348: More Fiddleable Time

Topics:

-Command Control Power needs your support. If you feel like the show has benefited you and your business, please consider supporting us on Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/cmdctrlpwr

-Jerry has a real head scratcher with a new client who had files disappearing from the desktop. He tried various fixes, including the keyboard shortcut to show hidden files: Command + Shift + Period. As it turns out, it was Parallels Desktop that had a toggle to hide items on the desktop. Face Palm!

-The next thing Jerry had to deal with was, how much should he charge?

-PSA from one of our listerners - 10.15.3 appears to correct the bug of data loss in Apple Mail. Thanks to Claire @ Passion Support for bringing it to our attention

-Another listener and “verified oldster” Glenn Kowalski describes the details behind some older network terminology like AppleTalk & LocalTalk

-Joe describes some helpful details about local IP address reporting within Watchman Monitoring

-Joe describes his frustrations with diagnosing logs on macOS

-Shout out to our friends at The TidBITS Content Network for their invaluable contributions

-Joe shares a story from listener Tim Nyberg of The Mac Guys where a client fell for a painfully obvious scam

-Jerry has a positive experience to share setting up Eero in a residential environment

-With mesh networks, Joe also leans towards Eero for ease of setup and maintenance.  But he does have concerns about privacy and ownership by Amazon

-The Eero Pro portal to manage all of your clients is a nice benefit to centrally manage things like updates and adding devices. https://pro.eero.com

325: Interview With John Moder of Crisp Solutions, LLC - Part One

Topics:

-This week we are pleased to welcome John Moder, owner of Crisp Solutions, LLC in Des Moines, IA

-Jerry asks John about his choice going to Synology after moving away from macOS server 

-John discusses his small team and his decision to move off on his own

-Crisp Solutions operates out of a co-working space

-Customer service is John’s focus and a building a “not transactional” relationship 

-Building a relationship with clients is of critical importance 

-Response time and letting the customer know you are aware of their situation makes a massive difference

-Jerry wonders about competition in John’s market and he talks about his relationship with them as well as with the Apple Store in Des Moines

-Building a rapport with the store is an art form that differs for each of us. Strategies are discussed. 

-With Ashleigh’s iPhone needing a replacement, Joe learns some interesting tips about repair costs and trade in values. 

-John is a very active participant on the MacAdmins Slack

-John runs into an odd issue in a Ubiquiti UniFi Deployment with a USG that would periodically stop communicating. He polls the hosts about what their next steps would be. 

-Synology backup solutions and cloud syncing tools are kicked around. John has been testing Synology’s own cloud backup solution, called C2. The thing to be aware of is that the data is stored in Germany. 

-Jerry picks John’s brain about managing Wi-Fi implementations as part of a monthly managed fee

-Ping monitoring and being proactive leads into a story about John’s ability to replace a dead AP before open of business for a customer

-John talks about keeping meticulous notes and making full rates known, even for MSP customers, to remind them just how valuable your services are

-Do you charge for notes or proposal creation? An important topic that you may need to consider. Listen to the crew and their take on the subject.

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors!

321: Green Acres

Topics:

-Special thanks to Puelle Design in Portland, Maine for hosting Joe's mobile recording studio this week.

-Joe is in the Northeast! He is visiting family for some milestones before heading on the road again

-Jerry is in the midst of a move to a new home and new headquarters of MacWorks.  He calls it the reverse Green Acres.

-After having a car mishap, Jerry discovers CarPlay in his rental car

-A recurring theme for our show has been value based billing and, of course managed services plans.  Joe & Jerry share ideas about their formulas for monthly billing.  Ideas like billing per user or per device, preset hours per month, and services used are among the topics of discussion.

-Prepaid discounts are an enticing way for clients to buy in to ongoing services.  “Monthly check-ins” are also something that clients seem to be drawn to.

-Do you install Watchman Monitoring on client devices for free as a “loss leader” or break even point?  What happens if you end the relationship?

-Jerry has a couple of funny client anecdotes with his classic impersonations

-He also has his fair share of gripes

-Joe's client had an issue in Calendar on her Mac: "The server responded with an error. There is insufficient storage space for "event title" in "calendar name" in account "iCloud". The choices were Try Again, Ignore, or Revert to Server. He removed a calendar she didn't need that only had a few events on it, and it solved the problem. Then we added a few tests, and she seemed to hit the limit again. We then moved a calendar with a lot of events to a local On My Mac calendar for archival purposes, and instructed the client to move needed events back onto a calendar on the server. Hasn't happened since.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202158

Thanks to our Patreon Sponsors!

320: Ya Gotta Monitor The Monitoring

Topics:

-Jerry follows up with Joe about clients with monthly plans and miscommunications that can occur

-Sam has a story to share about how something related to this occurred to him and he had to rectify this with the client

-Using Daylite, Sam now has checks and balances in place to make sure alerts are functioning.  He does this by using the Forms feature for checklists

-Jerry also has a similar story to share with a Gmail account that needed security features adjusted.  He also discusses the need to “monitor the monitoring”

-VMs need monitoring too!  Joe talks about using Watchman Monitoring on virtual machines

-Joe wants an easy ability to view external displays via tools like Watchman Monitoring or Addigy.  It would help when creating specs for a computer upgrade.

-Joe continues on his wish list of items to include like mouse battery alerts, applications opened over time, etc.

-PSA from Jerry about upgrades.  All consultants with Windows 7 computers should look at upgrading to Windows 10 by January of 2020

-Another tip is an app from Saint Claire Software called Go64.  This will alerts you about apps that are not 64-bit and not ready for macOS 10.15 Catalina
https://www.stclairsoft.com/Go64/index.html

-Joe tries to make sense of names listed in ALL CAPS

-Sam is put out by a client that shortens all names to one letter initials

-What’s worse is people that text Jerry with computer issues and only their number is displayed

-Clients that frustrate us make us rethink the relationship.  Joe may have more patience than Jerry in that regard.

-Google Chrome’s messaging language is still a source of annoyance for Joe

-Always coming back to password management, we discuss phishing attempts in conjunction with old passwords

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.