Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog | Vlad Mazek on IT, Business and Technology

Quitting

Posted: 10:15 pm
May 11, 2011

Rant
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This is a post for the new category named Rants. Now most of the rants will likely be very abrasive in support of my Vladville alter ego which keeps most of you too scared to call me so I can actually manage to get something done at work. Don’t let people tell you Vlad is nice and you need to call Vlad, I bite people. Often and hard. On the neck.

I love my job.

I love my company.

I am immensely proud of what we’ve been able to build at Own Web Now over the past decade. Every year I look at my company and cannot believe how different we are from the previous year.

But man… I haaaaaaaaate what my job involves. Here is my average work day which by some miracle has left hair on top of my head. I am truly blessed to be the living proof that the evolutionary history of the human species involved monkeys – if my body wasn’t 99% covered by hair, I’d be bald. Either from stress or ripping my hair up or setting it on fire.

Here are my average tasks during the day which have left me at least partially insane and completely disoriented. I am routinely pressed (under critical deadlines) to make decisions about stuff that won’t happen for months or years. For example, I need to approve a flyer today so it can see the light of day next quarter and I’m also expected to pull out numbers out of my ass on a whim – how many people will work in the Orlando office in 2014, how many bread racks you can fit in a 10×10 cage, the turnaround time of a vendor shipping from Texas to Texas and if I remember where I ordered 2 post telco racks 8 years ago.

Now if I lived in the la la land of the future, that would be great! But no – I also need to make decisions on the spot – how much to charge for this, do I want to give client X a call, can we please fire partner B for being abusive to support, do you remember that contract you signed yesterday, was anything in those 36 pages related to transferability of the licensing between companies?

Keep in mind that almost none of this is my job – it’s all done by others in the organization and they just ping me for feedback, advice, review or opinion. So the actual outcome or decision is not something that I would explicitly make on my own.

Then 5 PM comes around. This is typically when people have given up on life and their careers and they write some of the nastiest crap I don’t think they’d ever be able to say to another human being. But you know what, I give everyone my email and my cell phone and never remember to say: It’s not for therapy sessions. If you’re rude to me, I will flat out refuse to help you. Every now and then I mess up and try to help only to get more personal insults flung my way.

Then I sit behind my sports car, slam the accelerator and burn away all my problem.

So what?

Listen, none of us have a perfect job, and I have a pretty kickass one.

The economic downturn has been rough on many companies and things are not recovering – not for everyone, not everywhere.

Every minute of every day you have an opportunity to quit. Many do. Many just struggle with the challenge.

If you’re thinking about starting a business, recognize that the challenge is not just in a dimension of effort and passion, you have to have a very thick skin and incredible level of dedication to the mission – so it better be one you can live with.

Every day I am asked for Quick Guides, Startup Shortcuts, every trick and shortcut that could help. There are none. None. Whatever you cut corners on to get from A to B you will be paying for (many times over) in the future.

Pick up cardio. Weight training. Anything mind numbing and repetitive. It will put you face to face with the option to give up on an almost consistent basis – but will also give you the thrill of accomplishment and moving forward.

Some people are just happy with the comfort. They don’t want to move forward. They are happy where they are. If you want more than that, be prepared to give a lot more than that.

This is how I roll

Posted: 11:44 pm
May 6, 2011

Boss, GTD
1 Comment

I wish I had a dollar for every time I got asked”: “I wish I knew how you manage to do it all.” The real answer used to be just pure stubbornness, I worked until I got it done. But then I grew up and company grew and I just have a kickass team that just grew the company 6% while I’ve been on vacation for a month. Fundamentally, it’s all about the setup. Here is mine:

This is my home office. Don’t let the looks fool you, the box in the upper right hand corner cost more than everything else you see. I have an Aeron chair that is about as comfortable as my bed. In front of it, I have 4 22” screens and a 21” TV for late night brain killing sessions. Cisco VoIP phone, landline when (if) the Internet connection goes down.

This is pretty much where all my creative work gets done. Notice that it’s relatively clean – no real “work” happens here. I have a small whiteboard to the left primarily for objective doodling.

Office Office

My real office at OWN HQ is quite different. I have a huge table with a dual display 28” monitors tied to my work PC and and another monitor tied to a Mac for social media stuff. I have a Polycom VoIP phone that I rarely use and a 42” HDTV with satellite service.

Another Aeron and a nice leather recliner. I have some other IKEA crap sprinkled throughout the office. It’s where real work gets done – phone calls, meetings, helping staff, management stuff.

Mobile Office

My mobile office is where unfortunately most of my stuff gets done. My primary system is a 15” Macbook Pro and 11” Macbook Air as a failover. I also carry an iPad with the Verizon chip onboard and a Verizon MiFi.

I pretty much live on my iPhone and I also have an Android (Nexus One) phone for Google Voice and corporate callbacks.

Logistics

Everything that can runs Windows 7. The iPads and iPhone naturally run iOS but neither is unlocked.

None of the desktops have time wasters enabled. No games. No social media. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Dealnews, no Techmeme and all of my typical sites are off. This keeps me from goofing off at work and keeps me focused.

My laptops have social media stuff and blogging software. They also have all the chat, video and entertainment stuff.

No Paper – Absolutely none. No postit notes, no sketch paper, my printer at home rarely has paper in it. When I need paper I go to Stephanie’s office and steal some from her. I cannot even express how important it is not to have any doodling opportunities – I save so much time by never having to track down where I wrote down something important. Everything is either on the PC or my LV notebook (as in leather bound notes)

Bottom Line

I don’t really have a “magic” answer to how to get stuff done, it’s quite personal. One thing I can tell you is that it’s all about optimization: Find out where you waste your time the most and eliminate it. I used to spend a lot of time on Facebook and social media so I nuked that. Before that, I spent a lot of time on the newsgroups and forums so I nuked those. Before that I frequented a lot of web sites and news / blog sites, now those are banned from my productivity areas.

As for the schedule, that’s a different story and something I’m just learning how to figure out. But as I pointed out yesterday, it’s a matter of personal recognition and adjustment: Find out when you’re the most alert and attentive and do your most mentally intensive tasks. Find out when you’re the most productive and pack it with your daily tasks. Find out what distracts you and bump it to when it’s least likely to impact your day. The way to start is simply by tracking your entire day – from what you do when you first wake up, when you first get to work, before lunch, after lunch, before you go home and after everyone is asleep.

Wrong on: Work In Air

Posted: 6:07 pm
May 5, 2011

IT Business, Wrong
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Earlier today I had the pleasure of presenting to a relative group of strangers at the HTG summit – folks who have never met me. Yet seemingly, my reputation always precedes me – so I always make a point to actually introduce myself:

“So my name is Vlad and I’ve been in this industry for a long time. I have said and written a lot of stupid stuff in my time but consider it a crime of passion. This is my family (pic of wife, kids, dogs, toys). This other thing is my business. It’s pretty much all I do and as a result I’m quite passionate about it.”

It sounds funnier in person, you kind of have to be there. Grown man doing a PowerPoint presentation with dogs and toys is humorous even without words.

Corrected

One thing that came blatantly apparent to me during my vacation is that time is quite limited and precious moments are very finite – I’ll blog more about it but I’ve had to make a number of changes in my lifestyle and schedule to get a little more out of my life.

Before I correct myself.. I’m a proud subscription member of the GoGo Wifi. I love working on a plane free of distractions, free of interruptions and with a very finite clock to get stuff accomplished. I don’t get that luxury anywhere – and am typically most productive on a plane. iPad included, Internet on a plane is perhaps the greatest invention for the business traveler this century.

But.. As I look at my 24 hours in a day, I’ve had to evaluate how I spend my time and what the most optimal way to go about it is. For example, I love working on a plane because there are no distractions and no interruptions. But I can work just as well with a few interruptions and disruptions elsewhere – or at night.

What I can’t seem to do anywhere is find enough peace, quiet and mental peace to read. I love to read. If self-help and business books were weed, I’d be Snoop Dogg.

So perhaps the peace and vacuum of a business flight is not best spent working – maybe it’s best spent reading and focusing on the subject without the emotion, without the late night eye strain and without the noise.

Books – and training in general – are an investment. Everything I learn makes me better. But work is relatively linear – I can do it later and get the same benefits as doing it right now.

Moving Forward

I will have a new category on this blog titled “Wrong” where I’ll try to correct some of my more genius stubbornness in the past. The more you know, right? Smile

P.S. You can buy the shirt from zazzle.com

Back

Posted: 9:36 pm
May 1, 2011

Boss
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After a true month-long vacation, I’m back! Typing from over 30,000ft on my way to Las Vegas, I’m actually really looking forward to getting back on the road, hanging out with the partners and helping my team hit all the stuff we have on the roadmap.

As many of my friends (incorrectly) guessed that I wouldn’t even come back to work, here is my mission for 2011:

Unify all of Own Web Now’s brands under the same name, same mission and same strategy.

We are doing great with ExchangeDefender and Own Web Now products even as the original business models established around on-premise IT, severs and infrastructure are clearly sunsetting. We are outright kicking ass with Shockey Monkey even though we haven’t even done anything significant with it (but will tomorrow morning!) yet other than making it free and making it the platform to start your IT business without thinking about the cost. Our collaboration on the CloudBlock is taking off with some surprising results (will share later)… and perhaps most importantly, the professional continuation of all the contributions I’ve made to the community I’ve made through the years is going through Kate Hunt at Looks Cloudy.

ALL OF THESE ARE GETTING A MAJOR UPGRADE OVER THE NEXT 90 DAYS!!!

So as I see it, the new version of ExchangeDefender 7 is going to kick some major butt in the areas of compliance, business continuity and security – all three cornerstones of our business that have made it so well known and deployed around the world are getting a major overhaul. As we’ve seen from recent reports, the cloud is still managed by people on the same crash-prone servers as you know and love – so the big push for us as we promote OWN cloud services is to keep reminding everyone that ExchangeDefender is always behind it and always running. Shockey Monkey is going to get some friends this summer – lots of them – and the direction that product is going may surprise you if you’ve been under a rock – as the technology we all once built and maintained is consumerized and now managed by end users, don’t you think they’ll need a more sophisticated way to manage it all even as the complexity goes down? CloudBlock is not something I have to answer for so I’ll just say that as the price competition intensifies and Microsoft keeps on bleeding (nearly a billion dollars of losses a quarter to fight with Google) end users will turn to a solid and profitable alternatives that work on the go. Looks Cloudy will get a new look and a bunch of new contributors – The Weather Report has been hugely successful and the follow rate on those podcasts is amazing – as I promised you when I announced it we don’t want to be a press release reprinting site or a rumors-for-clicks that most of the tech sites have become, our community has some outstanding people in it and we need to learn as much from each other as possible.

My job is to make sure that no matter what you come to us for, we make you aware of everything else we’re doing too. Frankly, if we only cared about ourselves and money was the bottom line we wouldn’t have partners – we’d have sales people. So as every product is designed to play well with others, we want to make sure we share that love and benefits with you all.

As for how I’m going to do it all – I don’t have the slightest clue Smile I really tried not to think about OWN at all on my vacation and I haven’t figured out what kind of schedule I’ll keep or what it will take. But as you’ve seen from me over the past 14 years – I eventually figure it out. Looking forward to this journey more than anything else.

Image vs. Purpose

Posted: 12:11 am
April 30, 2011

Boss
Comments Off

I’ve been on a vacation for a month and while a ton of ideas have been swirling around my brain… for the most part I’ve been driving around and having a time of my life. So here is what’s on my mind and how it relates to running a business.

Ducati vs. Harley Davidson

So the obvious answer is Why not just take them both? Unfortunately, in business and in personal life you really can’t have it all any more than you could ride two bikes at the same time.

Harley Davidson V-Rod Nightster is a Porsche-designed 1200+ cc beast that is part cruiser, part leather couch, part rocket. It is by far the most comfortable bike I’ve ever been on and even after a 100 mile field trip I barely felt like I even got out of bed. That, and you look like a badass no matter what you’re doing:

You simply have the sense that those that see you think you’re cool.

Then there is the Ducati. Engineered for the stop watch, designed for the track. It’s actually their tagline. The most award winning GP motorcycle company in the world. From the moment you twist that throttle and dry clutch clunks get closer and closer together, the bike pulls and doesn’t stop pulling. It’s as simple as riding a rocket while having the feeling that the only thing keeping you are your knees. The entire ride is a long pushup, you look like you have a death wish and after an hour you’re ready for a nap – still smiling though!

What you should do…

When it comes to a Harley, do you really care what a bunch of strangers think of you? After all, this is about your happiness. But do you really need one that is built and designed for the track, that will overheat in city traffic no matter the fun?

If you want a comfortable ride, go for the Harley. If you want pure performance and exhilaration, go with the Ducati.

But you really should get both. I did Smile

This is the quagmire that most business owners have. On one hand, you really have only one purpose and everything that gets in a way of it be damned. But you also have to worry about how what you do is being perceived and interpreted – no, people don’t hear the same words that you think are coming out of your mouth.

When you try to “balance” these obviously opposite qualities, folks tend to see right through your fake personality. We all know and hate those folks, who are seemingly your best friend when they are right in front of you but their attitude and message changes depending on who they are talking to. They move forward and up while they dwell in relative anonymity, but plummet once they are exposed.

So how do you balance it? I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s similar to driving two bikes at the same time – face on the pavement and ass on the sidewalk.

The point is that while you might want it all, you have to settle for what makes you happy and what you can be consistent at. Hopefully, over time that builds into a solid track record and respect. No shortcuts. And you can sleep at night. There you go, the secret to a long term sustainable business and leadership model.

America, F Yeah!

Posted: 9:40 pm
April 24, 2011

Vladville, Work Ethic
4 Comments

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.

Vacation Mode

Posted: 9:06 pm
April 18, 2011

Boss
3 Comments

Apparently I have cost a lot of people some money with my vacation: Apparently there was a bet out there that my vacation wouldn’t last a week with a lower payout if it didn’t last two weeks. Sorry folks Smile

I haven’t stepped foot into the office since March 31st and I don’t intend to either. My staff has handled everything in my absence: promotions, marketing, dealing with system maintenance, new hardware and software rollouts, fantastic progress on the ExchangeDefender 7 and Shockey Monkey, getting rid of a toxic employee, training, collateral – really, everything has gone flawlessly so far.

Or they have just been great about not sharing the stories of carnage with me. Smile

Look, I’ve worked pretty much non-stop for a decade to build Own Web Now and make it what it is today. I was dead serious about taking a month off to relax, refocus and reenergize.

How I Do It

My wife knows me best and she correctly characterized me as a binger. Like Charlie Sheen I only have one gear: Go! It partially explains how we’ve been so successful through the years: Not only do I work hard but I also beat the shit out of everyone around me to get their absolute best. That type of schedule and intensity doesn’t allow for relaxing vacations because I’m always thinking about what’s next.

For the fellow bingers and workaholics who don’t buy into the life balance bull, here is how I did it, step by step:

1. Before I went on my vacation I made sure to wrap up all my outstanding projects and reassign anything that I did not finish.

2. I delegated my mailbox management to a VP on my team. They have full access to my mailbox and delegate issues as neccessary.

3. My management team discussed every possible weird scenario that could happen that is not in the blueprint. For example, what do we do if the agents show up and put a big lock on our door.

4. I made sure that our core partner base knew that I was away and was going to stay away no matter the emergency.

5. I committed to no strategy discussions during my leave. This means any HR decisions, any product decisions, any marketing decisions, anything else that had to get done would get done by my team without penalty.

6. The hardest part: I was not to work on my computers. I was locked out of my work desktop. I was locked out of our beta environment. I was locked out of our test servers. Even if I had a brilliant idea, I could not call people up and try to make them work.

It has worked for the past 18 days. I had a few phone calls with quick questions, a few text messages and some IMs, nothing drastic.

Why? When I come back I am not coming back to the same role I’ve had for the past 13 years as the CEO of Own Web Now. Sure, the title will be the same but I will not be doing what I’ve been doing so far. There is something new called Project Blueprint, I hope to fill you in on the details over the summer. If you look at the “Final Vladville Post” there are some hints in there about the future of our industry not being similar to the past. No, it won’t happen overnight, but it’s going in a new direction and that’s the key to a successful business: you change with the times.

I needed to take time off so I could adjust myself so I can lead us through the next decade.

SBS 2011 Integration

Posted: 10:52 pm
April 13, 2011

IT Business, Microsoft
Comments Off

Some of you that work closely with my team have heard that we have a beta of ExchangeDefender hooked up with SBS 2011 Essentials (server formerly known as Aurora). In effect, the software is designed to give microbusiness clients a way to centrally manage all their accounts – Exchange 2010, SharePoint 2010, ExchangeDefender and have the modifications applied to their SBS 2011 Essentials server.

We’re currently seeking a second wave of beta users. To apply, send email to: beta@exchangedefender.com

Requirements:

Active ExchangeDefender Service Provider

Active ExchangeDefender Exchange 2010 mailbox

Functional, physical, SBS 2011 deployment (no virtual machines)

System requirements exceeding Microsoft’s minimum hardware requirements for SBS 2011 Essentials.

Ability to provide admin access to our dev team for deployment and troubleshooting purposes.

If you meet all of the above requirements, we’d love to get the integration rolled out for you. There is no fee, no minimum number of users or a commitment / contract.

The overall experience will integrate the way users already manage their ExchangeDefender services (Exchange, SharePoint, ExchangeDefender) and unify the account signon and credentials across the systems.

Overall Strategy

Exchange 2010 + SharePoint 2010 is our dominant product – and SBS 2011 Aurora is yet another brick that helps small businesses climb to the cloud for services that they don’t want to manage but keep their important data and backups local. By bridging the two we can reduce the amount of maintenance and double-management happening between the cloud service and the on-premise file server.

If you’re wondering how this fits our overall strategy – in 2011 you will see announcements from us, Dell and Microsoft that unify HaaS (Hardware As A Service) and SaaS (Software as a Service) and go towards eliminating a lot of the cost and a lot of the concerns businesses have with storing data on systems that are not under their physical control.

Of course, that’s just the tip of it. If you’ve been in tune with the messaging out of OWN as of late you know that we’re extending our amazingly successful platform in more and more areas.

It’s like having your cake and eating it too Smile

ExchangeDefender 7 Rumors

Posted: 5:15 am
April 5, 2011

ExchangeDefender, IT Business
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Over the past few weeks my phone has been blowing up with txt and email inquiries about the ExchangeDefender 7 and the future of the product. Let me ease your mind – over the last few weeks we’ve been buying up a lot of hardware and a lot of space for the 7 release – We’re bumping up network capacity by additional 100% and bumping up the hardware capacity by 30%.

Our Dell team is very happy. And kudos to them for being able to fill such a large order so quickly.

On Wednesday at 1 PM EST (https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/120736520) we will be officially launching ExchangeDefender 7 beta and it should be in everyone’s hands within the week – most folks by Friday depending on demand.

Now on to the rumors, changes, general fear – folks, if this wasn’t going to kick so much booty, I wouldn’t be spending so much $ adding capacity. Those of you that have worked with us through the years remember the rough spot we ran into with the billing system change in 2009 and growth pains where there were some delays in delivery at times – things sure have changed through the years.

This is the biggest change to the product since it’s launch.

Naturally, there are going to be rumors when you make a statement like that. One area that confuses a lot of folks is the mentions of Shockey Monkey and what that means for those of you using Autotask and Connectwise, etc. First of all, the integrations with the two are only going to get better the more solid their API’s get and the more functionality they extend and introduce in their product.

Second, and most important in my opinion, is what we have learned with Shockey Monkey. For your sake, what have we learned from it that we can deploy within ExchangeDefender to make you more successful? Shockey Monkey launched in August of last year with less than a thousand “legacy” portals and by the time Shockey Monkey turns 1 year old we’re on pace to be bigger than Autotask and ConnectWise, combined.

You might want to go back and read that paragraph again. Then think, what could you learn from that experience to make your revenues and profits grow like Own Web Now’s have since last year? In the first 5 months of 2011 we would have attended 0 trade shows, launched 0 new products yet our growth has already beat all of 2010.

The dynamics of the software business are changing rapidly and if you’re depending on software solutions and their maintenance to grow your revenue, you have to change along with it. Today the big news that nobody cares about is that Epsion got hacked and to make a long story short: your clients will be getting a lot more SPAM. But is that the future of email? The mob business model, where the product is nearly free but the “protection” is gonna cost you? No, it’s not.

The main message I hope to make in the beta launch on Wednesday is that people hate to work with the mob. But they love to buy stuff.

It ain’t easy..

Posted: 12:44 am
March 31, 2011

IT Business
3 Comments

With just one workday left till my big vacation, I find most of my mental time (which was dedicated to imagining the next crackheaded idea I had) goes towards reflecting just how good I have it and how great Own Web Now became in a relatively short period of time. Naturally, I wanted to offer some advice that I wish I hadn’t figured out the hard way.

Last fall I went to talk to my pal Arnie about Shockey Monkey and the stuff that you’ll start seeing later this summer/fall. He made a very accurate observation that I looked tired (2nd kid, long year on the road, growing company, etc) and offered me the best piece of advice I ever ignored: “You shouldn’t be making decisions when you’re exhausted. Take time off, you’ll figure it out.”

That was his advice, I’d recommend it to anyone that isn’t ~~insane~~ a workaholic like me.

My advice is that only you can dig yourself out of the mess you’ve made. If you’re honest with yourself, most of the mess that you (are likely blaming others for) have was caused in some way / shape / form by you.

The mess typically happens when you start taking other people’s brilliant ideas over what you know is right. For example, it took me nearly 10 years to stop listening to people immediately after they say: “We have this business case scenario…”

We have a unique business case scenario…

“Yeah, me too. Mine calls for not paying taxes. The thought of being beaten up on the prison floor keeps me from pursuing it though.”

In business, people like stuff done cheap. But they want it done their unique, special way.

I like to remind people that I don’t work at Burger King and that unless they want me to make them a sub, writing software isn’t like adding extra mayo or substituting swiss for american cheese.

You will always be pushed to change, tweak and hack your solution because people that don’t understand technology will not understand it’s limitations or why your recommendation makes sense. This is the #1 obstacle to growth of SMB IT Providers – they get caught up in the lunacy of SMB owners that like to tweak everything and end up becoming just another internal employee. No wonder you can’t scale and grow fast, you’re only human.

One story that is near and dear to my heart, and I love telling it over and over, concerns the people that bring me family businesses with higher reliability requirements than Fortune 500. Stop me if you’ve heard these:

“this is the worst possible time for this to go down”

“we absolutely need 99.999% uptime and maintenance windows need to be announced 6 weeks in advance”

“we need a zero downtime migration, will this stupid idea work”

Listen. If Disney can take a multi-hour maintenance period twice a week – on the sites that are used to check in their customers and sell their vacations and tickets – so can your little family business. So long as you understand your limitations, you can work around them. Or you can go back to pen and paper, no downtime there.

This may seem heartless to you but it’s really the best single piece of advice I can offer you: do not go against your principles. When you do (and when people go against your advice) they will come back to you for help and even when you solve their problem they will still blame… you’ve guessed it: you.

Trust me, I’m not a virgin

The problem with people that don’t know any better is that they are unwilling to accept advice from those that have seen the carnage that happens when you go outside of the recommendations. Recommendations, or best practices, are simply a collection of the least lethal steps to be taken to achieve a tech solution.

You don’t recommend solutions because they cause the least amount of work for you, you do it because you’ve seen a bunch of different ways this can be done and the one you’re recommending will cause the least amount of problems. But but but but we have a business case scen… no, you have my recommendation – go against it and you’re on your own.

Enabling Bad Ideas Is The Same As Supporting Them

There is a huge difference between an idea that sounds good and a successful implementation of a good idea. Many people can’t figure out the difference and it leads to a ton of stress and unnecessary work for everyone.

This is where so many people hit the wall of frustration that comes with enabling bad ideas. Because no matter how much you discourage someone from pursuing something stupid they will always blame you for it when it goes wrong. The era of personal accountability is long gone and since someone is paying you for the service, you’re going to deliver that service, right?

No. The service is what’s in the contract and guide. If you don’t follow it, we go back to step one.

Conclusion

Some of the worst business decisions I’ve ever made were not related to being overworked or tired, they were result of compromising my principles in order to earn business that was not worth the money it was bringing in. Which left me tired and overworked, trying to fix the problems I knew were going to happen in the first place.

Trust me, it’s not worth it. Making a dollar isn’t a business if it costs you two dollars to earn it.

Easier said than done: You’re not the first or last person that ended up in this situation. Last fall I had the option of taking it easy, backing away from the challenge and using the many valid excuses I have in my life to take the easy way out. There is no thinking yourself out of the mess you’ve made: there is just a lot of work and elbow grease. In the past 6 months I damn near killed myself and everyone that works for me: and now I’m going on a real vacation in nearly 10 years and leaving the company in the hands of people that I not only trust but have a long record of knowing they can handle anything people throw at them.

If you’re going to work hard, work smart. Stick to what you know and surround yourself with good people and good business partners that have the experience that you do not.

Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog