633 Time is a Precious Resource

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LinkSprinter provides accurate results in about 10 seconds. Contact NetAlly today and learn how to fix network connectivity issues faster. Hello, friends. 

Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals and managed service providers, where we try to help you run your business better, smarter, and faster. This is our Wednesday live show. The IT Business Podcast is powered by NetAlly.

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Our live stream sponsor is Computers Done Right. Our podcast partner, Super Ops, is also here. And I say that specifically because earlier today, the guest that we had scheduled for this evening had to cancel.

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I just simply put out the generic, hey, I'll be doing the show. Anybody got any topics? And it was like a bat signal went out. And Juan Fernandez with Super Ops is going to join us.

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He will be here in just a minute. And of course, they also are our drink sponsor. Their logo here is on the mug that you see me drinking from during the show.

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It is not alcohol, although tonight it probably should be. And before I get going with that too much, let's go ahead and bring out Juan and get started with the show. He is, let's see, let me see if I even have his title right, because I got it wrong the last time.

(2:59 - 3:09)
I believe he is the Global Channel Chief at Super Ops. Juan Fernandez in the house. Juan, how are you? Uncle Marv, what's going on, man? It's great to be here.

(3:10 - 3:16)
All right, good to see you. Did I get the title right? You did. You got it, man.

(3:16 - 3:19)
Yeah. You should call me whatever you want, though, man. We're friends.

(3:20 - 3:37)
Well, listen, be careful what you ask for. All right, so this is our Wednesday show. Like I said, we had a guest that canceled, so I had a couple of things in my head that I needed to get out.

(3:38 - 4:09)
So Juan, I'm going to ask you to bear with me while I go ahead and get the first one out, because this has been nagging at me since last week. I almost did a very special video on it over the weekend, and I was going to do this whole presentation, but the bottom line is, it comes down to I had to deal with somebody who uses this. And if you're watching the live stream, I am holding in my hand a very basic RJ45 tester.

(4:10 - 4:30)
And when I say very basic, this is one that I actually bought. Yeah, I bought this off of Amazon so I could start to show people the difference with these things. And I had a job last week that was too far for me to use my regular cable guy.

(4:31 - 4:50)
And the customer's like, well, we know somebody that's in the area, and they're very good, so why don't we use them? Turns out it was another managed service provider that happened to do cabling. So I'm like, look, I try to get along with everybody. I'm not going to fight.

(4:50 - 5:01)
I'll let you do the work. They did the work. And there were, let's just say a handful of cables that weren't quite right.

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And I didn't find them out until I went to go set up computers at this location. This was actually a customer move. So this was moving into a new space, and I find these cables that are not right.

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Of course, I'm using my EtherScope and my stuff to plug in on no connectivity, no nothing. And so I called them. I said, look, you guys got to come back out.

(5:27 - 5:48)
And so the guy comes out, and he pulls out this. And he starts running the stupid little, and I don't know if you can see this well on the screen, but it's running the little green test for each light. And he's like, oh, they're all green, so it must be good.

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And so I had to then show him what I did because I was like, bro, that don't work. So, and this is how bad I didn't even prepare for this. So let me get this all set up as I'm talking.

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But the bottom line is it was just one of those things where I said, how in the world can you be running cable and not have a good tester? And my rant was basically going to be, get yourself a damn good tester, especially if this is what you're going to do. And there's a couple of things. There's two things that I really wanted to express, is that one, if you are a managed service provider and you're trying to add services to your business because you think, hey, I can capture this business, well, do it right because it's making us look bad.

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And secondly, if you're a cable company, then you damn well better be doing it right and spend some freaking good money on tools. And I'm going to have to power up my stuff here, but it was just frustrating. So the bottom line is I plugged in my tester and there was no connectivity.

(7:19 - 7:38)
Yes, I could do the same thing on my test and see that all of the cables lined up end to end, but there was something wrong with the cable. And listen, I'm not a cable guy. I don't know all the things that could happen with signal interference and all of that stuff.

(7:38 - 7:59)
I just know that it's supposed to work and it didn't. And that was my rant on them. And the fact that I had to pull out a better tester than they had, and I don't even call the EtherScope a tester, it is not meant to qualify or, well, let me rephrase that.

(7:59 - 8:17)
It is not meant to certify. But what it does do is it does verify that the stuff was working. And so I had this whole thing set out where I went and printed out, here's my sheet, just in case people are questioning me.

(8:18 - 8:46)
I printed out a whole sheet on the differences when it comes to testing. There's continuity testing, which is what the little $20 tester does. There's verification testing, where it goes a step further and it checks that the cable is wired correctly by testing the pin-to-pin continuity and ensuring that each wire is connected to the proper termination points at both ends.

(8:47 - 9:13)
It also verifies wire pairing and can detect insulation defects like splits, opens, et cetera. However, it does not test the cable's bandwidth or suitability for high-speed data communication. So that obviously is a big thing where, if you need to test and make sure that it works at 100, a gig, 10 gig, PoE, that's what you need.

(9:14 - 9:34)
Then there's qualification, which is kind of where I put the NetAlly tools in. It determines if an existing cabling link can support specific network speeds and technologies like Fast Ethernet, VoIP, or Gigabit. It performs bandwidth assessment, identifies defects that may affect the bandwidth, such as crosstalk noise or PoE issues.

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Actually, you know what? That's not what the EtherScope does. But it can test links at various speeds and provide information on the maximum supported data rate. And then, of course, there's certification, the most comprehensive and rigorous.

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So the bottom line is you've got to have something better than a continuity tester, especially if you're going to be charging me. $120 a cable run. Yep.

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Which is sad because the guy that I like the best out of all my cable guys is only charging me 70. And his stuff is flawless. Well, when you find a good person that does it right, you know, I talk to MSPs all the time about this.

(10:20 - 10:37)
I say, you know, tell me what you do. And then it's interesting what they say. And I'm like, okay, now tell me what you can prove that you do well, whether you have a certified, like you actually have a process for it, you have documentation, you have certified individuals to do it.

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You can tell me without a doubt. You can prove that you do that well. And it's very interesting to oftentimes see how big the list may start off and how small it gets really quickly.

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And cabling's always one of those things. It's like, oh yeah, we could do that. I can buy a crimper and I can buy a cable bag and I can go out and do that and just run a few tests and put some probes on the end and make sure it works.

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Hmm, that's not always how that works. So- And the problem is that most of the time you can get away with it. Sure.

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I mean, a lot of times people can, you know, connect it. And as long as there's connection and the computer connects to the network and gets out to the internet, that's all you need. But when you've got to verify service, you've got to verify that, hey, I can get this much power to this phone or access point.

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Yep. That's where all of this stuff comes in handy. So it is interesting.

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So I think I may have my connection up here. It is establishing a secure connection. And I'm running this on my CyberScope from the Link Live portal.

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And maybe my Comcast is not helping me out as much as it should be. And that's just a joy. So I'll stop sharing.

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And if it comes up, we'll go back to that. But anyway, that was my rant. I'm glad I didn't do it on Saturday because there would have been a lot of curse words in there.

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But, you know, I had to step back, collect myself and, you know, listen, maybe they had a bad day. You know, maybe- Or they got a bad, maybe they got a bad box of cable. Maybe.

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Maybe their regular guy with the real tester wasn't available. I don't know. So I kind of wanted to temper my thoughts.

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But at the same time, I'm thinking, if you're purporting yourself as this is something you do, then you send the tech out with the right tools, especially if you're going back out to fix something that you know should have been done right the first time. So that was where I was going there. I agree.

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I actually had a cabling company, so I know all of what you're talking about. Yeah, my first IT company, I had a multitude of divisions and one of them was integrated cabling solutions. Okay.

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So I actually was the Southwest provider for what used to be Vonage, back then. And I had all of the cabling for like Darden Restaurants and Office Max and Home Depot. And we built, I can't even tell you how many of those I wired and ran tons of cable.

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And I've been on lifts in places I probably should have never been in terms of what we did. But we got a lot, we had a huge, massive contract. That company actually did tons of money and revenue in terms of cabling.

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So I know the struggles all too well. All right. And there is something to be said about a good set of equipment.

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We learned that really quick in our younger years was that we wouldn't play with anything other than like, you know, really high end name brand equipment and would always certify our cable before we left. Like we had proof of the pudding for everything we ever touched. Otherwise you're going to end up having to come back and support it later.

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Just do it right the first time. Yeah. So of course the big thing is you don't have to go out.

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I know everybody always says, to get a certifier from Fluke, you know, it's thousands of dollars. To be honest guys, you can get this done with a couple of hundred bucks. There are, even if you go to Home Depot or Lowe's and get the Klein testers, they're better than this thing.

(14:34 - 14:50)
I mean, I'd still prefer something, you know, I tell people, look, if you want to do cable, you've got to spend at least 500 bucks, maybe a thousand. Yeah. You know, but I know people that get away with it and it's a shame.

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It's a crying shame. All right. So I think, yeah, my thing isn’t working.

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So, all right. So my second rant was going to be around CJ. And Juan, you had reached out to me and said, if I needed some help, you could help me.

(15:14 - 15:30)
And this is where I think you could aid a little bit here. Sure, what are we doing? So my, one of my juniors, and this one is CJ. So I've got, I don't know if you've ever heard my junior names.

(15:30 - 16:00)
I've got an AJ, a TJ, a CJ, an OJ. But CJ gives me the most joy and the most aggravation because CJ will send me an email like he sent today where he says, the end user's computer at this office lost connection to the remote. Now they can't get back in.

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I can't connect to them in the dashboard. Please advise. All right.

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And so I had to say, well, if there's no connection, you obviously can't get to the dashboard. Did you call them and try to do any troubleshooting? Yeah. And then about 10 minutes later, end user is connected just fine.

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Thank you. Not even explaining what happened or anything like that. But my frustration with CJ, OJ, AJ, is a lot of times they'll send these emails when they are supposed to be the first line of support.

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Sure. And you can tell by the email, they have done no troubleshooting at all. And it's almost like, I don't want to deal with this.

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Let me just escalate it. And then the customer looks at me sometimes at my invoices and go, wow, we pay you a lot of money. And I'm like, yeah, because I'm obviously doing advanced work that your junior can't do.

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And my time is precious. So if I have to do the work that junior should have been doing, I'm going to bill you for it. And that, of course, always starts a nice discussion.

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And they don't understand that time is money, and my time, I mean, the whole reason they have a junior usually is because they don't want to pay the full network administration rate or the full senior rate or whatever. They're trying to save some money or, hey, we just need somebody who can change out a cable, swap a mouse, if something's not working, they're right there, and we'll call you if we need you. Well, if the dude isn't doing anything, and I say dude loosely, because there are some female juniors out there, good and bad.

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But if your first thought is to just simply ask for help without even trying, that's a problem. And this is kind of a warning to the techs out there. Maybe you're just getting started, maybe you're on your third job in a year and you don't understand why, or you don't understand why you can't get promoted, why you're not getting the bigger jobs, why you're not doing the nice projects.

(18:43 - 19:05)
Well, the problem is if you're not doing the little stuff well, why am I going to waste an opportunity and put you on bigger jobs to fail bigger? Yep. But from the customer's perspective, it's more of, well, we pay you an awful lot. Yeah, my time is money.

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Yeah, and you're very serious. To get to the level that I'm at, to get the experience that I have, to get the training that I have, to get the tools that I have, it costs me money. So it's a double-edged sword there.

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I'm going to stop because I'm rambling. What are your thoughts when you go through that? I think we all find ourselves there. I mean, you're playing so many different roles there.

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You're playing the guy that's going to find all. This is a neurological mindset. I find this a lot with people.

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I had, as I was progressing through my career, I grew up in a place called AOL. I had no way to touch the people I was supporting. I had to close my eyes and visualize the problem and the solution and walk people through that had never touched a computer in their lives on how to solve these problems.

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And I think that a lot of times what happens, and again, I hear in this scenario here, their neurological pathway is actually problem equals mark. And I saw this early on in my career. It's like, if the problem equals one, how do I get out of that? Because I was becoming the savior of all things.

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And the more I did it, the more they kept mapping their mindset to just ask Juan, just ask Juan, just ask Juan. And I was feeling overwhelmed and stressed out about it all the time. And I'm like, why in the hell am I having to deal with all this? It's better that I just do it and we get to that point as leaders to say, I don't need you if all you're going to ask is me.

(20:36 - 20:53)
And it's really interesting to think about that because I always used to say, how did you get here? And I did this in my last business. I'm like, how did you arrive at my desk? And they're like, well, I don't know where else to go. And I'm like, why don't you go solve that problem and then come back and tell me how you fixed it.

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But I want you to come tell me how you fixed it, but don't come back to me with that problem. Go fix it and come back and tell me how you fixed it. And that changed so much for me.

(21:03 - 21:19)
And it was interesting, but again, to that point, like the model in which you're, the relationship that you have in a co-managed environment like that is hard for you to push back. And you have to explain that to them. Like, look, I'm having to educate your end users on the process to troubleshooting.

(21:19 - 21:31)
That actually is also an additional value that you're not paying me for intrinsically every single time. You're paying me to also teach them how to do their job. And they need to understand that.

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Like, here's what education costs and here's what certifications cost, and they're getting it for free. So that's, every time they call me, that's baked into that price. And they're like, oh, I didn't think of it that way.

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And you're like, yeah, because you wouldn't think of it that way. You see a problem and you want it fixed. You think problem goes to him, he can't solve, goes to me.

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And since I've got the experience, I should be able to solve it faster, but I'm having to train them on how to fix it too, right? So there's a lot that goes into that. And I think in a co-managed environment, it's always a dicey situation on how you handle that. And that's where you got to come back with like clear delineation of process escalation.

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And so you can illustrate their job and you have to be able to say, look, they're just not doing their job. It's not me not doing my job. You got me here to save you from disaster.

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Here's where they're failing. They can't even fill this box. And that is not a deficit of me.

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Why don't you just let me put people in there and I'll actually manage them for you. And then you don't have to worry about it. And I'll charge you to do that.

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And that's what I did with mine in that case. But to your point, it is frustrating when you can't control the process internally. That is a huge problem.

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And really it's a mindset shift. In the continuous effort, they'll keep doing it. The more and more and more and more and more, they wire their minds to say Marv is the answer.

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Every time they see a problem, they're going to say Marv, Marv, Marv. And institutionally, they will actually disable themselves. So for everybody that's listening, you have to stop doing that.

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You have to stop saying, this is a problem I can't solve. You have to look at it and solve that problem to your point. Like you have to dig into it and understand what the real issue is here.

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And like, how can I creatively solve this? Last thing you want to do is call Marv. And I'm not trying to erode your business here, but if I'm trying to give somebody like some ideas on how to push themselves forward mentally, you can't, that problem needs to live and die with you until you absolutely cannot do it anymore. And you need, the last thing you should ask for is education.

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Not for resolution. Can you show me how to fix this? Because I don't know how. And that's the point where they need to be.

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Not, hey, Marv, you deal with this just because I want to go home at five o'clock. Like, no. So you and me are very, like I, this is a hot point for me too.

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Because anytime I see that, I'm like, oh no, no, no, no, hold on a second, guy or gal. Nuh-uh, uh-uh, you're not coming out of here like that. Get over here, sit down and fix this problem.

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And you mentioned, it was a tough, it's tough. This is a client that has gone through a few juniors. I'm sure.

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And it's one of those things where setting those boundaries has been something that when you try to do it, even the client wants to push back, well, we can't afford somebody. I'm like, well, then if you can't afford a junior, you can't afford me. And it's one of those things of trying to get them to understand that.

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And of course, from the junior's perspective, I just want to, trying to get them to pivot. In their minds, they're like, well, I don't want to. Well, then if you don't want to, I'm going to talk to your boss and we'll find somebody who will want to.

(25:04 - 25:22)
Yeah. I had this situation several times in doing co-managed in large environments where we actually, and what I did was I built a process that literally engulfed them into everything and every way I did business. So I made them conform to our roles and the way we escalated tickets and the way we worked.

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And ultimately they were like, why don't we just pay you to manage them? And I landed up taking over those spots and letting those people go and replacing them with folks that would follow my program. And it was such a better experience. And a matter of fact, I grew many help desks that lived and built underneath that.

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I had some of those customers outgrow me because we knew our size limit. And they stayed and I said, hey, why don't you just take these people? Here's what I'm paying them. And you keep them because they can run your business effectively.

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So that's an option. I don't know if you've thought about that. Again, now you're getting into hiring more people.

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We have, I've actually offered to, look, I'll supply the techs. And that way you don't have to worry about time off. You don't have to worry about benefits.

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You don't have to worry about all those things. I'll take care of it. But it's this particular client, they're stuck with the whole idea of, that means we have to pay you more.

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And I'm like, you're paying somebody. I don't understand what the sticking point is. And it's almost like, you just don't want to pay me.

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And that's a you problem. Cause you're just going to be throwing money out the window trying to pay other people. And it's one of those things where, okay, you know what? Fine.

(26:49 - 27:04)
As long as you keep paying my bill, fine. But we're going to keep going around and around and around, which is what we do, which is why I have so many stories for this show. It's all this one customer.

(27:05 - 27:10)
This might be a sign though. I have a whole thing that talks about the most painful customer. If you're making money on it though, keep going.

(27:11 - 27:24)
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like they're that much of a pain. They're not. It's just one of those things where they're actually below the threshold of, you know, they're not costing me more than they're paying.

(27:24 - 27:33)
Fine then. So if it's worth the time and effort, then it's still worth it. It's worth keeping them, right? Yeah, it is.

(27:35 - 28:13)
But this makes, we had talked before we started on the show about this whole time is money, time is precious thing. And you had a phrase that I wanted to ask you about where you said, time isn't currency. Can you explain that? You know, I think that it's so many people out there, right? We have this conversation and we talk about time as this butterfly that just freely floats the air and it just comes freely and goes freely and it's just everywhere.

(28:14 - 28:29)
And you know, it's interesting that as entrepreneurs, that's the one thing we think we have an abundance of is time. It's like, I can go and solve that problem cheaper, better, faster because I can spend more time on it. I can do better things.

(28:29 - 28:43)
I can actually give them a better experience because I'm going to spend more time on it. And it's an interesting fallacy when we think time is not a currency. Like we don't quantify our time and qualify our time as effective.

(28:44 - 29:10)
This really came as like a gigantic slap in my face years after my first business. And one of the things that shook me was I was negotiating myself out of my true value, right? I was like, oh, well, I can donate all this time. And I didn't realize from everybody I was taking time, right? So if I quantify time with dollars, let's say I have $8 a day.

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Let's just say it's eight. That's my active, like my usable time today. I have eight bucks to spend.

(29:17 - 29:33)
And I go and I spend that money. Where am I spending it, right? Maybe I'm spending six hours at the office and maybe one hour in traffic a day and then maybe one hour with the family, right? That's it. I spend one hour with my family, but I've wasted six hours of now.

(29:33 - 29:55)
And did I get the money that was relative to the amount of time I spent? If you take and monetize that and you say, okay, my time is worth $400 an hour. And you multiply that by whatever hours a day you want to put in. It's interesting when you start to look at, I had to look at it and say, look, my days’ worth about 3,600 bucks.

(29:55 - 30:16)
And if I'm not making 3,600 bucks today, what am I actually spending my time? I'm actually investing in something more than getting revenue from something. And when you look at it from that perspective, we had this conversation. I said, even down to the mowing of my grass, I make way more money by not mowing my grass than mowing my grass, right? I love it.

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It's something I enjoy doing, but I don't make any money doing that, right? And I take a lot of time from my family to go do things like that. And it's just, this time is a currency concept isn't something that we as entrepreneurs are braced for. And it's interesting when you think about it that way, because we often run our businesses that way.

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We run them in a way that it's like, it's okay if everyone calls me 10 times a day and I don't make any money today. It's like, I will eventually. It'll come, right? We always say, it'll come.

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No, you got to be thinking about how am I monetizing those things? And even with your staff, so many of us don't run businesses in that way, where we're thinking to your point, I'm paying that person to do something and they didn't do anything, right? That literally that time that it took was probably like $700 for that situation that you just talked about. And did we bill $700? That customer paid that guy something. That customer is paying you something.

(31:15 - 31:25)
They're having to look at it on their end and they're questioning like, hey man, that's a lot of money. And that's the cost of doing business, that's a lot. And they're thinking about it, but we don't often see it that way.

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We're like, oh, well, maybe I don't need to make $3,000 a day but if you were to put your time and quantify it appropriately, you'd start to see where I am actually investing time and money into versus actually making it. And that's why when I built my MSP, I was not interested in wasting my time by any means. Like I didn't waste any minute.

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Like even going to lunch, I didn't waste. Going to events, I did not waste my time. Like I was getting paid and I wanted to make money.

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And this is the same way I live all the time. It's like, I give a lot, but I give because I have the time and the money to do that now, right? I didn't have it back then. So I focused on how to make that money.

(32:10 - 32:22)
And this is where I think a lot of people need to consider how they're running their business. To your point, Marv, if you're getting paid and they're still at that, over that mark of me making money with them, then they're worth keeping. But if they're not, I'm out.

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I went through that. And I don't know if you heard the story. And at the end of 2017, I did fire my largest customer at the time.

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That were, I think the numbers, they were 33 or 34% of our revenue, but they were well over 50% of my time. And that had to stop. Part of that concept came from a book called The Millionaire Next Door.

(32:51 - 33:17)
We should do a book study on that because that's where I actually got some of these ideas. I get ideas from all these different books. Originally, The Millionaire Next Door talked about how there are people that are truly rich in the sense that we think of rich as just because you make a million dollars or you have this, but there are people that are balance sheet poor, but look rich.

(33:19 - 33:40)
Whereas the guy next door to you is probably a millionaire and you'd never know it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because of how they're spending their money and they are doing the things that we talked about where they literally, like you said, have mapped down how much it costs for them to just go through their day by the hour.

(33:41 - 34:01)
Exactly. And if it costs less to pay somebody else to do it, pay somebody else. So that's where I started doing some things in my business where I finally figured out a way to calculate what does it cost to run my business per hour? Exactly.

(34:01 - 34:18)
Based on salaries, wages, keeping the lights on, going to conferences, everything that I spend in a year, what does that come down to per hour? So first of all, that can't be above my rate per hour. Exactly. That's the first thing.

(34:18 - 34:57)
And the second thing, even something as simple as delivering a computer, this is how bad I got, okay? If I've got a client that's a half hour away, even if I send my office person who I pay 20 bucks an hour to go deliver that computer, that's a half hour one way and a half hour back, plus there's going to be some time in between. If I was to send a tech to go deliver that computer and set it up, blah, blah, blah, there's that time. Yup.

(34:57 - 35:13)
Uber Direct cost me 17 bucks. And all I had to do was set up my agent on the computer, packed it up, Uber Direct delivered it. There's a junior on site to set it up and all of that stuff.

(35:14 - 35:23)
That's the things that we need to be paying attention to. I don't think a lot of people, and again, that's the thing, right? So I can remember even building a laptop. It was interesting.

(35:24 - 35:38)
We had a four hour minimum, right? And it was like four hour minimum, it didn't matter what you did. If you bought it, if you sneezed, if you got a new one, like it was four hours, didn't matter. And they were like, Juan, it doesn't take an hour to turn the computer on and push the button.

(35:38 - 35:50)
I said, oh really? I said, yes, it does. It actually takes even more than four hours. So I'm actually giving you a deal because the amount of time I have to spend on just getting out of the box takes me an hour.

(35:50 - 35:56)
Like you don't think it does, but it does. Like getting it delivered, getting it shipped. Like there's so many pieces in that.

(35:56 - 36:07)
And they're like, after I broke down all the true costs of actually delivering a computer and it was like almost six hours’ worth of time. I said, you're getting a deal at four hours. That's why we just bake it into everything.

(36:08 - 36:19)
And we would drop ship them straight to the customer's location. So I didn't actually touch them. Like we just, they came from our, just straight from our OEM, straight to the customer.

(36:20 - 36:27)
And we set everything up from there. Yeah, very nice. Most of it was scripted, but it took us a long time to build that scripting.

(36:27 - 36:37)
Well, yeah. You've got to go through the process of validating the script. What if something doesn't work? You know, what are the, you know, the ways to fix it? All that stuff plays into it.

(36:38 - 36:45)
And I even built in, you know, what it costs to dispose and recycle the computer. Smart idea. It's another thing.

(36:45 - 36:48)
Now you're doing chain of custody stuff. That's a value add. That's smart.

(36:48 - 36:59)
Yeah. You know, it's interesting how many people don't do that though. Like I talk about this all the time and it's, you know, I talk about the quarter in the dollar out and building a profit protection program.

(36:59 - 37:06)
I'll be talking about it tomorrow on a live stream I'm doing. It's still so true today. And we weren't keeping that.

(37:06 - 37:18)
Like no one told us, hey, you know, figure out what it costs to run a business and then start there. It's like, nah, if I figured out the tech, I'm just going to go and start and somebody will give me some cash, right? And that's where we start. And so it's so hard sometimes to shift.

(37:19 - 37:29)
And it's an honor to know that you've done it. Cause like those are the keys that build a really successful business. It's when you actually make money, you can breathe a sigh of relief.

(37:29 - 37:36)
You're not taking out a mortgage on your house to actually have to pay your employees. You're not struggling with financial woes. Like you can hire qualified talent.

(37:37 - 37:50)
So many things change. Yeah. I'm thinking of something that I'm not going to say now, but listen, on May 31st, when we're together, you and I should talk about this.

(37:50 - 38:00)
So I'm going to try to make a note here that we'll talk about the millionaire next door mindset. I like that. I've never actually read the book, but it sounds amazing.

(38:00 - 38:11)
All right, we'll have to do that. It took me some math actually. I got into like this real big thing about time equations and I have a whole book that I haven't published and I'll actually leak it a little bit here.

(38:11 - 38:31)
It's called defining time and success before it defines you. And many of those chapters are how I actually had to personally tear apart my life to understand what success meant to me and how I was actually getting to it and the way I was accomplishing it and when I was going to stop. Because it's just a whole train.

(38:31 - 38:39)
Like there's a whole number of things in that time. Qualification and quantification is so freeing when you figure it out. So I can't wait.

(38:39 - 38:55)
We'll tear that apart because I look forward to that. All right, so we'll use that to segue into where am I going to be? And I'm going to start by tomorrow. I know that I had told people before that I was supposed to be in the city of Miami last Thursday.

(38:56 - 39:09)
That did not happen. It got pushed back to this Thursday. I will be in Miami visiting the dark side, Kaseya at their corporate office.

(39:11 - 39:29)
I kind of have an idea of what I'm doing. I'm going to be visiting with, of course, an account rep because I'm sure they're going to try to sell me something. I'll be visiting with a C-level person and our hope is to do a podcast from some place at the Kaseya office.

(39:30 - 39:44)
So I will be doing a show there and I believe I will be, I'm going to take everything. And we might be doing a video podcast. I don't know if it'll be live but we will be doing a video podcast there at Kaseya.

(39:44 - 39:59)
So give you guys a little bit of a preview of what we'll be doing later at some other conferences. One of which is May 31st. I'm going to be seeing you over in the Tampa Clearwater area for your Super Ops Super Summit.

(40:00 - 40:26)
So since you're here, why don't you tell everybody what that is? You know, the Super Summit, you know, I'm so excited about it. And there's been such a wonderful thing to do. And, you know, similar to like what we're talking about today, Marv, it's just a lot of what we don't know in managed services is things that we don't know we should ask, right? And the Super Summit is all built around helping MSPs get their feet underneath them.

(40:27 - 40:42)
You know, it's never too late to make money in managed services. And one of the things that I wish that somebody would have done when I was coming through and building my business was help me. And the Super Summits are specifically designed to be workshops.

(40:43 - 40:51)
There's no pitches, and I mean none. If you do a pitch in my place, you get kicked out. And even from us, like even though we sponsor it, we're not talking about us.

(40:51 - 41:02)
We're talking about the community. We're trying to help MSPs with workshops and great speakers. All the speakers are curated from wonderful folks that have been to our events and have voted the speakers back.

(41:02 - 41:14)
So we also listen to that. And it's just, it's really a community-led opportunity and we're really excited to be able to continue to do it. It's just every time we have one in a different city, people flock to it.

(41:14 - 41:20)
And we're really excited to have you come join us this time, man. All right. So that is going to be in the Tampa, St. Pete area.

(41:21 - 41:31)
You know what? We've got one of those golf facilities here down the street from me. So we got to talk about getting one here in Fort Lauderdale, so I don't have to drive. I'm in.

(41:32 - 41:38)
I'm 100% in. I'll come to Fort Lauderdale and do it, man. So that's where I'll be on May 31st.

(41:38 - 41:58)
June 3rd through the 5th, I will be back in Orlando. IT Nation Secure is that conference and that will be the official kickoff of the Vendor Pitch It podcast that I will be doing on behalf of the Pitch It organization. I will be there doing some interviews on site at that conference.

(41:59 - 42:05)
Swag, people. Swag. That's also what I'll be looking for at that conference.

(42:06 - 42:26)
And then the following week, June 9th through the 11th, I will be out. It'll be my annual trip across the Mississippi out to Denver for PAX 8 Beyond. And just to prepare you guys for that, I have a special live podcast with Rob Ray next Wednesday.

(42:26 - 42:35)
And you won't want to miss that as we talk about PAX 8 Beyond and that event that he has out there. So those are my next three events. It's going to be fantastic.

(42:36 - 42:41)
And looking forward to them all. All right. That's going to be fun.

(42:41 - 42:46)
You got some fun cooking there, buddy. I do, a lot of travel. All right.

(42:46 - 43:06)
So Juan, I did not have you as a scheduled guest so I didn't prepare you for a Florida Man segment. So I'm going to ask you to pick a number, one, two, or three and I will read a Florida Man story that I have. So what number would you like? Let's go with three.

(43:06 - 43:20)
Three, all right. Number three. This was published yesterday.

(43:20 - 43:50)
And the title is, the title is Florida Man Allegedly Bites Chunk Out of Deputy's Head at Music Festival. So James Anderson was arrested and charged with aggravated battery on an officer and resisting arrest with violence. He did this while he was at Ponce de Leon, Florida at the Holmes County Sheriff's Office.

(43:51 - 44:24)
And he was at the Soul Fest, an electronic music festival in Ponce de Leon. Anderson, who said he's an employee of the music festival, allegedly attacked a deputy from behind. The affidavit said Anderson admitted to using a cocktail of drugs that night, including PCP, LSD, ketamine, mushrooms, and ecstasy.

(44:26 - 44:35)
Oh, wow. All of that. So Anderson grabbed the gun of the officer, tried to take it out of the holster before taking a bite out of his head.

(44:37 - 44:59)
And I don't know if I'll, I'll probably have to put a link to this, but they, of course, blurred out the image where the dude actually took a bite out of the back of his head, a la Mike Tyson. And- I wasn't going to say that, but I was thinking it. Little high, little high to the right.

(44:59 - 45:26)
Yep. So that is your Florida man story for this evening. I do have to say, folks, some people, you know, so I had somebody on the podcast a while back who, after having it go through their marketing, PR, legal department, whatever, asked me if I would take out the Florida man segment because it didn't seem to go with the show.

(45:27 - 45:39)
And I had to say, no. The Florida man stories get the most clicks on my podcast. That's funny.

(45:39 - 45:51)
That is ridiculous. So I will keep doing Florida man stories. Well, I would say that I'd be amiss if I didn't at least attribute a wonderful drink to this segment of the show.

(45:51 - 46:04)
There it is. There it is folks. If you are listening to the audio and you're not seeing the video, Juan Fernandez is holding up his own super ops sponsored mug for the IT Business Podcast.

(46:04 - 46:15)
I appreciate that. Always nice to get a nice little ad grab there. All right.

(46:15 - 46:28)
Well, Juan- And I don't have alcohol in mine either, Marv. Well, I wonder, should we bring these on the 31st and have a celebratory drink out of them? I think we should. I think we should.

(46:28 - 46:33)
This would be fun. You have to get Nancy to bring hers. And I will tell Nancy to bring hers.

(46:34 - 46:48)
And I think we need to load you up with some swag, apparently. By the way, I'm going to be redoing my shelves back here. So yes, some new swag from my podcast partners would be nice.

(46:49 - 47:04)
We are- You know what, I don't even have a super ops shirt in my rafters. Do you guys have shirts? I think you need one of these, though, is what you need. Oh, I need a hat rack.

(47:05 - 47:16)
Yeah, I don't have it. Are they all pink? No, they're not, actually. Oh, I get a rainbow of colors? We have this one, too.

(47:16 - 47:26)
That's a nice one. And they're real quality, too. They're not like... So we'll have to... And we got the new edition that just came out.

(47:26 - 47:35)
So I will have to... When you come, we will make sure that you have one. All right. So he is holding up the super ops hat swag.

(47:36 - 47:51)
One pink, one black with the super ops logo on it. And what's nice, maybe I'll have to start wearing a hat, but watching out the sunburn here on the head. Oh my gosh.

(47:51 - 47:57)
Juan, thank you very much for hopping on the show and helping me out. Anytime, brother. I appreciate it.

(47:57 - 48:11)
Of course, I had enough rants to go, but it's nice to actually talk something else that will help us as IT professionals. That's what the show's really for. Run our businesses better, smarter, and faster.

(48:11 - 48:18)
So that's going to do it, folks. That is a wrap. Thank you very much for tuning in.

(48:18 - 48:49)
And remember to, if this is your first time watching or listening, subscribe to the channel, head over to itbusinesspodcast.com. There are many ways to follow the show, whether it's to click on a podcast catcher so you can listen audibly, or you can go to the social media, YouTube, LinkedIn, or the Facebook and catch the live shows as well. And that's it. Just trying to make sure I didn't miss anything.

(48:50 - 48:58)
Juan Fernandez, the global channel leader for super ops. Thank you again for joining. Always a pleasure, man.

(48:59 - 49:11)
In summary for today, folks, if you're a cable guy, get a damn good tester. And if you're a junior, do some damn work before escalating. That's my best tip ever.

(49:13 - 49:20)
Or call Marv. That's going to do it, folks. On behalf of my friend, Juan Fernandez, that's it.

(49:20 - 49:25)
Uncle Marv here, signing off. We'll see you next time. And until then, Holla!