SMB Community Podcast

The first person I grabbed at SMB Nation was Robert Crane from CIA Ops – CIAOPS.com . Robert presented a great demonstration on using live data to create meaningful information for clients. Robert Crane Microsoft's PowerBI is a business intelligence. Robert showed how to analyze data from a variety of sources. Once you have an Office 365 login, you can add this product and it will be just another...

Report One from SMB Nation 2015. Featuring Nick East from Zynstra and Dave Seibert from SMB TechFest. Nick East Last year Zynstra ( www.zynstra.com ) pretty much dominated SMB Nation with demos. This year Nick East announced that Zynstra is now distributed both through Ingram's cloud program and through D&H. In fact, they were at the show with D&H ( www.dandh.com ). If you're interested in finding...

At the Business Solutions Channel Transitions event in Chicago (two weeks ago), I caught up with Randy Clark from Mercury. Mercury is a payment processor. Think credit cards. Pretty much everyone takes credit cards. Everyone who has clients that trust them has the potential to sell credit card processing. Randy Clark – Mercury Pay In this interview, Randy talks about getting started as well as the...

Mike Monocello Mike Monocello Mike Monocello is the editor-in-chief of Business Solutions magazine, a monthly publication dedicated to helping IT solutions providers grow their businesses by selling complementary technologies and moving into thriving markets. We talked about building recurring revenue models, technology, and business. Mike has to come up with new articles for a variety of readers...

One of the coolest things I've ever seen at a conference is a "Visual Practitioner" summarizing the event via large scale drawings. I talked to Jackie Forbes at the recent MAX 2015 conference. She is with Drawn to Learn ( www.drawntolearn.co.uk ). Her background is in meeting facilitation, so she has good skills around picking out the important points of the day. Here's a picture of the drawings s...

Back at the vendor hall . . . I talked to four folks about taking your business to the next level. Two of them are directly in sales and marketing (helping you with S&M), one who helps you generate reports to make more sales, and an industry organization you should absolutely be involved with. Ken Goldstein is with Choice Technologies. They are an MSP with a successful sales process – and they're...

While in DC for the MAX 2015 conference, I wandered down to the vendor hall. Of course I took my trusty recorder along for the stroll. Here are three quick interviews with vendors I met. Carl Banzhof from iScanOnline talked about "data breach intelligence." Basically, they use a host-based agent to search for sensitive data. In addition to the places where you know you have data (e.g., the databas...

I always love working with Joe Panettieri. He's a very smart guy, very fun to talk to, and totally tuned into the channel. So I had to grab him for a quick podcast when I saw him in DC this week. Joe Penettieri at MAX Joe and his partner Amy Katz run After Nines, Inc., a consulting company. And they've been working on a new project. In fact, they're going to announce it and launch in a few days. I...

I love the ChannelPro SMB Forums. There's always something new and different going on. Even the panels change from city to city. Here's a quick report from the ChannelPro SMB Forum in Chicago last week. You can still sign up for the last show of the year – November 3rd in New York / New Jersey. See http://events.channelpronetwork.com for more details. In this podcast, I interview Erick Simpson and...

Earlier this year I spoke at the Retail IT VAR of the Future Conference, sponsored by Business Solutions Magazine. In this interview, I talk to Jim Roddy, President of BSM, about the upcoming conferences called Channel Transitions. The conferences will be: Chicago – Sept. 24th and Orlando – Nov. 5th You can find out more at www.channeltransitions.com or www. BSMInfo.com . Jim Roddy The conferences...

Sell My MSP! What a great idea! I love the new project from Managed Service rock stars Amy Babinchak and Rayanne Buchianico for a number of reasons. Their new project is called Sell My MSP and the web site is www. SellMyMSP.com . It's a new clearinghouse for people looking to buy or sell an I.T. business. Sell My MSP The first reason I love this project is that it's very educational. You can reque...

While I was down under at the MAXfocus partner conference in Melbourne, Australia, I talked to a couple of the sponsors in the back of the room. Mark Winter Mark Winter from Rapid Fire Tools was promoting their Network Detective product. Rapid Fire Tools ( www.rapidfiretools.com ) already has a presence in Australia. Mark was here to meet partners as well as sign up some new partners. In this inte...

While I was in Australia for the MAXfocus Partner Conference, I was quite impressed with their plans to data mine their own tools. Dave Sobel I caught up with Dave Sobel, Director of Partner Community for LogicNow (MAXfocus). Dave's team is responsible for the MAX partner conferences and they did a great job with this one. I asked Dave about the whole "Big Data" initiative at MAX. He was very exci...

Todd Billiar Yesterday I talked with a couple of pros about the hiring environment for small IT shops. The good news: According to Todd Billiar from VAR Staffing, there's about a 1-2% unemployment rate for I.T. Consultants. The bad news: Everyone wants more money – even if they're not qualified. This podcast includes interviews with Todd as well as Josh Peterson, one of the great coaches in the IT...

Dave Seibert joins me for a look at tapping into Community Knowledge. Dave Seibert This conversation flows from a presentation I saw Dave give in Anaheim last year at the SMB Techfest ( www.smbtechfest.com ). In fact, I liked the presentation so much that I asked Dave to create a new version for the SMB Online Conference. There are people "talk" community and there are people who "do" community. D...

I had a great catch-up chat with Harry Brelsford from SMB Nation. He's busy with a couple of things going on at once. I know: Shocker! First up, SMB Nation is putting on the first "Behind the Curtains" training on Windows 10, in association with Microsoft. This is a vendor-free event. It is also sold out – but Harry has a waiting list. So be sure to register because that will guarantee you're on t...

Last week we had a report from Robin Robins' Big Seminar – www.robinsbigseminar.com . This is the second report on that event – featuring an interview with Robin herself on why this event is different from other events in the community. In this podcast, I interview four folks: Nadia Karatsoreos from MAXfocus, Stephen Swavley from Documentation Toolkit, Rob Rae from Datto, and Robin Robins from Tec...

We had a great time in Nashville for Robin Robins' Big Seminar – www.robinsbigseminar.com . I love this event because it's crowded with great partners who are totally dedicated to working ON their business (see my Small Biz Thoughts Blog post on this). In this podcast, I interview four folks: Jan Spring from eFolder, Jeff Dryall from Plan27, Nathan Brebner from Sandler Partners, and Bab Farkas fro...

This is the first report of two I'm doing on the Channel Partners Conference in Vegas last week. The primary reason I attended is that many, many, people at the Channel Pro SMB event in Baltimore kept asking me if I was going. I went a little early and connected with some folks. Then I stayed a little late and caught up with some others. I always recommend that strategy, as opposed to rushing in a...

I am fundamentally lazy. Or busy. Or both. As a result, I sometimes captures interviews while I'm out and about and then don't post them up right away. I'm going to be doing some catch-up here. I've got three quick interviews for you here. They are: Steve Noel, MSP Evangelist for Axcient Jeff Dryall, Directory of Business Development with Plan 27 and Kevin Jones, Sales Engineer, RapidFire Tools We...

Just in case you haven't heard of Third Tier . . . Third Tier ( www.thirdtier.net ) provides services for technology consultants. They provide education and assistance on a wide variety of topics. I caught up with Amy Babinchak a few days ago to find out what new and cool. It turns out there's LOTS of great news from Third Tier. Their SMB Kitchen project is going strong – with a new program coming...

Catch our Dec 16th Odd Tuesdays episode! Karl speaks with ChannelEyes ' Jay McBain about their mobile app platform for connecting Vendors and channel partners. Rayanne Buchianico also joins the show in our Oddballs segment. Rayanne talks about her MSP course – the Financial Processes That Make All the Difference . The course is geared for MSPs and covers such topics as: separation of accounting an...

Check out Nov 4th's Odd Tuesdays episode where Karl talks with Results Software 's Mike Honig about their expanded CRM system. And our Oddballs segment in this episode features Small Business MVP Amy Babinchak discussing the importance of MSPs building and developing vendor relationships. You can find the Nov 4th's episode here . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for in...

I just got back from the big ChannelPro SMB Forum in Philadelphia. For more information on next year's events, visit http://events.channelpronetwork.com/ . At the event, I talked to a number of vendors. Here is present some quick shout-outs from Datto , Buffalo Tech , Excel Micro , Lenovo , and StorageCraft . Most importantly, I had a chance to hang out with Dave Seibert and sit on a cloud panel w...

I had a good visit with Rob T. Rae from Datto at the GFI Max 2014 conference this week. Later in the day, Datto was awarded both Best in Show and Best Exhibitor Interaction awards. Datto is a backup and disaster recovery company with about 400 employees worldwide. They're big in Canada, Europe, as well as the U.S. One big point for Rob was that they're focusing on a lot more than continuity. How d...