Best Of CCP - 009: Welcome new members - part 1 2013

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An extended water cooler chat with Jerry, Sam, and Joe, discussing issues facing new ACN members, featuring tips from seasoned pros.

Followup:

- Gary Hustwit, director of the Helvetica and Objectified documentaries tweeted that the correct pronunciation of Helvetica Neue is "noya"

- Command-Control-power "Have you tried restarting?" first generation shirts funded!

Topics:

- hybrid Managed Services offerings; Joe's "Tech Checkup", Sam's "Wellness Visits"; Jerry's offering periodic monthly maintenance to check backups, check disks, run updates; discounted rate when paying for six or twelve months in advance

- the advantages of sporting an Apple logo onsite and in public; whether or not to advertise on your car; great sources for logo merchandise aside from the ACN-direct options: Zuse, Queensboro

- Apple Professional Services; operating as an arm of Apple; how to get involved with APS? face time with Apple, building a reputation over time

- Francois Daumard, formerly heading up Mobile Technology Competency at Apple in the Apple Consultants Network, left Apple a couple of weeks ago to join Fiberlink, sellers of MaaS360, a cloud-based Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution

- Apple Remote Desktop frustrations; Jerry coins a phrase for dealing with the black screen of doom: "cleaning the windshield"

Memorable lines:

"There's just these big black chunks of blocks and you have to open up a new Finder window and drag it around to have it clean the windshield." – Jerry

Mentions:

- Passenger

433: Part 2 with Tim Nyberg of The MacGuys+

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Topics:

-Joe ponders the question, what about requiring a monthly plan?

-Everyone debates the merits of a managed services only approach.

-One of Jerry’s customers mistakenly deleted mass amounts of Gmail data synced with Apple Mail. Retrieval wasn’t a simple solution due to how Google “labels” items in comparison to folders in Apple Mail.

-One of Tim’s clients that stored everything in Apple Mail had a catastrophic issue.

-Is Apple Mail a professional mail client? The ongoing debate continues.

-Backupify offers native server side backups for Google and Microsoft 365. 

-Backblaze affiliate accounts can be an additional revenue stream for consultants.

-Alerting customers to issues that come from services like Watchman Monitoring is one thing. But getting them to take action is another.

416: Interview With Annie Chen VP Of Product At Splashtop Inc

Topics:

• This week we are joined by Annie Chen, the VP of product management at Splashtop.

• Splashtop is a Silicon Valley company founded in 2006 that started off as a browser based product.

• Today they focus on remote access to your devices, working closely with GPU manufacturers to optimize and leverage hardware encoding to achieve high performance.

• Jerry commends Splashtop on the feature parity and he talks about how Mac had seemed to always receive the short end of the stick with other remote access products.

• Splashtop has three major offerings: Splashtop Business Access, Splashtop Remote Support - useful for MSPs looking to replace their RMM products, and Splashtop SOS for quick remote access.

• It is easy to try out and adjust to Splashtop, which Jerry found really helpful.

• Sam recently tried to use SOS with a customer and ran up against macOS security settings but was able to deal with it by blindly typing in admin credentials on a Mac

• Annie explains how the Safe Reboot feature works, which will help you reboot a computer remotely without losing access.

• Jerry likes how the screens that Splashtop SOS presents to the clients because it makes it easier for them to know what to do.

• Joe has been really happy with the consumer side of Splashtop as well.

• With Splashtop’s next version release, Mac Streamer will support native hardware encoding.

• They have recently formalized their MSP support group and an advisory panel.

• Splashtop is also working on having a specific build for M1 that they hope will be a universal binary and installed on Mac as a whole.

• They have just launches a monthly subscription plan for Splashtop’s remote support product.

• With Splashtop your subscription can grow as your business does.

• The group is impressed with Splashtop’s feature set in general.

• Jerry mentioned how Splashtop’s competitor would show advertisements even though you paid for the product.

• Focusing on security and protection, Splashtop has set up a security advisory counsel as well.

• Annie says the remote support and SOS products are really great for MSPs and service class teams.

• Visit Splashtop.com to set up a free trial and see what all the fuss is about.

263: Two Guys Pointing To A Mac, Looking Interested & Intrigued

This week we are proud to be sponsored by FLEXdesk, an offering from our friends at Rooted Consulting.  FLEXdesk - Help Desk support that grows with you

Topics:

-Jerry talks about his recent experiences working with out friends at TidBITS Content Network: https://tcn.tidbits.com

-Sam is disappointed in our train show on the way to ACEs won't make it to air

-Sam has some interesting follow up from a story he shared about iCloud backups not appearing.  Jerry's idea to rename one of the phones was based on an older issue relating to Time Machine backups.

-The FBI telling users to reboot their routers caused a bit of panic for some customers

-Repairs is how Jerry spent his Memorial Day weekend and he laments about the latest iMac glue strips from iFixIt. He also had a heck of a time with a fan repair in a Drobo FS

-privnote.com is the latest recommendation from Jerry for securely sending password information

-Time management seems to be a weak point for Sam as he describes preparing for meetings or presentations

-Jerry talks about dressing up for a new client and a snazzy tie

-Sam discusses a client that pays a lump sum annually and the stress that comes with it

-There is some CrashPlan PROe follow up for Jerry as he recently moved to a Linux hosted solution running virtually

-Somewhat on the heels of recent discussions at ACEs, the guys talk about marking up hosted services if you are doing the legwork to set it up and manage

-Contract discussions come up again and Sam talks about being specific about what is NOT covered just as much as what is

-Jerry has to deal with a family member second guessing his work and making his own recommendations

253: Interview with Justin Maxwell of Smith.ai & Keypad

Justin Maxwell of Smith.ai and Keypad joins us for an incredibly informative and in depth interview.  Most recently the design lead for Google’s Android Auto, Justin has designed products and built teams for Google, Apple, Mint (Intuit), Sony, and plenty of startups along the way.  Here are two of Justin's offerings that we discuss on Command Control Power:

-Smith.ai is a superior call answering & intake service for small & solo businesses. Their live, U.S.-based virtual receptionists capture & qualify leads, book new clients, and build better relationships with your existing clients.

-Keypad is the most advanced & affordable cloud phone system for small businesses.  Keypad offers call routing, call analytics, and many customizations to help you track your performance, and convert more leads.

-Justin takes us through not only the story of how he brought these businesses to life but his life at Apple as an interaction designer for Apple.com

-As we talk Smith.ai, Justin describes the look and feel of the site and how it relates to their customers

-Smith.ai acts as your virtual receptionist, to provide a layer between customers and your business.  At the same time, they are able to weed out all of the spam or unnecessary calls.

-Justin was mint.com's first UX hire and gave him good perspective on small businesses and their needs

-Their team essentially followed around small businesses over the course of a Summer to figure out what their needs were and what they found was that phone calls were the biggest pain point

-Instead of being a brick & mortar company, they utilized VoIP technology and highly skilled employees working from their locations

-"It all starts with a phone call"

-Jerry can't imagine running his business without Smith.ai at this point.  Even just not having to answer calls at client sites to try and make a sale

-Smith.ai's system uses machine learning to help the receptionists make the right decisions over the course of a call and provide the correct answers, versus reading from a script

-Joe & Justin discuss their easy to understand pricing as opposed to minute based pricing

-Keypad is an excellent complement to the Smith.ai service.  Instead of using services like Ring Central, Google Voice or Grasshopper, which can add latency to a call, they developed Keypad.

-You can sign up for the beta of Keypad here

-Simplicity is a focus of Keypad because of feedback the team has received about similar service offerings

-Justin discusses analytics to understand when volume is high or knowing when you need additional support

-Jerry mentions a possible higher tier offering for VIP support and how to tie it in to our monthly services plans

-Joe signs up right here on the show!

-Look out for service offerings in the chat space from Justin's team

250: Interview - Justin Esgar of ACES Conference, Adam Engst Of Tidbits Contenet Network & Adam Rice of AdamRice.org .

Join us all at ACEs Conference on May 9th & 10th in Baltimore, MD! 
https://acesconf.com/ccp

ACEs Conference was created for one reason and one reason only:
To help IT consultants grow their companies.

With unique, premium content delivered by world-class speakers, ACEs Conference is the place for inspiration, ideas, business networking, and instantly-applicable knowledge. It’s no surprise that our attendees continue coming year after year—just one ACEs Conference and you’ll be sold.

Justin esgar

Adam engst

adam rice

Our Guests This Week:
Justin Esgar - Founder and creator of ACEs Conference
Adam Engst - TidBITS Content Network & speaker at ACEs - https://tcn.tidbits.com
Adam Rice - Fellow ACN and ACEs attendee extraordinaire - https://adamrice.org

Just some of the great features of ACEs Conference 2018:
-Sit Down with Charles Edge - Panel Discussion
-Adam Engst will be Moderating a marketing panel
-Mark Berman - Journey Mapping (to be revealed)

-A general discussion brews about how marketing works within the world of small business

-Find that one "golden nugget" that resonates the most with you and introduces new way to thinking about things

-Jerry brings up an excellent question that Justin answers about business owners that may think they know the lay of the land and what ACEs can do for them

-Adam Rice discusses his business location, clientele, and how his first ACEs opened his eyes

-Justin talks about the ACEs Mastermind Group, which continues the conversation after the conference: https://www.acesmastermind.com

-Addigy will be holding a welcome party overlooking Camden Yards on May 8th.  Join us there!

-Tickets are $529 but using the code CCP will give you a 10% discount.  Use your code before prices go up!

-Command Control Power will be doing a Live Show at ACEs Conference 2018 on day 1.  We hope to see you there.