Smb Community Podcast By Karl W. Palachuk

Travis Austin: PumpUpTheAuto.com One of the first and best Autotask experts is Mr. Travis Austin. Travis has developed programs for getting information in and out of Autotask. Now he specializes in helping companies get the most from their Autotask investment. Austin's new venture is called PumpUpTheAuto.com. Of course Travis was at Autotask Community Live in Phoenix last week. We caught up and talked about his latest adventure. In this interview Travis tells us about how folks are using Autotask and how you can make the most of it if you're already an Autotask user. Travis has extensive background and experience in making Autotask fit a business' workflow. His tools, tips, tricks, and expertise have proven invaluable to thousands of Autotask users, and he's ready to help you use Autotask better, too! We use his email connector and have for many years. You can check out Travis' new adventure at www.PumpUpTheAuto.com There you'll find some great educational videos about the latest features being release

Richard Tubb – Effective Business Networking: How to Network Online and Offline Richard Tubb is well known for the Tubblog at http://www.tubblog.co.uk/. Richard is a former Managed Service Provider and now a successful coach for I.T. Consultants. Richard has worked in the IT industry for more than 15 years, working at large corporations such as Ernst & Young and the NHS, as well as being the owner of an award winning Managed Service Provider business in the UK. After selling his MSP business, Richard now works providing expert advice to help IT companies who want to grow their business in a scalable and sustainable way – helping them moving their business up a gear by putting together Managed Service offering and pricing it correctly, getting to grips with Marketing to help generate sales, or implementing internal systems and processes that encourage growth. Richard has a great blog and always provides excellent value to the community. We are please to have him talking at the SMB Online Conferenc

John Armato – Think Inside the Box John Armato is a Senior Vice President & Senior Partner, and Creative Strategist for Fleishman-Hillard International Communications. John helps companies set strategy, shape messages, and develop programs to inspire people, sell products, solve problems, promote causes, and avert crises. He has won dozens of awards and worked with more than 100 clients, including Hallmark, H&R Block, Visa, E. & J. Gallo Winery, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Egyptian Tourism Authority, and the University of Oregon. John is in demand to lead "big idea" sessions and to coach others on the creative process. He has been called "one of the most accomplished presenters in his field" and his keynotes have been featured at clients, colleges, and conferences around the country. In this podcast, John talks to us about creativity and how the "idea" process works. I think you'll find this a very engaging discussion. It also t

Rayanne Buchianico Rayanne Buchianico is an Accountant and MSP Business Consultant. At the SMB Online Conference in June, she'll be talking about Understanding Your Financials: Three Mandatory Monthly Reports and What They Are Telling You. We talked last week about how you can use QuickBooks and your financials. She gave some great information – which is why she has TWO presentations at the SMB Online Conference next month. Listen to the podcast … then check out the conference. Rayanne has over 25 years of accounting, tax and business experience in the SMB sector. She specializes in working with IT Professionals and MSPs to improve profitability through accounting systems, financial reporting, and PSA integration. She was awarded the 2012 Jim Locke Memorial Community Award (formerly "SBSer of the Year") by SMB Nation and SMBTN and was named to the SMB 150 list by SMB Technology Network (SMBTN) and SMB PC magazine in 2011 and 2012. She partnered with Bigger Brains to provide the QuickBooks 2013 vide

Manuel Palachuk My brother Manuel is an author, business coach, and outsourced CIO. He worked at KPEnterprises for six years, half of it as President. In this presentation he talks about the five tools that can transform your company overnight. He has over 25 years of business, management, and training experience in the computer and electronics industries. He is an expert of process, systems, and their efficiency who is driven toward continuous improvement in all aspects of business. Manuel is the co-author of the Network Migration Workbook, an expansive document covering the complete processes and checklists required to migrate your network with zero downtime. Manuel is currently writing Getting to the Next Level: A Blueprint For Taking Your Managed Service Business To The Top. Manuel speaks on Day One – June 25th. In this 25 minute interview he gives an introduction to his talk. In the full presentation, he'll talk about cash flow, communications, people processes, working in real time, and monitoring bac

Brian Sharp Brian Sharp is a great motivational speaker/trainer. He runs a company that helps small business owners learn to use speaking and presenting as a means to expand their company and make sales. His company is called Go Big – http://www.gobigcompany.com/. As you'll hear in this interview, Brian does not like the "pitch fest" approach to motivational training, which is very popular these days. We did a press release recently on Brian Sharp's appearance. See the press release here: SMB Online Conference Press Room. Brian helps businesses understand where their business and how it can grow. Very much inline with our "IT Business Reboot" theme, Brian will be talking about How to Take Back and Turn Around Your Small Business. As you will hear on the audio, Brian is very excited to be presenting this material. A few sites mentioned by Brian: PresenterBox.com and BrianSharpOnline.com. The theme of this year's SMB Online Conference is IT Business Reboot – We'll cover a variety of

Strategies for a Post-SBS World "June 30th isn't that far away." Kevin Beares is the Community Lead for the Windows Server and System Group at Microsoft. Kevin is in charge of driving community interaction for the SMB space. I caught up with Kevin at SMB Nation Spring at the Microsoft Conference Center. Kevin gets props for putting himself on stage and letting the entire crowd put their toughest questions against him. It was supposed to be an hour, but Kevin stayed more than two hours and was accompanied by Microsoft MVPs Steven Banks and Cliff Galiher, who did a good job of representing both the Microsoft perspective and the partner perspective. One of the first things Kevin pointed out to me is that there IS a product team that is still focused on the SMB space. The Home Server and Small Business Server products have been re-jiggered and the current SKU is Server Essentials. But the team still exists. He did not say this, but the comment "Read into that what you want" allows me to r

Better Sales Through Better Education Chip Reaves from Bigger Brains is going to be one of the featured speakers at the 2013 SMB Online Conference. We did a press release recently on Chip's appearance. See the press release here: SMB Online Conference Press Room. In this podcast Chip talks about some research he'll be presenting in his June presentation. Here's a very good tidbit: When asked what they need in a consultant, the Number One requirement is knowledge. Clients want to have someone they can trust to give them advice . . . and that person needs to speak business as much as technology. Chip's talk will address several ways you can improve your sales and bottom line by adding internal and external education to your business. Download the interview to read more. The theme of this year's SMB Online Conference is IT Business Reboot – We'll cover a variety of topics related to re-building your business as if you were starting over today. Here are the topics for Day One – June 25th: 9:00 AM Karl's Ke

At the SMB Nation Spring Conference, I talked to Laura Shafer, Director or Product Marketing at StorageCraft. StorageCraft and their ShadowProtect product are very well known. Now StorageCraft has a new cloud-based disaster recovery program called StorageCraft Cloud Services. This product was in beta during "Super Storm Sandy" and performed admirably. Now it is in general release. For more information, visit www.StorageCraft.com – There's a Partner link on the right side of the page. Contact Laura at laura.shafer@storagecraft.com or ping the partner program at sales@storagecraft.com. – Download the Interview with Laura Shafer of StorageCraft here. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This week Chip Reaves from Bigger Brains announced a great new offering for managed service providers. I talked to him about Bigger Brains and the new offering – Computer College. Chip is the founder of Computer Troubleshooters in the U.S. (It was originally an Australian company.) Computer Troubleshooters grew to 480 locations in 33 countries. After selling off his interest in that franchise, Chip still owns a Computer Troubleshooters business in South Carolina. Bigger Brains was created to provide e-learning systems to Chip's clients. Training is a natural addition to what we do for a living. In fact, many of us offer some kind of O.S. or software training in our managed services offerings already. Bigger Brains now has two levels of offerings. First, the "Bigger Brains" brand is a training service that you can resell. It has lots of courses and sells for about $17 per user per month. That's end user pricing. You can make a very healthy profit on that (details in the audio). Cources include Excel, Word, Pow

I had a great talk with Michael Siggins, Publisher of ChannelProSMB. Among other things, he brought me up to speed on their big live event scheduled for April 10th: Channel Pro SMB Forum. This day-long educational event will be in beautiful Long Beach, CA. The weather is expected to be perfect! Channel Pro Forum will be a jam-packed, one-day affair with great content, great food and great networking opportunities. Sessions include: o Adapting Your Business to the Cloud o Winning Sales and Marketing Strategies for MSPs o Where the Money Is in Mobility o Today's Hottest Trends in Hardware o CompTIA Training: MSP Partners Trustmark And of course you, I will be there on a panel. The event is FREE. For more info and to register, please go to www.ChannelProForum.com. Michael also mentioned that ChannelPro magazine is holding its Reader Choice Award voting. This is a program designed to identify the most SMB-specific products, solutions and services for ChannelPro readers and their customers. They are accepting v

For several years now, I have presented my "State of the Nation" address for small business IT consultants. I never pretend that I'm unbiased. But most of my writing is pretty matter of fact. And most of my interviewing is intended to coax information out of other people. But once a year I dust off the soapbox and give a 45 minute "State of the Nation" address. This year, I talked about . . . Highlights (lowlights?) from 2012 The Death of SBS Cloud Services Economy Rebooting Your IT Consulting Business in 2013 The recording came out pretty good, so I am posting it here. – Download Karl's 2013 State of the Nation Address for Small Business I.T. Consultants here. Here are some of the web sites listed in this broadcast. www.SMBBooks.com www.smbonlineconference.com blog.smallbizthoughts.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

After months of preparation, Cloud Nation (www.cloudnation.co) was launched last week. I interviewed Tom Poole, President of Cloud Nation about the launch. First, I dropped in to www.cloudnation.co and signed up for the install-access 30 day trial. So I was logged into the system while interviewing Tom. The site has two sides. Betty the Business Woman represents small businesses. Folks who enter there will get a test drive, but they will be channeled to resellers if they want to buy. Carl the Cloud Guy The other character is Carl the Cloud Guy — the I.T. Pro. There are two levels of membership. There are partners who wish to offer their cloud services through Cloud Nation. But most of us are going to be exploring how to be a Cloud Nation Certified Professional. Yes, there is a certification program. The training program has a series of ten modules that cover the technology as well as sales and marketing strategies. As the introductory email states, "Getting the Cloud Nation experience firsthand is a great way

A few people have been talking about the new HIPAA training from Reflexion. In my brain, Reflexion = Spam Filtering. So how do you get from there to HIPAA training and certification? So I called Scott Barlow, VP of Sales and Marketing at Reflexion. HIPAA Training from Reflexion Scott ended up giving me a great education on HIPAA requirements, the one important "Business Associate Agreement" you need to have, and how you can get certified and resell certification to your clients. Scott tells stories about very small companies being fined due to HIPAA compliance issues – including a 5-physician that was fined $100,000! Training is very straight forward and very inexpensive. The course has ten sections with quizzes at the end. Then the course as a whole has a 50-question test at the end. It is 100% online and costs only $299! Best take-away is the template you get for your Business Associate Agreement. If you're looking for a great additional source of revenue, and you want to work with people in the medical c

I ran into Arlin in Orlando a few weeks ago, but we never connected for a podcast. So we made a point of connecting my phone a few days ago. Arlin Sorensen of HTG Heartland Technology Groups (HTG) have been a major force in the SMB space for many years. HTG programs have traditionally been face to face peer groups. Right now there are about 250 companies in the face to face groups. But now there are another 70 companies involved with HTG's online program. Arlin gives us some good information about the specialty groups that are evolving. There are specialty groups for managers, smaller companies, and even much larger companies. HTG's big annual conference will be in Dallas May 6-9, 2013. In addition, HTG is organizing a "CEO Vision" Summit in Omaha, NE August 15-16, 2013. This will be a special "Ted-Style" format. Arlin gives the details in our podcast. – Download the Interview with Arlin Sorensen here. Whether you're interested in the Face to Face peer groups, online peer groups, or specialty programs, yo

One of my favorite resources in the SMB community is Robert Crane – Directory of the Computer Information Agency. You can find him at CIAOPS.com. I refer to Robert as a resource because he really is "the man to know" with regard to SharePoint. That includes the SharePoint services shipped with Small Business Server 2003, 2008, 2011, the free version from Microsoft, or the full-price product now available as a hosted environment. SharePoint Operations Guide by Robert Crane Robert maintains a massive resource library he simply calls SharePoint Operations Guide. See more information at SMB Books and CIAOPS.com. The SharePoint Operations Guide now includes a great deal of information on Office 365 and how you can integrate these products to add value for your clients. Robert and I had a phone chat yesterday (Well, today in Australia). Robert gives us some great ideas about how to make money with these new products. He spells out a wonderful analogy between technology consulting and shepherding sheep. Imagine th

AVG Announces Cloud Care As I was wandering the floor at IT Nation, Jessica Turner from AVG stopped me to give me some information about the new AVG program: Cloud Care. Then Austen Clark wandered up to hand me to AVG marketing goodies. I assumed he was an AVG employee, but he's a very happy client of theirs and volunteered to hand things out. So I snapped this picture: Jessica agreed to an interview. She brought me up to speed on the new AVG program and the revenue opportunities for MSPs. This service is provided on an as-needed basis with month-to-month payments. Includes anti-virus, content filtering, and remote IT services. We also went into deployment options, installation, their dashboard, how new users are added to the system, and more. Download the Interview with Jessica Turner from AVG. For more information on AVG Cloud Care, visit www.avg.com/cloudcare. For more information on IT Nation, visit www.TheITNation.com. For more information on ConnectWise, visit www.ConnectWise.com. Side story:

As the IT Nation show was winding down, I talked to some guys from Continuum. Joe Consolmagno is a Technical Account Manager for the Mid Atlantic Region. Raymond Vrabel is Director of Technical Account Management. Continuum was at IT Nation to talk to partners about how they integrate with a variety software programs. In addition, they introduce a variety of products. I asked Joe about the performance of Continuum worked during Hurricane Sandy's visit to New York and New Jersey. The result was pretty impressive. The combination of Continuum and Datto made response to the disaster fast and easy. In addition to "Continuum Vault" for disaster recovery, the performance of the cloud-based NOC was excellent. Ray mentioned that during the disaster, about 3,000 virtual servers were spun up in the cloud – many of them in advance of the hurricane just to make sure that companies would have no downtime. Download the Interview with Joe and Ray from Continuum here. For more information about Continuum, visit www.continuu

I always like catching up with Dan Wensley from Level Platforms. Dan makes a point of starting out this interview with a ringing endorsement of the IT Nation conference. Level Platforms recently added helpdesk and NOC support for MSPs. The phones are answered in North America – primarily in Ottawa, Ontario. The key to success is the integration with clients' existing RMM solution. We talked quite a bit about the lessons from Hurricane Sandy and the power of cloud services during a disaster. Hurricane Sandy was a real test for how MSPs will react to disasters in the age of cloud-based management and disaster recovery. Dan is proud of the performance of their NOC during the hurricane, and he's confident that they will perform just as well in the next disaster. Download the Interview with Dan Wensley from Level Platforms here. For more information on Level Platforms, visit www.levelplatforms.com. For more information on IT Nation, visit www.TheITNation.com. For more information on ConnectWise, visit www.Connect

My friend Nancy Hammervik is the Senior Vice President, Industry Relations at CompTIA. On November 9th she was awarded a Bronze Stevie Award as "Female Innovator of the Year – Government or Non-Profit – 11 to 2,500 Employees." The Stevie Awards were created to honor and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and business people worldwide. All organizations and individuals worldwide may submit nominations to the Stevie Awards for Women in Business. The Stevie Awards are given out by the American Business Association. We talked about her role mentoring women in business and specifically women in IT. Nancy deals with pretty much everything in CompTIA that deals with partners: Communications, education, and a lot more. Their goal is to be vendor neutral while providing education and opportunities for VARs and MSPs. Download the Interview with Nancy Hammervik from CompTIA here. For more information on CompTIA, visit www.comptia.org. For more information on IT N