409: Interview with Marketcircle CEO, Alykhan Jetha - Makers Of Daylite

Topics:

• This week we are excited to be joined Alykhan Jetha, the founder, president, and CEO of Marketcircle.

• Jerry talks about how impressed he is when he uses Daylite to run his own business.

• AJ explains how he came around to creating the app Daylite when it was originally for their own needs.

• Daylite was shown at Macworld when it first was created.

• AJ shares a story about when Apple approached him and the other creators of Daylite and how hectic the next couple of months were.

• The goal for Daylite is to help small businesses grow. The founders are working to make it easier to use in order to open it up for more people.

• Why has Marketcircle focused on sticking with the Apple platform?

• AJ talks about the evolution of Daylite and the big decisions/changes they had to make, including why they stayed native.

• Jerry recalls the early days of Daylite and he is impressed with how much easier it is to use compared to years ago.

• New improvements are coming to Daylite.

• Sam talks about the benefits of focusing on one platform.

• Jerry encourages viewers to look at Daylite since it has changed so much over the years. You can get a 30 day free trial here https://www.marketcircle.com .

• Sam talks about how helpful Daylite has been for him in communications with clients. Especially the ability to file emails for future reference.

• Jerry and Sam talk about how helpful mail integration features are on Daylite.

• AJ talks about ISO certifications.

• How has Daylite adapted to everything going on in the past year?

408: The Mystery System

Topics:

• Sam talks about how efficient the MFA set up on 1Password is.

• When clients are prepared with their 1Password vault it makes it a lot easier for the group to do their jobs.

• Creating a vault with client data can be very helpful.

• Does anyone create separate vaults for each of their clients?

• 1Password is huge for teams, however, setting it up isn’t always worth it if it’s just for one person.

• Joe talks about the new, app-less 1Password extension.

• Sam shares information from a recent article that came out about chrome data-harvesting.

  • He says: DO NOT USE CHROME!

  • https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2021/03/20/stop-using-google-chrome-on-apple-iphone-12-pro-max-ipad-and-macbook-pro/?sh=29a801574d08

• Joe shares a story about a client who had a scary problem with the Nest security system because they didn’t migrate their account when Google bought out Nest. They refused to return her money when they weren’t providing the monitoring services she was paying for.

• Lately companies have seemed a little lax when it comes to their clients threatening to cancel their service.

• Sam is very hesitant to recommend Kitcast because of an issue he had with the customer service. They actually discovered they had a problem with how they deploy their app but they seem to be very slow on fixing it.

• Joe asks Sam about his billing and MSP that they had talked about 6 months ago and the two of them discuss how they bill their clients.

• Sam talks about an “uncouth” interaction he had with a rude client.

• Joe explains how he used Omni Disk Sweeper to help discover what was causing a weird problem for one of his clients.

• What is the mystery “System” that often contains a lot of data that seems to be non-removable?

407: A Ticking Time Bomb In Your Business

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Topics:

• What exactly is technical debt?

• Jerry has two pretty big professional clients who have accumulated quite a bit of technical debt.

• Spending money on important things will save you the trouble of dealing with it later.

• The group talks about how these clients who refuse to spend money sometimes aren’t sustainable.

• News Flash: On TeamViewer you can now disable in-product marketing messages.

• Sam is looking into a business continuity document that can be very useful especially with clients who don’t listen (thanks to Michael Thompsen of Origin84 for the tip).

• When your system can’t keep up with you it can cause you to be unproductive because you end up wasting time on things and switching tasks.

• Sam tells a story about how one of his client’s old systems finally kicked the bucket and he had to get all of their data back.

• Tip: Update your software about every 2 to 3 years.

• You end up paying less to keep up with updates than to fix everything when it goes wrong.

• Joe actually had to buy floppy disks for a job he had to do on a Powerbook 100.

• Jerry shares two useful tools he uses: Smith.ai and a helpful calendar app called Harmonizely. Harmonizely allow clients to schedule appointments and offers direct integration with Daylite..

• Daylight training has been transformative for Jerry.

• Sam can’t bring himself to start offering calendaring services to his clients. One reason is a need for control.

• Joe also talks about showing just how unavailable you might be.

• Jerry talks about the mysterious “alien arrow” that one of Joe’s clients has been telling him about.

• What is Casper Sky??

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406: Interview With Armin Briegel Author of "macOS Terminal and Shell"

Topics:

• This week we are joined once again by Armin Briegel of scriptingosx.com and the author of “macOS Terminal and Shell”

• Armin speaks about his personal pandemic experience with work and family.

• The group speaks about the differences in how different countries are handling the pandemic. They have extended the lockdown in the Netherlands until April, while it seems the U.S. is loosening up. Vaccinations are rolling out a bit slower in Europe than the States.

• No one’s network was prepared for the pandemic with the amount of people working from home.

• Armin tells us about how conferences in the near future are looking. Many are still holding out but one he was planning on attending has already chosen to go online even though it is scheduled for October.

• It is worrisome for conference speakers because they have to plan on how to talk based on if it is virtual, pre-recorded, or in-person.

• Armin speaks about his experience speaking at virtual conferences and preparing for pre-recorded sessions as well.

• Sam dislikes speaking online when everyone has their camera off because he feels disconnected from the audience.

• Sometimes it is less stressful to present a pre-recorded session and answer questions in the chat.

• Now that presentations are recorded online, you cannot reuse a presentation and you have to build a new one each time.

• Armin plans on presenting at JNUC.

• Sam is looking forward to regularly interacting with people in 2022.

• Armin talks a bit about his new book “macOS Terminal and Shell” (available on Apple Books) and how he began self-publishing in 2016. He has managed to publish a book almost every year since then.

• Jerry talks to Armin about why he specifically chose Terminal as the subject for his book and the difficulties of talking about Terminal and Shell.

• Armin is planning to write his next book on scripting.

• Follow Armin’s informative posts on Scripting OS X

• Help Armin surpass his wife in Twitter followers

405: Accruing Technical Debt

Topics:

• Jerry brings up clients that you need to be more up front with billing for your time so there is no confusion that can lead to an unpaid bill.

• He talks about one particular client that has aging hardware/software and they are scrambling for support. He tries to set expectations early.

• That rings a familiar bell for Joe who might be more inclined to start helping someone right away.

• With Sam’s monthly clients, he has formal paperwork that mentions “discovery”. Often times customers are more inclined to accept that if they know it will save them costs moving forward if you are already familiar with their environment.

• Jerry talks about smaller clients to possibly start small and move incrementally to earn some money up front.

• “Technical debt” is a term Joe coins from all of this.

• Realizing Joe may have missed an opportunity for calling out chargeable items, he realizes that he may need to get more comfortable onboarding a larger client.

• Sam talks about he learned from a similar situation.

• Jerry talks about a very strange problem his client who could not find any of her mail, her inbox was empty (and Time Machine wouldn’t work!)

• Joe remembers back when emails would disappear after updating to Catalina.

• The group discusses the many issues everyone has with mail and the recovery service.

• Tim Nyberg of The Mac Guys shared some feedback about using the mobile support feature of Splashtop which leads into a conversation about using it.

• He has a remote support feature on his website (themacguys.com) that helps you download the correct version of Splashtop.

• Sam has to break the news that he had to let go of a really nice office space.

404: Let's Just Say His Name Was Bill

Topics:

• Joe performed a fully remote project with a client where he had to help extend their Eero network into their outdoor garage studio all through email.

• He works on a similar project for another client who gives him hard time about billing and the story ends with a surprising twist.

• The group talks about the difficulty of charging for remote work.

• How and when should you let a client know that there are going to be billable charges for a remote assessment and evaluation?

• Some difficult clients aren’t worth the money. But it’s a tough decision if they represent a large portion of income.

• Joe talks about “Fire Client Friday”.

• When does a client go too far?

• The group discusses how to figure out who you want to work with.

• Sam feels like he’s in an awkward position of assisting a previous employee of a client who may be turning around and billing for the answers.

• Joe and Jerry give Sam good advice on how to approach the issue.