SMB Community Podcast: Business Advice for Small MSP Owners

Topic 1: Generative AI is Fun … Until the “Other” Guys Start Doing It Too

https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/31/how-china-is-building-a-parallel-generative-ai-universe/

China is aggressively building their own versions of generative AI platforms (with some obvious / inevitable filters) that do essentially the same thing as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion. The question is whether they will be able to out-race us to the auto-content future … and whether that is a problem.

Topic 2: LastPass - Lessons for the Channel

Should we be worried? What do we expect from vendors? What’s reasonable and realistic?

https://blog.lastpass.com/2022/12/notice-of-recent-security-incident/ 

Is this worth discussing as a larger topic of always-on monitoring and reporting?

Topic 3: Fast Forward Into the Future: Intelligent Elevators are Coming Soon

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-whats-next-b35b53bd-5aa6-4a83-aae5-a44e904ffa78.html?chunk=0&utm_term=emshare#story0

Everyone who has ever been in an elevator knows what is good and what is bad about the experience. But changes in behavior and city culture brought on by the pandemic are accelerating the evolution of the elevator experience: facial recognition to automatically take you to your floor, provide personalized advertising / entertainment, and even provide solo rides for VIPs. The smart city concept will eventually affect everything … are we ready for elevators that know who we are?

See also: Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything Paperback – January 1, 2000 by James Gleick  (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/Faster-Acceleration-Just-About-Everything/dp/067977548X 

Sponsor Memo: PC Matic 

PC Matic — Endpoint Security built on a zero trust/default deny foundation.

Finally - a light weight, simple to deploy & easy to manage approach to application allowlisting. The perfect compliment to your current security stack. No minimums and no annual contracts.

Find out more about by visiting https://PCMatic.com/MSP today.

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New music, new intro, new everything. We reboot the entire podcast format, and welcome new host Amy Luby.

Our Hosts are:

• Amy Babinchak - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amybabinchak/
• James Kernan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-kernan-varcoach/
• Amy Luby - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amycluby/
• Karl Palachuk - https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlpalachuk/

Call for help: Amy is looking for robots out in the wild! Connect with her via LinkedIn.

Stay tuned for a show on AI chat and how you might use that.

Please like, subscribe, and share. We look forward to a great new format!

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Sponsor Note: NSITSP

By now you've heard of the National Society of IT Service Providers. But why should YOU join? The NSITSP is committed to transforming our Industry into a Profession. They've established an industry-wide code of ethics and are working to improve the reputation of IT consultants nationwide.

Wherever anybody is talking ABOUT IT consultants, NSITSP wants a seat at the table. That includes the media, government regulators, and the general public. Take pride in your industry and show off your membership.

Join us today at https://www.NSITSP.ORG

:-)

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Topic 1: For Sale on eBay: A Military Database of Fingerprints and Iris Scans

Great topic for ITSPs - especially as clients get rid of equipment at the end of year. Old machines of all kinds might have sensitive data. Not this juicy, perhaps, but stories like this are great for you client-facing newsletters.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/technology/for-sale-on-ebay-a-military-database-of-fingerprints-and-iris-scans.html

Topic 2: The age of the work-from-home whistleblower

Why are so many remote workers deciding to squeal on their companies?

https://www.businessinsider.com/remote-work-surge-employees-whistleblowing-complaints-companies-fraud-2022-12

Topic 3: Man Simulates Time Travel 

So, what is our weekly update with AI? On the up-less existential-side, we have some fun: Time traveling with the aid of AI. No copyrgiht infringment here. Right? 

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/12/man-simulates-time-travel-thanks-to-stable-diffusion-image-synthesis/

Sponsor Memo: SBTTC 

This podcast is sponsored by the Small Biz Thoughts Technology Community. Check us out at https://www.SmallBizThoughts.org

Forms, templates, and checklists are just the start. Our Community includes ALL of the best-selling books on managed services in all available formats, plus free training, members-only programs, and the best business training available to managed service providers anywhere.

Plus, we have weekly live members-only Zoom calls. The average member saves more than 200% of their membership cost each year. We are totally dedicated to YOUR success. 

Just because you're in business for yourself doesn't mean you have to go it alone. Join us today at www.SmallBizThoughts.org.

:-)

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Happy New Years! For our last episode of 2022, Host James chats with Mathieu Manaigre.

Published author and a mastermind of overlapping calendars, Mathieu is backed by a team of amazing experts allowing him to do all the fun work involved in building the most loved IT services company in Canada.

Resources and Links:

www.avenirit.com

https://www.facebook.com/aveniritinc

https://www.linkedin.com/company/avenir-it-inc.

https://twitter.com/AvenirITInc

Sponsor Memo: SBTTC

This podcast is sponsored by the Small Biz Thoughts Technology Community. Check us out at www.SmallBizThoughts.org.

Forms, templates, and checklists are just the start. Our Community includes ALL of the best-selling books on managed services in all available formats, plus free training, members-only programs, and the best business training available to managed service providers anywhere.

Plus, we have weekly live members-only Zoom calls. The average member saves more than 200% of their membership cost each year. We are totally dedicated to YOUR success.

Just because you're in business for yourself doesn't mean you have to go it alone. Join us today at www.SmallBizThoughts.org.

:-)

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Topic 1: Meta scamming: Scammers Are Scamming Other Scammers Out of Millions of Dollars

https://www.wired.com/story/cybercrime-hackers-scams-forums/ 

On cybercrime forums, user complaints about being duped may accidentally expose their real identities.

Topic 2: Teens are Self-Liberating from Social Media

‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html 

Topic 3: The Drones Are Coming (to 22 Select Locations Around the Country … Within Driving Distance of a Wal-Mart)

https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/walmart-droneup-drone-delivery-service-launches-arizona/638950/

Wal-mart announces legitimate progress on rolling out drone delivery to customers in key metropolitan areas. The forecast is to expand to 34 stores in 23 cities by year end to reach a capacity of 1M drone deliveries. And … Utah is on the list of the next markets to launch. Could a burrito delivery be in the near future?

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Sponsor Memo: Cisco 

I bet you think working with Cisco is hard. They’re big, and have so much going on, and you’re … smaller.   

That’s why there’s Cisco Partner Journeys, an innovative new digital experience designed to accelerate your engagement with Cisco.

Each unique journey leads you to the best tools, services, programs and portfolio offerings to help you accelerate sales, build a practice and enhance profitability.

Whether you are new to Cisco or a long-time partner, Cisco has the right journey for you.  

Interested? Visit https://ciscopartnerjourneys.com/ to find out more.   

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Host Karl catches up with Yvette Steele.

Yvette Steele is a global diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) leader building inclusive and equitable workplaces one employee at a time. Her belief that "inclusion is everybody's job that anybody can do" was the catalyst of the book "Impactful Inclusion Toolkit: 52 Activities to Help You Learn and Practice Inclusion Everyday in the Workplace." Since entering the workforce in the late 1980's, she was frequently the only African American woman on the team or one of a few where bias, sexism, racism and prejudice were served daily making it impossible to consistently perform at peak levels. Decades later, these issues persist with the same intensity where many continue to be disempowered in their efforts to maximize potential. In this time of increased awareness of unfair systems and practices plaguing people of color, individuals with disabilities, the LGBTQ+ community and others, her book provides the roadmap to acquire the skills needed to create cultures of equity, inclusion and belonging.

Yvette has been recognized as a diversity thought leader on the inaugural Channel Futures DE&I 101 List for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion through words, actions, and leadership and has served on the DEI Advisory Committee for YMCA-USA, Tech Advisory Board Steering Committee for the National Urban League, and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Task Force for Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. You'll find her calling out the issues and providing solutions on diversity and workforce focused podcasts, blogs, news articles and panel discussions to include the Wall Street Journal, the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) and the ChannelPro Network.

Resources and Links:

https://www.amazon.com/Impactful-Inclusion-Toolkit-Activities-Workplace/dp/1119930200/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/yvetteportersteele/

Sponsor Memo: SBT Tech Community

his podcast is sponsored by the Small Biz Thoughts Technology Community. Check us out at SmallBizThoughts.org

Forms, templates, and checklists are just the start. Our Community includes ALL of the best-selling books on managed services in all available formats, plus free training, members-only programs, and the best business training available to managed service providers anywhere.

Plus, we have weekly live members-only Zoom calls. The average member saves more than 200% of their membership cost each year.

We are totally dedicated to YOUR success. Just because you're in business for yourself doesn't mean you have to go it alone.

Join us today at SmallBizThoughts.org

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Topic 1: The Bots are Coming for LinkedIn, Adding New Layers of Risk for Professionals and for Companies … but Especially for Recruiters

https://thehustle.co/12122023-LinkedIn-bots/

Bots are everywhere on social media, and some platforms are doing more to combat them than others. Now that the bots are proliferating on LinkedIn, it’s vital for everyone to think about the layers of threat and the corresponding hygiene on the career-centric platform.

Topic 2: How does AI write fiction (and online advertisements)? “Fluent BS”

https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-fluent-bs/

The term “Fluent Bullshit” was originally coined by The Verge:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/5/23493932/chatgpt-ai-generated-answers-temporarily-banned-stack-overflow-llms-dangers

Topic 3: Investors Call Time On FAANG Stocks – Big Tech Not Going to Lead the Next Round of Economic Growth

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-10/investors-call-time-on-faang-stock-dominance-after-nasdaq-s-rout

The iconic big tech stocks have not only dominated the conversation around the tech industry in the past decade, they have also represented the most reliable outsized sources of growth. But looking forward, industry analysts and stock market investors are indicating they do not believe these mature companies will be able to generate the dramatic growth results needed to maintain sky-high valuations. Who will fill the gap?

Sponor Memo: PCMatic

PC Matic — Endpoint Security built on a zero trust/default deny foundation.

Finally - a light weight, simple to deploy & easy to manage approach to application allowlisting.

The perfect compliment to your current security stack.  No minimums and no annual contracts.  Find out more about by visiting PCMatic.com/MSP today.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Karl Palachuk has a major announcement . . . followed by a discussion of The Five Employee Rules You Can't Forget - No matter how difficult the job market is right now.

Karl has been procuding materials for IT consultants who are tackling the challenges of hiring in as we roll the calendar over to 2023. He recently posted a recorded webinar at https://www.mspwebinar.com on Hiring and Keeping Great Employees in 2023 - https://mspwebinar.com/finding-and-keeping-great-employees/.

In this podcast, Karl outlines five extremely important things you need to remember, even in a difficult job market.

Karl is one of the SMB Community Podcast hosts. He has written more than twenty books, and runs the Small Biz Thoughts Technology Community as well as IT Service Provider University.

Karl has built and sold two managed service businesses. He has been a professional consultant for more than three decades, and he has been an active community builder in the SMB IT market for more than fifteen year. He's also the founder of the National Society of IT Service Providers and is currently their Executive Director.

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Sponsor Memo: Acronis

Are you still relying on a frustrating patchwork of legacy solutions? Modernize your cybersecurity and data protection with Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud. It's a single solution that combines backup, anti- malware, and endpoint protection management. As an MSP, you can easily improve clients' security posture, eliminate complexity, and generate more recurring revenue. Learn more about Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud at Acronis.com.

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Topic 1: Should the Police have killer robots?

San Francisco approves the use of robots capable of lethal force.

Is this move inevitable, or are the arguments in favor of this just rare exceptions to the rule?

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/sf-police-killer-robots-would-have-explosives-not-guns-sfpd/ 

Topic 2: Data Volumes are Increasing at Such a Fast Pace, We Need New Words to Describe Just How Much There Is

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-11-30/new-prefixes-for-huge-and-tiny-numbers-ronna-ronto-quetta-and-quecto.html

And to absolutely no one’s surprise, businesses are struggling to afford the cost of managing all that data

https://www.techradar.com/news/rising-data-management-costs-are-hitting-businesses-hard

Data is the essential component of literally every dimension of the technology industry, and we’re producing more of it every day at literally astronomical rates. So much so that we have run out of words to describe just how much there is. Science is solving that part for us. But science can’t help us figure out how to pay to store / manage all of that data. Observation #1: I sure hope you are selling data storage / management solutions. Observation #2: What are the ripple implications for IT management and the services MSPs provide?

Topic 3: Chatbots and Generative AI Image Systems are Getting Pretty Good … But is that a Good Thing?

https://mashable.com/article/chatgpt-amazing-wrong

  https://www.axios.com/2022/09/12/ai-images-ethics-dall-e-2-stable-diffusion

AI systems for creating content are steadily improving in terms of technical / functional capability. But the layers of ethical questions continue to stack up. How do you know if the AI chatbot is telling the truth? Is AI art actually art? If the AI is trained on the work of other artists, who should get credit?

Sponsor Memo: Linode 

Linode – a top Infrastructure as a Service provider has resources specifically for helping MSPs explore the alternative cloud.

Discover this growing market: one of the best-kept secrets in building a scalable, thriving, modern Managed Service Provider business.

Learn about the cloud provider landscape, improving KPIs, security, and more in Linode's free ebook, The MSP's Guide to Modern Cloud Infrastructure, available now.

This resource and more at https://linode.com/mspradio

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Host Karl sits with Acronis's Righter Kunkel at the Cyberfit Summit 2022!

Righter is a seasoned leader with responsibilities for strategy, design, implementation, and execution of corporate customer success vision anchored with financial growth.

Righter has over 20 years of leadership experience in the public sector/commercial education and consulting industry. Righter has a deep working knowledge of operating a global for-profit partner, employee, and customer training business to include the internal business functions of development, certification, enablement, sales, services, and operations.

Sponsor Memo: Small Biz Thoughts Technology Community

This podcast is sponsored by the Small Biz Thoughts Technology Community. Check us out at https://smallbizthoughts.org

Forms, templates, and checklists are just the start.

Our Community includes ALL of the best-selling books on managed services in all available formats, plus free training, members-only programs, and the best business training available to managed service providers anywhere. Plus, we have weekly live members-only Zoom calls.

The average member saves more than 200% of their membership cost each year.

We are totally dedicated to YOUR success.

Just because you're in business for yourself doesn't mean you have to go it alone.

Join us today at https://smallbizthughts.org

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.