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A rising tide raises all ships – that would be the basic story for Small Business Saturday 2018. Say what you must but the economy on Main Street is humming with job and wage growth followed by Goldilocks conditions of a healthy housing sector, modest interest rates and still strong domestic equity markets. I report on Small Business Saturday

It’s that time again to participate in our periodic survey – MSP business operations. Your insights and wisdom help the community as a whole and we’ll present the results in a future post so you can individually benefit. Your participation helps us create a crystal ball to have visibility into the future!

Colonel Matt Elledge was the featured speaker at Canon multi-function printer (MFP) product launch at SpiceWorld 2018 in Austin, Tx (October 2018) In this podcast, Elledge speaks about creating buy-in inside your team. His book is based on four principles that helps leaders create TIME - so leaders can work on the business, not in the business.

Remember this guy? Just before election day, I caught up with Jonathan Friebert who is well-known in the SMB Nation community as the past director of Microsoft’s Voices for Innovation (VFI) – a non-partisan, political trade association

Like you, I’m struggling with defining the Internet of Things (IoT) revenue model for managed services providers (MSP) and partners. We’re still defining the paradigm (yes – an overused phrase). Fortunately I caught the keynote speech by Eric Hembree, Director of IoT-Advanced Solutions

I spoke with Tiffani Bova, author of “Growth IQ” and a frequent speaker, about her new pub. She also shared insights from her keynote address before a group of IT partners and managed services providers (MSP) at Ingram ONE, the annual fall conference for Ingram Micro currently underway in the Washington DC area.

I caught with with a busy Karl Palachuk across the border in Montreal, Quebec Canada at the SherWeb Accelerate18 conference in October 2018. Karl's message was very specific for managed service providers (MSP) about making money but running your business better. The speech "25 UNBREAKABLE RULES FOR RUNNING A SUCCESSFUL MANAGED SERVICES BUSINESS" (yes - Karl is shouting in UPPER CASE!) has the following conversation: 

Gotta hand it to SherWeb, a scrappy indirect CSP, from the Great White North in Canada. It’s sharing several initiatives in day one of its annual confab called Accelerate in Montreal this week. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. SpiceWorld is a must do on the annual tech conference calendar. Teaser alert – attendees agree but I’ll get to that in a minute. First – an internal conversation concerning the Spiceworks marketplace announcement.

Inside
I spoke 1:1 with

I always told momma I'd rather be early than late. I'd say our exploration of analytics resembles that old saw. You are now seeing smart/savvy analytics players from the small and medium business (SMB) partner community (including managed services providers - MSP) enter this space. Admittedly the tools and rules are still being

Long-time SMB Nation tribal member Fred Pullen (all the way back to the TS2 days) lays out the conversation for Microsoft Edge v Internet Explorer 11. Hey - the both ship with Windows 10. Do you need both? Which is more secure? Answers to these questions in more in our interview at Microsoft Redmond recently.

In this segment of Tech Tuesday on Northwest Digital News, Kevin Hunter and I engage in a freewheeling conversation about the Smartsheet Engage 2018 conference underway in the Seattle-area. We focus on defining Smartsheet