365: Interview With Richard Wingfield Of Envision Design

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Topics:

-This week we welcome back Richard Wingfield, Head Geek at Envision Design in Houston, TX.

-Richard has talent in photography and has taken a picture a day on Instagram @rbwaia

-Joe recommends a guided meditation app on iOS called Waking Up by Sam Harris.

-Sam has experienced float tanks as a form of meditation and relaxation.

-Working to calm your “monkey mind” can take practice.

-Currently, Envision is only working with their clients in a remote capacity.

-On the topic of photography, Joe mentions the Front Steps Project in Neeham, MA.

-Richard discusses some of his key components in working with his clients in a managed services capacity, like Synology, Dropbox, Barracuda, etc.

-As more of our clients work from home, we discover just how many only use their iPhone as a hotspot or those who are just stealing their neighbor’s wifi.

-Most of Richard’s clients have been respectful of not having his team in and much of their staff is still mostly remote as well.

-He did have one that needed onsite work to set up surveillance system for a client that just completed a new space as the pandemic hit.

-Sam has a client that has had a very tough time with video conferencing, even though their network and ISP speeds are very stable.

-Richard had suggested a device called Domotz to Sam, to investigate network related issues at his client. Richard installs Domotz at all of his clients as part of his services to them. Domotz has a hardware device that can be installed but even more handy is their Synology app.

-Domotz charges $19/month per site and includes a powerful feature set for reporting, network topology, and device priority.

-Richard put considerable effort into making billing changes in his company. In part, it was in response to clients not understanding what his monthly charges were for. In these changes, he split out costs for actual support time, called Consulting & Support and costs for items they may resell, called Software & Services.

-These changes to his billing procedure helped, especially when clients may look to shop around.

-Richard talks about minimum standards for signing and working with any new client.

-Some clients only learn after something happens.

-Syncing is not backup!

-As a gesture to his clients, Richard and his company gave many hours on top of MSP support to assist remote setups.

-Give a listen to Richard Wingfield’s new podcast, The Black Hole Cafe. He records the show with his daughter and the first episode is dedicated to coffee: https://www.theblackholecafe.com

364: Makin' A Ruckus

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Topics:

-CCP is doing video again!

-Sam has a yarn to spin about dealing with a Ruckus ZoneDirect 1200 that died. After hours and hour of support and three ZoneDirectors later, he had the situation under control. In short, he has a ZoneDirector 1200 to sell. It can be yours for a low, low price!

-The team discusses working with wireless vendors and the difference in price points. Justifying costs are a large part of working with clients in the SMB market.

-Sam was surprised to find out that Ruckus supported a complete replacement of their hardware, free of charge, even 7 years after purchase.

-In the end, Sam only billed 2 hours of time for the Ruckus nightmare. An old discussion gets rehashed about billing appropriately when time goes way over initial an initial estimate.

-Jerry makes what should have been a simple change with Crush FTP and it blows up in his face. The vendor worked diligently to correct the issue after a recent update.

-Joe sees the light about project based pricing vs billable hours.

-Jerry talks about a “not to exceed” price, which can be helpful to comfort clients who are concerned about cost.

-Do you read release notes? Joe does. After struggling with Finder copies to a new RAID on 10.15.4 and continual crashes, Joe looks to update to 10.15.5. The release notes for 10.15.5 says “large data transfers to RAID volumes no longer cause Finder to be unresponsive”.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos_release_notes/macos_catalina_10_15_5_release_notes

-Joe recalls remote support in the early days, where we guided our clients almost by memory.

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363: Patience Of Joe-b

Topics:

-Jerry & Sam speak with a guest who may be in witness protection 

-Jerry continues to be frustrated with remote sessions. 

-Sam is wowed by the ability to VNC directly into the touch screen of Toshiba multifunction printers. 

-Swiping up on the address bar of Safari for iOS minimizes it for more website real estate. A nice find by Joe. 

-Customers will sometimes drop computers off and do just a little too much to “swaddle” and protect it. 

-Joe has some theories of Captcha images. 

-We dedicate some time to discuss Sam’s backyard/Zoom background. 

-Sam has one heck of a time getting back into his Amazon account after being locked out due to what they detected as fraudulent activity. 

-One of Joe’s clients has multiple infections of malware on an aging Mac mini. Upon some digging, he finds some crafty malware that burrows itself in a Bookmark folder called “New Page”. 

-Upgrading old networks sometimes is met with underwhelming responses. 

-Jerry has to lay down the law with a client that has legacy email accounts and years of data and sync issues. 

-A previous consultant wanted to bill Joe’s new client for password gathering. 

-Host Gator is a challenge to deal with as Joe unfortunately finds out. 

-The email venting continues…

-A client that Sam has known for many years asks him if he needs to escalate to his tech.  

362: Fear Inoculum

Topics:

-CCP is on video!

-Jerry has commentary on his cohosts’ appearances

-Jerry & Joe are fancy coffee drinkers. Jerry’s coffee of choice is Afrique and he uses a Baratza Virtuoso grinder.

-Joe, a major fan of the band Tool, shows off the new album, Fear Inoculum, along with visual props. He also shows some of the artwork from his friend, Alex Grey. 

-Sam had the opportunity to see a Tool show as well

-People deleting emails to free up space aggravates Jerry immensely 

-On the topic of clearing out mail, Joe assisted a customer in freeing up space with their ISP’s free email account. 

-Jerry has some show and tell to help visualize a story about storage space on an iMac. He uses a product called Grand Perspective.  Clam AV was taking up a tremendous amount of space, possibly with quarantined items. 

-Jerry discusses taking away markups on hardware to help his clients out

-What show would be complete without Sam discussing his buddy with a restaurant

-Sam does a rare repair for him as he replaces the logic board for a 2017 MacBook from his own 2016 MacBook

-Jerry does his best Sopranos impressions 

-Apizza is a thing and there are different theories as to how it came about 

-An entire section of the show is dedicated to the food service industry 

-Joe has “a buddy” who has a USB tester called “Is it me or is it USB”.  Command Control Power is offering these free to our Patreon sponsors at the $25 and above level. And the t-shirts are coming! (Better late than never)

360: Bum steer Or A No Steer

Topics:

-iMac upgrade needed?  No problem!  Or is it?  Jerry has quite the story to tell…

-It reminds Joe of a PSA from listener Brandon Walter on episode 273: https://commandcontrolpower.com/podcast/tag/take+control

-Supply constraints crossed Joe’s mind as factories and shipping companies are being affected by COVID-19.

-Joe wonders about external SSD options as an alternative iMac upgrade.  Jerry & Sam give their two cents.

-With so many computers in offices offline, it’s possible to get lazy about your Watchman Monitoring tickets. Stay alert!

-“I’m gonna preface this by saying I love my clients.”  -Jerry Zjgmont

-Jerry & Joe banter about walking clients through new purchases

-For making hardware purchases, Joe tends to lean towards Apple Retail and the custom store portal for ACNs.  Jerry has a good relationship with a reseller in the NY area.

-TidBITS Content Network (https://tcn.tidbits.com) content and affiliate links in articles are a dynamic duo to drive quality traffic to your site.

358: Corona Downtime

Topics:

-There is a lull that Joe sees over the last two weeks so he explores an option to offer Watchman Monitoring for his clients free of charge

-Jerry goes in depth into his strategy and changes in his process with tools like Watchman Monitoring

-Another idea was to change the name of his service, originally called MacWorks Monitoring, to MacWorks Alerts in an effort to make it more friendly to the user.

-After a new newsletter and free options for the newly minted service, he received very little response from his clients.

-The group at Command Control power wish the group at TidBITS a happy 30th anniversary!  They have provided invaluable information to us and fellow Apple consultants.  If you aren’t already a member of the TidBITS Content Network, consider becoming a member: https://tidbits.com/membership/benefits/

-As Joe asks Sam how his monthly clients have responded, he brings up one particular client that not only was behind on payment, but had their internet service cutoff due to non payment.

-Jerry notes that you cannot lean on anyone to sell anything new during this time. 

-Sam also adds that it would be good to check on some of your clients on a personal level.  Not everyone gets through this as well as others.

-Sam wants to know what people are doing to help their mental and physical health since this can be stressful in many ways

-Each of the hosts reveal what they do to keep themselves moving.  Sometimes you need to take your mind off of work, even if business is slow. 

-Reallocating newly available time is another concept that we are all needing to grapple with.

-Sam has been working on certifications for the Certified Wireless Network Professional: https://lms.cwnp.com

-Another item he has been working on is revamping his MSP documentation and moving away from the “magic number” and itemizing services as well as signing up for more partner programs.

-What are you working on these days?  CCP wants to know!