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.”

My inbox is flooded, my cell has 3% battery life and the housekeepers organized all the charging cables… somewhere. So instead of doing something useful to make up for taking a 2 hour nap at work today – hey it’s good to be the king – I’m going to answer something that people desperately beg me to teach them every day.

Vision

Overly simplified, it’s not much more than an easy punchline for Scott Adams to throw in the Dilbert comic and help disaffected middle-level management cope with their inability to come up with a better lie than the one they are copying from someone else. Quite simply:

Vision is a process of buying into the lie that someone else has figured out an answer to a problem that nobody else has figured out yet. When you see your bosses talk about the vision, company mission, agenda and even something as routine as promotions and company rank it’s all a plea to have you believe in a lie that might come true if we all wish hard enough.

But what if you haven’t completely given up on life and work?

Over time people become bored with their jobs, companies and lives and decide there are better ways to spend time. For some it’s drugs, for others it’s vacations and for some it’s spending 2 weeks fishing. Whatever it is, some people never see their work through to the eventual success and decide to quit without actually walking out the door. It happens to every mediocre business out there.

But it doesn’t have to.

Allow me to simplify this vision thing, at least in the way that I see it. I spend most of my time emailing, chatting, Facebooking, conference calling or just shooting @#%^ with my partners. When you talk to enough people you start to hear some common problems and you start to pitch different solutions or proposals – either stuff you’ve failed at or seeing what they have failed at so far. Then you think of a solution. Then you wonder if it would work. Then you do some quick math in your head and figure out if you could sell it and…

Voila.

Done.

I know the problem. I know the solution. I’m pretty sure I could make $ marketing, selling and delivering the solution. The vision is the process of getting from where I’m at now to people using it to solve their problem.

It’s actually quite simple. It’s the process that’s troublesome.

The Foolproof Vision Making Process

In the past year we’ve launched three different companies. Two of them are already making money and the next one will in a few weeks. So allow me to share some tips.

Every day I talk to people who have no creative way of figuring out their way out of the box they’ve taped themselves into. It’s probably because I spend most of my time talking to people with technical backgrounds whose job it is to forsee potential problems instead of creative ways to get around them. If you’re one of those take a tennis ball and go hang out in your sales guys office. Keep on bouncing it against the wall behind them until they either jump up and catch it with their teeth or challenge you to a game of phone-handset-tennis-ball baseball world series. If you have more than one sales guy you can either start a fantasy league, betting pool or have the others play the outfield. No matter the process, once the first tie hits the ground you’ll be in the right mental state to work on your vision.

First: The first person you need to sell the dream to is yourself. One of the biggest problems small biz IT folks have is thinking that someone else has figured it all out. They haven’t. So start lying to yourself about the thing you’re about to produce – this way when you lie to your potential clients it will seem extremely genuine.

Second: Understand that your idea is stupid but hopefully nobody else can figure that out until they sign the check: market test your ideas. Call your clients, partners, colleagues, have a staff meeting. Lie until something strikes you down. If it doesn’t it’s safe to say you’ve got the divine go ahead!

Third: Stick with it. It’s easy to point out problems, it’s hard to work around them and actually build something. Everything is dumb, stupid and idiotic when you’re looking at the first draft. Revise. Refine. Redo. But the process of the lie becoming reality is what the vision is all about. This is the hardest part because it involves the most work and time.

Finally: Give it time to fail but have an exit strategy before you even start. I cannot stress this enough. Just because nobody cares about what you’ve done right away or people dismiss it doesn’t mean you’ve failed.. yet. Give it some time. Try to revise it, play with it. Some of the biggest opportunities I’ve missed aren’t in the projects I’ve lost to others, they are in projects that I was too impatient with and didn’t stick with. It also speaks a lot to the maturity of what you’re doing – if you have a 6 month horizon then who would ever sign a 1 year contract with you?

Summary

It’s easy to criticize, it’s hard to work. Before you can convince everyone else that you’ve figured something out you need to convince yourself. The process of selling the idea starts with the idea itself. Vision is the process of lying to yourself hard enough to believe you’re telling the truth to everyone else who is going to lie to themselves in the process of making you an honest person.

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.

For a moment let’s ignore the looming global financial crisis and European Union debt refinancing, ignore the fact that Apple is now worth more than Exxon Mobil or more than the 32 largest banks in Europe (combined!), ignore the terrible PC shipments and outlook from Dell, even ignore Microsoft and virtually every other SMB PC company that’s killing it’s channel program. I think each of those is a blog post of it’s own and it’s something that Kate @ http://www.lookscloudy.com has been covering rather well – but the present is not really what’s all that relevant to your future business development.

Let’s for a moment look at the consumerisation of IT and it’s impact on VARs. It’s a concept and a word so foreign to the Microsoft VAR that even Microsoft spell check can’t hold back it’s red squigly underline and the audience reacts like this:

The biggest news of this past week was not that HP decided to kill the OuchPad (Artist formerly known as TouchPad).

The biggest news of this past week was not even that HP has decided to spin off (read: for the love of god, someone take this boulder off our shoulders) it’s PC business.

The biggest news of this past week has been what HP intends to do to continue growing it’s business.

Apparently, it’s not this. Remarkably, they are so convinced it’s not this that they are willing to sell out the whole inventory for $100, which is less than you’d even pay for a digital photo frame.

The biggest “corporate” challenge to iPad failed so hard and so abruptly that HP is still running nationwide tablet commercials even after they have massacred the product.

What does HP defeated in the area of consumer electronics and disparaged in the nearly $4 billion dollar computer business think it will do in the future? Apparently, it’s enterprise services. What about you?

Here is the billion dollar (or million dollar depending on your aspirations) challenge for the VARs:

Are big box PC makers just criminally mismanaged in a sense that they not only believe they will never catch the iPad but that indeed their best PC years of selling hardware and networking are over?

Regardless of the correct answer to that question, the biggest marketing backers of the SMB VAR (including the partner purging Microsoft) are throwing in the towel and getting in the IT services.

To which the obvious question becomes, what exactly are you going to be managing a few years from now if all your vendors are either calling it quits or competing against you?

I’ll withhold my opinion for the time being and let you ponder on this as quietly or as loudly as you wish.

I will however offer this parting thought: Q1-Q2 and what I have of Q3 so far marks a higher decline in overall VAR activity than we’ve seen just around the Bush recession and financial collapse in 2008. Yet, profitability and revenues are higher than ever before. Simply put, people that are contemplating stuff are dying. People that are working are thriving. With the more apparent shift in the relevance of IT services, what does your business look like 2-3 years out? What are you adding value to in order to get paid if even your existing vendors don’t see themselves in their business lines anymore or show a bleak outlook?

Food for thought indeed.

Tomorrow morning I’m going back on the road for what will hopefully be the shortest conference trip of the year for me – CompTIA Breakaway. It promises to be a great event and while both Looks Cloudy and ExchangeDefender will be there in force, I’m trying to look beyond it much like everyone else. What’s the next big hype that will fall flat on it’s face?

At this very moment, the cloud is a money printing machine.

Aside from that, not much is going on. People are still afraid to make major investments and when they do so they aren’t putting it into traditional hardware and software as you can tell by warnings and financial reports of tech companies. What they are selling like crazy is consumer electronics and that’s happening relatively untouched by the MSP/VAR community because consumer experience is both direct and disposable – lower total cost of ownership.

While I’m quite excited for this years Breakway, I’m also going to predict that it will probably be the greatest one ever – because the conversation is certainly changing. The future of small business IT isn’t in credentials nobody has heard of or an audit board trying to hopelessly chase one fad after another (security, virtualization, health care). It’s this:

This is a retail storefront whose tagline is “PC & MAC Repair” and their draw is a virus removal special starting at $49. They also apparently sell hardware and software, used laptops and generally everything your variety MSP / VAR happens to do.

A decade ago an A+ credential meant something because it was widely recognized as a hardware expertise certification by the IT managers that were hiring IT workers. Ditto for vendor certifications such as Microsoft Certified Partner. Finally bottoming out with Microsoft’s Small Business Specialist logo which separated small business IT experts from attorneys ordering the action pack. But massive new business influx as a result of a new logo – not so much.

OK – Now What?

If you’re heading to CompTIA Breakaway, don’t waste your time getting lost in the vision of things. The current small business marketplace for technology is dictated by the vendors and by the IT Solution Providers that are implementing various bits and pieces of those vendors to deliver their own solution. It’s not the next credential. Or the next vertical. Or the next hype cycle.

Lot’s of people missed the MSP train. They managed.

The Healthcare IT was all air. People moved on.

Many of you will never choose to deal with the cloud. And you’ll be fine too.

Point is to sit down and work on your service delivery and solution – that is ultimately what will make the difference.

It’s you vs. Microsoft/Google/Apple/Dell.

Own Web Now (my real job) makes 90% of it’s revenues from less than 20% of our partner base. We’ve had spectacular growth this year despite cutting our conference budget by 75%. Next year we intend to cut it even more – another half. Not to buy more Ferrari’s but to help you be more successful – there are far more cooler things we could be doing with our cash for our existing partners than spraying conferences in attendees in hope of finding a new partner. It’s clear to me you guys like what we’re doing – the referrals are through the roof and Shockey Monkey, a product with exactly $0 marketing budget, is adding people daily.

One thing I’ve been hearing a lot is:

“Vlad, I’m tired of being the middleman for all this. Just cut me a check.”

I hear you. I’ve been saying the same as well to my vendors – and we’ve been outsourcing stuff aggressively this year. Competitively speaking, you’ve got to pick what you want to be good at and stick to it – but make money on virtually anything. I’m pretty sure that’s the very definition of hustling don’t quote me on it though.

This is quite possibly the best time to be in business IT. The opportunity is tremendous because among all the confusion, people going direct, new hypes and new promises of untapped blue oceans and amazing financing schemes – really hard working people are making tons of money selling the cloud which in turn is fueling their project work and all the other stuff that goes along with it.

To pimpin’

Look forward to seeing many of you at CompTIA – my window there is quite tight – I get in around noon tomorrow and leave after the vendor festival on Tuesday evening. I don’t plan to sleep though so you’ve got 24 hours of my time – easy! Yes, I’ll buy you a beer. No, you can’t have the iPad.  In the meantime, sign up for this:

New ExchangeDefender Archiving Solution Pack

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/275688153

August 4th, 2010 at noon EST – Thursday

Remember, if it’s not something easy that’s going to put $ in your pocket every time you do it, it’s not worth it.

Today two big, obvious, truths were revealed to those who held their sword aloft and said “By the power of Greyskull…”:

1. I am a shameless, selfpromotional opportunisitic guy.
2. I am neither Vartruth nor The Channel Watchdog.

Here is the truth. I spend a truckload of money to attend, sponsor, wine & dine, iPad-coat and act as an overall Santa to the channel. And all you people want to talk about is some tween shenanigans of stuff we all know but don’t sit around and talk about because there is something grander at hand: success.

So now you know what will happen to the next sucker who asks me about the sensationalism in the channel. First, I will tell you I know exactly who it is. Then, I will proceed to pin you in a corner and pitch stuff so hard that cash will bleed out of your ears and eyes. 

What Started This

My ex-wife sent me a txt late at night saying that she was defending my honor whenever my name came up as the obvious identity. Her comment:

“Don’t make me look stupid.”

My response:

“One way you can tell it’s not me is that everything I do is for the goal of promoting myself.”

Obviously you all think it’s me.

And since everyone thinks it’s me – and nobody has claimed Vartruth or The Channel Watchdog – who am I not to exploit it for attention? It registered more people than the last corporate webcast I ran.

You’ve seen this blog for years go after Microsoft, Apple and other folks that I tried to work with. It was self-serving and opportunistic at every step – and I put my name/reputation behind it. Now I was stupid and in my 20’s and the way I justified it at the time was because I could not afford to buy the kind of publicity that things like SBS Show, SPAM Show and Vladville generated when I voiced the displeasure of the community.

But at some point I grew up (I’ll admit I’m still stupid) and found a better way to get things done. Then again, it’s easy to look back from my skybox and point a finger at a 20-something Vlad that was working 20+ hours a day.

Faceless destruction for the sake of damage makes no sense to me. Even The Channel Watchdog asked:

“I have a load of stuff on Chartec, Labtec, and SMB Nation that I am putting together for release. Attacking Harry worries me a little though because everybody thinks he is a saint and my politics are shakey right now”

My response:

I’m not sure what your motivation for doing what you’re doing is but whenever I start to second guess myself I ask “How is this going to make me money?” — if I figure out a way, I go with it. Otherwise, why bother?

You see, we all have a reason for doing what we’re doing.

What I learned from this

Just like almost everything else in the channel, most people are not paying attention. Which in this case is a good thing.

Surprisingly, most people found the stuff generated by Vartruth and Channel Watchdog Unprofessional / Offensive. It’s surprising to me because if I don’t find something amusing or interesting, I ignore it.

I also found out that my deep disappointment in my friends low opinion of me as a shameless selfpromotional pimping machine can be cured by 30 minutes of shameless sales pitching.

What you need to know

Vartruth has disappeared. The Channel Watchdog is still around. But if you’re offended, why do you talk about it, ask who it is, secretly snicker about it all the time.

Would knowing who it was make any bit of difference to you? Would you stop doing business with them, today? If so, it was Scott Barlow. For both. Oh and whoever runs Office 365 and Google Apps. In fact, they collaborated on the whole deal! But if you believe that, you’re an idiot.

As I mentioned in the webcast today, if you continue to pay attention to baseless rumors and support the sites that sensationalize stuff that is not immediately relevant to your business, this will continue. What’s even worse is that if you’re a vendor, it’s only a matter of time until a slow news day makes you the next target.

It’s a cycle. When you legitimatize rumor mongering vendors flock to it because they want eyeballs. They spend big money for even the smallest of banners and ads and then a magical thing happens – there are only so many ways you can touch the same press release you get from your vendors blog, twitter and Facebook. So you know what happens? You stop paying attention. Yes, the traffic dries up. There are only so many times people will care about whether they are the top 10, 100, 200 or 500 people in the industry – and then you read baseless stuff like “Hear folks are making career changes” or “Which service provider is going under next, stay tuned” – which happens ALL the time but you still click, still move stuff around and then act surprised when the very form you legitimized is somehow offensive to you because it publishes stuff that is slightly more controversial.

The marital infidelity of certain popular channel vendors is every bit as interesting as who just got fired from a major distributor as is the brand of bike or car I’m buying this week. The only trouble is when you pay attention to some of it you no longer get to choose where the line between appropriate and offensive happens to be. And by virally spreading it, you don’t get to pick who the cannon is pointed at.

So to the shocking number of people that filled out the survey and attended the webinar – I hope you enjoyed the prank. Remember what I said: At this very time dozens of great seminars and training opportunities are taking place and you chose to hang out with me. I hope I made it worth your while. It’s not that we as grownups don’t like a juicy rumor, it’s that we as grownups have a responsibility to focus on business first and foremost.

Who the folks behind the avatars happen to be doesn’t matter to you one bit. What matters is whether you choose to be sucked into it or choose to run a business.

One of the more neverending debates I have with my entrepreneurial friends is over development of new business lines. Regardless of how big or small you are, venturing outside of your comfort zone tends to require new skill, new connections and cash. Most of all, it’s about the right timing.

There are a few things that success is not about:

Potential. Ever hear someone tell you that they have an awesome business, incredible revenue growth and potential – but they just don’t have the cash to grow as fast as they possibly could? Bullshit. Investors love great ideas and growth potential – what they don’t like the risk. So if you have an incredible potential and incredible risk – you’re like everyone else out there.

Uniqueness. Almost every hopeless entrepreneur that has sold himself his own dream believes they have a unique business model. The problem with that is that business models are easy to copy and more savvy people can get things done faster than people obsessed with perfection and quality.

Connections. It’s all about who you know, right? Unless you deliver a total disaster. Then those connections are your enemy because nothing spreads faster than bad news. In every new venture, you have to establish new partnerships but that is by no means the primary vehicle for business development. For some reason, many people I’ve met in business spend an incredible amount of time trying to network but it rarely works out – I suppose because it’s more enjoyable and easier than actually working.

Right Message, Wrong Timing

Even if you have a great product, if your timing is wrong you’re going to be spinning tires. For example, if you just decided that you were going to start building networks or selling computers at the time when the world turned to the cloud and tablets, you’d be out of luck even if you got fancy with financing because you’re pushing in the wrong direction. Marketing hardware and large investments in a bad economy is the wrong message.

But let’s say you had the right message – it’s all about the cloud now so let me ride the hype! I’m gonna build me a data center! Well, slow down Bob. First, what is different from your data center and thousands of others that are already built and not at capacity.. aside from not having SAS70 Type II audits, bandwidth redundancy, power redundancy, business history – you know, the stuff that takes years to develop and prove? Being right alone is not enough if you’re showing up late to the show.

Right Message, Perfect Timing.

The trick to having the right message is research, experience, case studies, test marketing. That part is relatively easy.

In terms of timing, you have to be lucky.

There you go, class dismissed. Do some research and toss the dice and hope they come up lucky. Hey, the blog is free

On a more serious note, I wanted to write this because I speak to a lot of you that are currently reorganizing and refocusing your companies to move them forward. Not all business models work forever – we had a great run with managed services. The cloud move in the small business we are enjoying right now won’t last forever either.

Focus on growing a dynamic, versatile company. Don’t fall in love with what you’re trying to sell, try to build what your customers want to buy. Demand should drive sales which should drive marketing which should drive more demand. If your chain is not spinning in that direction or is missing any of the components you’re going nowhere fast.

Most of all, accept failure. For every Own Web Now, ExchangeDefender, Shockey Monkey and CloudBlock I’ve got 20 other things I’ve tried to build and it just didn’t work out. Remember all that hype around Health Care IT that flopped? Well, what if you sunk all that money and effort into the cloud? The point isn’t to dwell on the stuff that didn’t pan out but to stay focused on building the next thing.

Do your research.

Stay ahead of the curve.

Stay loyal to your clients and deliver what they are asking.

Everything else will fall into place given enough passion, effort and luck.

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.

It’s been a few months since I’ve offered you an update on Shockey Monkey. Since last fall the product has been very solid and in a few months we will be celebrating our first birthday!

Over the past few months I’ve been ignoring overjoyed by the amount of interest for Shockey Monkey among software vendors. To be honest, I believe Arnie Bellini (of ConnectWise) deserves more credit for that than I do, but I will take the compliment. While I have listened to some offers (mostly VC) I have not seriously considered any for one simple reason: Shockey Monkey is about you, not us. That’s why it’s free. We’ve helped more people enter the MSP business without spending a dime than I think anyone else around and it’s been my way of saying thanks for putting ExchangeDefender on the map. Personally and truly.

What does one thing have to do with the other? Well, shortly after launching Shockey Monkey many of you told us that in order for it to fit in your portfolio it had to play nicely with the stuff you’ve already invested your money in (primarily RMMs) – so the focus of the first quarter and second quarter has been on developing integrations rather than stuff from Vlad-thinks-this-would-be-cool™ pile.

Which is not as easy as it appears. It’s like dating. When you’re in kindergarten. It’s hard to make a case for someone to integrate with you when you’ve been on the market for 8 months. Yet folks took a chance on us.

I’m happy to report that you’ll see some major integration announcements soon (some are kind of obvious since we’ve actually been at their conferences to demo the product).

Now…

Over the next month or so I’ll be going to three different countries to talk to potential suitors that have shown interest in Shockey Monkey. I think our solution has a lot of potential outside of the PSA marketplace and I want to explore some ideas about my opinion of where the MSP marketplace is going with the cloud.

Like I said, much of the interest has come on the back of the moves ConnectWise has made with their investment portfolio. With each bag of cash they drop, the more complete their solution becomes (which now includes a world class PSA, RMM and a quoting tool) and comparatively puts the other competitors at a disadvantage.

You can’t hate capitalism.

But if you compete with what they acquired you also can’t stand still and just stay in your comfort zone of the solution you’ve developed because the client now expect more than just a point solution and a token integration.

It’s really not so different than the world that the solution providers find themselves in – you’ve got to be the jack of all trades.

Like I’ve said before, we’re not going to be competing with ConnectWise, Autotask or anyone else. I feel they are in an entirely different league and frankly I don’t have the budget nor the motivation to help people learn how to run and build an MSP. My business is the cloud.

But if the licensing of our technology can help fund monkey’s development, bring some features to the market faster, reduce or eliminate the fee for the Pro feature set and help many aspiring MSPs and VARs step up their game… that’s good news for me, you and by tangent even ConnectWise and Autotask. With every Shockey Monkey portal out there, the pool of clients looking for a PSA grows, the utilization and time billing is improved, spending on supporting MSP tools increases and our entire MSP community ultimately benefits.

Or I’m dead friggin wrong and Shockey Monkey is still free to you just for the asking

Who loves ya, baby?

MSPs and IT Solution Providers have an inherent business model flaw: They can’t compete on both price and performance at the same time. Your solution cannot simultaneously be the best and the cheapest because the cheapest is always getting cheaper and the best is exceedingly difficult to accomplish.

So how do you compete? I don’t know, and I know exactly. Allow me to explain I recently got an email from a long time ExchangeDefender partner who was asking for further volume discounts of our product:

“Can you also look at my account and see if you can do anything about the pricing – we continue to bring on more ExchangeDefender accounts and I don’t want to have to downgrade the accounts to the lighter versions to help us maintain our margins in the face of more and more competition.  Thanks.”

Sociopath Enterprise Architect

To succeed in this business you need to be able to wake up each day and shift mindsets quickly.

I myself had to face the line above – many times. As a matter of fact, I and other OWN sales folks have been approached about meeting BPOS pricing – which we just cannot do. I think we lost most if not all of those deals because quality of service doesn’t matter to many – only price does.

So my options are cut all the vendor sponsorships we have, kill all the partner programs, stop answering my phone and try to compete with BPOS until Microsoft realizes they are doomed against Google and give it away for free (and run me out of business in the process). That’s one option, but I honestly would not wake up and drag myself to work each day to build a crippled product.

So we launched CloudBlock – You can now buy hosted Exchange with more storage than Own Web Now provides for $2.95 / month.

We’ve also been approached time and time again to compare our ExchangeDefender product with Postini, AppRiver, MX Logic <insert antispam product here> and asked to compete on price for their lowest tier antispam solution. Now, when you look at ExchangeDefender it’s $2 a month. For that you get the base antivirus/antispam but you also get 1 year of LiveArchive on Exchange 2010 with no storage limits, you get web filtering, web file sharing, encryption, integration with your PSA and RMM tools and even a free version to use on your own stuff. But after hearing “I just need antispam” a billion times, I allowed the team to create an ExchangeDefender Essentials offering for $1 a month: spam and virus filtering.

Do we spend a lot of time thinking about the Essentials offering? Not at all. There isn’t even a product ID for it in our billing system – all 5 people that have ordered it just have ExchangeDefender with a 50% discount. The offering has been as successful as a flying brick.

On the other hand…

When we decided to publish Shockey Monkey as a commercial product, we decided to give it away for free. No restrictions, no catches, no limited time trials, no approval process at all. You just fill out a form and 60 seconds later you have a full blown client management portal.

If you want some of the advanced features, you can sign up for the Pro.

This is the exact opposite of the ExchangeDefender and OWN business models: of writing really, really, really great and profitable stuff.

Why is it different? Because there is no “markup” on a solution that you’re going to use to run your own house. But I don’t know a single MSP that doesn’t charge at least $5 for ExchangeDefender. Either all of my partners are total crooks, or they are great at sales.. or there is a valuable addon that comes with deploying these solutions, one that (when managed properly) businesses are willing to pay for and support their business on.

Skitzo enough for you?

It all just comes down to what kind of business you want to run, what kind of solution you want to offer and what motivates you to work to please your clients.

For me, it’s all about ExchangeDefender, Shockey Monkey, OWN. But I’m an entrepreneur and I’m willing to take anyone’s money with CloudBlock, ExchangeDefender Essentials and anything else from folks that are willing to compromise. I would never sell those to a client but if that’s what you need to build your business that is your decision to make.

Do you want it good or cheap?

That is the only question that matters.

When you build your solution stack, do you want a good one or cheap one?

My name is all over ExchangeDefender. I go to trade shows all the time. If my solution was terrible there would be a line of people waiting to beat my ass. I have seen CEO’s that have since stopped going to shows for having their butt chewed out by their clients. I never want to be in that situation or put my people in that kind of a position. That is why all of my VPs go to these events, answer the phone and work with our partners. That is why our partners sell our products and know someone is behind them.

But if you need to cut costs to remain competitive.. That is a race that goes in only one direction. Whether you have your successful business model figured out (like Shockey Monkey) or are just serving a wider market (like CloudBlock).. I hope there is a method to the madness.

And to answer the original question.. No, ExchangeDefender price is not going down. It’s going up. If that’s not for you, I understand and I got options. You can have Essentials for $1 or you can have CloudBlock Antivirus/Antispam for $0.35. Just remember that there is only one solution I stand behind, and while I will feel sorry for you when the 35 cent one doesn’t work out, I’ll only offer 35 cents worth of compassion. Now.. roll the vartruth video.