Long title but it gets the point across – how do you stay commercially viable when your offering is not something people are willing to recognize as a problem worth paying you to solve?

I’ve been on record stating that I believe the SPAM / Virus filtering is something that is rapidly losing value and will be free. Later this year we will be launching a barebones antispam/antivirus cloud solution that is a fraction of the cost of whats currently out there and aim at making it free eventually.

The response of the security vendors has been to nickel and dime the client base because there is still a lot of value in filtering and lots of money can be made on the things like encryption, web filtering, etc. Our response has been to eliminate wasteful resources and reallocate them to those features that the users are actually willing to pay for. Here is a concern one of our partners voiced in our portal:

During these financially stressed times, it gets harder and harder to provide justification to a customer on why they should spend the slightest penny on anything. With that said, after the upgrade to ED5 and the induction of “SMTP Tempfail,” the numbers of SPAM messages being filtered out by ED servers and listed in our customer’s daily reports has dropped dramatically. This is great for both OwnWebNow, by reducing the loads on the ED servers, and our customers, for having to filter through less junk in their ED quarantines and daily reports. But the unintended result is that we, as OWN partners, find it harder to justify to the customer why they need to have or maintain the ED service. The reason being is that the numbers on the Domain Security and the SPAM Trend Reports have dropped dramatically. These reports gave us the numbers and graphical proof that our customers needed to wrap their minds around to see the service working and made it easier on us to justify the need for the ED service. The feature request in all of this: Even if the message is dropped via the SMTP Tempfail, couldn’t those messages be counted, and listed on the reports, as being filtered in the total number of messages for that domain? Or maybe adding a section within the report for the SMTP Tempfail that list the number of messaged dropped.

Here is my response:

Dear Steven & Nathan,

Unfortunately, the tempfail is something that is issued during the SMTP transaction and we do not know the destination of the email – it could be heading to any email address or domain on the network. Logging that information is not just pointless, it would only require more resources and cause users to be even more unhappy with the service and the amount of junk they are dealing with.

I will tell you both that this is not the first time I’ve had to answer this question.

I will also admit that I share your concern, however, I have chosen to address it in a different way.

I can’t build a company on top of a fear for something that the technology has already addressed. That is to say, I can’t sell a solution to a problem that has already been largely solved that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

Now, how do you create a compelling value offering considering that the original problem is already a component of the solution? Grow the solution. Add web filtering. Add business continuity. Add encryption. Add large file web sharing. Add it all for free.
That’s been my answer. Honestly, if a user is so unaware of the widespread SPAM problem that keeps on growing year over year, and all it takes to aleviate their fear is a chart, we’re not really dealing with sophisticated people. The kind that will likely not place value on the rest of the stuff we do either. So I can’t address them.
However, I can grow the sophistication and the value in my product by giving them more security, not just the illusion of it.

Please feel free to email me at vlad@ownwebnow.com, I don’t want to be insensitive to your concerns Steven because I’ve had to answer them and the above is what we came up when it came to the product design. I hope it also helps you in your discussions with your clients and gives a better footing for your managed services solutions because this goes hand in hand with the total solution.
-Vlad

There is a larger question here that the managed services providers have to answer to remain in business and address the pricing pressures from the big boys. I’ve been doing a series of “cloud” presentations with MSPU trying to explain to people all the vectors that need to be considered here because the truth is: When you are paid to solve the problem, and you solve it, the client no longer experiences the pain and their willingness to pay for it diminishes the further they are removed from the problem.

Basically, there is a diminishing value of providing managed services. Response? “Screw them, if I stop doing what I do for a day their network will explode.” Ok, guess that would work but I don’t know that it’s great customer service. From experience, bunch of charts and graphs isolating the problem don’t work either – When you are not directly experiencing a pain, charts and data points do not have an emotional impact which makes the client wonder why they shouldn’t consider an alternative (cheaper) solution.

Now, I think I wrote a blog post or two about commoditization of services Remember, it’s too late to think about this stuff after you’ve lost a client. You need to do it now because I can guarantee you they are being bombarded with alternatives. You can’t call me a day after Microsoft swiped your client and you want to get into Hosted Exchange business but you never introduced it to your clients before because you’re a LAN guy. You have to be faster, better informed, less biased than Google, Microsoft or _____.

Bottom line is: Ignorance As A Service doesn’t work. And as painful as it may be, we need to approach our clients with different set of collateral and value propositions than we did in the past. What that entails and how effective it is going to be is a matter of trial and error.

Warning: Adult situations and topics ahead.

Have you ever heard these?

   Seize the day.

   Live each day as if it were your last.

   Live life to the fullest.

People like to say these things. But when it comes to doing, they tend to bring up other quotes like: “Oh, I can’t do that, need at least 8 hours of sleep or I can’t function.” or “I just can’t get that done, I have other plans.”

Every now and then I try to picture their conflict of desires and efforts and it looks a little like this:

“So you mean to tell me that if you knew you had 1 day to live you’d first make sure you had a really good night of sleep instead of doing something that would make the life worth living?“

Hi, my name is Vlad, I run marathons.

I am for all practical purposes an obese guy. 6’1”, 205 lb.

Yet every year I tell people that I run marathons and half marathons for fun. This year I did the “Goofy Marathon” at Walt Disney World which is a Half marathon on Saturday followed by a full marathon on Sunday. Over 40 miles including all the walking from the parking lot.

I’ve done marathons and half marathons all over Florida for years now because it’s the time I get to disconnect from my life and business and gain some perspective about how easy it is to give up and just how much nicer it would be to do nothing at all.

Yet, when I talk to people that are in far better shape than I am, I constantly hear one thing: “Oh, I could never do that. I just can’t do long distances. I just can’t do running. Or jogging. Or walking really. I can’t do cardio.”

The words “I did a marathon” don’t imply that I ran 26.2 miles and that it was down to me and a Nigerian who just happened to be a better sprinter in the last quarter mile. I was behind him. Way, way, way behind him. I’m pretty sure that by the time I was half way though my marathon the said Nigerian was already getting his first drink on his flight back home. You get the picture, I jog. For hours.

The Secret To Failing

I am not arrogant enough to tell you that I know a secret to success.

I am however experienced enough to tell you that I know the secret to failing. I’ve failed at stuff more times than I can count and it all comes down to one thing:

I didn’t try hard enough.

Now don’t get me wrong. I had fantastic excuses. Really, really, really good ones.

However… As I’ve gotten older and slightly less foolish I’ve realized that I have a rather limited amount of time around here (life) to do my thing and earn the kind of lifestyle I want.

If you honestly look back at all your failures you can probably track down at least half of them to the lack of effort, care or time you put into seeing them done.

The Reality

The reality is that yes.. you can do a marathon. People that survived horrific diseases make up an unusually large number of marathon participants. Practically crippled and astonishingly old do as well. Anyone can run a marathon. And trust me, you can make it through the day without 8 hours of sleep.

So you’re gonna go register for that marathon today, right? Wake up at 6 AM tomorrow instead of 8 AM? Yeah?

Of course not. Cause what’s in that for you, right? And I don’t mean what’s in it for you like a year down the road or four years later – what’s in it for you right now, immediately?

There is a reason why most people don’t have college degrees. It’s not time, it’s not money, it’s not brains – it’s effort. It takes a heck of a lot of dedication to pursue something that’s four years away for which you’ll be in debt for a decade and benefits won’t be fully realized even longer than that.

Yet, people are able to see beyond that. People are able to walk / run / jog. People are able to go to college. People are able to have kids, sleep 4 hours a night and keep on making things better with each and every day.

Optimism vs. Pessimism vs. Reality

I’ve fired a lot of people who felt their barely-40-hours-a-week were enough for them to keep their job. I’ve passed on a lot of resumes that felt cover sheets were not necessary.

The reality, whether you’re a pessimist or optimist, is that you’ve got to treat everything like it’s your own and your own benefit it on the line. If you’re cynical about that, you’ve already lost.  And that’s what happens – people go into things with the best of intentions but get cynical, tired, exhausted… they give up, slack off and ultimately they are out of work.

The same happens to entrepreneurs. We get excited about projects and potential revenues, we start building a business plan, we fund it, we build it, we market it, we start to really see the results but it’s just not enough right now. We want more. Faster. Different. We lose interest, we let someone else deal with the difficult stuff. We ignore the leadership we need in our business.

So… what now?

Nobody is going to go run a marathon as a result of all this, nor are you going to go get a college diploma or put in any more hours at your job.

The point of this blog post is to understand how things fail.

Do you want more than what you’ve got? Do you want a better life? Well, then you’ve gotta do more than you’re doing now and do it consistently and persistently.

If you need the qualifiers like how much time, for how long and how hard – then don’t bother. Desire for success is an internal quality and work ethic is something you build every day. You’ve either got it or you don’t.

…

So this is a brief introduction to my answer I promised in this post. The first question in trying to determine if you need to continue or quit is in being honest with yourself about your current predicament. Did you get yourself in this position and do you believe that by working harder or longer you actually have a shot. If the answer is yes you’re on the right path.

Something that has been on my mind as of late, and on the minds of OWN senior management, is the level of difficulty required to obtain our services. Here are the polar issues involved:

Our stuff is too difficult to setup!

Problem & Solution: Alrighty then, let’s simplify it and make it easier than Gmail to get into. Design the UI, run it past the retards and see if even they can get through it without impaling themselves on large words.

Effect: Support loads explode because lowering the bar brings in the people that are incapable of reading and solving kindergarten-difficulty puzzles.

We need this advanced feature, now!

Problem & Solution: We expose a more sophisticated control set and a complicated feature.

Effect: Clients complain that it takes too much effort to get something together and that it’s too complex.

The Reality

I spend half my day trying to simplify the things that we do so that we don’t get the same type of negative feedback, but the vendors we work with create impossible hoops and requirements for us to achieve so I get to feel the kind of sentiment my clients get.

But here is the bottom line…

The bar is there for a reason. It’s there to keep people who are not ready for the complex solutions from being able to hurt themselves with it. If you’re complaining, the bar is not the problem: Your inability to get above it is. We all may bitch and moan about the limitations that are put in place on the iPhone, but wast majority of people will not jailbreak their handset to enable advanced functionality.

At the end of the day you have to know your place. And if you’re not happy with it, it’s up to you to step up. Nobody will lower the bar for you.

With about 47 hours left in January, I wanted to hit the neglected-as-of-recently blog and update everyone about how things are going here. Having wrapped one of the bitchiest weeks I’ve had in a long while I can now look back at what happened in January.

Louis Vuitton

For Christmas I asked for one thing: A Louis Vuitton agenda. The damn thing cost more than my iPhone. I like to doodle and as my lifestyle got so digital that paper is something I rarely see (unless it needs my signature) my ability to use my “distraction” medium as an organization platform became impossible. Maintaining management focus on the same device that you use to exchange dirty jokes with your friends about why men like DisneyWorld and what wouldn’t wake up Cinderella if you were Prince Charming (think about it!) is like trying to have a fine dining experience where everyone’s seat was a toilet. Ahhh yea. Picture it, imagine it!

To those of you that said my blog wasn’t filthy and entertaining enough anymore: I demand your apology

But back to the topic: I’ve laid out the entire year in this agenda and it’s made me infinitely more responsible for hitting the milestones I’ve committed to.

McBeefy

One agenda I have for 2010 is to run everything from Orlando. That’s easier said than done, and it’s required a lot of us to grow up. In order to get to that level, and keep everyone comfortable, was to make the office more like home.

At one point someone remarked that there was more food, snacks and booze at the office than there was at their home. “Ditto” was my only remark.

The biggest challenge in making the work a place where people can grow is aligning it more with what they expect from life, instead of making it a prison they must rot in to sustain their lifestyle.

So in January we had massages, drinks, party time, TV, etc.

Most importantly, we went McBeefy. Here was my original pitch about two weeks ago:

As for social stuff, we’ll be going to <insert random downtown bar> at 4 PM every Friday. The first two rounds are on me. After that, back to work to plan the next week. Social stuff is optional, you don’t have to go. You can’t take off early though and you can’t go straight home after the break.

When you work in close quarters with people you notice a lot about them. And you count on them, a lot. One of the big things in having a functional team is not letting anyone boil in their discontent and wiping the slate clean at the end of the week.

Doing this type of stuff has allowed me to open up to my team about the reality and balance of what’s going on and it’s resulted in them putting in a lot more effort and taking charge of things.

What are we doing tonight, Brain?

The same thing we try to do every night Pinky: One of the big things we’re doing in 2010 is global expansion. Not of just Own Web Now, but lifting up of our partners as well. Trying to survive on tight margins by staying in your zip code is not be viable – and we have about a decade worth of experience in running a business globally and connections with just about everyone.

In January we really reinforced our focus on customer service and followup – and we’re still hiring across the board for that in service and level 2 support.

The bottom line here is: If we really suck as much as some people would lead me to believe, how come we’re growing so much and getting so much praise from so many of our partners and clients?

The answer is simple: it comes down to consistency. Some people cannot handle not getting the same level of service at all times. Some people don’t like working with women. Some people don’t like the phone. Some people don’t like the email. Some people don’t like the support portal. Yet, everyone makes it through the day. And what we all count on is consistency in whichever preferred way we work in. And the only thing that counts in sustaining that is knowing when we fail.

Make no mistake, Own Web Now went from me writing control panel software in high school and constantly listening to what people wanted and delivering it. It gets somewhat more complex when you grow a few million times over

We beefed up support – our Tier 2 will extend direct support from 4 AM to 10 PM EST next week. Our Tier 1 will also have more control in terms of dispatch and escalation. And we’ll also announce a strategic escallation to Tier 3 for people that are beyond FUBAR (means F’ed Up Beyond All Recognition).. or is that Third Tier?

Innovation

Our product agenda in 2010 is to extend our products and services in a direction where they become manag(able)ed services. What I mean by that is that there is a lot of business intelligence that can be collected from an extensive amount of data we collect and can process intelligently. It’s all about extending ourselves into our clients businesses and becoming valuable beyond the benefits they purchased the software for in the first place.

If you think about it, it’s inevitable. The software will eventually be free, but the knowledge and organization that will come from having access to all that data will cost a leg and an arm. That, and only that, will be making the difference going forward.

Note on Competition

In December, when we announced ExchangeDefender 5, we saw our competitors sic their partners at us trying to figure out the strategy behind the all-in-one, no-addons business model for enterprise security, business continuity and compliance. Yes, we know who you are. Yes, we check records. Yes, we see you on Facebook. As they frantically cried on the phone: “This is going to kill <insert vendor>!?!?” I somewhat laughed inside that people think about business competition in a primal way of one company trying to kill another like we’re MMA fighters.

The reality of the “next” decade that we’re in (2010) is that the skills and expertise we all claim in technology are not that far more advanced than those of a teenager. Our latest hire is a college freshman that is 18 years old. On her first day at work she had me on her Live Messenger, added me as a friend to her Facebook and managed her way around Office 2010 Beta and was on the same technical level as the rest of us in the office in her first week of work.

What does this say about businesses that pretend to be social media experts or computer services shops? Are you any more real/human than an 18 year old girl, or think that you can sell “double click, next, next, next, finish” for $100 an hour?

With the concept of “niche” gone, the “blue ocean strategy” turning out to be a fable in the world of global commerce, the “technology business” has to evolve or die. I see so many of my partners waste so much time trying to figure out how to be awesome at the exact same thing they were doing five years ago, all while their managed seat counts go down every month.

The.. technology.. world.. is.. changing.. Nothing new there – the news is the speed at which it’s happening.

My goal in 2010 is to take out the “pricing” and “feature set” from the consideration when our partners consider the competition, because the client base we serve expects it all to be free anyhow. Aligning the technology with the business management is where we’ll thrive.

Full Throttle

I hope you’ve enjoyed my rant for the month, please join our partner program if you’d like to be more involved (and informed) about what we’re doing. For obvious reasons, I can’t just dump it on Vladville anymore because the way I crack jokes among my friends is quite different from how I run a multimillion dollar global business. Damn that feels good to say.

Hope 2010 is all you’ve hoped it would be so far!

It’s been a long time since Own Web Now Corp and ExchangeDefender were all about me. We’ve grown tremendously through the years, with a fair amount of pain, that is almost inevitable with success.

With February 1st right around the corner, I am proud to run an organization that has moved forward in a very big way.

Frankly, we’ve delivered what we’ve promised we would.

Now, I have a favor to ask. As we grow at this next level we’ve earned, it’s more important than ever to do things right. Over the next few months you will be receiving calls from people at Own Web Now. It won’t be from me, or even from anyone on my team. In USA, you’ll be talking with Sheila. In UK, you’ll be talking with Susanne.

I am asking you that you give them your time and your opinion as if it was me waiting to speak with you.

We want to know what we’re doing right and wrong, what we’re doing too much or too little of. Basically, we want to deliver the level of service you expect and make sure we keep all of our partners involved and benefiting from things we do here. Many of the programs you’re seeing us roll out right now had my direct involvement in them – and I didn’t create them for the Ferrari California fund, I created them for you because you asked for them.

I understand that along the way we may have lost some people and shaken up some confidence, but day after day I am getting an overwhelmingly, amazingly positive comments and praise about OWN. I want to make sure that we deliver consistently and stay in the leadership role in this business.

Thank you for your time. And if you ever feel you’re running into dead ends, I am very easy to find. It’s still my company. It’s still your feedback that guides it.

This is the question that has been thrown at me time and time again by partners that I’ve talked to in the last week. The euphoria of the new year had passed. The “Windows 7” migrations didn’t materialize. World in January 2010 is the same as the world in November 2009 – new calendar though.

And it’s getting worse: Walmart to lay off 11,000 people with 5,000 let go last month. Everything from Dollar Store to Louis Vuitton is getting downsized, even the jewelry stores and luxury car dealerships are closing doors: And when even the rich tighten the spending you know nothing good is around the corner.

I don’t have a prediction to share, nor some great insight that I haven’t offered before but I would like to offer two personal opinions:

1) We’re still growing. But… we’re growing rapidly across the products and services that the market demands. If your mind is still stuck in the “that’s not what we do” gear, you need to grow out of it and fast. Bottom line, people are still paying for IT services and they are paying well. If that’s not the case for you, either your marketing sucks or you’re selling the wrong thing.

2) It’s never too early or too late to make changes. If January 25th, 2010 is not what you envisioned when you put your plans together, go back to those plans and figure out how the current measurements compare to your estimates and goals. Look:

We all make mistakes and there is no such thing as perfection – and the measure of the man is what he does after he’s made a mistake.

If things aren’t working out, talk to someone that’s doing well and copy them. Or back to the drawing board. But flooring the accelerator in a car that’s driving on the wrong side of the street is just foolish.

Again, bottom line in difficult times is having a solid plan and being responsive to the demands of the market. You’ve got to keep on moving.

Many of you have been emailing and calling to ask what I’m up to and what’s going on – yes, I have been quiet but not on purpose. We’ve been working remarkably hard on ExchangeDefender 5 and a few other projects and even with 20+ hour days I just haven’t found the time to put anything insightful on Vladville. Certainly nothing you haven’t heard a million times. I apologize if I haven’t gotten back to you via email as well, things have been just amazing and the response to OWN’s success has been remarkable. We’re thankful and we’re working hard to continue earning that business and deliver on our promise. We worked very hard to get to this point and I must admit that I’m enjoying it.

But we have had a fundamental change of philosophy @ Own Web Now. It’s no longer about relationships. This company was built on my back, my money, my instinct and my work ethic. But it didn’t really blow up sky high in profits and revenues until I decided that our technology will speak for itself and it won’t always be pushed by one loudmouth ambitious jackass.

Here is the realty of the situation: Microsoft, Google, Apple, AT&T, Verizon, Dell, HP and the like are coming hard and there is no more niche out there. There is no undiscovered, untapped, imaginary market for goods and services because business technology has become ubiquitous that anyone can consume it. Right now, we know the stakes, we know what it takes to market, sell, deliver and support the solutions people are asking for and (someday soon) I want to be one of the names at the start of this paragraph.

That’s right, we’re focusing on fundamentals here. In November and December we got to test our bandwidth and capabilities – we ran 4 marketing campaigns in the span of 1 month. It rocked! We also found out some minor holes that we needed to kick ass at. I’ve been front and center in the effort to guide the company through that and just get as close as possible to perfect. One thing I learned in the process is that perfection isn’t so much in not making mistakes or delivering the service flawlessly – but setting the right expectation. And with so many people, and so many levels of experience – the expectation varies and if we are to take that next big step we need to get rid of the “we won’t” and “we can’t” ways of limiting ourselves – because it’s not our decision to make, it’s the clients.

I have setup the people and processes at OWN to make a material enhancement to all our product lines – on a monthly basis throughout 2010 and beyond. If ExchangeDefender 5 and the 75 cents / mbox we’re now letting our partners build little empires on is any indication – we are way ahead of our competitors. And it’s not a lead I’m willing to give up. Want to know why?

That’s why. It’s time to go big or give up

Not to forget the home office..

If you don’t work with us @ Own Web Now & ExchangeDefender, you should. I can’t ask for your business, or contribute to your business, in a more plain way than that.

Earlier today we launched the OWN University. That is to say, we formalized the process by which we will be creating, distributing, managing and enhancing the way we will aggressively get businesses into the cloud they can trust. Please check it out here:

http://go.ownwebnow.com

In the “less is more” era, old dogs have to learn new tricks. Next week, we will be applying the same concept to ExchangeDefender, followed by all of OWN cloud solutions – public ones and private ones that just a few hundred of our partners work with us on. Naturally, we’d like to see that number grow

As for the details, I’ll explain them later. For the moment, I’m glad to see this all unified and pushed forward.

The other day a muslim terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who was on a no fly list failed to blow up a flight to Detroit. He successfully sent the panic and travel standards back to Fall of 2001.

This is a business post. Apologies in advance to my Vladville fans who were expecting a rant

What ensued is an combo of outrage, despair and conflicting coverage of processes and procedures that are in place for flights:

• “You will not be allowed to use bathrooms or gadgets during the last hour of your flight”
• “You will not be allowed to bring more than 1 hand item on board”
• “You will be required to check your baggage”
• “There is a different set of policies TSA follows for domestic and international flights”
• “There is a different set of policies TSA is advising the airlines and it’s clients”

Oh my.

What TSA is actually doing here is creating a randomized security protocol so that the would-be-terrorist-hopeful could not efficiently execute their plans.

Every time I get upset at the way I’m being treated I look at the way we treat our clients. Are we doing the same? What have (many) past mistakes taught us about efficiency, standardization, protocols and consistency?

Here are a few takeaways:

1. Every time expectations and deliverables are changed, the overwhelming result is negative – clients that got disappointed by the change are 10x louder than the ones that got a benefit and are silently content.
2. Every time deliverable parameters are changed, dozens of other processes used in the service delivery had to change and the finesse of executing a new process takes a performance hit. In simple words: Monkey’s aren’t experts at pealing a banana in new ways.
3. Conflict from point #2 generates confusion and increases workload on the entire organization and the overall system. The client is upset. The staff is confused. The management is unsure how it all failed.
4. No matter how insignificant the change, or how great the communication: your message will not be received correctly by a large share of your audience.

The biggest message here is that focus should always be to get the basics done right and vigorously address every instance in which you fail. Because everyone (staff, clients) is aware of what the core values and basic deliverables are, there is no argument over what failed – so we all share a responsibility in resolving it to the mutual benefit.

Dating back to the good ol’ SBS Show, we’ve always gotten together at the end of the year, poured some eggnog and looked towards the future. 2010 will be no different. This Wednesday, Mr Erick Simpson, Mr Karl Palachuk and me will be getting into our Delorean, kicking it up to 88 mph and we’re taking you along.

Yeah. We’re that cool. Hoverboard over the pond cool. And yes, we’re bringing back the 2010 World Almanac… and we’re reading the IT Solution Provider pages out loud!

SPAM Show #15 – Live!

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/167456256

8 AM PST – 11 AM EST; Registration required.

Last week we broadcast what is perhaps the funniest IT provider webcast ever made. It featured my partner Alex Rogers and we talked about our School of Southern Charm and Proper Lady Behavior. Due to distortion, it sounded like there were some vulgar words in it, so we won’t rebroadcast that one. However, if you’d like to hear Alex’s wonderful wife, Monique Rogers, SPAM Show #14 is available for download. There is a trick: You need to be our partner. Ok, not really, but you do need to be our fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ExchangeDefender and download it and the other 14 hours at any time. We’re changing this in 2010 as well so tune in for that as well.

Look forward to talking to you, taking your feedback, highlighting your thoughts and opinions during the webcast and more. Can’t make it? Get registered for it now and I’ll email you the download link (won’t be available through the usual channels since it will be live)