Smb Community Podcast By Karl W. Palachuk

At the Business Solutions Channel Transitions event in Chicago (two weeks ago), I caught up with Randy Clark from Mercury. Mercury is a payment processor. Think credit cards. Pretty much everyone takes credit cards. Everyone who has clients that trust them has the potential to sell credit card processing. Randy Clark – Mercury Pay In this interview, Randy talks about getting started as well as the opportunity options for credit card processing. Some people sell directly to their clients. Others create a complete side business selling credit card processing. In addition to working with Consultants and VARs, Mercury works with software developers. As you know, there's at least one live of business application for every business out there. One very important point: If you want to increase the resale value of your company, recurring revenue from payment processing can increase the value dramatically. The key is that you get a small faction of every sale made by the merchants you set up. Find out more about

Mike Monocello Mike Monocello Mike Monocello is the editor-in-chief of Business Solutions magazine, a monthly publication dedicated to helping IT solutions providers grow their businesses by selling complementary technologies and moving into thriving markets. We talked about building recurring revenue models, technology, and business. Mike has to come up with new articles for a variety of readers every month (retail VARs, managed service providers, etc.). As you can imagine, it's hard to figure out which content to focus on. They spend a lot of time listening to their readers in order to get feedback about where their audience is and where they're going. We talked about the Business Solutions Channel Transitions conference in Chicago last month. We also looked ahead to the conferences Business Solutions had coming up later this year and next. The next Business Solutions Channel Transitions conference will be in Orlando in November 5th. Details and registration are at http://www.channeltransitions.com/.

One of the coolest things I've ever seen at a conference is a "Visual Practitioner" summarizing the event via large scale drawings. I talked to Jackie Forbes at the recent MAX 2015 conference. She is with Drawn to Learn (www.drawntolearn.co.uk). Her background is in meeting facilitation, so she has good skills around picking out the important points of the day. Here's a picture of the drawings she did for two days of the conference. Click to enlarge. Drawn to Learn I didn't realize that this is now an official profession with meetings and titles. Even while we were talking, someone came up to ask Jackie about illustrations like this for video projects. She specializes in meeting artwork like this, but she gave him a referral to someone who specializes in the video side of the business. If you were not at the conference, a lot of the components here won't make sense. But to those who sat through presentations, these are great reminders of what we saw and heard from the screen. (Did you know the unicorn is

Back at the vendor hall . . . I talked to four folks about taking your business to the next level. Two of them are directly in sales and marketing (helping you with S&M), one who helps you generate reports to make more sales, and an industry organization you should absolutely be involved with. Ken Goldstein is with Choice Technologies. They are an MSP with a successful sales process – and they're willing to help you increase your sales. They have developed an assessment system to help you analyze prospect networks and develop a sales proposal based on the findings. Find out more at www.choicetech.com. Matthew Koenig is with RapidFire Tools. RapidFire Tools provides network auditing reports that are both big and beautiful. Here Matthew talks about the compliance assessments you can run with RapidFire Tools. This includes PCI, HIPAA, and general security. More info at www.rapidfiretools.com. Karl and Raj Raj Khera is with Presstacular. They help you automate getting out a newsletter every week, or m

While in DC for the MAX 2015 conference, I wandered down to the vendor hall. Of course I took my trusty recorder along for the stroll. Here are three quick interviews with vendors I met. Carl Banzhof from iScanOnline talked about "data breach intelligence." Basically, they use a host-based agent to search for sensitive data. In addition to the places where you know you have data (e.g., the database), iScanOnline looks at PDF and Excel reports that were generated from a database, but now those reports are stored on local PCs and in Dropbox accounts. In addition to cataloging data that might be where it doesn't belong, the tool also checks to see whether a breach has occurred and calculates the estimated cost of that breach. You can request a 14 day free trial on their web site at www.iscanonline.com. Jim Lippie from Clarity Intelligence Platform talks about "turn-key automated analytics as a service" platform. Basically, that's a tool that looks at how their data is moving around inside their business (bot

I always love working with Joe Panettieri. He's a very smart guy, very fun to talk to, and totally tuned into the channel.So I had to grab him for a quick podcast when I saw him in DC this week. Joe Penettieri at MAX Joe and his partner Amy Katz run After Nines, Inc., a consulting company. And they've been working on a new project. In fact, they're going to announce it and launch in a few days. I knew Joe wouldn't give me the full scoop, but I got some hints. Joe's using the hashtag #E2E so you can look for that on Twitter, etc. The official announcement is Tuesday, September 15th. In the meantime, here's a teaser podcast. Check out the After Nines Blog at http://www.afternines.com/news/ And follow Joe on Twitter at https://twitter.com/joepanettieri UPDATE: The Site is Now Live Visit my Small Biz Thoughts blog for the details: ChannelE2E Launch Promised to Walk You to The Exit and the new adventure is . . . Channel e2e – https://www.channele2e.com Listen Now: Listen to the Podcast. Hosted by Simplec

I love the ChannelPro SMB Forums. There's always something new and different going on. Even the panels change from city to city. Here's a quick report from the ChannelPro SMB Forum in Chicago last week. You can still sign up for the last show of the year – November 3rd in New York / New Jersey. See http://events.channelpronetwork.com for more details. In this podcast, I interview Erick Simpson and Todd Haugland. Erick Simpson Erick Simpson is the VP and CIO, of SPC International – see http://www.spc-intl.com. Erick was one of the panel members on Cloud Services and bundling. He also made a presentation on "Value Pricing." I asked what that is and Erick explained. Instead of taking costs plus x%, value pricing focuses on identifying the client's pain and pricing services with client pain relief in mind. Note that this is a different kind of sales process, and is focused on clients who approach technology from a strategi perspective. Luckily, Erick is convinced that anyone can learn this process. For more

Earlier this year I spoke at the Retail IT VAR of the Future Conference, sponsored by Business Solutions Magazine. In this interview, I talk to Jim Roddy, President of BSM, about the upcoming conferences called Channel Transitions. The conferences will be: Chicago – Sept. 24th and Orlando – Nov. 5th You can find out more at www.channeltransitions.com or www.BSMInfo.com. Jim Roddy The conferences will focus on transitioning to recurring revenue models. Traditionally, Business Solutions subscribers (about 40,000) have included a large number of businesses with vertical markets in POS (point of sale) and barcode technology. Jim mentions an interview with Greg Dixon from ScanSource called Managed Services Tsunami. You can read that article here: http://www.bsminfo.com/doc/a-managed-services-tsunami-in-pos-bar-coding-is-coming-don-t-say-you-weren-t-warned-0001. Note: You can get into these conference free of charge with the checkout code PODCAST01. Additional Contact info: Web – www.BSMinfo.com Blog – blog.BSM

Sell My MSP! What a great idea! I love the new project from Managed Service rock stars Amy Babinchak and Rayanne Buchianico for a number of reasons. Their new project is called Sell My MSP and the web site is www.SellMyMSP.com. It's a new clearinghouse for people looking to buy or sell an I.T. business. Sell My MSP The first reason I love this project is that it's very educational. You can request an evaluation of your business right away. But you can also get some forms and worksheets to "prep" your business for sale. Those will give you some checklists that are educational to go through. Second, Amy and Rayanne are totally focused on the reality of selling a business. Some people have unrealistic expectations about the value of their client list, the role of debt in the process, and the timeline needed to complete a sale. Amy talks about the "strategy" of letting a business winnow down until there are just a few clients left. Rayanne mentioned the need to put debt outside the sales proc

While I was down under at the MAXfocus partner conference in Melbourne, Australia, I talked to a couple of the sponsors in the back of the room. Mark Winter Mark Winter from Rapid Fire Tools was promoting their Network Detective product. Rapid Fire Tools (www.rapidfiretools.com) already has a presence in Australia. Mark was here to meet partners as well as sign up some new partners. In this interview we discuss HIPAA equivalent issues in Australia as well as the global PCI standards. Mark also had some good conversations with distributors in Australia. So things are looking great for them! Contact info: Sales@rapidfiretools.com Web – www.rapidfiretools.com Phone – +1 678-323-1300 Jerry Koutavas I'm always happy to run into Jerry Koutavas – even when I'm not expecting it. Jerry and the ASCII Group were in Melbourne to support MAX as well as test the waters with regard to expansion of ASCII into Australia. Of course I used the opportunity to probe about specific programs they might be offering. I've alw

While I was in Australia for the MAXfocus Partner Conference, I was quite impressed with their plans to data mine their own tools. Dave Sobel I caught up with Dave Sobel, Director of Partner Community for LogicNow (MAXfocus). Dave's team is responsible for the MAX partner conferences and they did a great job with this one. I asked Dave about the whole "Big Data" initiative at MAX. He was very excited about the possibilities. As he says in the interview, MAX has billions of data points to analyze, not just from how their tools are used, but for end-user computer systems as well. Dave gives some hints about the big announcements coming from MAX at the U.S. Conference next month. He also brags up his team in Australia. Dana Bullister Next I talked to Dana Bullister, a Data Scientist for LogicNow. Of course I thought they had one. She assures me that they have a whole team of Data Scientists (isn't that a cool title?). Dana talked about how the data are gathered and used. She makes the point that the co

Todd Billiar Yesterday I talked with a couple of pros about the hiring environment for small IT shops. The good news: According to Todd Billiar from VAR Staffing, there's about a 1-2% unemployment rate for I.T. Consultants. The bad news: Everyone wants more money – even if they're not qualified. This podcast includes interviews with Todd as well as Josh Peterson, one of the great coaches in the IT community. Todd recently published an article in ChannelPro SMB magazine. That got me thinking about the best interviewing approaches today. I discovered that he's got all kinds of great information about the trends in our industry today. Here we talk about some of those trends, including the rising cost of technicians as well as the types in highest demand. Todd's Billiar Contact Info: www.varstaffing.com email tbilliar@varstaffing.com Phone 972-847-0566 Next up I talked to Josh Peterson about the recruiting/hiring process. Josh is a firm believer that you should also be talking to people about working for yo

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 upcomin

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.

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 – Rob@datto.com Special Musical note . . . Music for this episode courtesy of Holland Marie . . . www.hollandmarie.com Holland Marie Used w

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 – jspring@efolder.com – 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 fo

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 McGi

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 –

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. Click Here to Listen to My Podcast with Amy 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 i

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