As a firm believer in the ABP methodology it pains me to even ask if you should always be pimping or whether there is perhaps a time that it’s not appropriate. So consider this as a part of public service.

First of all, I understand. Economy is tough. Lot’s of people are unemployed or facing unemployment on the horizon. Market is oversaturated with talent which drives wages down and IT Solution Providers are more careful about how they spend their money. So you’ve got to earn it.

Professionally speaking, big trade show off hours are a virtual job fair for many. It’s the best place to go if you are looking for the next step if your career.

With one huge exception: Trade show hours when we interact with our clients. This is not the time to be selling me stuff. I know it’s easy, I know it’s fast and I know that you can pin someone in a corner – but it’s disrespectful. We spend a lot of money to present our solutions and if you come to a booth trying to sell something I always say the following:

“That sounds interesting and I would love to consider it. Right now I need to focus on dealing with our clients so if you don’t mind let’s schedule something – give me your card and I’ll follow up with you.”

Then I proceed to tear up the card.

Sell to me in an elevator. Sell to me at lunch. Sell to me while we’re walking to a meeting. Sell to me at a party. Sell to me in the hallway. Even interrupt me while I’m having a meeting in a lobby. But if you attempt to sell to me while you know well enough that I’m actually working – in my booth during show hours nonetheless – I’m sorry, I have to pass.

It’s all about the first impression. If I don’t know you and my first impression is that you’re disrespectful or worse (unaware) then even if your offering is somewhat intriguing I will not associate a positive feeling to what you are selling.

So yes, always be pimping. Except while someone else is pimping already.

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.

The fever surrounding the daily channel soap opera has come to new heights as VARs apparently find their day-to-day jobs boring. You’ve probably heard or seen Vartruth video series on youtube as it spanked one vendor after another (or the even more hilarious public spanking of Harry Brelsford by Robin Robbins as a result of it) or the more recent outing of MSP vendor dirty laundry by the Channel Watchdog.

Tomorrow, at 2PM EST, Channel Watchdog and Vartruth will unveil their identity:

Click here to register!

Please join us for this one-time-only webcast during which we will not only introduce you to the folks behind the controversy.. but also back it with the live interview, email logs and more.

But what if you can’t attend? Well, you can still play and win an ExchangeDefender tshirt. Just complete this survey and email vlad@vladville.com when you’ve done it – and you’re in!

Who is behind Vartruth and Channel Watchdog? Think you know?

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/?C7QFFG6

Join in the fun!

Since early 2003, this blog (and it’s blogger.com predecessor) chronicled the Fast Times at SMB high, the rise and fall of several business models and the lessons learned along the way to building wealth and solutions for the SMB technology marketplace. From the network engineer to SPF to IT Consultant to VAR to MSP to Master MSP era’s, it’s been a fun ride and it’s also been 10 years since I’ve had a real vacation (instead of 2-3 days here and there).. so.. as both I and my company move on to the next chapter in our lives, I figured it would be fitting to sum up the last 10 years of SMB IT and explain how and why things are changing.

The Cloud Prior to 2002

From roughly 1997-2003, the SMB world was preoccupied with simply establishing a presence. From the massive buildout of LANs across small businesses to building web pages, this was the era during which people figured there was a world beyond @aol.com or @compuserve.com. Microsoft was taking over the network dominance from Novell and for the most part the IT businesses of this time were high on skill and highly compensated for it.

My first job in 1996 involved me talking to SMBs and helping them write connection scripts for Trumpet Winsock. With the release of Windows 95 the obstacle of connecting to the Internet was nearly eliminated and it created the largest surge of small business users trying to get to it. Along with it came the IT Consultant who no longer had to have a tremendous amount of networking skill – just listen to the customer and know who to call for help.

This was also the moment at which technology became affordable and available. Purchasing computers immediately prior to this era required setting aside thousands of dollars to place the order, waiting weeks if not months for your 486 or that shiny new Pentium, upgrading your modem or USR Courier firmware every fall – naturally, you wanted to consult more than the sales guy when parting with so much money or reading books (yes, books – thick ones with no pictures) to get up and running. Prior to this it wasn’t simply enough to want something and have money to buy it – you had all sorts of considerations and limitations in place. People had to find out if they were on copper or SLIC lines, they learned their distance from the central office or DMARC. 

This era ended with the ability to walk into Best Buy and walk out with everything you needed 20 minutes later.

With this mass availability of technology the biggest business for SMB consultants was connecting all these computers, printers and “the Internet.”

Primary business: LAN buildouts. Most of us made money on the side designing web sites, setting up an online presence, upgrading networks to Windows 95, NT4 and dreaming about XP.

SMB, The Cloud and 2003

This was the year that everything changed. Windows XP had taken off, Microsoft announced Office 2003 and SBS 2003.

For the first time, ever, it was the user that was put in charge. SBS 2003 was in fact designed to allow the business owner to manage things, not the IT department.

There was a catch here. Because things got so easy for people that were computer savvy, suddenly if you were in business but not on the Internet you were at a huge disadvantage.

Computers got cheap. Internet access got even cheaper. The demand for all things IT skyrocketed. We got mobile.

It also marked a gold rush of SMB IT jobs. Prior to this, most SMBs didn’t have an IT department, the closest they got to one was having one of the employees kids come after school to fix computer problems. But troubleshooting network connectivity wasn’t as easy as changing the screen resolution or creating desktop shortcuts. Enter the “IT Consultant”

This was also an era in which being an SMB IT Consultant went from a highly profitable hobby to an actual professional that had to talk about more than just technology. Because the job of connecting everyone and everything became more time consuming, it also became extremely expensive: justifying costs, explaining the tradeoffs, presenting alternatives and being a part of planning stages was the new norm.

It also shifted many of the existing companies from being technology enthusiasts to focusing on the business. The rise of VAR came from the rapidly declining costs of hardware, software and directly from the decrease in complexity. Because the costs started shifting from the cost of purchase to the cost of deployment and support, established SMB IT companies started reselling a lot more than just their time or their one vendor they were certified/authorized for.

Primary business: Network infrastructure. Beyond computers and monitors, IT in small business became less of a tool and more a part of the process. Margins on hardware declined but margins on support and billable hours exploded.

2004-2005 The Dawn of Cloud

Now even laptops were affordable. Internet was everywhere and it was free. It started showing up at Starbucks and McDonalds. Email became free and Google’s Gmail launched with 1GB of storage.

SMB IT started to mature and the support personnel that came with it was under more fire to respond quickly to problems and outages. Businesses started relying on technology more and demanded it on mobile devices. At home. On the road.

Assuring the uptime and eliminating ugly encounters with large service bills gave rise to managed services model. VARs could now get a more predictable level of revenue and eliminate the surprises that came with ad-hoc support.

The key here was that network control became decentralized: you no longer had to be in the office to work and the IT provider no longer had to stop by to fix the problems or perform maintenance tasks.

Primary business: VAR. The more dependent companies became on technology, the more stuff they bought and wanted it connected and sync’d to their existing infrastructure.

2005 – 2008 The Fall of Steel

As the small IT solution providers were building their management cloud, they were simultaneously discounting the relevance and eventual success of large software companies who no longer wanted middlemen at the gate. The entire SMB IT food chain turned from steel and towards services.

IT providers faced their second major growth challenge in a decade: maintaining technical expertise while supporting/migrating/project planning of legacy systems.

For the first time we no longer were preoccupied with the faster, newer processor or the next big OS – we were spending more time trying to keep the old stuff up.

It was also the beginning of the end. With software/hardware companies at odds with the clients and partners that dealt with the client issues, someone had to fix the problem.

Primary business: Support.

2008 The Fall of Bear Sterns & Global Depression. The rise of IT consumerism.

To this day, the most popular Vladville post is the one covering the fall of Bear Sterns that plunged us into a depression/recession. Almost immediately following March 16, 2008 folks stopped looking forward with technology as an investment and focused on it’s cost.

This was bad news for pretty much everyone. Large companies gutted their IT departments. Small companies froze projects, purchases and more.

This was the era of “Do we really need ___?”

This was the tipping point for the cloud in SMB. Up to this point, the sales were largely based on the solution fit and the new features that solved problems. The discussion went from buying something new and towards using something less expensive.

At the same time, technology became more personal and the division between work PC and home PC blurred with the new wave of smartphones, web sites and online services. The more cool stuff people used, the more of it ended up in the business.

Suddenly workers were not willing to wait for the IT department to get things online or to allow something that restricted their control – they just signed up for an online service and eliminated the middleman. In SMB, we were the middleman.

Primary business: Support.

2008 – 2011: Cloud, Cloud, Cloud

The title sums it up. IT providers, to both large and small companies, were dealing less with steel and cables and more with consumer devices, online services, hosted services and gadgets.

The era of buying something that would break and then cost you to fix it was replaced with the subscription service that (once it broke) could be substituted with another. When it was no longer needed it got handed down (iPod, iPad, iPhone) or repurposed.

Primary business: Pimpin’ – anything that could be marked up, measured or required IT assistance got a plan attached to it.

The Future

The future, or the end of the past I’ve outlined so far, is surprisingly similar.

The frustration of IT Solution Providers over not being able to move ahead quickly is met with the rapidly declining demand for their services. The consumers (not clients anymore) are willing to pay for certain services but that doesn’t make IT Solution Providers profitable or produce a reliable revenue stream. User friendly gadgets and user friendly online services seamlessly integrate with one another and with social networking and Google, solving problems is easier than ever.

The error margin is widening and tolerance for failure is higher as we have alternatives. If the computer is dead, you pick up your tablet. If it’s dead, you go to your smartphone. If you don’t have reception, you’re never too far from free wifi. Service companies get by without even posting a phone number on their web sites and support is peer based through social networking sites and forums. The value of the human interaction, while desirable, is not compensated enough for it to exist.

This is a far cry from a highly competent, highly skilled and full service IT solution provider. They are deemed too expensive. Meanwhile, a large cloud service provider loses tens of thousands of accounts and escapes without a scratch.

Let me make this clear: This is the end of IT Service Provider business as we’ve known it.

Without being able to pick the low hanging fruit (remote managed services) IT Solution Providers will find a harder time trying to pay off the huge investment in the tools and training they bought to build the business up in the first place. It’s not like all the servers and IT demands are suddenly going to disappear and be replaced by the iPad or the next Android tablet, but with the consumers ability to find quick and cheap alternatives the profitability and business viability of your typical IT Solution Provider is questionable.

That is a difficult thought to swallow but as you can read in this post, it is not the first time our industry and our profession has faced a challenge. What is new is that at some point the paths of software/hardware manufacturers and those that support their solutions diverged. The software/hardware manufacturers won – they are selling more stuff than ever but the support jobs that existed to get that technology in the hands of consumers aren’t needed. They made devices cheaper, software more reliable, user experience more friendly and the consultant unnecessary.

Everything has become a subscription service. There will still be edge cases, a slim minority that will either never be able to accept that or use it. But business is seldom about edge cases and IT services aren’t luxury goods.

It is time to take a good hard look at what makes money and what doesn’t, what sells and what doesn’t, and what the marketplace is actually demanding. In my career I’ve been blessed enough to build and sell computers with a $1,000 margin, collect thousands of dollars for a migration that took half a day, get thousands of dollars just for offering my opinion on a conference call and get paid for seeing the progress bar move from left to right.

Those days are gone. So is Vladville’s coverage and fascination with it. I have a month-long vacation coming up to reflect on the past decade of the fun in this business and look forward to coming back and talking about what’s next. In the meantime, I encourage you to sign up for our Own Web Now blog and Looks Cloudy site.

Continued as a part of the New Year review blog posts. Out with the old, in with the new? Well, a year is a loooong time and there is a lot of old stuff that needs to be cleared off the schedule. If you run a small business, odds are you have people take on roles as the organization grows and not all the roles and all activities are in the best interest of the company. Even worse, some could be taking on too many roles while others are just hiding from the corporate axe. Finally, some could be doing a ton of mundane tasks with no value and can feel unappreciated for all their hard work while not understanding that it doesn’t matter.

I’m watching the Tim Tebow special on ESPN. Tim Tebow was a Florida quarterback, Heisman Trophy winner, 2x national champion, etc. The special follows him through the months leading up to the NFL draft and he is talking about his training session: Did I work the hardest? Did I stay the longest? A successful day is a day in which I become better than I was yesterday.

Businesses operate the same way. We’re only as good as we are this day / quarter / year. So this week we are running a special exercise that I hope brings more discipline into what we’re doing and how.

This week I asked all of my staff to send me a list of things they do. Office Space style: What it is you would say you do around here?

There are several reasons for this: I want to know what you’re wasting you’re the time on. I want to know what you’re doing. What is your primary responsibility? What is your secondary responsibility? What are some areas that you’re working on that I could develop into a full time role? What are some of the areas that I should remove from your schedule? Are you really spending that much time doing that?

Whose decision is it anyway?

What is everyone working on? If you’ve paid attention to e-myth, you wouldn’t need this exercise. Unfortunately, striking a balance between being an overbearing micromanager and inspiring leader that doesn’t make any decisions is very difficult.

If you have a good team around you, chances are that they have picked up some of the slack that you were not aware of. Or developed processes and means for dealing with the problems they encounter working with clients day-to-day.

In government that’s known as Form 114-A. In small business that’s called “I like working with Bob, can you transfer me to him?”

So here is where it gets ugly: Some employees will, from the most positive angle possible, waste a ton of your time and money. They don’t know that they are doing anything wrong – from their standpoint they are helping you. You don’t know any better either – from your standpoint they are robbing you blind. Reconciling the fact that someone is wasting their salary on mundane tasks goes across as well as “Ma’am, your baby is ugly.”

I’m particularly terrible about this. As a matter of fact, around the Orlando office I’m known as The Dreamcrusher. From the standpoint of my own ignorance, I always offered a honest opinion when I saw something heading for a sure failure. Most people tend to assume that the work just materialized out of nowhere and that the company with all it’s problems and solutions just appeared out of nowhere. No, motherfucker – I’m the big bang. I know where I’ve cut the corners, I know where I just got things to work and I’ve tried to fix certain things over and over again to the point that I’ve been where most people are when they propose solutions to problems that have existed for a while. Not all of our problems are caused by negligence you know ; )

So what are we doing different this year? Well, personal comment first:

I’m big on roles. Everyone has a primary role – whatever it is they are hired to do. Then there is their secondary support role – something that they are capable of doing to help the person that’s an expert / in charge of doing.

The greatest thing you can do in your primary role is automate it and move yourself on to the next problem. Some employees cannot grasp this concept. They feel like fixing problems will remove the reason for their employment. At McDonalds, yes. An automated drink dispenser has sent many back to the vocational school. In a professional organization – no. We value problem solvers. If you’ve figured out how to remove personnel (ie: human incompetence factor) from an equation you’re both worth more and likely capable of solving bigger problems.

Here is what I asked for:

1. List of things you’re responsible for
2. List of things you work on
3. Your daily schedule

Let’s break it down:

1. List of things you’re responsible for – the only opinion that matters is mine. I want to know what my employees feel is their primary cause for employment. This is critical because if they are focusing on areas that I do not value they are not moving towards the goals that I have set for them. They could be the best damn fish slicer in the world but if their job is tweaking SpamAssassin rulesets, we both need to refocus.

2. List of things you work on – the only opinion that matters is mine. I want to know what you’re doing with the 8 hours you spend at work. Browse the web? Update Facebook? Build beta environments? Reboot servers? What? What? This is critical – most people in professional services firms do not know everything their employees do. Trick is, your employees know what you need to be doing better than you do – from an operational sense at least. What they do not know is how this fits into the solution you are trying to build. These two need to be on the same page – and it’s the sole purpose of this exercise.

3. Your daily schedule. This one is split down the middle: Your sales people shouldn’t be making assigned client calls in the morning – nobody is going to pick up the phone on the west coast at 9:30 AM EST. If they do, you’re in trouble! the name of the game here is optimization: are the tasks that fill up your 8 hour day used in the best possible way?

Optimization

Find out where your employees are wasting time – help them understand what they are doing wrong and fix it.

Find out where your employees have uncovered potential in operations – and invest in it.

Find out if your employees are making the best of their workday – and rearrange it until it’s perfect.

Find out if your employees are doing multiple jobs – document it and make them a manager.

Find out if your employees are halfassing multiple jobs – cut their responsibilities and refocus them.

Find out if your employees are slacking on their sole job – and fire them.

Realize you’re working with human beings. Most people really do try their best. But their best needs to be aligned with your best interests and their expertise. Some people are organized. Some people are driven. Some people are just full of crap. There is a role for everyone. But if you don’t ask, and don’t make it a point to guide them to what you want them to be doing, then it’s your fault you’re underutilizing or beating down your team.

Most people want to be good at their jobs. Most people want to do what’s best for the client. Unfortunately, what is the best for the client may not be what’s in the best interest of the organization. What wins? Well, depends on whether you like receiving your paycheck or not. That’s not to say that you’re fired if you don’t do it my way – but if I’m unable to convince you that you need to follow my plan (that a lot of other people are already aboard on) then you might not be a fit going forward. There is a middle ground between completely heartless and completely compassionate. But it has to be driven by reason and the agenda.

Your job as the boss is to make sure your team is the best they can be. If they aren’t, that’s your fault. Employees job is to get things done in a way that moves the organization forward. If they don’t, they aren’t employees anymore.

But if everyone is not on the same page, you’ve got a catastrophe on your hands. People feel overworked, underappreciated, underpaid, unloved and lose their sense of being a critical part of the team. Listen, if you weren’t valuable, you wouldn’t be employed. If you are employed, you need to kick ass in the direction that the guy with the corner office points to.

Business is a team effort. Get to know it.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, young Vlad set out to write a free PSA. He failed, big time. The longer he kept on lying to himself about the next beta being useful, the further away the competition moved. Eventually, the goal of building a free PSA and a tool for IT Solution Providers died an uneventful death.

Now with the apologies to the British Empire, estate of Charles Dickens and the fans of A Christmas Carol, I proudly present a (hopefully) inspirational message of what happens when you follow the best in people and focus on doing something nice.

…

Our story begins in 2008 in Orlando. The trade show exhibit hall area is empty, nothing around but a few Freeman employees running around in forklifts destroying thousands of dollars of marketing material. Ebenezer is busy stuffing the marketing collateral and display booth in boxes where out of nowhere, the Ghost of CPA’s Past appears. He sits in the new IKEA chair and starts to tell a tale of what the life could be for the young Ebenezer:

“You know Vlad, if you tie in your billing together you’d be years ahead of the other guys”

Imagining the life of Maserati’s and someone else tearing down his trade show booth, Ebenezer opens up the window and asks his development staff just how far along the billing integration is. They look up at him as if he’s lost his mind; even in the API’s were there and we could do it, the mess on Ebenezer’s side is far too great. “When I come back to the Office, this is the first thing we’re talking about. Forget that PSA thing we’re working on.”

…

It’s a cold Nashville morning in spring of 2009 and Ebenezer is long over his PSA days now. Sitting in his booth, exhausted from handing out t-shirts and talking about LiveArchive, Ebenezer is visited by the Ghost of CRM’s Present. Dressed in a t-shirt and a suit jacket, the ghost tells an entirely different future – one filled with social media, interaction, looking beyond a town square and all it’s small trade.

“Imagine a marketplace filled with experts. I don’t know anything about building a VoIP system, but I can find one in the marketplace. We both use the same process control so we can sell a single solution professionally. Then extend that marketplace to the cloud, to Linux, to anything you can imagine.”

Ebenezer awakens in Orlando, looking at the blueprints for automating cloud services.

…

It’s spring time in Dallas and the land is green and orange. The Ghost of CPA’s Past is back and he’s bought every turkey in the marketplace. Everyone is rejoicing at the feast with the busy farmer working from before sunrise to after sunset to keep the villagers happy. Although the times are hard, everyone is working and trying to earn some more coal for the fire.

The Ghost of CPA’s Past sits down with Ebenezer again:

“I’m ready to blow this thing world-wide. Cloud is the real deal. I don’t know if you’re the guy or not, but if you tie in your cloud services to where we are going…”

Ebenezer calls the office and yells at Bob Cratchit: “Take all the gold off my desk and send it to Dell. We’re tripling the size of our network.”

…

Ebenezer triples the size of the worldwide network. Spends countless gold to get the system working with both the Ghost of CPA’s Past and the Ghost of CRM’s Present. Earns great praise in the marketplace, people rejoice.. yet.. there is little follow-through behind the festivities. It’s nearly fall of 2009 and neither of the worlds described by the ghosts are quite as nice as they have seemed.

Ebenezer sits down with Bob Cruchit, Tiny Travis, Fred and Mrs. Cruchit:

“Perhaps we are onto something else here. We’re now living in the world that the ghosts showed me. Yet, the marketplace I see is far broader. We meet villagers every single day who don’t have the tools – working with other villagers, other artisans, other crafts people that could use what we do every single day. Perhaps if we gave it all away, we could get them to use our cloud? Maybe if we started thinking about everyone else and what they could do with our software first, for free, we could make a true difference.”

…

Epilogue

It’s Summer of 2010 and Ebenezer is in Dallas at a huge dinner. It’s the launch of Shockey Monkey, the biggest turkey anyone has ever seen. And everyone is invited. Everyone gets a free meal.

The End? The Beginning.

Editors Cut & Deleted Scenes

Everyone needs a villain. Competition is an easy motivator and it helps polarize the parties so that the few really driven people can move the whole group forward.

Shortly after building Shockey Monkey in 2006 I realized that it is nearly impossible to run two businesses well. Even harder in the same house. It’s hard work trying to be the best. Best at two different things? I don’t know how GE and Philip Morris do it but in my 20′s I couldn’t figure it out.

One difference in the way the world turned in 2006, and how it changed as a result of the ghost’s visitations, is that my attitude towards what I’m building as the CEO turned into something positive instead of something competitive.

When the Ghost of PSA’s Past asked me if I was the guy to build the worldwide cloud, I jumped at it without hesitation. My team spent a lot of frustrating hours to make it happen because it benefited our partners. Our partners embraced us around the world, despite the problems, and we all benefited. Did I know that the ghost was also having that same talk with another guy from San Diego, only to see that deal die last winter and show signs of resurrection recently? Of course, but we pushed forward and built an even better billing tool for it. When the ghost chose my competitors product to protect his cloud and it crippled him for days, I offered to help for free. When he then invited that same competitor to speak for free in front of his user group and later asked me to pay for the same privilege, I still sponsored his party and still keep on developing for the platform. Business world is not about social justice – it is not about what others are getting that you aren’t getting. It’s about what you’re willing to do yourself, your effort, to earn the business.

No matter the roadblocks, you have to stay positive if you actually believe in what you’re building every day. Imagine the negative stance on all of these: They want to buy a different cloud company so we’re going to stop writing software for their platform! They are using our competitor, endorsing and showcasing them to our partners for free so we’re going to do something bad to them instead! Think about it, where does that leave you? Business is not a war in which you kill your competitors, there is no profit in that. Business is about building a better product so you can win your clients trust and business. Plenty of profit in that!

When the Ghost of CRM’s Present heard my presentation about giving away Shockey Monkey for free, he stood up in front of a whiteboard and started drawing up ideas for how my ideas may be able to grow. He broke down my dreams one-by-one and told me just how much effort went into building a professional quality system, saving us literally years worth of effort. This makes sense, this doesn’t make sense, this doesn’t turn the needle, have you thought of licensing that, how about this? I showed up in Albany with a few dozen slides of half baked ideas and I walked away with a business plan.

Both ghosts have been phenomenally encouraging and inspiring in my effort to bring something valuable to the marketplace.

There are plenty of negatives in every business relationship. If you focus on those, all it can do is destroy you. Sure, it makes for an easy motivator and a great story whenever there is public conflict. But how do you win? By focusing on running someone out of business? I have never met anyone like that in my time as an entrepreneur and I’m not sure how one even shows up for work if they are wired like that.

So given all the bad blood in the tragedy that is the IT reseller channel, I have given it the past 13 years. In that time, I’ve always focused on how do we make things better for everyone that relies on us. When we decided to look at Shockey Monkey again, we didn’t frame it in the IT world. We asked ourselves – how can this thing benefit any kind of a business out there. When you boil it down to the basics, all businesses struggle with the same problems so why can’t there be a single simple way of dealing with customer relationships, invoices, work orders, projects, tasks, communications. Delivering the service, charging people for it and then paying your staff is 90% identical in all service organizations.

We set out to build the simplest tool we could imagine.

We are now on a cusp of technical expertise not being a service for emerging technology or a professional skill needed to deal with technical pain points. We are now in a world of mature technology and simplicity, that partners us up with our clients on tying technology to process execution and vice versa.

I hope you find this inspiring. I’ve had every opportunity in the world to be angry, to feel mislead, to be jealous, defeated and feel like I was being lead on. Lucky for me, I failed myself at the very beginning by building a tool that I wanted. When I focused on the needs of others, Shockey Monkey was born and in the 5 months since it’s birth it’s been the most successful product I’ve ever had with the brighter future than I ever thought it could have.

Focus on the positives, take every bit of encouragement you can get and think about more than yourself.

P.S. All the characters, events and similarities to real world persons or events are coincidental. Again, sincerest apologies to Charles Dickens and Merry Christmas to all.

I’m on my way to Europe.

I have a few business appointments to take care of while out there and would love to meet some of our partners and for the lack of a better word, buy some beer. Here are my plans:

October 18 and 19 – Downtown London, mostly open. After brief business meetings in the morning I’m for the most part hanging around town with Mr. Tubb and Mr. Bonathan.

October 20 and 21 – CompTIA EMEA @ Heathrow. Outside of the speaking sessions and vendor slime hours, I’m more than glad to sit down and talk business and tech.

October 22, 23 and 24th – Paris. French people are apparently on strike so I’m completely uncertain about my plans there but they include downtown, Disney, etc.

If you happen to be a fan of the blog or make contributions to VFF, drop me an email at vlad@vladville.com. About the only thing I’m not willing to do is sales calls

Microsoft is set to launch Windows Phone 7 today. And by launch, I mean start talking about it openly – you’re not getting a Windows phone today.

Features and how it compares to Android and iPhone for the most part don’t matter as far as I’m concerned. People will still buy it, I have friends that still use Windows Mobile for some reason.

What really matters (for Microsoft, for the rest of us in the IT business) is the shelf life: How long will Microsoft stick with a failure?

Right now, Microsoft has received a cold shoulder from many developers, even with (supposedly) a lot of money being thrown down by Microsoft to bring the most popular applications to it. It’s biggest evangelists are questioning it in public. Competitor’s fans offer it praise. So many questions for a phone that isn’t in any consumer hands yet.

It took Apple 3.5 years to get to where they are. Android, about two. Neither platform is perfect but collectively they are crushing the Windows Mobile, Blackberry, etc.

The Reality

Microsoft may as well demo a fantastic phone tomorrow. Hey, there is a first time for everything! But the reality remains that most people will not develop for it. We certainly won’t be touching Windows Mobile for a long time. Why? There needs to be a demand for it. Right now, demand is elsewhere. That is where development happens. Microsoft can get into it by establishing and sticking with a mobile strategy for years. So far, that has not been the case.

People tolerate imperfection. I own a Porsche 911 4S convertible. It’s not a perfect car. It’s ridiculously overpriced, it has the shock absorption of a brick and all the comfort and spaciousness of a discount airline seat. Yet, I’ve always wanted one and I absolutely love driving it. In part due to too many 80’s movies, in part because “I’ve always wanted a 911.” – Nobody out there has ever said “I’ve always wanted a Honda CR-Z”. Ever. Why? Because it got introduced this year. Perfectionism and commitment are built over time. Porsche has gone from an economic initiative of the Nazi government (Hitler funded Porsche’s “car for everybody” in late 1930’s) and for over half the century Porsche has manufactured the 911.

Same with the likes of Corvette and Mustang.

Constant pursuit of perfection.

Microsoft’s mobile track record suggests anything but that – and the same guy that brought you the success of Windows Mobile all the way up to the Kin debacle (Andrew Lees) is in charge of Windows Mobile reporting directly to Balmer. Here is to hoping they have learned something.

This has been an interesting year, road-wise. I entered the year with one company and all of my hobbies cleared. Now I have 4 companies and another professional hobby (book) and after a ton of traveling this year I have to come clean and announce that my next and last official business trip will be October 20th, 2010 to London for CompTIA EMEA.

Even though I’m not a part of the other stuff, Own Web Now, ExchangeDefender, Shockey Monkey and the new yet unannounced business will be sponsoring the ASCII event in Boston, the MSPU event in Newark, SMB Nation in Las Vegas, CharTec Academy in November, the HTG All meeting in Orlando and of course the ConnectWise event here in Orlando. The HTG and ConnectWise might have a brief cameo visit from me simply because I count many of you as my friends and I’ve made a promise to several of my international friends to come by and say hello. 

Beyond that, the person in charge of all of OWN’s marketing (roadshows, print, webinars) is Stephanie Hoffman. I likely will not return to the road until spring time.

…

On a more personal side, I really do enjoy hanging out with my partners. That’s why I’ve made the Orlando International Airport my second home this year and done so much to help so many of you embrace the cloud and make a lot of money from it. Looking at our numbers, many of you have ran with my message and made a ton of money from it – and that’s really what it’s all about – helping each other succeed.

Since March of 2009 I’ve made a significant effort to introduce you to the others in Own Web Now that make all of this possible and we continue to build a business management center out of our Orlando office. Everyone that works here is easy to reach and is here to work with you.

So while I take some time off to help my wife and welcome our second child into this world I hope you don’t take it personally that my physical presence at the shows will become more limited. However, my presence on the web and on this blog will increase

It’s been a fantastic year both professionally and personally, thank you so much for stopping by and saying hi. And of course, thank you for reading Vladville. The traffic keeps on going up even though I’ve posted less so it’s great to see the entertainment value has remained

Every organization depends on people. First and foremost.

But the kind of people you hire helps define what your organization actually builds toward.

The people that I trust my business to – you know, the one that’s got my name on it that I represent at every industry event and actually stand behind as it’s designer – are very much like me. Except they are better in nearly every way.

They are smarter.

They work harder.

The work longer hours.

They are passionate about what they do.

Most people out there are happy to follow. Just do the 9-5, bare minimum to keep their job, while moaning and bitching about what they do. You know these people. Oh, I can’t wait for the weekend. Oh, I can’t wait for 5 PM. If you work with people like that, run, they will drag you down with them. If those people work for you, put them out of their misery and fire them today. Everyone deserves a job that challenges them to wake up each day and become even better at building both themselves and their contribution to an organization.

Don’t get me wrong, not every day is paradise. Every role comes with some broom sweeping, long hours and dealing with difficult and frustrating problems. But solutions to problems lead to opportunities which give us a chance to prove not only that we can deal with the challenges but also beat them.

With every day that we beat down challenges and problems comes the eventual fulfillment in the realization that very few things can stand in our way with enough effort and persistence.

Today is Wednesday. Half way through the week. You know how you can tell that you love what you do? If you’re doing the math in your head thinking if I put in a few more hours today it’s almost Thursday which means that I’m just a day away from Friday so really I gotta get the most stuff done right now and just cruise forward from there.