The Avalanche.

The Avalanche: Trouble with problems in small business is that they never get smaller. They only get bigger. And more complex. And involve more people. And require more money. Oh – and end up distracting the whole company to get resolved.

I’ve seen most of my entrepreneur friends crack and burn out in this stage. They either fire everyone around them and attempt to blame everyone but themselves for the issues or throw their personal life in an repairable disarray.

The trouble with the avalanche is that the person that caused the problem must both be strong enough to let those around them in on the issues and help own the problem and fix the solution – while the person also admits they created the problem while showing confidence that they know how to fix it.

Describe the problem. Explain it, solicit input, delegate, lead through the fix.

As the company grows from being a small business / startup mode in which everything goes, growing up takes forever. Designing a large business is not the same as a small business maturing – it’s about sustainability, mentoring, delegation and elevating your game to the next level.

Most people crack here. Personally. Professionally. Mentally. At the end of the day, is all this hassle worth a few more million or am I bored with it?

This is where most small businesses end. Either in a tailspin out of business, or an acquisition… or hopefully something better.

Motivation Process

My Ironman was an admission that I couldn’t deal with the pressure of fixing the problems I’ve caused in designing OWN for a full year that it would take to address them. So personally, I decided I could do it in 3 months if I absolutely focused and did nothing but work. I was right. So here are some tips:

1. Recognize the problem.
2. Admit it’s your fault.
3. Ask others for ideas how to solve it.
4. Ask inside / outside. Employees and clients.
5. Draw up a plan.
6. Sell the plan.
7. Cut the plan up and delegate it all away.
8. Draw up reporting.
9. Design milestones and rewards for reaching them. Start here.

You wanna line up a lot of witnesses to you don’t wuss out. What people often make a mistake of doing is hiding what’s going on – it’s easy to quit when you don’t have a bunch of people that will watch you fail. Call it motivation.

My Challenge

I’ve been fortunate enough to be around some great people while building Own Web Now. I’ve seen some succeed. I’ve seen many fail. Those that flunk out and get jobs aren’t going to be writing books about it. Those that succeed have businesses to run. I on the other hand don’t sleep a lot.

You’re not gonna read a book about it. But boy will you know when the problems you’ve created in your business are bigger than you or your ability to solve them yourself.

My problem was that I had a lot of really wacky ideas that I built into products and services from 2003-2007. Then as the cloud stuff started picking up steam all of my crackheaded ideas turned into big products. Then from 2008 we had to focus on service and grow up fast – away from grunt work of infrastructure and data centers to a mature business model of delivering services. It was a huge transition. And while we figured out all aspects of the business – running a business is more than just making it through the day. That’s business management. Running a business is about taking it in a direction. At the beginning of the year, we had a hustler problem – we could do everything but you needed to know someone. That doesn’t scale. So my challenge has been to document the business, delegate it away and dedicate more of my day-to-day on what the business needs to do next.

I made it through my ironman and my company, my team and everyone we serve is much better off as a result of it. Own Web Now is operating on a different level in June of 2011 – instead of at some point in 2012.

That, I hope, makes all the difference. After all, I now play in the big leagues.

Issue of happiness often comes up in peers at events and discussions with employees during quarterly reviews. As company owners we have to pay attention to people around us – if you need people, you’re in the people business.

Some people are workaholics – they need to be taught when to stop working. Some people are slackers, they need to be told how to motivate themselves to get the job done.

This post is about neither.

It’s about the motivation for happiness and whether that motivation is realistic or just a hopeless optimistic dream – the best case scenario that rarely pans out.

Money or Happiness?

Taken to the extreme, it’s a polar issue.

You can work yourself to death and have money to buy happiness. Don’t listen to broke people, money can buy you happiness. Beatles said money can’t buy you love. Notorious BIG said “Mo money, mo problems.” – which is true, everyone has problems. But with money, many problems can go away – fast.

The question isn’t really whether money can buy you happiness, it’s how much money do you need to buy said happiness and just how deferred it may be.

There is nothing wrong with sacrifice. But you don’t need a Ferrari or millions of dollars to be happy.

There is plenty wrong driving a Kia while waiting for your company to become the next big .com.

Ever wonder why plumbers, painters and every other handyman occupation demands on seeing the job before they offer you a quote, even when it’s something simple? It’s not because they can’t figure out how much it will cost to paint a 10×10 room with an 8 foot ceiling. It’s because they want to see what kind of house you live in and what kind of a car you drive.

So how is it that these uneducated laborers are smarter than your typical dreamer employees?

Mostly because employers are really good liars. Think Dilbert’s pointy haired boss times a thousand. Think you’re going to get a massive payout when your company gets bought? Ask Skype guys how that worked for them. It’s typical – but rarely discussed. Because it’s easier to let everyone think they will get a really big payoff at the end if they just break themselves in the process. It’s almost like an afterlife proposition – for your career. Yet it rarely works out. Which at times leads to Dilbert apathy:

You see, most companies I deal with are multimillion dollar businesses that are on the brink of being taken over for 2000x their value. Yet their CEO typically drives a Yugo or a pickup truck. I guess they are too busy to shop for a car. Or someone is full of crap.

Belief towards a supernatural corporate acquisition better be fueled by some real life corporate miracles – like Christmas bonuses, paid days off, vacations and your boss actually liking you enough to take you out for drinks outside of business hours. If you aren’t seeing one, what makes you think you’ll see another.

What you’re willing to buy, I suppose, is up to you.

Here is my advice

Having driven a Honda Civic HX for nearly quarter million miles, until it got towed away because I left it on the street without a license plate (that I moved to a more expensive car) I know a lot about sacrifice. So I will admit, I was wrong – you need to enjoy some of your hard earned money.

Life is a lot nicer with nice cars, nice vacations and nice clothes. Millions will come eventually.

But if you push 20 hour days, you may not be around to see that day.

If you push 2 hour days while in the office for 8 hours, you definitely won’t see that day.

The difference is slight but it’s a matter of motivation. Allow yourself to be happy and little annoying things in your life will become a lot easier to tolerate or ignore. Refresh, refocus, reengage.

You only have one life and only 24 hours in a day. No, you can’t fill them all with what makes you happy because you probably gain some level of happiness from not being homeless – so being good at work is a must. But you can’t fill them with everything you hate either – because that will make even the stuff you do like less enjoyable.

Screw Balance

Again, personal experience.. I don’t do balance. I don’t know where it is, I don’t know how to achieve it and I’m pretty sure if I could I would only kick myself in the ass for not striking it perfectly which pretty much nobody can do. You’re always screwing someone.

So you know what… work hard.. play hard. Take it to 11, take a nap, get back to work on Monday.

Have a great Monday folks, and work on your happiness too.

For bosses and monkeys alike. We all want that bannana. Mine comes in Rosso Corsa DS 302. What color is your banana?*

* (Title of a self help book I promise I will never write)

I wish I had a dollar for every time I got asked”: “I wish I knew how you manage to do it all.” The real answer used to be just pure stubbornness, I worked until I got it done. But then I grew up and company grew and I just have a kickass team that just grew the company 6% while I’ve been on vacation for a month. Fundamentally, it’s all about the setup. Here is mine:

This is my home office. Don’t let the looks fool you, the box in the upper right hand corner cost more than everything else you see. I have an Aeron chair that is about as comfortable as my bed. In front of it, I have 4 22” screens and a 21” TV for late night brain killing sessions. Cisco VoIP phone, landline when (if) the Internet connection goes down.

This is pretty much where all my creative work gets done. Notice that it’s relatively clean – no real “work” happens here. I have a small whiteboard to the left primarily for objective doodling.

Office Office

My real office at OWN HQ is quite different. I have a huge table with a dual display 28” monitors tied to my work PC and and another monitor tied to a Mac for social media stuff. I have a Polycom VoIP phone that I rarely use and a 42” HDTV with satellite service.

Another Aeron and a nice leather recliner. I have some other IKEA crap sprinkled throughout the office. It’s where real work gets done – phone calls, meetings, helping staff, management stuff.

Mobile Office

My mobile office is where unfortunately most of my stuff gets done. My primary system is a 15” Macbook Pro and 11” Macbook Air as a failover. I also carry an iPad with the Verizon chip onboard and a Verizon MiFi.

I pretty much live on my iPhone and I also have an Android (Nexus One) phone for Google Voice and corporate callbacks.

Logistics

Everything that can runs Windows 7. The iPads and iPhone naturally run iOS but neither is unlocked.

None of the desktops have time wasters enabled. No games. No social media. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Dealnews, no Techmeme and all of my typical sites are off. This keeps me from goofing off at work and keeps me focused.

My laptops have social media stuff and blogging software. They also have all the chat, video and entertainment stuff.

No Paper – Absolutely none. No postit notes, no sketch paper, my printer at home rarely has paper in it. When I need paper I go to Stephanie’s office and steal some from her. I cannot even express how important it is not to have any doodling opportunities – I save so much time by never having to track down where I wrote down something important. Everything is either on the PC or my LV notebook (as in leather bound notes)

Bottom Line

I don’t really have a “magic” answer to how to get stuff done, it’s quite personal. One thing I can tell you is that it’s all about optimization: Find out where you waste your time the most and eliminate it. I used to spend a lot of time on Facebook and social media so I nuked that. Before that, I spent a lot of time on the newsgroups and forums so I nuked those. Before that I frequented a lot of web sites and news / blog sites, now those are banned from my productivity areas.

As for the schedule, that’s a different story and something I’m just learning how to figure out. But as I pointed out yesterday, it’s a matter of personal recognition and adjustment: Find out when you’re the most alert and attentive and do your most mentally intensive tasks. Find out when you’re the most productive and pack it with your daily tasks. Find out what distracts you and bump it to when it’s least likely to impact your day. The way to start is simply by tracking your entire day – from what you do when you first wake up, when you first get to work, before lunch, after lunch, before you go home and after everyone is asleep.

After a true month-long vacation, I’m back! Typing from over 30,000ft on my way to Las Vegas, I’m actually really looking forward to getting back on the road, hanging out with the partners and helping my team hit all the stuff we have on the roadmap.

As many of my friends (incorrectly) guessed that I wouldn’t even come back to work, here is my mission for 2011:

Unify all of Own Web Now’s brands under the same name, same mission and same strategy.

We are doing great with ExchangeDefender and Own Web Now products even as the original business models established around on-premise IT, severs and infrastructure are clearly sunsetting. We are outright kicking ass with Shockey Monkey even though we haven’t even done anything significant with it (but will tomorrow morning!) yet other than making it free and making it the platform to start your IT business without thinking about the cost. Our collaboration on the CloudBlock is taking off with some surprising results (will share later)… and perhaps most importantly, the professional continuation of all the contributions I’ve made to the community I’ve made through the years is going through Kate Hunt at Looks Cloudy.

ALL OF THESE ARE GETTING A MAJOR UPGRADE OVER THE NEXT 90 DAYS!!!

So as I see it, the new version of ExchangeDefender 7 is going to kick some major butt in the areas of compliance, business continuity and security – all three cornerstones of our business that have made it so well known and deployed around the world are getting a major overhaul. As we’ve seen from recent reports, the cloud is still managed by people on the same crash-prone servers as you know and love – so the big push for us as we promote OWN cloud services is to keep reminding everyone that ExchangeDefender is always behind it and always running. Shockey Monkey is going to get some friends this summer – lots of them – and the direction that product is going may surprise you if you’ve been under a rock – as the technology we all once built and maintained is consumerized and now managed by end users, don’t you think they’ll need a more sophisticated way to manage it all even as the complexity goes down? CloudBlock is not something I have to answer for so I’ll just say that as the price competition intensifies and Microsoft keeps on bleeding (nearly a billion dollars of losses a quarter to fight with Google) end users will turn to a solid and profitable alternatives that work on the go. Looks Cloudy will get a new look and a bunch of new contributors – The Weather Report has been hugely successful and the follow rate on those podcasts is amazing – as I promised you when I announced it we don’t want to be a press release reprinting site or a rumors-for-clicks that most of the tech sites have become, our community has some outstanding people in it and we need to learn as much from each other as possible.

My job is to make sure that no matter what you come to us for, we make you aware of everything else we’re doing too. Frankly, if we only cared about ourselves and money was the bottom line we wouldn’t have partners – we’d have sales people. So as every product is designed to play well with others, we want to make sure we share that love and benefits with you all.

As for how I’m going to do it all – I don’t have the slightest clue I really tried not to think about OWN at all on my vacation and I haven’t figured out what kind of schedule I’ll keep or what it will take. But as you’ve seen from me over the past 14 years – I eventually figure it out. Looking forward to this journey more than anything else.