497 Why Am I Doing This?

Hello, friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business podcast. And this is one of those pop-up podcasts, not planned, not lived. So here I am recording late on a Sunday evening, June the fourth and I'll tell you why in just a minute, this is going to be a very hectic month for me. And I was just sitting here watching the heat come back for a win against the Denver Nuggets and watching naked and afraid. Um, and it was a pretty interesting Sunday and then I realized that, oh, I've got a busy week because next Sunday, I will be in Denver for the Pax8Beyond conference. And then the week after that, I will be in Tampa for the ASCII edge conference. So I've got both of those coming up and I just started doing a whole bunch of interviews for the upcoming pitch at 2023 contest for ConnectWise.

I have signed on with Sean Lardo to do a prerecording of all of their 27 contestants this year. You're going to hear a lot about them, the emerging vendors and contestants. They're going to be guests on my show and they're going to be on a couple of other shows. So you'll hear a bunch of those. Mine will probably be the shortest of all the shows.

We're only going to have like 15-minute episodes. I think other podcasters are going to have them on for half an hour or longer. So, um, that's going to be happening here. Uh I'm going to be releasing two of those this week. That is one of the reasons why I wanted to do a show tonight because I'm going to have to apologize to everyone.

I don't know if anybody was looking for this or planning for this, but I am rapidly approaching show number 500. And because of how busy I've been, I made no plans to celebrate and I was looking at the schedule and thinking that I may be having show number 500 while in Denver and without any way to plan for a celebration or acknowledgement, I said, well, let me rearrange some stuff. And so I am recording a show tonight which is going to end up being show number 497. I will be releasing two of the pitch shows which are going to be shows 4 98 and 4 99. Those will be on Monday and Tuesday, which leaves the Wednesday live show as show number 500. So I have reached out to some previous guests, some good friends to see who, who can join me for that show. And uh we'll just look back and have a big old remembrance party of all of the shows I did before, including the days of Podnutz Pro and the Reim imaged it Business Podcast. So I hope that if you are up to date with listening to the shows that you will make a point this week to join us live on Wednesday at 8 p.m.

as we celebrate show number 500 of the podcast. Now, another reason I wanted to go ahead and do this is that I ended up having a very heart to heart conversation on Thursday evening and let me kind of set the background for this. So a lot of the things that I had tried to do this year were born out of goals over the last couple of years. One of those goals was to do an IT business book club and I did make an announcement early in the year that that was going to be on the table. This year, I had reached out to a couple of people and we were all set to do a couple of book reviews, but then I ended up talking to a good friend, not only about doing the book club, but about the fact that I was going to be trying to make changes to my business. This year, I was going to try to do a little rebranding, a little reimaging, probably hiring a tech this year. And we got to talk about setting up the business for scale or to run basically without me down the road as a proper business should or a proper MSP would. And so we started to do that. So instead of doing the book club, I started meeting with this person. Uh it started off every week and then went to every other week and we started getting into, you know, all of the processes of setting up your business. And that was one of the motivations for me to actually look into a PS A, which that is probably the one thing in my stack that every other MSP has that I don't, I've got my arm in, I've got my antivirus EDR.

I've got my backups. I've got, you know, my scripts. I do have some PowerShell scripts. Yes, I've learned some of that. Uh We got some 3 65 stuff that we're taking care of um doing phones. So I've got my business pretty much going except for ticketing or PS A. So that was something that we were going to look at and that was all in anticipation of hiring a tech. And some of you asked Marv, whatever happened with that.

Well, did not hire the tech. I believe I did share a little bit on a previous episode that we went through the interview process, had several interviews, brought two people back for a second interview and then made an offer to a young kid. And the kid basically said that it wasn't enough money that he had to be paid what he was worth. And I said, you've only had one job for four months and you have no worth. Well, I didn't really say that to him out loud, but in my mind, that's exactly what I was thinking. And I said, you know what?

That's ok, be gone. So I was trying to hire a tech in anticipation of my, I think they're my third largest client. Uh, this was the client I just picked up recently. Um, and they were used to having a tech on site every day and their tech currently is a part time person that's there four hours per day and they were going to be gone for seven weeks. And I thought, you know what I need to probably go ahead and hire somebody and I would have that person help me cover over there for seven weeks. Well, since I did not hire the tech, I had to do all that coverage myself, but it turns out I didn't have to go there every day.

The customer soon realized that they didn't need everyday assistance. I was able to provide them with a lot of remote stuff. Uh I did go there at least two days a week, sometimes three days a week and it worked out well. I survived. So that was all good. But going back to the book club and meeting with this person about the business, uh, of course, you know, we would go back and forth with what's the proper way to set up and run your MSP business. And a lot of talk out there.

A lot of people say you gotta do this and you have to do this and you all of these things and we would go down the list and, you know, listen, there's a lot of things that I like about the MSP models. There's a lot of things I don't like about MSP models and for those of you that do not know back in 2015 or 16, I don't remember the original date, but, you know, in the Pod Nuts community, which is where the podcasting started for myself along with uh Jeff Halasch, Paco Lebron, uh Matt Ray. That's, that's where we were in the podcast world and we decided to go to Chicago to attend the conference and out of that conference was born the man in the van, which is basically what I considered myself because there were some MSPs that just literally were slamming solo techs for a lot of different reasons. But to make a long story short, I'm like, you know what I'm doing just as good, just as well as some of these MSPS. Why the hell are you slamming us? And I took on the man in the band persona and said that we're, you know, we can be just as good as some of these larger MSPS. Now, obviously, we can't offer all the same things, but there's no reason for them to be slamming us, uh, especially if you're an MSP that is struggling.

Um, and you see us doing well. Well, you know, that's on you as far as I can say, um, without getting too much more into it. So, you know, I've met some good people because of that. I've met some, some, some great people in, uh, met some great solo techs, met some great MSPS. We've been on the show together.

We've been friends over the years, but I just kept struggling with this whole idea of changing the model of my business, which, you know, I have called a boutique. I have called an artisan shop. I, you know, basically, even though I have subcontractors, it's pretty much me as the solo tech. I do have somebody that helps me here in the office. You, you know, her, Kim, my wife uh takes care of a lot of the bookkeeping stuff. She's my girl Friday when I need, things dropped off. Uh We have an office which a lot of solo techs don't have. And it's, it's not a cheap office.

I'll be honest about that, but it is a place where when customers need to come by, they can look at the office and be like, oh yeah, you're legit and I like that. But all of these things were kind of circling. Uh when I was talking to my friend and we were trying to figure out, ok, I don't think I can do all of this right now. I the direction that we were going with changing my business and reimaging just at least right now did not seem right. So for about the last month or so I was going through trying to support this client, trying to do extra podcasts, trying to do the business stuff, trying to just take care of other clients. I just had to have a little come to Jesus in my mind and say, you know, what, why am I doing this? Why am I doing any of the things that I'm doing? And this has been a topic actually when I went back to look at it. Uh May 2nd, uh I actually decided to put a topic on paper with some bullet points. Um And the topic was going to be why are we doing this? And it was going to be a show where I would talk to other techs and business owners and we would talk about all the reasons that we choose to do what we do. Why do we choose to be in this business? Why do we choose to have the type of business that we have? Um We talk about things like, you know, work life balance. Uh We talk about processes; we talk about stats. Why the whole question is why? And this was a question that I would ask people that I would have conversations with when I was either giving advice or we were sharing in a little group, meeting, little mentorship type stuff. And really it boils down to when, when you get to a point where you're looking to make a change, when you're looking to figure out why you're struggling. Why are you having a hard time? Do you need to make a change? The real question is why, why do you feel you need to make the change?

The only thing I can say is don't do it because somebody else is doing it and you think that they're doing it the right way or don't do it because everybody else is doing it, you gotta do it when it makes sense for you, which is where I've been and I have been at these crossroads many times, you know, being in the industry, running an uh an it business trying to be an MSP, trying to survive as the man in the van, uh holding on to a lot of stuff and then letting go of a lot of stuff. But every time I get to the point of why, why am I doing this? And it always comes back to, you know what? That's because I want to do it and it's either that or because my customers are happy that I do it. And for me, at least right now today, those are the two things that guide me.

I want to do it. And my customers want me to do it. It's pretty much it. And as long as the business works for me and the support works for them. I'm not gouging them with money. They feel like I'm giving them good value.

We're supporting their network; their data is backed up. Their systems are running. There's no downtime, you know, I'm keeping up with the industry news, I'm keeping up with the industry best practices. We are protecting them from malware and cyberattacks all of those things.

You know, listen, there are some customers that are fighting and that's to be expected. But for the most part, most part, when customers come on board and come, correct, things are good. Do I need to do a better job of communicating to some of those clients? Probably do? I need to change my tactic on some of the things that I'm doing probably. But right now it's working. So that happened to me on Thursday. So between Thursday and today, I kind of took a break from some stuff, took care of the business, took care of the wife and then just was sitting there today thinking, ok, I need to come correct, I guess to you the listener and say, hey, this is where my headspace is at.

This is where the podcast is at. It's going to be hectic over the next few weeks and, you know, I just need to have a little bit of time to tell you. Thank you. For listening. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for supporting this show.

There are a ton of podcasts for the it industry. There are a ton of vendor programs, peer groups, there are so many things out there and listen, everything is fighting for your attention. So the fact that some of you still take the time, not only to listen but to send me emails from time to time with, you know, a comment about a show or a suggestion for a show, you know, you message me on the Facebook uh or on LinkedIn.

I, you know, I get to everyone that I can, I appreciate the responses. I appreciate the suggestions. I even appreciate the criticisms and you know, I may not change my mind because of her criticism, but I appreciate it and I welcome it and I'm going to continue to ask you to do so. Uh But the one thing I'm not going to do is hide and you know, I've had some thoughts in my head for a little while and figured I needed to get them out. This was a good time to do it and to let you know why things are going to be happening the way that they are. So that is it pretty much um Just I did, I, I made some bullet points to make sure I got through everything. Um But yeah, so that's the reason that I'm doing this, you know, when I sat down, looked at myself, looked at the business. Why am I doing this?

A couple of you had reached out to me, uh in the last month that I've had personal meetings with and helped you guys get through that. If there are others of you out there and you're going through something, listen, just stop and ask yourself why. And if the reason that you give is not making sense or not acceptable, then ask yourself why. Again, you keep asking yourself why until it makes sense. And I will tell you this, a lot of the posts out there that have been in the groups, whether it's on the Facebook groups, email forums, reddit. Uh, there's some crap going around out there and there were some people just laying it on thick with trying to pretend to be successful when they're not, uh, telling you how you should be when they're not doing stuff themselves.

Um, there's some nice little, you know, attacks on, you know, the man in the van or Chuck in the truck. I heard that on a podcast which has sounded pretty cool. I actually like that. Chuck in the truck. Um, pretty good, but the bottom line is, there's a lot of stuff out there.

Listen, if you are listening to this show and you've been in business for a few years, listen, you're here, you've made it, you know, if you survive the first year or two, then you're good. Now, can you do be doing better if you say. Yes. Well, figure out a way to make it better. If you're doing good, then don't worry about it. But, uh, don't engage in the crap that's going on out there.

Uh, that is slamming everybody that is not doing exactly what everybody else is doing. Do your thing. You want to have good work life balance, make it happen. You want to do less with more or more with less. Listen, do it. You want to reimage your business? Do it? Just make sure you do it. That's right for you. So that's it. I just wanted to get that out there. So, uh, the show will be out. Um, well, it probably won't be out till early, early Monday morning, but it was recorded on Sunday and then they'll have a show on Monday number 4 98 Tuesday, 4 99 and Wednesday show number 500. So, I hope that you put this on your calendar and join me Wednesday live and, uh, that's it. We'll see you Wednesday.