SMB Community Podcast: Business Advice for Small MSP Owners

I interviewed Ahin Thomas, Vice President of Backblaze. He describes himself as "A former bartender, songwriter and hand model."

Ahin previously worked as director of eCommerce at Sears Holdings, was the co-founder and CEO of Vintners' Alliance, and was the head of marketing for Symphony Commerce.

In this interview, Ahin talks about Backblaze's major products: Computer Backup and Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. Computer Backup provides unlimited data storage, native clients that silently run in the background for Mac/Windows, and affordable prices with rock solid endpoint backups that do not require maintenance.

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage works well with an established company and includes reliable/predictable pricing in an industry where it is lacking. It also empowers companies to "move to the cloud" and leaves room for MSPs to make a profit where they can switch to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, giving customers a discount vs. Amazon S3, and pocket the difference.

Relevant links: - https://www.backblaze.com - https://www.backblaze.com/blog/ - https://twitter.com/backblaze (@backblaze) - https://www.facebook.com/backblaze (@backblaze) - https://www.youtube.com/backblaze

:-)

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.

Quick intro note: Check out Dave's new podcast The Business of Tech daily - www.mspradio.com.

Dave and Karl were in Adelaide Australia for this recording - live from the SMB IT Pro conference.

Topic 1: Update on Drone technologies and opportunities

Karl attends the Comptia Drone council webinars. Of course that's a favorite topic here, so we share our thounghts. Commercial drones are no longer on the Gartner Hype Cycle. But drone delivery systems has entered.

Lots of people who took the original license exams are not renewing their certs. But colleges and high schools are beginning to pump out students. About 20% of the students who complete the classes actually take the exams.

There are millions of drones in the air – most are not licensed.

People in our industry are making money today - “Drone Service Provider” is a thing. Opportunities include recurring revenue.

Link: See www.comptia.org/drones

Topic 2: Should Facebook take the ad money from politicians?

We don't go political here, but it's a legitimate quest about online industries and "media" outlets. Ad revenue is a small portion of revenue for Facebook. If you say no to politics, where does the line end, just with candidates?

. . . And perhaps the larger question of who (if anyone) should be policing outright lies.

Topic 3: The changing nature of background checks in the era of Big Data.

As we all know, the amount of "data" on you is growing all the time. Who owns it? Do you have rights to limit its use? How far should we go? We’ve probably already gone further than most people realize.

https://www.smartdatacollective.com/growing-depth-of-background-checks-in-big-data-age/

:-)

Episode 30 !!!

Topic 1: Karl’s Robot Cat

Karl bought himself a robotic cat! It's a Hasbro "Joy for All" companion animal. We talk about what this means for the bigger picture of robotics, human interaction, jobs, and opportunities going forward.

Related Links:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078FFX7Q8/

https://joyforall.com/

On robots taking jobs:
https://www.apnews.com/6034c9ce1af347ec8da996e39b29c51b

Topic 2: Voice Interface and Web Site Accessibility

As a result of a Supreme Court case, retail web sites must "accessible" - and this may include voice accessibility. To be specific, retail web sites must be accessible AND must be compatible with a voice assistant.

Dave talked about developing voice access with Alexa (see https://developer.amazon.com).

At the same time, Apple is making major moves on voice activation and accessibility.

Links:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/10/07/dominos-pizza-website-accessibility-supreme-court-wont-hear-case/3904582002/

https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/06/07/hands-on-with-apples-new-voice-control-accessibility-feature

Dave continues to looking like a visionary on this one.

Topic 3: Noise Pollution

A great article from The Atlantic digs into noise pollution and declares that "Noise is the exhaust of the digital economy," and exhaust is pollution that poisons humans.

We dig into noise pollution generally, both in "tech" environments and daily life.

Link:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/the-end-of-silence/598366/

-- -- -- 

Please check out . . .

Dave's daily Business of Tech podcast at https://www.mspradio.com/

Karl's Community at https://www.smallbizthoughts.org

Ryan's LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanmorris303/

I interviewed Keith Gillette, founder of TaskTrain, a new documentation tool for checklists and procedures. He describes TaskTrain as "A practical tool to scale your business by eliminating avoidable errors & increasing operational efficiency.

Keith Gillette is a "process pragmatist" and Founder/CEO of TaskTrain, a process management SaaS application streamlined for SMBs. Keith has more than 25 years of IT operations management experience in both embedded and virtual CIO roles. He holds a Master of Science in Information & Telecommunications Systems Management as well as a Master of Business Administration from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Keith is a Six Sigma-certified senior member of the American Society for Quality.

As a systems administrator, Keith was often burned by lack of system configuration and procedural documentation, so he became diligent in documenting everything he did. He carried that lesson with him when he advanced to IT leadership. His motto became "If it's not documented, it's not done."

Based on that experience, Keith launched TaskTrain as the tool he wished he had back in the day.

Web Site: https://TaskTrain.app LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/tasktrain/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Task_Train Facebook: https://facebook.com/TaskTrain/

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: Jim Cramer, the financial TV guy, has proposed that the "FAANG" index needs to change. FAANG simply means Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. Cramer thinks we should drop Netflix from the group because they've lost money recently and add Microsoft in its place.

Ryan connects this with our earlier discussion about technology reaching the point where non-technical people are beginning to pay attention to the industry (and what that means).

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/03/cramer-we-gotta-get-netflix-the-hell-out-of-faang.html

FAANG is a horrible measurement of the industry. What metrics do we think are the right ones?

Topic 2: UPS get approval for the first Drone Airline

Article:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/1/20893655/ups-faa-approval-delivery-drones-airline-amazon-air-uber-eats-alphabet-wing

With this move, UPS will start deploying drone deliveries in "campus" settings such as medical campuses and college campuses. To make this successful, they will need to develop a great deal of sophisticated controls, procedures, and safety protocols. But my guess is that they'll be hugely successful.

We talk about the details and practical side of this as well as the bigger picture: What this means to IT professionals. Bottom line is, we think this is great news.

In a related development, CompTIA has a new Drone community to look into this kind of opportunity. See

https://www.comptia.org/membership/communities-and-councils/drone-advisory-council

AND they have a live webinar meeting of the Community this Thursday (October 17th). Register here:

https://www.comptia.org/events/view/drone-standards-best-practices-and-market-research

Topic 3: Net Neutrality gets a win - inside a loss

News Item: Federal judge upholds the US government’s right to eliminate net neutrality - but also reaffirms states’ right to enforce net neutrality within their borders.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/10/net-neutrality-still-dead-but-judges-rule-that-fcc-cant-preempt-state-laws/

A bit of good news/bad news here. AND a little disagreement on whether net neutrality is really that big of a deal. Either way, our industry is affected more and more as the government gets involved in things.

We also dig into the affect on privacy regulation as it relates to net neutrality and the IT Service Provider.

-- -- --

About Us:

Dave Sobel comes to us from MSPRadio.com.
Karl Palachuk runs the Small Biz Thoughts Community - SmallBizThoughts.com.
Ryan Morris is from the Morris Management Partners - morrismp.com

I had a great chat with my old friend Nigel Moore from Australia about his new book, Package Price Profit.

(You can buy it on Amazon in paperback or Kindle edition.)

This book is a great overview of pricing and bundling options in the IT service industry. I particularly love his analogy about so-called All You Can Eat: Everything at the buffet is included. If you want us to make a special dish for you, that's not included!

Of course Nigel is also the founder of the Tech Tribe - www.thetechtribe.com. So we chatted about that a bit.

The official book site is www.packagepriceprofit.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.

I had a great chat with my old friend Nigel Moore from Australia about his new book, Package Price Profit.

(You can buy it on Amazon in paperback or Kindle edition.)

This book is a great overview of pricing and bundling options in the IT service industry. I particularly love his analogy about so-called All You Can Eat: Everything at the buffet is included. If you want us to make a special dish for you, that's not included!

Of course Nigel is also the founder of the Tech Tribe - www.thetechtribe.com. So we chatted about that a bit.

The official book site is www.packagepriceprofit.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: Terms that are totally missused.

What terms should we stop using? Dave's nominee is “Market Consolidation.” We have a lot of M&A activity - the number of IT service providers continues to grow. How much of this is simply maturity? Take that news coverage with a grain of salt.

Ryan calls out "Convergence" as the thing that just never happened. And "Compliance" as the buzzword to follow - NOT compliancy!

Karl throws "Millennial" on the pile. In particular, the use of the term to call out behavior you disagree with. Young people have always been young people. Aside from simply not being 50, they bring a lot of energy and freshness to business - as young people always have.

. . . and lots of related conversation in all this.

Topic 2: Amazon announces Sidewalk: A proprietary wireless mesh network. What could possibly go wrong?

Amazon announced dozens of new products and services recently. One of the hottest is their Sidewalk mesh project. This is a proposed standard that will fill the gap between short-range options like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, larger (long-distance) cellular networks. The idea is to make sure a bunch of vendors agree on how to implement things so they work together.

Sitting out the party: Apple, Google, and Samsung.

Link:
https://www.channelnomics.com/2019/09/26/amazon-unveils-sidewalk-wireless-network-for-iot/

Topic 3: Do we really care about calendars if we sell recurring revenue?

We all seem sucked into the End of Year, End of Quarter, and other calendar-oriented sales strategies. Does that still make sense?

What's it gonna take to get you into this car today?

Ryan pushes you to work on the customer's calendar, not the vendor's calendar. Karl's a huge advocate to sending out offers at the end of the year (No sales: Just an opportunity to help the client reduce their tax bill by spending money). Dave has a tip about balancing the sales seasons.

We've got some great strategy ideas here.

:-)

This is a great interview with Jennifer Fields of ASTEK Marketing. I have worked with Jennifer for 2+ years now. She's the real deal.

ASTEK specializes in marketing for MSPs: strategic planning, direct marketing, executing call-downs, and more. They have a new office in Kenosha, but it's populated with people who have been with ASTEK for several years.

We cover a lot of territory in this podcast, but the my favorite part was the discussion of MDF – Marketing Development Funds that are available from many vendors. In addition to simply helping you spend the money, ASTEK actually helps you apply for the funds and makes you they are distributed.

The bottom line is that they provide a very technology-specific marketing. Everyone understands your offer. AND they understand the context of what you do. So if you're doing VOIP or security, their team understands all those other options. So they can pick up on opportunities that a non-technical marketing team would miss.

Overall, a fun conversation. Check it out and post your questions below.

(Jennifer is also a community leader in the Small Biz Thoughts Technology Community.)

Find Jennifer at: www.astekmarketing.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.

Another great show! We hit a lot of bases with this one.

Topic 1: Digital Transformation - Yes or No?

References:

Ryan says Yes - The term "Digital Transformation" is becoming more valuable and meaningful over time. This is what we mean when we focus on value versus feature, feature, feature. We are actually seeing examples of companies that do this.

Dave’s take: There's no here here. In other words, “no shit.” Isn't this just another transformation. Why do we need a new phrase here? There's certainly opportunity in transformation, but we don't need the digital hype.

Karl's tie-breaking vote . . . revealed within.

Related Links:

https://www.cio.com/article/3211428/what-is-digital-transformation-a-necessary-disruption.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2019/07/21/7-examples-of-how-digital-transformation-impacted-business-performance/#4dcad51f51bb

Topic 2: Criminals misusing drones to wreak havoc.

Drug smugglers have used drones to get contraband into prisons. Other drones have helped immigrants illegally cross borders. Mexican drug cartels have even used drones to drop remotely-detonating explosives on targets. And of course morons fly drones into forest fires and planes fighting the fires have to be grounded.

Federal Aviation Administration is working to make it illegal to “weaponize” consumer drones, require drones to fly within the operator’s line of sight, and make a national registry of drones and their operators.

Related Links:
Criminals Are Now Using Swarms Of Small Drones To Befuddle Law Enforcement

Man drops homemade bombs on ex girlfriend’s house

Meanwhile, in the channel . . . CompTIA just held their first Drone group meeting last month. Consultants will be affected by new regulations even if they are perfectly law abiding citizens.

Topic 3: Voice Partnerships and Ecosystems. A consortium emerges.

Amazon leads the way to a massive coalition of voice technology providers. More than 30 companies are involved, including BMW, Bose, Logitech, Microsoft, Salesforce, Sony Audio Group, and Spotify. NOT joining the group are Apple, Google, and Samsung.

Sadly, the coalition has a loser of an acronym: VII - Voice Interoperability Initiative.

Related Link:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/24/20881321/amazon-voice-interoperability-initiative-alexa-microsoft-baidu-intel-qualcomm-spotify-assistants

Once again, this was a fun show to record. Please share with your friends and give us your feedback.

:-)