SMB Community Podcast

Host Karl talks to ASCII CEO Alan Weinberger about his new book - The Doctor's In: Treating America's Greatest Cyber Security Threat . Of course, we also talked about the state of the industry and what's ahead for IT consultants. Alan book illuminate for the general public how important a Managed Service Provider is in maintaining the health of our economy and our infrastructure itself, in the new...

Host James Kernan interviews Dave Scott from Scott Digital Marketing. Dave Scott is the Founder, President and CEO of Scott Growth Strategies. Dave has over 20 years of experience working with MSPs, Tech and IT firms and B2B companies. He pours his wealth of marketing knowledge into clients making sure they're seen, heard and valued in the current tech climate. In the end, Dave delivers digital ma...

More and more every day, you need privacy policies on your web site. These requirements change every day. How can you possibly stay legal and up to date? The quick answer: You pretty much can't. That's where Termageddon comes in. Host Karl interviewed Hans & Donata Skillrud from Termageddon. Termageddon aggregates privacy policies and generates valid privacy policy text based on your business and...

Host Karl talked to James Norrie from CyberconIQ. CyberconIQ takes a new approach to educating users about security - based on their demonstrated behavior. As we've all seen, pure education has limited success. This program helps users alter their behavior. Guest Dr. James Norrie is a Professor of Strategy and Cybersecurity and former Dean of the Graham School of Business at York College of Pennsy...

Host Karl interviewed Rom Hendler, CEO of Trustifi Email Encryption Solutions. We start our discussion discussing what makes Trustifi different from other email security solutions. Trustifi provides email encryption delivered on a software-as-a-service platform. They provide both inbound and outbound email security from a single vendor. Most email security systems address inbound traffic only. But...

Host Karl interviewed Guillaume Boisvert, Director for Product Innovation at Sherweb. The topic of the day is: Take Office Security to the Next Level. Guillaume has been instrumental in commercializing Sherweb's Infrastructure as a Service solutions for public and private cloud. He has more than 15 years of experience developing and marketing web services for both B2B and B2C platforms. Prior to h...

Host Karl caught up with Tom Lawrence of Lawrence Technology Services. Tom runs a very successful IT consulting business - and uses YouTube as his primary marketing tool. That's a very rare thing, but Tom's been making videos since 2014. His channel has really taken off in the last few years. The "Lawrence Systems" channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHkYOD-3fZbuGhwsADBd9ZQ - and has...

Host Karl sat down with Kevin Coppins, President and CEO of Spirion. Kevin wakes up every day on a mission to protect what he knows matters most—your sensitive personal data. With a team of passionate data privacy professionals at his back, Kevin is working to re-envision the culture of entire industries, putting privacy at the forefront where it belongs. One of the biggest problems today is that...

Host Karl interviews Eric Anthony, the founder of the hot All Things MSP Facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/allthingsmsp ). Eric also manages a YouTube Channel focused on his photography/videography hobby. Eric has been helping people with technology since high school. He has owned his own break/fix and managed services companies, spent time in internal IT and for the last 7 years has...

Host Karl interviewed Ryan Denehy, Founder and CEO of Electric (www.electric.ai). Electric manages pretty much any cloud-based services for end users. Interestingly, they provide support via Slack, Teams, and Email - not through a client-facing ticketing system. Ryan explains that they primarily focus on SaaS management, device management, and network management. In growing their MSP business, Rya...

Host Karl caught up with John Hammond, the Senior Cybersecurity Researcher at Huntress. Right at the start is Karl's favorite new term: Ransomware canaries. Here we discuss the Huntress "Hack_it 2021" event, March 22-24 online. In addition to an all-day "Hacking Windows" pre-day, the event features a variety of great hands-on training. You can see the full agenda at https://www.huntress.com/hack_i...

Host James Kernan interviews writer Kate Frank about the strategic use to writing as a marketing tool. Kate is a professional writer with decades of marketing expertise. She has a unique ability to tap into the genius of others and get their message on the page of a book or other media. Most people struggle with identifying their unique proposition for their customers and clients. For Kate, it is...

Host Karl sat down with Pete Matheson for the second time in two months. Here we get an update on Pete's YouTube channel traffic and the lessons he's learned. Check out Pete's last appearance here: https://www.smbcommunitypodcast.com/2021/01/pete-matheson-using-video-to-grow-your-it-business/ Basically, Pete saw great opportunities with YouTube, so he jumped in and gave it a lot of his attention....

Karl and Mike get together for an update on security. As you know, 2020 was quite a year. There was new legislation at the state and local levels, primarily in response to an explosion of sophisticated attacks of ransomware. We went into a good deal of detail on new NIST and CMMC recommendations, as well as a major update on HIPAA. Mike Semel is a noted thought leader, speaker, blogger, and best-s...

Karl caught up with a fellow CompTIA Executive Committee member, Pete Busam from Equilibrium Consulting. Pete and Karl sit on the Advancing Tech Talent and Diversity E.C. Pete Busam is the founder and owner of Equilibrium Consulting, LLC, a management consulting and outsourced marketing firm specializing in assisting channel and technology services organizations with establishing partner relations...

Host Karl interviews Paul Katzoff from White Canyon Software. White Canyon provides software to really, truly, honestly remove all the data on hard drives so it cannot be recovered. As Paul points out, we could download free tools from the internet, but "they don't get certified for a reason - they don't work." Wipe Drive can erase one drive at a time, a dozen at a time, or even build a Pixi netwo...

James Kernan interviews Hartland Ross from eBridge Marketing Solutions. Hartland has been working in the sales and marketing of IT services and SaaS firms since 1999. He is well recognized and regarded in the IT services industry and to date has worked with hundreds of firms providing opportunities for business growth through M&A, marketing strategy and by providing industry advice, recommendation...

Karl interviews Janet Schijns from the JS Group. Janet is the CEO and Digital Ninja of JS Group, a leading go-to-market consultancy in the technology industry. She's a former executive at Motorola, Verizon and Office Depot. Plus, Janet is the founder of Tech Worlds Half, a not-for-profit dedicated to keeping women in the technology industry. Her recent awards include: Channel Influencer of the Yea...

Host Karl interviews Daniel Welling from Marlow, UK. Here we look at "organic growth" vs. buying companies as a growth strategy. Which is best for you? Daniel started his career in IT in 1995, following a sales track, working for a number of VARs and quickly developing a consultative approach to new business and account management, leading to Sales Management within a few years. The urge to do mor...

Host Karl sat down with Pete to talk about promoting IT businesses. Pete started his own MSP in 2011. For the next near decade that business grew, hit and exceeded the magic £1m turnover mark (one million pounds revenue), grew to 16-staff, strong and the business brand itself became well known locally as something for other MSPs to aspire to. In early 2020 Pete exited the business to pursue other...

with Dylan Dahlquist dylanquestdigital ( at ) gmail.com Google's Advertising platform is versatile, far-reaching, and pretty confusing. Sometimes getting a clear return on ad spend can feel closer to wizardry than science, but that's why Dylan has spent years figuring out methods for businesses and organizations to grow with Google Ads. He has success managing Ad Accounts for a variety of business...

I caught up with Richard Tubb near the end of November. In addition to a general catch-up, we recorded a podcast on Marketing Tips! We did this after an experience we shared that resulted in extra bonus marketing for Richard - because he was prepared. It got me thinking about how being ready to take advantage of opportunities goes a long ways. In this conversation, Richard shares some great ideas...

Karl interviews co-host James Kernan on his new book, Tech Up or Lose Out. James is the editor and publisher of the book. And, of course, he wrote a good deal of it. James calls this book the Entrepreneurs Guide to IT. The target audience is small business - not just IT businesses. You might, for example, give this book to clients to educate them on why they need tech support. The basic goal is to...

Host James Kernan interviews Sarah Hansen on Social Media Marketing. Sarah runs Hansen Collective, a firm that uses online marketing expertise to help both international and domestic clients, while also fostering a community and educating her audience on creating effective social media strategies for personal brands and businesses alike. Hansen Collective combines modern social media marketing str...

Karl interviews Manuel Palachuk, author and coach. Manuel is introducing a new kind of interactive event call The IT Confidential. See https://theitconfidential.com . The new venture is a bit like a webinar/podcast with a major twist: A live audience. The goal is to take a hard look at some issues that others are not talking about in the channel. Plus, he got a cool look and feel for the web site....