We can learn a lot from our bruthas and sistas in the fast-paced world of finance and borrow//beg/steal those best practices as we enjoy (yes - enjoy) the final days of 2024. ‘Tis the season to engage in year-end portfolio adjustments. The analogy is solid while the tactics may be different: This might include tax trades such as liquidating losses or locking in gains in equities v MSPs looking to fire annoying and unprofitable clients. 

Firing Your Client Funny: Did you know that the first week after the holiday season (early January) is THE biggest divorce week of the year on the personal side after couples “stay together for the holidays for the children.” Happy client divorce often means a happy MSP life. LOL. Most of us get hired quickly by our small and medium business (SMB) clients but fire them too slowly.

Neither rain nor darkness or sniffles/colds (going around here) kept the loyal and dedicated group of geeks from our 2nd Annual Geek Holiday Party on December 4th!

So just a short shoutout via the pic below recognize the geeks on the loose at the gathering...a few hours of chatting and good food.

So why bother? For a couple reasons.

 At IT Connect 2024 in Orlando, AUVIK, a network and SaaS management company founded in 2011, discussed their focus on "frictionless IT." AUVIK's president oversees customer acquisition, onboarding, and success, while Joe Barnes, based in Scottsdale, focuses on growing indirect partnerships and expanding resale business. AUVIK plans to launch endpoint network monitoring and enhance SaaS management automation in 2025. They emphasize their strong partnership with ConnectWise and the integration of their tools into ConnectWise's ASIO platform. AUVIK sees a resurgence in MSP growth post-COVID and is exploring additional events and lunch-and-learns to engage their community.

Action Items

• [ ] Explore doing additional lunch and learn events.
• [ ] Continue developing partnerships and exploring new channel opportunities.
• [ ] Enhance Auvik's SaaS management platform with more automation for customer onboarding and offboarding.
• [ ] Expand Auvik's network monitoring capabilities to include endpoint monitoring.

On the surface my Christmas tree, admittedly a work in progress, has very little to teach about Customer Relationship Management (CRM), But get into the branches (not the weeds LOL) and this tree is the meaning of life with respect to starting, owning and operating a business in the Small and Medium Business (SMB) space. Read on. 

This week I had the pleasure of providing the first of a series of training sessions for my colleagues at the Well Done Foundation not-for-profit (NFP) on utilizing the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM instance. At its core,

Harry Brelsford and Paralee Walls discuss the Connect 2024 event, highlighting Paralee's company's success in the previous year's startup pitch competition. Paralee emphasizes the importance of integrating chat solutions for better customer service experiences, contrasting traditional ticketing systems. She shares her background in public school education and how transitioning to tech marketing is similar to teaching. They discuss the cognitive benefits of learning a foreign language, with Paralee noting that she dreams in Spanish. Paralee describes her company's marketing strategies at the event, including a "rage room" for venting business frustrations and a solutions booth. They also talk about the benefits of providing exceptional service experiences, exemplified by their party bus service for attendees.

Long-time readers will recall that we have always support Small Business Saturday that falls after the US Thanksgiving (started 2010). This year it’s November 30th. Here are a few ways you can participate.

Go Buy Something (Anything) from a Small Business! 

I love shopping on Small Business Saturday. Last year I picked up some sauces from a small business in the cute tourist town of Wimberley, TX in the hill country outside Austin. And I’ll hit the elephant in the room head on folks. Yes - buying a drink (wine, beer even Vodka count when you visit a local diner. Snap a pic and post it in our SBS group on FB (join HERE) 

Host a Reception at Your Business Location

Just in time for the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays, the SS SMB Nation has arrived at the island of misfit tech toys. Here is the exclusive scoop.

Using the holiday break to reflect, recharge and renew, I gathered up all my misfit tech toys that are consigned to a shelf in my home office LOL. Then I placed them on the SMB Nation sailing vessel for arrival just in time for Santa to distribute to up-and-coming geeks world wide.

A quick peek of the snap show a few highlights.

Harry Brelsford and David Tulip discuss their professional history and experiences in the IT industry. David shares his journey from joining Newman Business Solutions in 1995 to growing their IT department into a £1.5 million MSP by 2009. He now leads the Network Group, which supports around 100 technology service providers in the UK. They reflect on the IT Nation 2024 conference, highlighting its educational focus and high attendance of 4,500 people. David mentions upcoming events for the Network Group in 2025, including celebrating their 30th anniversary at Wembley Stadium and expanding their reach to 250 organizations over the next three years.

A common refrain in technology (heck any area) is the need to both stay current and lean forward to remain relevant. Like you, I can remember pivoting from the sad demise of Novell NetWare to Window Server (remember NT?) leading up to the granddaddy of all migrations: the end-of-life (EOL) *and* and of service of Windows Small Business Server (SBS) to whatever (cloud et. al.). Do you realize that all happened in 2014 - ten years ago. This was the same timeframe as the Windows XP (EOL). Another example of voluntary (for some of you it was involuntary) professional evolution from break-fix to the Managed Service Provider (MSP) business model based on monthly recurring revenue (MRR) (invented by the telcos IMHO)

Here We Grow Again - Looking Around the Corner into 2025

I recently attended a keynote at the Mindset Reset conference