I can’t believe I’m about to write another serious post this year. I’m going to have to quit this as it’s really going to mess up the Vladville vibe and let you all in on what I really do and well… nobody wants to read about that. But I hope you forgive me this one, I promise a prompt return to jackassery in the very next post.
I am really excited about tomorrow.
As you know from reading this blog, I’ve built Own Web Now and ExchangeDefender from a one man web hosting operation to a global leader in a whole bunch of categories. Life is good. But life is not all about money, and when you really love something and put your name on it. Well.. you just don’t want to turn into a Symantec.
There is another company out there, that I write about a lot, that has lost it’s way, burned friends and got ridiculed for its poor quality to the point that it had to rename the exact same thing just to be able to save face. Yeah, 90% share is good, but it’s the consistency that matters.
It’s something I wrote about earlier this month as I was really getting into the new gig at OWN. The painful side effect of success and growth is that mistakes are harder to spot. While something is working so well and perfectly for 99.999% of people, that 0.001% are becoming mortal enemies. Moreso, what about people who never became a part of the count because they simply couldn’t figure out what was going on? Attracting attention is easy – everyone can bullshit marketing. Setting expectations, and delivering on them, consistently, reliably.. that’s a huge undertaking.
Over the past few months I have been very hard at work assembling a team in Orlando that I believe can help me fill the holes in our portfolio and come up with a story. While I’m not foolish enough to believe my business plan has a 5 or 10 year shelf life, I do believe that the current offerings will continue to make a living for thousands of people. So even though it’s going really well, I owe it to them to perfect it. I have so far hired and trained folks to assist in the areas I believe we suck at. You’ve seen massive improvements in a number of areas already, however, we have miles to go. I only have one role still on the market – Shockey Monkey Product Manager and a PM for OWN Australia.
Get to it already..
My new job at OWN, aside from being the CEO, is the systematic implementation of ITIL.
Many of my long time readers remember this as the book that I have been writing for over a year now. The work eventually became the wishful thinking of how I hoped OWN would run – and now I get to make it a reality.
The responsibility matrix on this one is pretty interesting:
Procedure Development – 25%
Quality Control – 25%
Software Development for the above: 50% (trend analysis, reporting, checklists, loopbacks and controls)
To an extent, we are very much there. Unfortunately, in the areas where we aren’t the system just falls apart and defers to “Talk to Vlad” or “Let me fix that for you ™” which is akin to making crap up as you go along, though with the best intentions, inadvertently screwing most of your clients. (see Microsoft Licensing for an example)
The real question, in case you’re wondering, is this: How do we remain on the top of the technology infrastructure pyramid?
I will blog about my efforts here from time to time.
P.S. “Where does this leave the Monkey and relationship between the Monkey/OWN applications and Connectwise and Autotask?” Due to a few NDA’s and current work with those companies I can’t go into full detail, all I can tell you is that the relationship with both is better than ever and some big announcements will be made towards the end of March. If you’re a Monkey subscriber or on the waiting list, you should be “seeing” things very soon.
