319: We All Have Some Value Based Billing In Our Soul

Topics:

-As much as we love Ubiquiti, Jerry has an axe to grind on this week’s show with regards to Cloud Keys

-Joe addresses the details of the issue based on his own experiences with Cloud Key power failures and the mongo database that Ubiquiti uses

-Specifically with the first generation Cloud Keys, Joe’s solution was to add power instead of relying on POE. This has been addressed with the newest generation, which now has a battery backup.
https://store.ui.com/products/unifi-cloudkey-gen2-plus

-Jerry doesn’t stop there. He has another saga dealing with a Ubiquiti install

-A strong case for an off-site controller that Richard Wingfield brought up is updating a singular controller as opposed to each cloud key at client sites 

-Circling back to value based billing, the crew reflects how they have already been using it in some respects and how to implement it properly in the future. As Jerry said, “We all have value based billing in our soul”. 

-Sam’s concern with this method is that there is no formula to calculate jobs

-Calculating monthly costs for monitoring & managing network devices leads us down the MSP path. How to bill appropriately? Do you require it? What’s not included? Questions that must be addressed when proposing services like this. 

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. 

317: Working On & Working In

Topics:

-Joe kicks off the show bringing up leisure time and time management 

-Working ON the business vs working IN the business

-A challenge for Sam is meeting interruptions that occur when clients reach out. Not just for him but for his staff

-Sam may be on the lookout for a new hire but does he look for an admin or a tech?

-The CCP crew are very appreciative of the collective audience and their feedback/advice

-“This is not for everyone”. Sam comes to the realization that running a business isn’t something everyone can handle. 

-A continual question for Sam is taking on Windows clients. 

-Joe explores marketing new services to current clients as a method of increasing revenue. For instance, offering Ubiquiti installations for clients in need of upgraded Wi-Fi. 

-QuickTime screen recording to the rescue for Sam as he tries to see a message that quickly disappears on his screen

-Joe has some follow up to how he sets up his clients with individual Ubiquiti UniFi controllers. While Sam is moving to a central controller, specific logins per client is something they agree on. 

-Cloud Key stability has plagued all of us. After some research, Joe has dug up information about the Mongo database and how it is prone to failure during a power loss. To combat this, Joe discusses his backup power plan for the Cloud Key. 

-After a recent discussion with Christopher Stout on Episode 311, Sam is looking to setup a closed system like UniFi, Synology Surveillance Station or Security Spy

-Sam learns some interesting details from a SonicWALL vendor about true throughput 

-Friend of the show, Weldon Dodd points out a great write up by Rich Trouton on his site, Derflounder. It’s an interesting piece about enabling Touch ID for sudo commands.

316: Wi-Fi On A Stick

Special Thanks To Our VIP Sponsors!

Topics:

-Sam has a first run working with the ”Wi-Fi on a stick” method of mapping out Wi-Fi. He uses a product from wifistand.com and NetSpot to create a map":
https://wifistand.com

-Joe brings up a great tool called Magic Plan to create floor plans on iOS:
https://www.magicplan.app/en/

-The nanoHD is a particular Ubiquiti model that same used and likes to deploy

-Joe warns of things to be aware of when scouting out an environment for Wi-Fi

-Another new monthly service that Sam is offering is hosting a UniFi controller in his environment to manage firmware updates and alerts. Joe weighs the responsibilities that comes with such an offering.

-Joe throws Sam a curve ball explaining how he has a singular login for his clients

-Another issue in the long line of networking troubles that Sam has experienced: finding incompatibility between a SonicWall and WAN connection at a NYC client. The fix? A dumb switch!

-That story rings a bell for Joe who has a similar story to tell about a Zywall and WAN connection that turned out to be a multi pronged problem.

Thanks to our Patreon Sponsors!

314: Give Your Dough To The Baker

Topics:

-Sam has some follow up regarding his “Ubiquiti Hell” from a few weeks ago.  In the end, it turned out to be a bad UniFi USG device.

-Joe has some wise sayings to share that ring true in our industry and the value we bring as consultants:
"Let the Baker Bake the Bread, even if he takes half the Dough" - Persian Saying 

“Give your Dough to the Baker, even if he will eat half the bread.” 

-Sam says we are like bomb technicians.  “You are paying us to know which wire to cut.”

-Jerry has some follow up about two factor authentication being baked in to one of our favorite apps, 1Password.  This was brought to our attention by long time listener, Michael Reinhart.

-Jerry is curious about the various methods of how 1Password can sync you data and what Joe & Sam use

-1Password’s secure options for recovering your security related data can sometimes be off-putting for some users and drive them away from password management tools

-1Password has an affiliate program that is fairly easy to sign up for.  It is run by commission junction.

-Moving back to Addigy territory, Joe expresses his frustrations with the interface at times

-Joe shares a tip about creating a custom table view. There is a view option in the column toggle icon in the top right of the Devices list.  Then you can adjust it and Save the changes using the table view menu in the top left of the Devices list.

-Joe encourages the group to scratch beneath the surface of Addigy and find resources available in the community

-For Sam, he’s been utilizing Addigy to enable MDM features like white listing Kernel Extensions (KEXT) and deploying PPPC profiles.  In the case of PPPC, there is a great Git Hub project that makes the process easier for those who are not familiar with these profiles:
https://github.com/jamf/PPPC-Utility

-Joe covers the topic of User Approved MDM and Sam tags along with a discussion of Apple Business Manager and enrolling into MDM at Setup Assistant.

-Another Git Hub project, UMAD, provides a nice GUI interface to encourage your users to onboard and enroll into UAMDM
https://github.com/erikng/umad

313: Addigy And More...

Topics:

-Joe has spent time recently dedicating his focus on Addigy and Watchman Monitoring and understanding how to best leverage those tools

-Scripts has been what Joe has been concentrating on and he has found a tremendous amount of help and support through the MacAdmins Slack and the Addigy community

- Joe created a script to help ensure your client's Mac fleet gets restarted regularly, according to the best practice you decide. Initial prompt to gently suggest a restart after a "recommended" uptime, default to do nothing if ignored. Second prompt when uptime reaches "preferred", defaulting to gracefully restart if ignored. Final prompt when uptime reaches "limit", defaulting to try a graceful restart and then try a forcible restart if needed. Default values: 7 days, 21 days, 75 days. "I prefer HyperCard"

- Joe's script, for Addigy users: Restart Mac per Best Practice gets approved while recording the show!

-Sam talks about the “Easy Button” he learned while working with Jamf. He likes the thought of empowering the users to have them complete step 0 before calling support.

-These conversations seem to always point to how it weaves into your managed services or hourly plans. And having clients wonder why they have you if things are working so well.

-Joe also created a couple of great scripts to work with Watchman Monitoring functionality:
— This script to easily "Adjust Watchman Monitoring Time Machine Warning", default 21 days. For those users who just can't seem to run a backup regularly whether by circumstance or habit. Previously used to connect remotely to adjust this, since it can't be changed remotely in the Monitoring Client web interface. Now we can deploy it remotely, even across multiple machines or an entire client!
—Another script to "Adjust Watchman Monitoring Root Capacity Warning", default 95%. For those users who perpetually, or periodically, ride the edge of Apple's recommended best practice and you want to give them a bit more leeway. Again, it can't be changed remotely in the Monitoring Client web interface and we used to have to connect remotely to adjust this.

-Jerry gets a call from a new client in a remote location and discovers a 2011 iMac that was fairly unresponsive. Jerry is tasked with the job of migrating to a new iMac. He sees an old version of TeamViewer on the computer and discovers a surprise!

-Jerry & Joe discuss an episode of the CYBER podcast - Snowden on iPhone: with Android, patching landscape is a disaster because manufacturers discontinue phones quickly and don't continue providing software updates, and because phone vendors don't control chipset updates like for WiFi and cellular chips. This leaves many older phones vulnerable but in many different ways so there's no simple exploit or "skeleton key" for all devices. This mitigates the kind of widespread attack that can be developed for iPhone, since so many iPhones are running the same versions of iOS and have the same chips and firmware running on the chips.

-A worrisome story about sharing sensitive data with others on Dropbox is shared by Joe. It leads him to think of a method of phishing or scamming end users: create phony Dropbox accounts, create shared folders, share some data with strangers "accidentally" in a folder with a generic name like “SECURE”. Listen as Joe talks about how he would set his trap.

-Dave Provine brought up the SS7 vulnerability in the MacAdmins Slack, which was originally demonstrated at the Chaos Communication Congress hacker conference in 2014 and made some news on 60 Minutes in April 2016. It exploits vulnerabilities in a system called Signaling System No 7 (SS7), originally developed in 1975. So it's not just SIM hijacking that makes SMS a weak link. By hacking SS7, an attacker could silently snoop on SMS text messages, phone calls, and access phone location data. Yikes!

-iOS 12.3 and macOS 10.14.5: wow they fixed a lot of security issues! "An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with system privileges" and "A malicious application may be able to read restricted memory" and "A malicious application may be able to elevate privileges" and "A local user may be able to modify protected parts of the file system" and "Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to arbitrary code execution"