SMB Community Podcast: Business Advice for Small MSP Owners

Dave Seibert joins me for a look at tapping into Community Knowledge.

Dave Seibert

This conversation flows from a presentation I saw Dave give in Anaheim last year at the SMB Techfest (www.smbtechfest.com). In fact, I liked the presentation so much that I asked Dave to create a new version for the SMB Online Conference.

There are people "talk" community and there are people who "do" community. Dave does community ALL THE TIME! He was just named as one of ChannelPro SMB's top 20/20 visionaries. And that's the tip of the iceberg after his recognition as a Microsoft MVP, SMB 150 honoree, MSP 250, VP of the So Cal IAMCP chapter, a major player in the SMBTN, and so much more.

WHY does Dave participate in all those things and more? Because he totally understands the value of participating in the community.

In this podcast Dave talks about how he garners knowledge on new topics and challenges as an IT professional by engaging in conversations at various SMB channel events. Then he gives some notes from his upcoming presentation. In all, he sprinkles in great advice and perspective from someone who is a great example for the rest of us!

Listen Now:

Listen to the Podcast.

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 catch-up chat with Harry Brelsford from SMB Nation. He's busy with a couple of things going on at once. I know: Shocker!

First up, SMB Nation is putting on the first "Behind the Curtains" training on Windows 10, in association with Microsoft. This is a vendor-free event. It is also sold out – but Harry has a waiting list. So be sure to register because that will guarantee you're on the list to get information about the next big Windows 10 event.

Details at the Events Page at SMB Nation.

The much bigger event is SMB Nation / Office365 Nation's Get Connected event.

Details are at http://getconnected.o365nation.com/ – including the agenda and speaker lists.

Get Connected happens August 4-5 and focuses on Office 365, Windows 10, and Azure.

As their web site says:

"Bringing together Office 365 and Win10 experts, thought leaders, and a wide range of IT Professionals, THE Get Connected event provides you the opportunity to gain the knowledge, skills and tools you need to support your organization. Learn how to incorporate the industry best practices at more than 20 educational sessions tailored to Office 365 and Win10. Join us to learn and explore bench marking features of Office 365 and Win 10 via this two day online conference August 4 and 5th, 2015, from the comfort of your desk."

The fun starts at 7:00 AM (Pacific) on Tuesday, August 4th. Sessions go through 4:00 PM that day. On the 5th, sessions are 7:00 AM until 1:30 PM.

Harry Brelsford

Topics scheduled so far include:

• Office 365 Licensing
• Office 365 Click-To-Run Deployment
• Making Money with clients on Office 365
• Line of Business Apps/Integration
• SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business
• Migration
• Introduction to Windows 10
• Windows 10 Security
• Windows 10 and Universal Applications
• Windows 10 and the Internet of Things
• Windows 10 Sales and Support Opportunities

Interviews with Harry are always fun and informative.

Listen Now:

Listen to the Podcast.

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.

Last week we had a report from Robin Robins' Big Seminar – www.robinsbigseminar.com. This is the second report on that event – featuring an interview with Robin herself on why this event is different from other events in the community.

In this podcast, I interview four folks: Nadia Karatsoreos from MAXfocus, Stephen Swavley from Documentation Toolkit, Rob Rae from Datto, and Robin Robins from Technology Marketing Toolkit. The first three are vendors. As you know, I love vendors because the pay the bills at these events. They literally make it possible for us to have channel-related events.

Nadia Karatsoreos – MAXfocus

Nadia Karatsoreos – http://conferences.maxfocus.com – www.maxfocus.com – http://youtube.com/maxfocus

Stephen Swavley – Documentation Toolkit

Stephen Swavley – www.doctoolkit.com

Rob Rae and Robin Robins

Rob Rae from Datto with Robin

www.Datto.com – [email protected]

Special Musical note . . . Music for this episode courtesy of Holland Marie . . . www.hollandmarie.com

Holland Marie

Used with permission of the artist.

Listen to all four interviews and my commentary here:

Listen to the Podcast.

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.

We had a great time in Nashville for Robin Robins' Big Seminar – www.robinsbigseminar.com.

I love this event because it's crowded with great partners who are totally dedicated to working ON their business (see my Small Biz Thoughts Blog post on this).

In this podcast, I interview four folks: Jan Spring from eFolder, Jeff Dryall from Plan27, Nathan Brebner from Sandler Partners, and Bab Farkas from Computerama in Freeport, NY. The first three are vendors. One of the reasons I like to interview vendors is that they are in business to make money for us. Those who do a good job making money for us become partners for life. The vendors also help to make possible the events we attend!

Jan Spring efolder

Jan Spring – [email protected] – www.efolder.com

Jeff Dryall and Karl Palachuk

Jeff Dryall – www.plan27.ca

Nathan Brebner

Nathan Brebner – www.sandlerpartners.com

Bob is an I.T. Provider from Freeport, NY. I wanted to interview him because he has such a unique vertical. If you've ever thought about focusing on a specific vertical, give this a listen!

Listen to all three interviews and my commentary here:

Listen to the Podcast.

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.

This is the first report of two I'm doing on the Channel Partners Conference in Vegas last week.

The primary reason I attended is that many, many, people at the Channel Pro SMB event in Baltimore kept asking me if I was going.

I went a little early and connected with some folks. Then I stayed a little late and caught up with some others. I always recommend that strategy, as opposed to rushing in and rushing out. A lot of the "good stuff" at any conference takes place around the edges.

Zynstra and CloudMSP team (and Karl)

I was lucky enough to connect up with the whole Zynstra Hybrid Cloud team. They were in town for an HP Global Partner conference. Here we are at the MGM.

Pictured here are Daniel Langton (CloudMSP), me, James Tuff (Zynstra), Andrew Morlidge (Zynstra), Nick East (Zynstra), Rhett Ryder (Zynstra), and Jeff Ponts (CloudMSP).

Learn more at www.zynstra.com or www.mycloudmsp.com.

– – – – –

I interviewed several people. On this podcast, you'll hear interviews with the following folks:

– Dave McGirr – Advocates for Business

Dave McGirr

– Dave is from Annapolis MD. He literally stopped me in the hallway to tell me how excited he is about the Zynstra Hybrid Cloud solution I had mentioned some time ago on a podcast.

– Paula Wong – Hayward Networks

Paula Wong

– Based in the SF Bay Area. Paula is a security specialist looking for IT partners. See www.haywardnetworks.com.

– Sam Ciaccia – Datto Networks

Sam Ciaccia

– Datto has offices in the U.S., Canada, London, and Australia. – Learn about the cool news for founder Austin McCord – and find out about the Datto Partner Conference in New Orleans! – www.dattopartnerconference.com and www.datto.com

Listen to all three interviews and my commentary here:

Listen to the Podcast.

Enjoy the recordings . . . I've got more coming soon from the Channel Partners event that just finished in Vegas.

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 am fundamentally lazy. Or busy. Or both.

As a result, I sometimes captures interviews while I'm out and about and then don't post them up right away. I'm going to be doing some catch-up here.

I've got three quick interviews for you here. They are:

Steve Noel, MSP Evangelist for Axcient

Jeff Dryall, Directory of Business Development with Plan 27

and

Kevin Jones, Sales Engineer, RapidFire Tools

We'll start with Steve Noel. Steve helped out one of my clients at the end of last year and we chat about that a bit.

I ran into Steve at SMB Techfest (www.smbtechfest.com) awhile back.

Axcient recently released a Granular Exchange Recovery tool – and they have lots of other cool things planned for 2015.

In this podcast, Steve also gives details on the "freeware" version of the Axcient product so you can learn the product – and maybe even use it in an emergency.

For more info, see www.axcient.com.

Listen to our Interview Here.

Next up is Kevin Jones from RapidFire Tools, discussing their flagship product – Network Detective.

Kevin tells us a bit about the new "Inspector" product. It's a great tool for doing assessments and creating a vulnerability report for clients and prospects.

Last year, RapidFire released a new HIPAA Compliance Module that has become very popular. Network Detective was named by CRN as the #1 income generating tool for 2014, largely due to the success of the HIPAA Compliance Module.

Coming in 2015: a new PCI compliance module.

For more info, see www.rapidfiretools.com.

Listen to our Interview Here.

Last but not least, I talked to Jeff Dryall from Plan27.

I insult him, then he insults me. Then we get down to the interview.

Plan27 is a web-based lead generation service. They provide search engine marketing specifically for the channel – as a managed service.

My question is: Isn't SEO such a moving target that no one can stay on top for more than twenty minutes? Jeff's got a great answer for that question. Plan27's Google analytics team keeps your Google campaign fine tuned hour by hour. Find out more by listening to the interview.

For more info, visit www.plan27.ca.

Listen to our Interview Here.

Enjoy the recordings . . . I've got more coming soon from the Channel Partners event that just finished in Vegas.

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.

Just in case you haven't heard of Third Tier . . .

Third Tier (www.thirdtier.net) provides services for technology consultants. They provide education and assistance on a wide variety of topics.

I caught up with Amy Babinchak a few days ago to find out what new and cool. It turns out there's LOTS of great news from Third Tier. Their SMB Kitchen project is going strong – with a new program coming soon.

One of their cool new programs is call Look, a Whale. The program is designed to help you with major problems, major projects, and taking on new Whale-Size clients. My brother Manuel is the new whale tamer at Third Tier. (I wish I had that on my resume.)

Another cool program features our long-time friend Rayanne Buchianico, helping people get their finances set up properly for running an efficient technology consulting business. That program is called Tech Your Books. I've worked with Rayanne personally for a long time and think she provides an amazing service. Check it out.

The original reason I asked Amy for an interview was her new Micro-Staffing program. Third Tier is ramping up to provide top-level technicians for your "team" on an ongoing basis with very little commitment. Think about that: A genius-level technician at your disposal. You get their cell phone and can have them do a variety of tasks as members of your company's tech support department. Very cool.

Check out the podcast to hear all the details.

Note: After we recorded this podcast, but before I could post it, I had an urgent need for assistance. I called on Third Tier and Mr. Philip Elder came to the rescue. It was a great experience, and I posted some details about it on my Small Biz Thoughts blog.

Related Links:

Here's the recorded webinar Amy refers to in the podcast: http://www.thirdtier.net/2014/12/third-tier-2015-sneak-preview/

SMB Kitchen: http://www.thirdtier.net/smbkitchen-asp/

Look, A Whale: http://www.thirdtier.net/look-a-whale/

Tech Your Books: http://www.thirdtier.net/tech-your-books/

MicroStaff: http://www.thirdtier.net/my-third-tier/

Blog: http://www.thirdtier.net/blog/

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.

Catch our Dec 16th Odd Tuesdays episode!

Karl speaks with ChannelEyes' Jay McBain about their mobile app platform for connecting Vendors and channel partners.

Rayanne Buchianico also joins the show in our Oddballs segment. Rayanne talks about her MSP course – the Financial Processes That Make All the Difference. The course is geared for MSPs and covers such topics as: separation of accounting and financial duties, entities and tax considerations, cash flow forecasting, and more over a five-week online teaching structure.

You can find the Dec 16th's Odd Tuesdays episode here.

*~*

And don't forget to listen for the show coupon that will give you discounts on the 2015 MSP Courses Lineup over at Great Little Seminar!

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.

Check out Nov 4th's Odd Tuesdays episode where Karl talks with Results Software's Mike Honig about their expanded CRM system.

And our Oddballs segment in this episode features Small Business MVP Amy Babinchak discussing the importance of MSPs building and developing vendor relationships.

You can find the Nov 4th's episode here.

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 just got back from the big ChannelPro SMB Forum in Philadelphia. For more information on next year's events, visit http://events.channelpronetwork.com/.

At the event, I talked to a number of vendors. Here is present some quick shout-outs from Datto, Buffalo Tech, Excel Micro, Lenovo, and StorageCraft.

Most importantly, I had a chance to hang out with Dave Seibert and sit on a cloud panel with him.

Dave is the mastermind behind the big SMB TechFest that happens about four times a year in Anaheim, CA. Here I talk to Dave about the next event – November 21-22, 2014.

For more info, visit www.smbtechfest.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.