Yesterday ExchangeDefender posted the biggest month both on revenue and profits. ExchangeDefender is booming thanks to Essentials ($0.50/user/month), the cloud is taking off with our premium offering that will include Lync (launch in May) and to be honest I’d love nothing more than to sit at home, stay on my diet and train for my Ironman. But instead (woe is me) I have to wake up at 3AM to go on a business trip.

This is somewhat a matter of perspective. Yes, I’d love to sleep in. But…

I am going on a one-day trip to Las Vegas. I will be back home in time for dinner tomorrow.

Over the next few hours I get to hang out with a bunch of our partners and figure out what we can do better. I don’t have to work. I don’t have to put up a booth or stand in it for hours.

I’m going to hang out with my Aussie friends that also do a ton of business with us. We’re going out to eat at a place that I hope looks like my garage in a few years. Then we’re going to see “O” at Bellagio. And somewhere along that way we get to figure out how to perfect our business down under.

This is my life.

Whatever the f I’ve done to deserve this.. I wish I knew it so I could do it all the time and never go to sleep.

Whatever it is that causes any of you reading this message to do business with us, thank you. We’re continuing to build kickass products and services and take them to the next level around the world.

Every day is a little bit better than the previous one. Every day I’m glad to open my eyes and go to work. 3AM or 9AM or noon.

I know we don’t say thank you often enough… so whatever it is that I do that you like and follow.. from ExchangeDefender to Shockey Monkey to Looks Cloudy to my Facebook or Twitter… Thank you.

I’m not about to share anything worthwhile. Tomorrow you’ll find out what I’ve been up to for the past year or so, I hope you join us for the webinar at noon. ExchangeDefender as a company has roughly another year of blueprint to execute and truth be told, it won’t need me for it. The business is very mature, not overly exposed to any particular product (we don’t make 90% of our money off one product with venture capital vultures circling our business like so many out there), the people that are in the VP roles have been here for at least 3 years (which is an eternity in the fast paced software business) and I trust just about all of them to run the core business lines and some have already been doing that for a while. I’m very proud of what we’ve built and where we are going and how many folks we’re going to help build their businesses. In a way, it’s the ultimate thanks for helping us build our business.

But this post is really more about me.

I have a billion different ideas on all the cool stuff to do next.

I also have a tremendous amount of resources and free time.

Unfortunately, none of it is easy. None of it will materially or significantly impact the bottom line, at least initially, which in general means I am not going to be very driven to do it. Not that I won’t be super excited about it – but if something blows up or if I find something else that can distract me for a few hours (“Hey Vlad, I have a guy who wants to get rid of his Ducati and I thought it would be cool to build a café racer”) I typically will. So if I stay in my Corse Rosa office at ExchangeDefender, I probably will not do the work at my fullest potential.

Ultimately, a lot of my ideas have a common theme/agenda but I need to draw them up and connect them and explain them in a really simple way (“We kill SPAM for a living”) type of a thing.

I need a change of scenery..

Here is where I ask for the free advice. Considering I typically offer free advice so help a brother out.

I’m considering going somewhere for a month and working in a bit of a mental vacuum ala Henry David Thoreau.. Except instead of going to some god forsaken cabin in the woods I want to be near a 4G network, Diet Coke and girls in thong bikinis. Mexico comes to mind but I don’t trust my entrepreneurial side not to start some sort of a drug distribution business with all of your credit cards and stolen identities.

Here is the problem / list of requirements:

1. I want to go somewhere relatively warm. Since it’s almost summer that won’t be hard to find.
2. I want a big city. Ideally, London.
3. The problem with going to UK or Australia is that we do huge amounts of business there and that would create an easy distraction.
4. I’d like something where I could bring my son along – so some sort of American school / camp for him to be around other kids would be great.
5. Considering Hawaii.. but it’s too far behind to stay in touch with the wifey.

Then there are logistical issues. I would need an Internet connection, not necessarily 4G, since I’ll be out for a month I’m sure I can find a place with an ethernet jack. I don’t want to be on the opposite side of the earth from my family.

If you’ve ever taken a break from your professional life of micromanaging your business to focus yourself on what you need to do next in your career… I would very much appreciate any advice or suggestions you may be willing to share.

This is not a post about religion or politics. If you disagree with my opinion please keep it to yourself, I will delete any comment relating to a flame war that typically comes out of anything that touches someone’s religious or political view.

I have been misfortunate enough to be born in a country that was ruled by a combination of religious corruption and political corruption for centuries. From the days of romans, to the Ottoman empire and Islam, to the communisim and the void of religion but full of dictatorship and corruption to the eventual relapse to Christianity which lead to ethnic and religious genocide and more. I have vowed never to return to that country and typically excuse myself from conversations that talk about “the good ol’ times” or how awesome that place is – so awesome that it has one of the worst employment levels in EU, lowest standard of living and the only folks who think highly of it don’t happen to actually live there.

I now live in United States and am immensely proud of this country and what it stands for. We got all sorts of freaks here and yet we manage to not kill each other most of the time.

Some of the folks that didn’t pay attention to history classes in high school or got their history lessons from their pastors stick to the mistaken notion that USA is a “christian nation”. It’s not. As a matter of fact, one of our founding fathers wrote an edited version of the Bible free of all the supernatural stuff that scares people into organized ignorance. I have nothing against Jesus, I was born and raised in the Christian household… but one of the things I am most proud of when it comes to America is that we’ve left Jesus behind and embraced the age of personal responsibility and embraced what it truly means to be an American:

Right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

America has successfully transformed everything that was religious about holidays and attached it to commercial principles that make America great. You’re free to practice any religion you wish but Christmas is about the presents and the tree. Easter is about the chocolate bunnies and colored eggs.

This is Walmart, unapologetically one of America’s greatest companies and as much as folks may hate it, the true spirit of America. It’s cheap. It outsources to China mercilessly in pursuit of the lowest price. Oh, and one more thing:

Vlad: Hi, what are your hours today?

Walmart: We never close.

America is not about Jesus, or god, or Allah. America is about us. Americans. About what we want, about what is important to us – without judgment of others.

And believe me, Walmart was packed. Chick-fil-A was closed today as it is on every Sunday. And it works for them. But Walmart was open. And everyone at Walmart that was working (and that I thanked for working today) was happy to be there and in a good mood. Happy to be working. Happy to be making money because when the times got hard we got back to what really matters in life: happiness.

Don’t get me wrong – there are many religious, political and special interest groups that would love for us to live according to their rules, their god, worship their way of life and their religious law. It works in Israel. It works in middle eastern Sharia-law countries. It works in Vatican. It works in Utah. It works at the cost of other religions: where if you’re not worshiping the right god you’re subject to prosecution, genocide or social alienation. It does not work in America.

Money is not the root of all evil. Money can and does buy you happiness – or nobody would work. Ever. In this country, regardless of our religion or upbringing or political affiliation – we work and we work hard. To earn the way of life we want and live it freely as we wish.

That is what makes us great.

As some of you may know, I have been out of day-to-day operations of OWN during the last two months welcoming a beautiful new baby boy, Sam Mazek, to our family.

Today, I officially come back full time (and then some).

Now here is the really cool part: We’ve already announced what our gameplan for 2011 is going to be. Messaging: easy, cheap, managed, any way you want it we got it.

We’re going to make a lot of people a lot of money.

My part? Starting today, I will be working the next 90 days straight.

No weekends off.

No events / shows / road trips / seminars.

I can’t even begin to explain how excited I am about this. As many of you may be able to relate, running a small business is rough. You’ve got one or two good products and you’re trying to groom the rest and get them to catch up. I’ve spent a lot of time on ExchangeDefender, a lot of time on Shockey Monkey and a ton of time organizationally building up the bits and pieces like training, perfecting the partner program, perfecting our process and execution. Now I can count lines of business on both hands and the most exciting part – in 2011 I get to hook them all up together and deliver them in one complete package.

I.. am.. pumped.

Write. This.. Down… (407) 536-VLAD. I expect you to call me. I am focusing 100% of my efforts on executing the plan we’ve announced and I’ve got an agenda to roll behind ExchangeDefender too. I’m calling it ExchangeDefender 500 but more on that in a bit.

Happy New Year! Now let’s get to work!

I have been encouraged by a lot of my friends not to write this post because at times my honesty plays a significant detriment to my message / agenda. So I sat on it for a little while. Here is the thing: after 13 years in business I know how to make money and how to build a business. I don’t know how to sleep through the night or talk to business partners if they have to second guess just how honest and up front I am about what’s going on. Frankly, I know a lot of fake people in the channel that havel double, even multiple personalities depending on who they are talking to.

So here is the truth, the whole truth and the complete frustration behind some of the topics that are often brought up to me.

Big Mouth

If you talk a lot, expect to be punched in the mouth.

This is just the nature of the beast. People often ask how much of it I get; I always hear about how certain people find me scary. My Inbox begs to differ. I am brought up every issue that is or isn’t my fault, near and far.

For example, in 2010 I’ve been faulted for marriages collapsing, losing houses, investments, entire businesses going under because of one issue or another that we were even remotely related to.

Are the conferences/sponsorships worth it?

Unequivocally, no. Absolutely no. Hell F no! If you are looking to launch a product or a service in the IT channel, conference sponsorship is probably the last thing you should do with your marketing money. No, absolutely no, questions about that.

However, conferences are about a lot more than closing sales. They are about getting realtime feedback, about modeling your marketing through the eyes of your clients, about establishing long term partnerships and about old fashioned face-to-face business. It’s an investment, and when you invest in something you cannot anticipate a return in realtime.

That said, in 2010 we’ve seen the highest repeat rate of any year. According to my marketing reports, 18% of the leads we got in 2010 at conferences were from new accounts.

Then there is a vendor tax. Even if you don’t anticipate to make your ROI in 12 months on a conference sponsorship, if you don’t attend certain events the channel starts looking elsewhere. Presence is important while some presence is mandatory. Microsoft WPC for example.

“So you’re going to kill Autotask and ConnectWise?”

There is this negative vibe in the channel that anything remotely similar to an established leader is immediately it’s killer. Even when you share hundreds or thousands or partners. This is not how business is done and this is not how partnerships work.

Let me put it to you in one simple fact: multiple Shockey Monkey competitors were presented with it’s feature sheet and potential over 9 months ahead of it’s delivery. Only one of them approached us about a purchase ($3 million) that was far below the market value. If this was such a hardcore competitive product and a threat or a killer you never would have seen it live.

Direction of what we’re doing also couldn’t be further away from the way from where our partners are going either. We’re not out to dominate the IT vertical.

Shockey Monkey

Man this pissed off a lot of people. I mean, livid. Despite years in development, it seems to have caught a lot of people by surprise. They didn’t read my blog or watch the videos or hear the pitch – but boy were they upset. It sounded a little like this:

“How dare you introduce another product when you already have all these bugs in the software I’m already paying you for?!?!?!”

It’s called capitalism. We saw a huge opportunity in the portal space and we saw nothing on the market capable of delivering it for free and still making money off it.

At the same time, our entire messaging and support platform needed to be based off of something in order to provide backend services to our huge MSP client base. We couldn’t have based our solution around the other providers in the space because none of them provide for the purchase handling, PCI compliance and other nasty stuff we get to deal with as a worldwide service provider.

And here is the best part – the part of handling tickets, companies and contacts is actually the easy part. Billing? Reporting? Integrations? That’s where the costs explode and that’s not something we needed to be really sophisticated about.

So let’s review: There was nothing on the market that was capable of supporting our business model. We built it. Then we gave it away for free. Now that it’s free and that all our partners can have it no questions asked and no $ required – ever – we’re able to execute our actual business plan: Delivering better support and more integrated services that serve the client end-to-end.

While to some of you this may appear like we’re looking to compete with other companies, we are simply executing our game plan. The one that becomes even more profitable with everything we’re doing.

So no, we didn’t take people off ExchangeDefender to build Shockey Monkey as a competitor for anything else. We built it to support our business model.

As for our competitors – they remain our partners and we’re continuing to write software for their platforms.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, invests millions in dollars just to pick a fight. So please, drop it. This is my final comment on it.

Did you just say you’re not going to sponsor conferences in 2011?

No, but we will be at far fewer dates than we did in 2010, that’s for sure. We already announced what we’re doing in 2011. Managed Messaging. ExchangeDefender Essentials. CloudBlock. ShockeyMonkey. ExchangeDefender Storage. We announced it, we presented it.

Now watch us execute it.

What I will do, however, is put the money we would have spent on the road into more staffing and training. As you’ve seen by LooksCloudy.com, we’re going to deliver a community powered resource to give you an edge. As you’ve seen through Shockey Monkey, we’re going to lower the cost of entry into the MSP space. As you’ve heard about ExchangeDefender Managed Messaging, we’re going to make you remarkably competitive with professional services firms. And as you’ve noticed about CloudBlock, we’re going to give you an edge on pricing.

You’re also going to see a lot of personnel changes: More support, more account reps, better documentation and more calls.

As I’ll announce tomorrow, I will be working with ExchangeDefender 500 directly in Q1.

We’ll be on the road next year. We just won’t be everywhere. The priority is on you, not on us.

Surprises about 2010?

Lot’s of people speculated about massive consolidation in 2010.

It didn’t happen.

Most of MSPs are still a bit too small and many are struggling, loaded with large long term contracts, commitments, leases or just plain and simple debt and overpaid staff. This seemed to be the trend of 2010 that very few were keen to discuss – the MSP business model has started to show the pricing pressure points and $50/workstation, $300/server is just not growing many MSPs fast while the cost of getting new business is growing.

What I’m really amazed at is how poorly Microsoft BPOS transition (read: Microsoft’s transition away from partners) has gone. Microsoft had to pretty much rename the product as they realized midway through the game that their partners were not behind them or that the clients didn’t want partners to begin with. Lot’s of “we wanted to decrease our costs, not move them elsewhere” came up and it’s going to be far worse in 2011. Listen, Microsoft decided they are a consumer company – and the business doesn’t want to pay a software company anymore – and a networking company, and a MSP company, and a hardware company and a telco company and _____ for 80% of what comes with an iPad for free.

The key word here is free. In 2010, it disrupted a lot of business models and will ultimately take down even more than just newspapers and overpriced geeks.

So we’re trying to transition to managed ser…

Sorry, you’ve missed the boat. By a few years. At this point all you’ll find is bargain hunters, painful migrations and people too set in their ways to accept a proposition that sees you growing over 10 employees.

Anything else?

Even though we’ve faced a ton of adversity as a channel in 2010 (and it will get worse, quickly, if you don’t adapt) the business remains positive and opportunities are out there. No, not for spyware removal or antivirus license sales. Or for building first networks, helping people pick the first server / right server / last server ever. There are many areas where the expertise and business management are compensated very well and we’ve seen many people grow in double or triple digits this year.

Finally….

Believe it or not, I’m a good guy.

There are few CEOs willing to write about what is going through their mind and doing so honestly at times is difficult. If you find my conclusions or opinions tasteless or unappealing, you don’t have to read this blog or do business with us.

I, however, wake up every single day trying to make OWN a better company for it’s partners. I don’t wake up grumpy, kick puppies on the way to work or bite heads off pigeons for lunch. I look at this company a year and three years down the road – and I try to make it go from here to there.

The big question isn’t really what motivates me because I’ve been fortunate enough to travel around the world and work with partners in all time zones that have broadband. You know why I go? I want to know what you’re doing. That’s what keeps me going. Because at the end of the day, we’re one of the few channel-only companies left, and we work for you.

I wish you a happy and prosperous new year and I thank you for reading Vladville.

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.

It’s been over a week since my last blog post and with so many people asking me about what I’m up to I figured I’d offer an update. I’ve been in quite bit of a funk as of late: I’m tired, I’m overwhelmed, I’m overworked and just dealing with some rather looming and final deadlines both personally and professionally and change is, well.. scary.

First up, Shockey Monkey launch went far better than expected. It’s been far more popular than we expected. Unfortunately, everything we thought we’d deal with when it became a problem became a problem at the exact same time. For example, we didn’t think anyone would be interested in integrating with it – everyone is. Which stretches thin resources even thinner.

Next up, the launch of our UK business has been sloooow. Brits work at a different pace than the one we’re accustomed in United States – and the amount of red tape and financial challenges is immense. To my UK partners who have begged us to charge in pounds for years – I love you – but it would be easier for us to outright rob you and steal your office supplies than to properly collect and account for stuff in UK. It’s getting done though, we even launched Exchange 2010 and SharePoint 2010 in European Union this week to our biggest partners.

As usual, Microsoft is killing us. We have been preparing for our Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 upgrade for two months now and the amount of surprises has really,  really, really worn on me. Not just because it seems like every week I have to apologize for people for another maintenance interval or a @#% unexplainable failure in a clustered service, but also because I’m stuck explaining to IT people s@%@ they are paid to explain to their clients while making it abundantly clear they haven’t read the documentation. Without getting into details – there is never a “down” situation in our hosting environment – there is always ExchangeDefender LiveArchive. But that’s cleverly hidden in all our advertising, marketing, sales and every single webinar I’ve ever done on the product. I can’t say that so I just apologize, offer service credits, give people a month of charges back for a 10-15 minute interruption because the guy claims it was “at least 90 minutes” – and they still make me out to be a bad guy for trying to move them to the 21st century.

“This ain’t a winery mother@#%, @#^$ doesn’t get better with age.” –Vlad Mazek, MCSE

The book is almost done.

We’re expecting another baby boy in November.

The conventional wisdom is to just put the head down and work through it because problems don’t go away if you don’t deal with them – but it would sure be easier to keep on coming back to work if it didn’t involve being kicked in the head every day. I do believe that the stuff we’re building and making possible is really going to transform us and our partners and that’s what gets me through the bumps and bruises and makes me show up for work even when I say I’m taking a day off.

Which is pretty much the attitude I have had ever since I lost my voice in DC.

Like I said, in a funk.

Rambling ahead; nothing worthwhile to see here.

This weekend I did something that I rarely, if ever do. Certainly never on my own. Before I describe to you what the past 2 days were like, allow me to describe the month of August.

August: 3 shows. 5 cities. Nearly 20+ hour days on the average including the weekends. I promised my parents a trip to NYC for their birthday months ago (May) and I barely squeezed it into August. How did you squeeze it in Vlad? Well, after a long week I packed the bags on my birthday and flew to NYC with my son (2 years old) on Friday morning, returning Saturday after midnight – just to be back at the airport less than 8 hours later to go to another conference to deal with a product launch and vendor integrations. Yeah, that was the slow week that included – technically and I’m sticking to it – a 2 day New York City vacation.

Now this kind of lifestyle is not for everyone. Here are the pictures of my little monkey, passed out hours apart on the subway, cruise to Statue of Liberty and Bowling Green:

People always plead with me to take some time off. My wife (used to be) one of them.

So this weekend I “unplugged” – I went out for drinks with my staff on Friday. On Saturday we went to downtown Winter Garden market where Timmy rode a pony. Then we went to downtown Orlando where, in 100+ degree heat, we attended a huge BBQ festival at Timmy’s church/school. I got punked into going to work, where my office got turned into a Kim Possible theatre and my wife passed out in the lounge on the new sectional we got a few weeks ago. I – literally – slept most of the day away. Went to Target, printed a bunch of pictures for the parents and for Timmy’s grand-grandma, bought a 6 pack of Samuel Adams and and I think woke up twice this weekend. Watched an ungodly amount of Hannah Montana, Suite Life on Deck, Phineas and Ferb or whatever else was on Disney channel, even cracked open sealed DVDs of Darkwing Duck and He Man. I spent nearly all of Sunday asleep. I left the house once, to buy hot dogs, and that was it. The only productive thing I think I did all weekend was rebuilding a Hackintosh box – tip: the Intel GMA 950 chipset doesn’t have 64bit drivers so if you’re installing Snow Leopard and want anything beyond 1024×768 add arch=i386 to your Boot.plist as a key/string. On the bright side, I found some donut holes last night. Locked the dog out to dry off before letting him in the house – he went back to the pool to cool off thus starting a vicious cycle of wet-dog, dry-carpet battle that we’ve been fighting all summer long.

In closing, I’ve been the most worthless human being on the planet and I felt a strange sense of inner death.

Earlier this evening, as I woke up from my 5 hour nap, I asked my wife the following:

“Seriously… how many days like this one would it take for you to leave me?”

Her half hearted laugh made me think it wouldn’t even take a week.

The Point Being..

Embrace who you are.. because that’s the only thing that’s going to make you happy in the long term. I know so many people in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and beyond who wonder – daily – what they are going to be when they grow up. Most are not doing what they want – and the whole “grass is greener on the other side” stuff is just an endless demotivator.

Find out who you are and what makes you happy. And do that.

For me, it’s my work and my family. Sleep, nah. Beer, nope. Relax and take it easy – maybe when I’m dead.

For the past 6 years (8 if you count Blogger) I’ve been documenting the evolution & extinction of the IT service provider. When I first started blogging my role revolved primarily around the technology – and the IT service providers were heavily engaged in debates on what is enterprise and what is SMB.

Today, the debate is not much different. It’s in-house IT vs cloud IT. Same debate, same points, same concerns and largely, the same players. Only there are a whole lot less of them. The era of RMM eliminated the fly-by-night SPF that existed for the sole purpose of workstation reimaging and spyware removal. The era of cloud eliminated a lot of hardware specialists and “we install support and manage small business networks”

And here we are today.

So before I write the last chapter, I’d like to take a moment and let you in on a little secret. Throughout my blogging career I’ve received countless amount of advice from people that are less successful than me (at blogging or in business) and I can’t even begin to count the millions of dollars I have lost by not spell checking my posts, including more advertising, making my posts less direct and my arguments less controversial. Yes, if only I were more boring, surely that would translate into more money…

… meanwhile in the real world, what really matters is the idea. Thanks to the calculated profanity laced posts and opinions wedged in between grammatical crimes, I have been able to talk to the world and have it respond back with some brilliant ideas. People I’ve never met in my life have approached me in person and said “You’re Vlad! I like you!” – best damn feeling in the world.

As my mentor once told me, opinions are like assholes – everyone has one. My opinions are just that, and my opinions don’t typically represent those of OWN & ExchangeDefender (though multiple people have quit over them). What’s important in business is rarely what you say – what counts is what you do.

So before I drop the nuke on this place, I would like to thank so many of you that have not just read Vladville – but actually gave some thought to what I was saying and bothered to email me and give me some more ideas. I have benefited from those tremendously, both personally and financially, and I’ve spent a great deal of that time and money giving back. I encourage you to do the same.

In business, there is a safe path and there is a challenge. If it’s safe and easy, everyone will be doing it soon. So you can either be first – and always be chasing, or you can be brave.

Somewhere between outright stupidity and careless spending is a goldmine. Thank you!

Here is some inspirational music.. (slightly dirty)