Monday, time for the weekly pep talk.

There are really only two things that piss me off about this blog and I’m pretty sure that you won’t be able to guess them. If you scroll through the comments you’ll find plenty of examples.

“Dude, you work too hard..”

Oh really Jimmy Joe Bob, have you discovered the f’n missing link between the hard work and success? What do you think, someone just gave me all this one day for the good dental hygiene? If I was born with all this knowledge then I sure wasted a lot of damn time in college, in webcasts, in seminars and on the road taking in conferences, training folks, giving speeches.

If you are waiting for someone to just “give it to you” then go stand in the unemployment line.

“It would be great if I could get all of that without having to work for it..”

I get a lot of this on the phone too.

Oh, I would love to have you just teach me step by step what needs to be done in each situation.

Oh, I don’t like to read, can you make a podcast about it?

Oh, I wish I could do that but I just don’t have the time, could you sum it up for me?

Oh, I know you write about that stuff all the time with over 2,500 posts on vladville.com but could you post it again because I have an attention span of a shit fly.

In my years on the road and working with the partners I’ve had the joy of meeting a few idiots. Maybe a handful. I’d say less than 50 in total. Considering how many people I know, thats nothing. Most people I work with are very smart. All these people have plans, have process, have ideas, are executing. What are they executing? Not a whole heck of a lot, judging by the fact that they have the same problems year-over-year and don’t seem to have made an inch worth of progress since the day I met them.

Why? Cause it’s hard. I have to keep on learning. Things keep changing. I’m too stressed, I can work only 3 days a week and if someone is rude to me I need a mini vacation.. Are you kidding me? Does that even work for four year olds? Why in the world would it work when you’re fourty? Hint: See point #1.

Everyone keeps on looking for a shortcut. There must be some process that you’re not in on. All the people that are growing and prospering must have some trick that they haven’t let you in in. Maybe I should just peer up with others who have as little clue as I do or maybe I should keep on revising my plan every two months?

There is no secret. There is no shortcut. There is no peer solution for lazy. There is no magic blog post to cure cluelessness. There is no lifestyle buffer between business ownership and unemployment.

You just aren’t working hard enough. Really, that’s all there is to it. Read all about it in my upcoming book “SMB ENTERPRISE WHITEPAPER”, available as a preorder for $49.95. Condensed for the busy professional on the go, just one page, just one paragraph.

Stop making excuses. Stop at looking at the grass on the other side of the fence. Stop thinking you’re special. Stop looking for motivation. Just take a huge break from all the things you are doing on the side to distract yourself from working on what you’re actually supposed to be working on.

And if the prospect of that brings you down, if you can’t find energy in what you do, if you aren’t up at 2am trying to get better at what you do and aren’t willing to work hard and be happy with the blessing that is the ability to build your own company and serve people in your own way then why the f… even bother pretending? For a set of steak knives?

It’s Monday. Are you here to work or not?

Yesterday’s article is really bringing a lot of attention, glad you liked it. To be honest, I am still very involved in the technical side of Own Web Now, especially the new generation of products, but I have stopped blogging about them because they brought in far too much tech support via email form that said “don’t email me your tech support issues, take them to Microsoft newsgroups”; But since Exchange 2007 won’t be touched by SBSers for quite some time I can talk about it without fear.

A while back someone said they would pay to have me teach about how I work this stuff, particularly the troubleshooting, deployment and management. I played it off politely and modestly, very much unlike vladville.com, but the reason why you don’t see these kinds of presentations in SMB and the reason you will not see these kinds of technical presentations in the SMB space is that at their very core they are both too simplistic and too complex for the audience. Contradiction? Not really. Most of this stuff is very simple once you know the basics and know where to look for.

Let me take you through the thinking process step by step, yesterdays post for example:

First, I checked the site through the web browser. This told me that the web server works, that the domain did not expire, that the DNS is properly pointed at the server. This effort took all of five seconds, but it did not send me down a path of troubleshooting a problem that does not exist. For example, there is no need to restart IIS - if it gave you an error code that means its working so you need to check its logs or App/System log for errors.

Second, usual suspects. Check that stores are mounted, check that the app pools are started, general service checks.

Third, event log - what is causing the actual problem. This is time consuming exactly once. That first time you realize what the problem is, what the solution is and how it gets solved.

That is so simplistic that it would take two minutes to explain, but if you were an SBSer and didn’t know the basics and just pushed wizards over and over this would be a 6 day overview covering everything from how the Internet works all the way to registering ASP.NET correctly.

Anyhow, I just wanted to offer an explanation for why you’re not seeing in-depth technical training in SMB — the basics are far too complex for beginners and the solutions are, dare I say it, obvious to anyone that understands the basics.

Funny how that is all that separates people making teens per hour as opposed to six figures a year, eh?

Serial entrepreneurs fail when it comes to making money with a technology business.

This is one often overlooked or hidden fact among your garden variety of business topics covered at technology conferences, particularly in SMB where most people are being attracted to thanks to no criteria, no barrier to entry and an overwhelmingly large market (and supposedly remote chance of grabbing a small share of it.)

But does it make sense to go into a technology business to make money if you aren’t good at whatever technical aspect your company is built on? Statistically speaking, no. Most people fail, some with a heavy debt, and a tiny fraction sells out at a large premium. The middle is astonishingly void.

Why is that? Generally because the profile of a business entrepreneur involves high risk, high stakes, high liquidity and high growth and unlimited potential and scale. Unfortunately for them, the successful technology business has immense infrastructure expenses that are highly insolvent - you’ve never seen a yard sale for Microsoft Volume Licensing and banged up plyboard furniture. On top of that, operations of a technology company tend to be executed by someone with a very high skill set, translating into a big salary and thus a big expense, and none of the assets are immediately useful because they require a lot of training, education and specialization. These obstacles in the lack of solvency and inability to rapidly scale headcount with demand are evident before you have even sold anything.

This is why most technology companies fold, even if they achieve some marginal degree of success and profitability.

Which brings me to the actual point of this blog post - if the above are the largest, near insurmountable, obstacles for someone with a ton of money to break into the technology business, why oh why are so many technology companies just dying to outsource their technical roles to someone else and assume the role of a technology consulting business advisor?

Maybe because the message being sent by those with vested interest in taking away technology roles from technology companies is the most advertised and pitched message - on fear that a larger company will break in, a fear that skills will not keep up, a fear that the opportunity is now and it is passing you by with every moment that your name is not drying in ink on an outsourcing contract. And many people foolishly fall for such a pitch because they are uncertain of their direction, they are afraid of what is coming down the pipe  and they swallow the blue pill of business acceleration but trade in their key competence in for it.

Here is a question you should ask: If this business is dying and I should not focus on it, then why are you trying so hard to get me to sign on the dotted line and hand you over the very thing that earned me my salary in the first place? When they try to misdirect and tell you that you really got the clients on the business merits a blah blah cut them off and say: What do you see in the future of your business, and if it is truly dying then why are you in it?

Hint: Some people have thought about their exit strategy and were able to figure out that they can sell off their revenue generating assets with a high technical dependency under contract while business agreements and terms are generally always up for negotiation and are valued much, much less.

I think the future of this business is in scale, in ability to reach everyone and be dynamic enough to gather your resources and seize on the opportunities that present themselves in each segment as each goes through its hot stage.

The future of your business is in the ability to offer more services and make more money, not in trying to massacre it into small pieces and end up with a ton of expensive support contracts. The question is can you trust someone who isn’t trying to sell you either one or do you base your decisions on colorful flyers. Perhaps you should just be trying to copy the very people that are doing just that much slightly better than you to afford a colorful flyer. In commerce, there is interest behind every move, try to find out what it is.

Chris went to NOLA this weekend. Made a presentation. People liked it a lot, one of my guys even texted me about it being the best presentation of the weekend. Turns out you can make quite a business if you use mobility to fit the SMB business, not check off boxes on the Microsoft sales brochure.

Chris then went to O’Briens and had a Hurricane. And a Hand Granade. Another. And Another. Sooner or later it was bound to produce some brain damage, manifested in willingness to help complete strangers be more successful in a role they are grossly unqualified to be in: SMB technology sales.

If you would like to support Chris, who is still living large off his SBS Show royalties, in another fruitful community effort to postpine the inevitable, here is a survey:

Chris sells Windows Mobile

Please don’t let my apathy towards the iPhone Roadkill and Microsoft get in a way of you filling out this survey and helping Chris try to turn the leaking oil tanker that is Microsoft’s business software. He is trying to make things better for us (and Microsoft) but Microsoft  is a company of numbers and statistics so if you’ve got the time and will, please, help a brother out.

Getting a lot of mail (and guilt) about not being in New Orleans this weekend for the awesome Swing Migration NOLA conference. I spoke at the event last year and really enjoyed the parties, believe me, I wish I could have made it. Ditto for the SMB Summit with SMBTN. I wish I could have made it. Hanging out with peers and exchanging ideas is what drives all of our businesses forward. It is also one of the more enjoyable parts of the business.

However, it is not the only or even close to the top of the most important parts of running a business.

In the long long ago, all Little Vlad wanted to do was to run the cool little bells and whistles that power an ISP. But nobody with their right mind would let me do that. So I started building one on my own. I went to college. I got a CS degree. I got a business degree. I designed a network. I designed software. I hired people. I cut deals. I worked my tail off. I learned from the best. I went and met and worked with everyone I could, all over the world.

I built a successful, profitable company.

And I am loving it. Honestly, I can’t imagine doing anything but what I do all day long. I get to deal with some of the most expensive and most complex infrastructure available. When I get bored of that, I go back and work on the software. When I get bored of that, I talk to my partners, get ideas, turn those ideas and feedback into something that makes everyone more successful. We all grow more.

To me, business success is in enjoying and being excited about your business.

Why would I want to spend time away from it? The conference and road life is hard. I hate being away from my home, my wife, my dog.. and now the baby too. Moreover, conferences have a dense political motive behind them where you are always offending people that you turn down. I have been fortunate enough to be recognized as both a business and technology leader that if I so choose I could spend 364 days a year on the road. Not just that, but the obligations of being a vendor whore - I am always being invited to be a part of this focus group, and that council and this advisory group and that exam review board and this conference planning committee and…

… and while all those are a tremendous honor and a blessing, I just love my life and my company too much to separate myself from it that much. I have been fortunate to meet so many of you on the road, gain some wonderful friendships, get a great reputation in this segment…. and I just hope you understand that as a single human being I can only do so much and be in so many places at once. It’s not a personal thing, it’s not even a business thing.. I just hope nobody is offended at that, even though the emails indicate otherwise.

If you’re pissed, have a drink in my name. One thing I can promise is that we’ll always be represented by someone in the community that will pick up the tab.

The New Orleans ITPRO SBS Swing Migration starts tomorrow, I am sorry that I can’t be there with so many of my friends and MVP family. I have received enough emails telling me that the pimp hat will be missed, asking what I’m up to and why I’m not out and about.. so, here is a preview, the next generation of software pimp:

I’m sorry I can’t join you folks, but I have sent one of my guys to meet some of our partners and get some feedback on what we’re doing here. His name is Billy Gibbons (yes, from ZZ Top!) so he should be pretty easy to spot. Ask him for stuff, he has a ton of shirts and iPods.

May 7, ‘08: Funboard, R.I.P.

Funny thing is that just the other day I got an email regarding Karl’s podcast which in a nutshell said:

“You are all alike. You throw together something great just to get an audience and sell your stuff, then when you figure out we aren’t stupid enough to buy your crappy books you shut off and disappear for weeks hoping nobody notices.”

The support street goes both ways folks…. I guess we’ll avoid that street until all thats left is a subscription based Susan Bradley twitter account.

Poor Mark, his last post is going to get him crucified, burned, pissed on and then some ugly weed will grow on top of it. At the last check of comments, nobody has yet called him unprofessional, bad leader or a hater of all small IT businesses, everywhere. God help him if he doesn’t write anything like that about SPF Nation or the rocks will really start flying, though mostly from people that are paid to speak there.

Here is the truth about conferences - they are a business. You pay for the speakers that you believe can drive the content that will convince people to sign up and pay for attendance. You then take your attendance count to the vendors and try to sell the crowd to them. In the end, you hope that what you paid for the venue and speakers is less than what you earned from the conference sponsors and paid attendees. The rest is just a balancing act between a conference being one large infomercial and making your sponsors look like they just burned a ton of money for nothing but a party. Everyone has their take, so long as conference organizer gets money, conference attendees learn something and the content presenters get paid, you’re good.

What a lot (lot, lot, lot) of people don’t seem to comprehend is that it’s just business. Whether you are a speaker, a sponsor, a vendor, an organizer, etc, you are going to a conference for a defined business purpose and a defined return/benefit. You do not go to a conference for a social benefit or to hang out with your friends.. you know what its called when you have to pay to have friends or pay for a good time, right?

The better question to ask…

One of the Microsoft employees asked me this question last week:

Someone will have to explain to me why there are 4 SBS/SMB conferences each year..

Truth of the matter is, all SBS / SMB conferences suck because they are too short because SMB business owners are not willing to take money out of their busy billable time to figure out how to better run their business or become better engineers. Why those people should only go to the highest profile conferences in this space (TechEd, WWPC) is a whole different rant that I am going to get attacked about some other time. Conference organizers know that your riffraff can’t get its head above its shoulders for more than a weekend or one weekday at best so they create focus conferences - pick a painful topic and keep on pressing that fear until they cut the check. Ergo, four conferences and there will be more and more as the businesses mature and realize they need to work on specific problems they face.

Disclosure: I spoke at the SMBTN Summit conference last year at my own expense (hotel, flight, speaking fee) and it would have been one of the conferences I would have attended this year had my wife been any less than 9 months pregnant. Ditto for the New Orleans SBS ITPRO conference.

Today was a rough day, I am knees and elbows deep in fertilizer working on the rose garden that is Own Web Now and what it represents. This is pretty difficult for me to write so please take it with a grain of salt, in all sincerity, this is the first post that I hope nobody is offended by. In order for any rose to continue to grow and bloom, some big branches have to be cut down, blooms removed right after they are the most beautiful and soil planted, replanted and refurbished from time to time.

OWN, in the eyes of many of our customers, is Vlad(tm). Truth is, there are so many people, partners, vendors and organizations that make this possible. I had never envisioned going into a business as some dark overlord of IT with the Exchange superpowers, I always thought that OWN could and would grow into being an organization that benefits businesses, big and small, new and old, and that we worked on the organization that would serve the clients, not a company that would have to put up with things, deal with politics, cut deals and agreements just to make a buck. But fast forward a few years and here I sit on my throne, looking at the incoming CID LCD and wondering if I really want the hassle. Here is how I came to my answer:

Last weeks MVP summit was a huge eye opener because I had no big agenda, I had no hunger, I had really just wanted to enjoy the company of some of the smartest people in this business, buy a few drinks and meals and hopefully learn something new. What I learned is that the opportunity to serve is far bigger than the opportunity to try and change peoples perceptions and set ways.

What I mean by that is that I got to see what Microsoft thinks is the future, I got to see my peers across all markets, I got to see the value delivery that is provided across all segments of the business - IT, services, development, infrastructure, sysadmin. Clue: it’s all the same. In every sector, there are 10% of people who are hungry, dying to have you come in and solve their problem. Then there are 90% of the others, which cause problems for you. Who in their right mind wastes their time on the 90% of the problem cases just because they demand attention instead on nurturing the 10% and making sure that the 10% are the future of your company?

Friday Massacre

OWN was a company built on partnerships, but partnerships are a double edged sword. They are great when they work, they are awful when they have to be broken. Unfortunately, today I had to go through my list and break quite a few of them. For years I have tried to be a good guy and give people the benefit of the doubt, to work with people when they are being difficult, to go that extra mile even when I know I am losing an account. No, it does not make sense financially, but I wanted to know that people didn’t hate me and my company even if we had disappointed them to the point that they virtually had to look elsewhere. I put up with a lot - deadbeats, assholes, gurus, power users, knowitalls… because my reputation was on the line whenever the company reputation was on the line.

But at this point, in 2008, as I am about to go on a leave, this company is about a lot more than me. This company is about the people that work with it, some around the clock, to make sure we and our partners can take the clients businesses to the next level. I have to, ethically, balance the equation of pleasing the partners and creating an environment that is not stress-oriented and driven by the whims of difficult people.

The primary question is - is this fair to the customer, is it fair to the partner, is it fair to OWN employees and is it fair at all?

In 2007, we solved the issue of unreliable SMB email with LiveArchive, nothing else on the market does quite the same thing with so little effort. In 2008, we aim to arm our partners up with the tools and skills they need to flourish. We look towards creating a scalable two-factor authentication offering that can be acquired and managed on demand, from one employee to thousands. We look to help the community of professionals around OWN so we can help serve more people where they are. We look to give advantages to the partners in the countries that have traditionally been overlooked.

So is it fair? Is it fair that the small group of people ruin everyone’s support experience because they crank out tickets instead of reading the documentation? Is it fair that partners cannot behave ethically, and cause us to restrict and limit the functionality of the product that could help those that need those features the most? Is it fair that partners can behave like dickheads and ruin the day of the individual that is trying to help them, so that the next person doesn’t get the spectacular support they deserve? Is it fair that my partners don’t get the kind of attention they deserve because it is being eaten up by people who are in trouble because they didn’t do their job and tried to pin it on us? Is it fair that we are spending time, money, resources and effort on dead ends instead of being open and welcoming and actually building instead of trying to find ways around stuff?

No, it’s not fair and it’s not fair to anyone involved which makes today a particularly tough day. It is hard to say goodbye to people that would rather stay and pain it through, even if we both know they would be happier elsewhere. So we’ve opened the door.

Not all business calls are easy, not all business transactions are fair. Thats life, thats entreprenurial spirit, that is the reality of any organization that looks to do better things for more people. If we have done that, and if I have to sacrifice some short term happiness to make sure we are posed to do that in the future, I will sleep very easy at night indeed.

I’d rather feed the hungry and empower the ambitious than beat myself down trying to change the minds of those marching towards their doom. In fact, that is our mission statement.

So today, I got rid of 20 service providers we used to work with, because we were no longer working together, we were working against one another. If you recall, this was the negative sentiment towards Microsoft that I took to Redmond as well. Truth is, these 20 partners accounted for majority of the support nightmares and demotivating events for my staff, and I would like to publicly thank Mark Crall from TechCare Team who took the time to help me come to this decision back in November when I first turned to him for advice, and for my homies in Karl Palachuk, Erick Simpson and Dave Sobel who always have my back and beat me up when I’m going in the wrong direction. Thank you guys.

On a brighter side, if you were looking for an asshole duel, today is a great day.

P.S. Life is too f’n short and Chris had it right when he talked about ego’s - some people really make themselves out to be 90% of the problem, even if they only represent 0.0001% of the solution. No great business gets built on trying to please that. Despite what opinion some of you may have of me, businesswise, I think we’d be a lot better off if I hired an evil sidekick that was just a complete ass. I’ve been too damn nice to far too many people and I apologize to my staff, my partners and our collective client base for having misprioritized our attention. I am trying to fix it.

This blog is brought to you by Bud Light.

I don’t care what you sell, the last person on the Internet you want to mess with is the guy that runs one of the largest message hygiene networks around. I receive well over a thousand legitimate business messages a day, excluding monitoring, reports, newsletters, mailing lists or commercial junk. I have the non-business mailings down to a science, before I ever read anything I look if it came as a SPAM newsletter or an actual communication. I build an adequate rule. Between all our vendors, suppliers, partners and associates I receive well over a thousand junk messages a day that are automatically filtered into a Newsletters public folder.

Simply put, you have to write a heck of a memorable message for me to remember you.

God help you if you SPAM me, and I remember your company name the second time your SPAM comes in. You are never (ever, ever, ever) getting my business again.

I buy a lot of stuff online. What can I say, I’m a busy guy and I live in a tourist city so the smell of Coppertone and burned british folks who haven’t yet discovered deodorant makes going to the mall a very unpleasant experience. I recently purchased two items online, from two different vendors. Here are their messages:

Vendor A: Blah

Monday: Vladimir: Your Exclusive BLAH 10% Member Discount
Tuesay: Another Chance for Sweet Savings - 20% off any purchase
Friday: Preseason Sandal Sale - 20% off!
Friday: Spring Fashion Sale - $15 off all Fashion Shoes $50
Friday: Your recent BLAH order

I have intentionally left out the single legitimate communication on this list: my tracking number for the purchase I made on Monday, which according to UPS still has not shipped. What does this tell me about Vendor A? Well, first that they are incompetent and that they can’t fill the order in 4+ business days. Second, that they likely have financial problems if they stoop to such a pushy marketing campaign to get sales.

Vendor B: Finish Line

This order was mine, pair of Adidas shoes. Same industry as the above. Bought on Tuesday morning: Order was filled by noon and an invoice was sent to me immediately with another $15 off $75 purchase in the same email. Smart. I am going to nuke an advertisement right away, but I am not nuking the invoice - and chances are I will see it again and more likely to come back. End of day, UPS tracking number with the package already picked up from the shippers facility. Since then, no SPAM.

The frequency of your communication is equivalent to the extent of your desperation

I have a very simple rule, direct non-business mail should come in with at least a seven day interval, unless it is an urgent notification that the previous communication was incorrect (change of venue, change of time, change of offer, corrections, etc)

Anything not directly related to a business transaction is SPAM. I do not need an invitation Monday, a reminder on Tuesday, a peer review promo on Wednesday, an incentive email on Thursday night and a last minute fire sale email on Monday morning alerting me that the earth may fall off its axis if I don’t attend.

It’s in poor taste, poor form, and it cheapens anything valuable you may have to say otherwise. It clearly communicates that last ditch of desperation, where one more email may lead to one more sale.

Today’s consumer is more like a hot girl at the club trying to avoid the perverts hitting on her. Yes, she will fake interest in the conversation. Maybe she will even smile politely. She may even give you a fake phone number. This is far too connected to the online behavior. We use aliases to get the information that requests our identity. We give out voicemail only numbers to sales people because we do not want to be interrupted. We sometimes even have polite conversations with sales people just to convey the fact that we are not interested and we hope to find those magic words that make them delete our profiles from their CRM with utter disgust.

Let go of your preconceived notions of what outbound marketing should look like and come to terms that conformity to signup/checkout forms does not extend to limitless permission to SPAM, SPAM, SPAM. Let go of the bad advice you got from some marketing reject who hasn’t had a real marketing job since the 80’s, it’s no longer about the volume of the people you reach (or the repetitiveness at which you reach the same person) it is about quality of your communications and the fit with my expectations.

Frankly, even the illegitimate pharmaceutical spammers seem have more candor and tact when compared to the so called marketing professionals. Marketing needs to be valuable to be considered, otherwise its just an unwelcome interruption. Deal with it.