Nothing Happens by Itself
Copyright © 2022 Karl W. Palachuk
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Greetings!
The new year is shaping up to VERY busy. In-person events look to be back to pre-pandemic levels. Maybe even busier!
We've added all the ASCII events to our calendar this week - plus a dozen more. This is a great time to start planning which events you'll attend in 2023. Remember: Attending events should be very intentional. That means you should have a reason to go and a set of desired outcomes.
Outcomes might include meeting vendors, finding new tools, getting great ideas, and networking with peers. Sharing drinks with old friends can be an important element as well, but don't forget to take care of the business side of conferences, too.
Please keep sending me any in-person events I should add to the weekly calendar.
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Final Webinar of the Year |
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Tackling the Employee Challenge
The next webinar is this Wednesday
Dec 14, 2022 at 9:00 AM Pacific
If you were registered for the first, you are registered for the second. If not, you can registration now:
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The December 14th webinar cover all the SOPs you need to have in place before the new employee's first day on the job. This includes
- Creating job descriptions
- Creating job ads
- Designing candidate questions and evaluation forms
- Choosing a candidate
- Making a job offer and getting ready for the first day.
NOTE: This webinar is open and free to everyone, BUT the recordings, handouts, slide deck, and written SOPs will only be available inside The Small Biz Thoughts Technology Community.
In other words, if you're not a member, you better attend in real time. (Or join, of course.)
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Good Riddance to QuickBooks |
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Like many of you, I have been shackled to QuickBooks for many years. In my case, I bought my first license in 1995. Back in the days of QB Desktop, I skipped upgrades many times because the product was so expensive and the functionality I used never changed. For about ten years, I had a three-person license. when I sold my first IT company, I happily moved back to a one-user license.
Overall, QuickBooks has long been the leader for financial programs in the small business space. But many of us (perhaps most of us) consider it overpriced. And, in my opinion, the online product has never been equivalent to the desktop product. It is certainly slower, more cumbersome, and has fewer reports.
And so, like many companies that move to an online version, QuickBooks has opened the door for competition.
There's great irony in how QuickBooks contributed to their competition. Perhaps this will be a case study for future business schools. QuickBooks is famous for not working well across a network, for having poor customer service, and for being over-priced. "Everybody" used them, but almost nobody loved them.
Microsoft took a stab at this market, but didn't have a commitment to keep up the pressure. Microsoft Small Business Financials died at the end of 2008. Perhaps if they could have foreseen QuickBooks' fumbling into the cloud, they would have stayed.
QuickBooks had two options for "going to the cloud," and they picked the wrong one. They could have used a licensing model like Microsoft of Adobe, with software installed locally but the licensing managed in the cloud. Instead, they opted to keep the entire product in the cloud so they don't have to worry about keeping local files updated and secure.
Some people still use the desktop edition simply because the cloud version is so hard to love. If they had kept the program on site and moved licensing to the cloud, QB Desktop would always be fast and full-featured.
But the greatest bit of irony is that competitors don't have to be cheap in order to take business away from QuickBooks. In fact, they can be almost as expensive - because QuickBooks has built up decades of bad service and customer resentment.
I like to say, "They've worked very hard to lose my business. I don't want to disappoint them."
So, beginning January 1st, my companies are moving to Xero.
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This decision has been coming for a long time. I needed to find a product that fulfilled the requirements I expect to have over the next five years. It has to be good at the things *WE* need. In other words, I don't need it to match up to every single thing QB Desktop can do. After all, I don't use most of those functions anyway.
We signed up for Xero this month, and we're building up our business on the platform already. The plan is to finish out 2022 in QuickBooks and be able to run all the reports we need for the year. This means we'll continue our subscription for at least a month as we need to balance bank accounts, Stripe, and PayPal. And we need to generally let everything settle so we can print out final reports for taxes, etc.
Next Week (in case you care), I'll give a note on the steps we took and the progress made - including updating documentation.
2023 will be completely on Xero.
. . . On a related matter, I expect to swear less in 2023.
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This article is not an endorsement or a paid placement. I am not claiming that Xero is right for your business (I can't promise it's right for mine). I'm just letting you know what I'm up to.
Comments and feedback welcome.
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Thank you for your support. Please share this newsletter!
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Planning for 2023 Starts NOW |
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Check out all the courses at IT Service Provider University
Core Standard Operating Procedures for IT Providers
You’re guaranteed to learn something that will make or save you the price of admission!
Taught By: Karl W. Palachuk
Newly Revised Course
- Five Tuesdays: January 10 - February 7, 2023
When I take on new coaching clients, they have many of the same issues over and over again. This is true of clients with $10 Million in revenue as well as those under $1 Million. And almost all of them boil down to SOPs – Standard Operating Procedures. Or the lack thereof.
Everyone knows you need SOPs. In fact, you probably know which ones you need. But where do you start?
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You will learn:
- A practical introduction to SOPs
- The relationship matrix of SOPs
- Clients
- Employees
- Vendors
- Internal Organization
- The Ten Most Important SOPs for your IT Consulting
- Business
- SOPs management, organization, and updates
- Implementation strategies internally
- Implementation strategies for clients
- Service Department SOPs
- Building
- Training
- Deployment
- Upkeep
... And More!
Avoiding the biggest pitfalls with SOP development and deployment
Building an Action Plan that works
Delivered by Karl W. Palachuk, blogger and author of the very popular “SOP Friday” posts at http://sopfriday.com.
Includes five weeks of webinar classes with related handouts, assignments, and “office hours” with the instructor.
This course is intended for business owners and managers. It is particularly useful for the Service Manager or Operations Manager.
ITSP University Certification:
Meets Certification Requirements for:
- Management
- Service Manager
This class will be recorded. Each unit is generally posted within 24 hours of the live class. These recorded units will become the On-Demand class and you’ll have lifetime access to it.
Class Content
Unit 1 Introduction and Organization of SOPs
Unit 2 Managing Time and Money
Unit 3 Service Delivery and the Service Board
Unit 4 Practical Operating Considerations
Unit 5 Putting It All Together
Note: * Members of the Small Biz Thoughts Technology Community attend at no additional charge. See details in the Community
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All the Resources That Are Fit to Print |
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Recent Blog Posts, Podcasts, and Videos |
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Small Biz Thoughts Blog:
SMB Community Podcast - New episodes drop every Thursday
The Killing IT Podcast - New episodes drop every Tuesday
National Society of IT Service Providers News Blog
Relax Focus Succeed:
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Selected Recent Videos and Webinars:
Our YouTube IT Consulting channel now has more than 615,000 views!
Subscribe today and don't miss a thing!
A quick guide to my Playlists:
- Total: Over 860 videos on the Small Biz Thoughts channel
- 350+ SOP videos
- 265+ Relax Focus Success videos
Plus . . .
- Training, Courses, Seminars on Managed Services
- Product Reviews
- and more
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Community News
SmallBizThoughts.org
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Looking forward to an Amazing 2023! |
On last Thursday's call, someone confused me with the question, "Is this our last meeting of the year?"
No! Not even close. We meet every Thursday at 9:00 Am Pacific on Zoom.
And then we proceeded to have an amazing meeting! As usual, the topics were quite varied.:
- Selling services online
- How to overcome objections . . . or should you?
- What about when the internet goes down? (or when . . . )
- The difference between very small (1-5 employee) clients, and slightly larger (minimum 10 seats) in terms of hand holding, expectations, and support
- Josh shares a shockingly funny story involving a client, their server room, and a heat lamp . . . yeah – you put that together correctly.
- Josh then updates a bit on how the “problem client” from a few weeks ago is going (the one who called outraged, believing Josh and his employees were reading all of his emails).
- Reviewing yesterday’s webinar on getting new employees – where to look, how how to advertise, and more
- What are people using for M365 and VOiP?
- Let’s talk franchises – who gets tech support, who doesn’t? How about approaching local franchises still using Gmail?
- Karl might be inclined to do some market research on this for the community. . .
- SMB Online Conference is happening! Mark your calendars for May 17 & 18, 2023
- and more!
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Join Us This Thursday - and every Thursday - on Zoom
The link is always in your dashboard. Log in, click your name, and plan to join us live on Zoom.
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Non-Members: If you want to get your 2023 headed off in the right direction, join our community NOW!
:-)
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My local "Cold and Flu" aisle.
I look forward to the day when people regain their faith that we live in the land of plenty and stop behaving as if they need to buy everything on the shelf.
I know people who still can't get a week's worth of groceries in their pantry because of the "Panic Toilet Paper" they bought.
:-)
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What's Here?
This calendar lists two kinds of things: LIVE in-person events from any organization that focuses on the SMB consulting community; and MY events, whether live, webinar, etc.
If you have live events on your calendar that may be useful to others in the SMB Community, please let us know. We'd be happy to list them.
Of course: Everything here is subject to change based on Covid. Click the links for the latest details. Please send updates so we can post them.
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December
Karl Webinar: Finding and Keeping Great Employees in 2023 - Part 2
December 14 - 9AM Pacific
Join me online!
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January
Send me your events !!!
Karl's 14th Annual State of the Nation Address for SMB IT
January 11th - 9:00 AM Pacific
Join me Live Online!
CyberTech Global Tel Aviv
Jan. 30-Feb 1, 2023
Tel Aviv, Israel
:-)
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February
ChannelPro Summit
Feb. 1-2
Dallas (Southwest)
Zero Trustworld 23
Feb. 1-3, 2023
ChampnionsGate, FL
Cisco Live!
Feb 6-10, 2023
Amsterdam
SMB TechFest
Feb. 9-10, 2023
Southern California
MSPExpo
Feb 14-17, 2022
Fort Lauderdale, FL
IOTSSA Cybersecurity Conference and Expo
Feb 15-16, 2023
Phoeniz, AZ
ASCII Edge 2023
February 22 & 23
Newport Beach, CA
MWC Barcelona 2023
Feb 27-March 2, 2023
Barcelona, Spain
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March
XChange March 2023
March 5-7, 2023
Orlando, FL
More info: https://event.thechannelco.com/xchange-march
ChannelPro Summit
Mar. 8-9
Dulles, VA (Mid-Atlantic)
CloudExpo Europe
March 8-9, 2023
London, UK
Gartner CIO Leadership Forum
March 14-15, 2023
Londong, UK
IT Nation 2023
March 20-22, 2023
London, England
Cloudfest
March 21-23, 2023
Europa-Park, Germany
ASCII Edge 2023
March 22 & 23
Atlanta, GA
James Kernan's Millionaire Mastermind Quarterly
March 30-31
Orlando, FL
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April
ItaliaSec: IT Security Conference
April 4-5, 2023
Rome, Italy
The IT Sales And Marketing Boot Camp
April 11-14, 2023
Nashville, TN
HIMSS
April 17-21
Chicago, IL
ASCII Edge 2023
April 19 & 20
Dallas, TX
CyberSecurity Expo
April 20, 2023
Bristol, UK
Connect IT Global
April 24-27, 2023
Las Vegas, NV
RSA Conference
Apr. 24-27, 2023
San Francisco, CA
TECHSPO New York
Apr 27-28, 2023
New York City, NY
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May
ChannelPro Summit
May 9-10
Chicago (Midwest)
2023 SMB Online Conference!
May 17-18
Zoom
Online - Stay Tuned for Details - but mark your calendar now.
Join Me Live Online!
ASCII Edge 2023
May 24 & 25
Newark, NJ
:-)
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June
Cisco Live!
June 4-8, 2023
Las Vegas, NV
IT Nation Secure
June 5-7, 2023
Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center
Orlando, FL
ChannelPro Summit
June 7-8
San Jose, CA (West Coast)
Infosecurity Europe
June 20-22, 2023
London, England
ASCII Edge 2023
June 21 & 22
Tampa, FL
James Kernan's Millionaire Mastermind Quarterly
June 29-30
Denver, CO
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July
ChannelPro Summit
Aug. 9-10
Newark, NJ (Northeast)
ASCII Edge 2023
July 12 & 13
Columbus, OH
CyberSecurity Expo
July 13, 2023
Manchester, UK
:-)
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August
ASCII Edge 2023
August 30 & 31
Toronto, Canada
:-)
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September
ChannelPro Summit
Sept. 6-7
Boston (New England)
ASCII Edge 2023
September 20 & 21
Chicago, IL
James Kernan's Millionaire Mastermind Quarterly
Sept 28-29
Omaha, NE
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October
ChannelPro Summit
Oct. 10-11
Atlanta (Southeast)
Acronis #Cyberfit Summit 2023
Oct. 16-18
Miami, FL
ASCII Edge 2023
October 18 & 19
Washington, D.C.
dattoCon 2023
Oct. 2-4, 2023
Miami, FL
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November
Send me your events !!!
:-)
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December
James Kernan's Millionaire Mastermind Quarterly
Dec 7-8
Phoenix, AZ
:-)
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Note: If you know of any in-person event for SMB Consultants, please send info to karlp@greatlittlebook.com. |
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Small Biz Thoughts is a subsidiary of Great Little Book Publishing Co., Inc. |
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