SMB Community Podcast: Business Advice for Small MSP Owners

This article was originally posted March 16, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. First Freeday Friday Podcast Posted – Oceanic Edition

This program was recorded and is posted here.

When it's Thursday afternoon here, it's Friday morning over there. So at 3PM Pacific time today, I launched the Aussie/New Zealand/Oceanic edition of Freeday Friday. We got a good recording, and it is available free to Cloud Services Roundtable Members.

Freeday Friday is a new program to give you access to some coaching advice in a totally new format. See details at www.FreedayFriday.com.

Basically, I am offering free coaching advice to a very few people – live and free. The "price" for free advice is that other people get to listen in. The idea is that we all share some common challenges, so we might be able to learn from each other and address those challenges in similar ways. I'm not really a "coach" with a program to sell. I will sell some hours. But this one-to-many format allows me to get information out there and engage in the community.

Besides . . . it's new and fun! And once the idea entered my head, I had to try it.

This recording is the first ever Freeday Friday – and starts off with a very common question for companies seeking to grow from one person to a four- or five-person shop. It's a little rough, but I think the advice is worthwhile.

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 article was originally posted March 5, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable.

As MVP Nation was winding down in Redmond, I was able to grab Chris Bangs and Dal Gemmell. Chris does a variety of things at SMB Nation, and plays a big role in getting vendors on board. Dal Gemmell is a Principle Product Manager at Symantec.

1) Download the Chris Bangs interview on "What's Up" with SMB Nation. Chris gives us great info on the re-designed SMB Nation website, the Fall Conference in Vegas, the SMB 150 awards, and a lot more.

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2) Download the Dal Gemmell Interview on one "Vendor's" view of MVP Nation. Dal is responsible for Endpoint Protection on desktops and servers for the small business market. He gives us some insight on why anti-virus is not enough, and how you might discuss that with you clients. He also gives some info on the integration of Backup Exec and other products with our standard SMB Tools.

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 article was originally posted March 4, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable.

What do you need from HP?

What have you always needed from HP?

A "Configuration" Quoting Tool!

Well, in this member podcast, Greg Starks from HP shows us the great stuff you can do with HP's new iQuote tool.

There are three ways to use the tool . . . including using their API to integrate it right into your company web site.

Member Download:

Interview with Greg Starks, March 2012

Links Mentioned in, or related to this podcast:

– HPiquote.net

– HP's press release was in June when the first US distributor turned on iQuote:http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110628a.html?mtxs=rss-corp-news

– Here is the blog announcement Greg did Feb 13 to introduce HP iQuote Universal:http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Coffee-Coaching-HP-and-Microsoft/Announcing-HP-iQuote-Universal/ba-p/107019 (Note: There are now 16 countries using iQuote.)

– The general info/landing page for iQuote is: http://hp.com/go/iquote.

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 article was originally posted March 4, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. Interviews with Jeff Middleton on IT Pro Conference and Tom Poole on SMB Nation

I caught up with a few more folks at MVP Nation in Redmond. After two days on content, content, content, I managed to talk to a few community members about what's next. Then I nabbed Jeff Middleton again to give us the low-down on his June conference.

So here's the line up of new down-loads:

1) Download the Jeff Middleton interview on the IT Pro Conference 2012. Jeff gives us the information and a great introduction to the theme of this year's IT Pro 2012 conference in New Orleans. Once I heard New Orleans, I agreed to go! Join me.

Details: 2-Day French Quarter Weekend Conference New Orleans

June 8 & 9, 2012

With a pre-day "brain explosion" event by Third Tier on June 7th.

I'll be at Jeff's conference . . . and THEN wander off to Orlando for the Autotask Community Live conference on June 10-12. That whole trip will be 75% brain overload and 25% vacation (at least for me).

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2) Download the Tom Poole interview on the MVP Nation and SMB Nation Conferences. Tom runs Cloud Nation and is a great source of info. He was a bit busy closing out this conference, but gave us ten minutes. Check it out and find out what's ahead for SMB Nation Fall!

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 article was originally posted March 3, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable. Member Podcasts from MVP Nation – Part 1

I ran into Arnie Mondloch and Dave Sobel in Redmond this week. I was there for the MVP Nation show. Arnie's in charge of Windows Evangelization program worldwide and has some great information on how partners can get involved in the development of Apps, Apps, Apps for the new Windows 8 and Windows 8 Metro platform.

The official title of his group is the Worldwide Platform Evangelism Group. Two products Arnie mentions in this interview are:

– Microsoft Platform Ready –http://www.microsoftplatformready.com

Microsoft Action Pack for Development & Design – https://partner.microsoft.com/US/40171463

Note: Arnie is also a Gonzaga University grad! Go Bulldogs!

Member Download:

Interview with Arnie Mondloch March 2, 2012

Dave Sobel is the new Partner interface for Level Platforms. He has some very cool things going on, including an offer to engage with the existing SMB and SBS user groups all over the world. I caught up with Dave in the hallway and he brought me up to speed on what Level Platforms is doing on the partner and user group front.

Member Download:

Interview with Dave Sobel March 2, 2012

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 article was originally posted March 3, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable.

I'm having a great time at MVP Nation in Redmond. We're on the Microsoft campus and I had a chance to catch up with a number of great people. I recorded six short podcasts yesterday.

The first two podcasts are under the category of "SMB Community Podcasts." That means they're free and open to the world.

First, I talked to Jeff Middleton about the MVP Roadshow that is just finishing. Thanks to the help of dozens of Microsoft MVPs, this show hit more than 50 cities all over the world. Jeff gives us a report on that.

Download the Jeff Middleton interview on Microsoft MVP Roadshow Here.

Second, I caught up with Dave Seibert from SMB Technology Network. SMBTN is helping to compile the list of the SMB 150 again this year. So nominations are closed and there are about 400 candidates to choose from. Voting has begun and you can go vote now at http://www.smb150.com.

Download the Dave Seibert interview on the SMB150 Here.

In addition to that, I have even more podcasts under the members-only section. So if you're a Cloud Services Roundtable subscriber, you can hear from Arnie Mondloch at Microsft, Dave Sobel from Level Platforms, and Greg Starks from HP about some really cool things going on in our space.

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 article was originally posted February 22, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable.

This program was recorded and is posted here.

I had a phone call with Harry two days ago while he was in the Bay Area. He gave me a lot of updates:

– Cloud Connect Conference

– MVP Nation

– Windows 8 and the MVPs

– Hotel information for MVP Nation

Harry also announced (and asked me to keep under wraps for a couple days), the fact that he has partnered with Zenith's MSP TV to webcase the MVP Nation Conference.

For information on the MVP Nation Conference and the $99 webcasting for two days of solid content, visit http://mvp.smbnation.com/.

I'll be at MVP Nation . . . so if you're there, look me up! And I'll be podcasting from the show.

For the full press release on this, see http://blog.smallbizthoughts.com.

This program was recorded and is posted 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.

This article was originally posted February 22, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable.

This program was recorded and is posted here.

I caught up with Jerry K from The ASCII group to talk about ASCII Success Summits for 2012, the ASCII Cup, and more. Find out how to contact Jerry for a free pass to one of the ASCII Success Summits.

Links mentioned in this podcast:

–www.asciievents.com

– Follow the ASCII Cup at

http://www.tripline.net/trip/Where_is_the_ASCII_Cup_-50552312153010049976FED79C206258

This program was recorded and is posted 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.

This article was originally posted January 19, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable This program was recorded and is posted here.

Podcast posted – A free-flowing discussion with Dave Sobel.

I caught up with Dave this week while he is in London, in a sweet little flat he rents by the week. As you may know, Dave has been a powerful member of the SMB community for some time. He has been a leader in the Microsoft MVP space, in the virtualization and cloud computing world, in HTG, and in the community at large.

Dave recently sold his managed service business and accepted a job with Level Platforms

https://www.facebook.com/djdave

https://twitter.com/#!/djdaveet

http://www.smbbooks.com/products/mssob01.htm

The book is Virtualization Defined – Now only $39.95

The DVD set is Designing, Implementing and Making Money with Virtual Environments – Now only $49.95

. . .

Members download the podcast now.

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 article was originally posted January 15, 2012 on Cloud Services Roundtable

This program was recorded and is posted here.

Part One of this Interview is posted here.

This is Part 2 of my interview with investment advisor and author Joyce Blonskij. Joyce is the author of Own the Clouds – The First Guide To Investing In Cloud Computing Companies. This book will be released on January 31st, 2012. For more information on the big "Virtual Launch Party" and a bunch of free give-aways, see http://owntheclouds.com/.

In this follow-up interview, Joyce gives some tips about getting started in Wall Stree investmenting. Joyce als introduced the four Key Cloud Elements – so you can identify cloud companies you want to own. She also introduces a chart called a Bollinger Band – her favorite kind of charting tool

The book will be only $24.95, and that prices includes a number of give-aways you can find out about at seehttp://owntheclouds.com/.

Joyce will be donating all proceeds from this book to charities, including Kiwanis House.http://www.kiwanisfamilyhouse.org/

Members can download this recording right now and get the year started off right with an introduction to investing. It's particularly cool to have such a great guide with a hook into our area of expertise. Check it out today.

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.