520: My Precious

Topics:

-Jerry takes issue with the way Joe & Sam covet their calendars.

-Each of us either use Calendly or Harmonizely.

-We discuss the latest in Apple certifications and listing on the ACN locator.

-The two courses and exams are Apple Device Support and Deployment & Management.

-All of us are intrigued with Apple Messages for Business. Cost seems to be a barrier for entry.

-You can have SMS hosted by a different company than you use for voice.

318: Interview With Tim Nyberg Of The MacGuys+ - Value Based Billing

Topics:

-From the days of the Apple II, Tim Nyberg was known as “The Mac Guy” in his college days because he could confidently fix any Apple computer. Tim kept the name, opened The MacGuys+ in 1991 and today he and his team are still obsessed with Macs and Apple technology. 

-Tim talks about his history from typing papers for fellow students, to a job at Kinkos, and eventually landing back in Minneapolis to build his current business. 

-Tim has a brick and mortar location that serves a purpose for walk in traffic and repairs. 

-Having a location has its challenges but provides opportunity and space to perform some large scale tasks 

-As Tim’s business has seen changes over the years, Jerry notes that the tools that he uses has allowed him to work more efficiently

-Tim starts to see himself being more of the business end of the company and transitioning from the technical end of the company. He is on his way to obtaining his MBA. 

-There are some clients that have been around for 20 years who want nothing to do with managed services 

-Value based billing is a concept that Tim has been presenting to his clients. Part of this is setting expectations with the customer and making them realize what the value of the work is. 

-As Jerry asks for a practical example, Tim talks about value based billing in projects like Synology setups, Wi-Fi roll outs where the value of expertise and padded time for potential pitfalls are covered as a part of the cost. 

-If projects go more smoothly than expected, it provides opportunity to offer a discount to the customer.

-One book that provided good information on this topic was "Value-Based Fees" By Alan Weiss

-It is important to express to the customer what your value is. Less important than total hours on an invoice is the details of all the work performed. 

-Like many of us, Tim leverages the TidBITS Content Network and a variety of social media tools to provide content to his customers. 

305: I Have Some Cookies In My Kitchen

Topics:

-Big thank you to Michael Thompsen and Viktor Glemme for guest hosting a recent episode of Command Control Power. Thanks as well to their guests Will O’Neal and Luis Giraldo for mixing it up with them. 

-Sam & Jerry express their disappointment in the cancellation of AirPower. 

-Sam shares some exciting news about office space. His group is on the move again. 

-Jerry has incredibly useful and relevant advice for marketing your business with Google and how he uses the TidBITS Content Networkto deliver information to potential customers.

-Reselling additional services is a subject that has come up in previous episodes. Sam has some thoughts to add and talks about how he is bundling up some services that he hasn’t offered in the past. 

-JumpCloud is one such service and Sam mentions their partner program

-Sam describes a conundrum that a consultant might find himself/herself in: pay me more to allow me to do less work. 

-Jerry finds a great site for picking the right Mac for your needs 
Picking the Best iMac to Buy in 2019 - https://www.macrumors.com/guide/best-imac-to-buy/

-The guys lament over Safari responsiveness lately 

-One of Jerry’s education clients has a need for a product called Inkscape. He describes his challenges dealing with X11 and the installation process. 

-Big shout out to Shawn Maddock of Envision Design. Envision is the company of friend and supporter of the show, Richard Wingfield. 

-Sam has some cookies in his kitchen

297: Interview with Justin Esgar of ACEs Conference 2019 & Virtua Computers

Topics:

-It's almost the time of year again for the ACEs Conference.  This week Justin Esgar joins Joe, Jerry, & Sam to talk about ACEs 2019 - to be held June 4-6 in Kansas City, MO (NOT to be confused with Kansas City, KS) 

-Work/life balance was a theme of ACEs 2018 that Joe really loved.  Both Joe & Sam attended the morning yoga session on day 1.

-Justin's wife as well as his Board of Directors have been key to making ACEs successful: Alan Hancock, Adam Engst, Andy Espo, Will O'Neal

-After feedback from previous years, Justin and his team have implemented a new theme where participants will be able to meet in small groups and get feedback and help from their peers.

-The Keynote this year is Sgt Major Fenton Reese

-Brian Best is back for year 5.  Will he be presenting in a tuxedo?

-Justin's own company, Virtua Computers, was changed dramatically from the conference and his yearly revenue reflected this.

-One piece of advice is to research and go all in on the tools you will need for your clients. Whether it's Addigy for RMM (Remote Monitoring & Management), Zendesk for ticketing, JumpCloud for SSO (Single Sign On) or Apple Business Manager.

-Automating and perfecting your processes is not only going to make your clients successful, but it will set your staff up for success as well.

-Justin shares some of how he bills his monthly services 

-Virtua also does Dark Web scanning for his clients.  He uses ID Agent for that service

-Keeping an ongoing relationship with the client is an important factor that makes those money conversations that much easier

-Justin quizzes the group with a typical interview question

295: Change Up The Usual

Special Thanks To Our VIP Sponsors!

Topics:

-Jerry has some clients with MacPractice and he has some concerns with their recommendations for Dolly Drive. Joe chimes in on his experiences.

-Since Sam is relatively new to syncing Desktop & Documents to iCloud, he was looking for a way to stop specific subfolders from syncing to iCloud. He found that adding the suffix of .nosync to a folder would remove it from iCloud.

-On the heels of naming conventions discussions, Jerry has a client that named folders with all the special characters that tend to wreak havoc on an OS. He got the old line “it wasn’t a problem before” from the client.

-Sam’s client had what they thought was an issue with a UniFi mesh device. The answer was a lot more simple than expected.

-Whenever a client messes with DNS, it’s a recipe for disaster. And Jerry’s client was no exception.

-A need from one of Jerry’s friends turns into the discovery of a line of products from Ten One Design. He ends up getting his friend the Blockhead, which turns the Apple power brick sideways to the socket. Check them out for a variety of other ingenious products like the Stella or Wifi Porter.

-Listeners of Command Control Power can get a very generous 20% off their order by using the code “Command” at checkout.

-It’s the simple things. Joe shares a feature of the Amazon Prime app on iOS that just makes sense and he wonders why other video streaming apps don’t do this.

-Jerry recommends troypoint.com for use with an Amazon Fire Stick

-Joe has a new segment/corner/pop quiz called “Apple should have told us”. His story starts with a local iPhone encrypted backup with a lost backup password. Apple does have a knowledgeable article on this topic: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205220#help

-His wish for an RSS feed leads him to a lot of dead ends: apple.com/support/rss/intl/body.html, rss.support.apple.com, support.apple.com/rss, and just for fun: www.apple.com/support/home/index.html

-Thanks to Tim Nyberg of The Mac Guys for mentioning a tax break for the tax year 2018 that may apply to your business: https://www.mileiq.com/blog/pass-through-tax-deduction/

-On a fun note, Jerry shares a funny ad for the Super Bowl from Stella Artois: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX8TMYRk6_w

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors!

291: There's No School Like The Old School

Special Thanks To Our VIP Sponsors!

Topics:

-Back from the holiday, Joe, Jerry, & Sam had a chance to meet up in the real world

-Jerry can name all three wise men but Joe & Sam draw blanks

-Joe “re-learns” a lesson about taking a red-eye across the country

-Surprisingly, nobody received any tech for the holidays but Jerry purchased a Sonos subwoofer for himself and has a new interest in the Amazon Fire Stick

-Jerry may need to update his TV to match all his audio tech. In that discussion comes about the old remote controls, like the one Sam used growing up…

-New Year’s Resolutions:
Joe - Going back to basics and focus on the fundamentals (ie. billing out as efficiently as possible, migrating more clients to managed services). On the personal side, developing a routine while living nomadically.
Sam - Would like to travel less for both business and personal reasons. On the business end, it makes it difficult to run if he is not always there to attend meetings or give directives. On the personal side, he would like to attend more events for the children.
Jerry - He is interested in growing his business and increasing revenue

-Jerry also has a plan to be organized moving forward and it includes the use of DayOne, an Apple friendly journaling app. DayOne can collect notes, images, audio recordings in journal entries and help organize your life and business.

-Joe shares his thoughts about how malware appears to be a more persistent problem with client devices.

-Jerry talks about using that term and clarifying between various naming conventions (malware, adware, virus, worm, etc.)

-This all leads to an issue Joe was having with a persistent Safari homepage that would not change back. As it turns out, a security feature from Apple disallowing “synthetic clicks” was not allowing Joe to resolve this issue remotely. Thanks to Patrick Fergus (@foigus) on Slack for the assistance.

-Sam brings back the MDM conversation when talking about how Apple is providing ways to be more preventative from a security standpoint.

-Joe & Jerry have similar issues with built in applications not running correctly on older operating systems

-Sam shares a new beta feature from Slack shared to him by Patreon sponsor Chad Swarthout. Slack gives you the ability to federate between multiple Slack teams:
https://slackhq.com/introducing-shared-channels-where-you-can-work-with-anyone-in-slack

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors!