Welcome to Fall and the Fall Holidays. I hope you are able to take off Monday for Labor - so you can spend time with your family computers. :-)

Luckily, the rest of September and October have no holidays that interfere with our work. Halloween is fun, of course, but it doesn't interfere with our work schedule.

For my business, these are the holidays that we take off work for the remainder of 2023:

If you don't have a published list of pay dates and holidays for your staff, now's a great time to take care of that. You'll be ahead of the curve for 2024. Gulp. We're already talking about 2024.

-- -- --

. . . on the passing of Jimmy Buffett

I first ran into Jimmy Buffett as a student at Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA in the 1970's. Jimmy used to make a regular route to all the small towns and colleges. I think he played at Gonzaga, on the quad, every year I was a student.

Some students drove all the way to Livingston, Montana and followed him through Bozeman, Butte, Missoula, and Coeur D'alene and into Spokane. On more than one occasion, we saw him at Gonzaga and then bought tickets to see him in the arena the next day.

Over my life, I've seen Jimmy Buffett in concert more times than any other artist. But more than that, I've seen tributes to him all over the world. You can travel to just about any beach, anywhere in the world, and you'll hear some local band playing Jimmy Buffett songs. He might be the greatest ambassador of his age.

When my daughter was born - 1992 - she had trouble sleeping the first six weeks, as many kids do. I stayed up with, holding her in my arms and rocking in a chair while Jimmy Buffett played for hours. The one song that I associate with that period is Little Miss Magic.

As soon as I head of his passing, I pulled up that song and a flood of memories came back. In the comments on YouTube, I see that many fathers have the same memories of holding their baby daughters while Jimmy sang them to sleep. As I wait for my grand daughter to be born, you can be sure I'm prepping a Buffett playlist.

My life is happier because of the music Jimmy added to this world. RIP

I'm headed to Western Australia in October. If you're around October 21-25, please ping me. I would love to get together with local partners.

My plan is to see some sites, take pictures of strange (to me) birds, and hang out on the beach. I've never put my toes in the Indian Ocean, so I'll check that off my list!

After that, I head to Melbourne and the SMB IT Professionals conference - https://www.smbitpro.org/conference-2023/. Maybe I'll see you in both cities!

Imagine this: You are a used car sales person.

No matter what else is going on in your business, you have a serious challenge: Your reputation.

Now imagine that you are extremely honest, ethical. and dedicated to being a good person. But you still have a reputation problem because your entire industry has one.

IT consultants need to work hard to make sure we're never in a similar situation. We have always had problems in our industry. Now, I believe we have fewer disreputable people in our industry, but those who are get more publicity than ever.

Way back in 1995, when I first started independent consulting, it was *extremely* common for unprofessional consultants to install illegal software, sell used equipment as new, register everything in their own name, and refuse to give clients the passwords to their servers and firewalls. It seemed like the majority of jobs I took included cleaning up after the previous IT guy.

Today, we still have some of those folks. But, more importantly, we have technicians selling client data on the dark web, MSPs who sign contracts and fail to delivery the services they've sold, and break-fix companies who call themselves MSPs.

You cannot blame business owners and politicians for being leery of IT service providers who come in with slick marketing, lots of promises, and a hard sell for services the prospect doesn't understand.

The National Society of IT Service Providers gets very little push-back. But one thing we do hear is: "I'm already professional. You can't make me more professional." I'm happy to hear that. It comes from people who take pride in their work and their business ethics.

But the goal is not to make "you" more professional. Our goal is to make the entire industry more professional by holding member accountable: We all need to hold each other accountable. When business owners and politicians see us doing that, they will naturally have a higher opinion of the honesty and integrity of our industry.

If you haven't done so already, I highly encourage you to head over to https://nsitsp.org/code-of-ethics/ and download our model Code of Ethics. Please put this - or a customized version - on your web site.

It's a great first step!

:-)

Over at IT Service Provider University . . . We've got a great savings opportunity right now.

I blogged about this, of course. So you can read all the juicy details there. But here's the key message:

Browse to https://www.itspu.com and use the code FallBlog23 to save $50 per class on all courses we offer.

-- -- --

The next big class is on Service Agreements - always a popular one. And now you can save big with that code. Class starts Sept. 19th.

After that, Lori Hardtke is offering an all-new course on Profit First for MSPs. As you may know, Profit First is a popular book by Mike Michalowicz. Lori is a Profit First coach and will walk MSPs through the process of taking control of their finances and setting up processes to help you keep them under control.

Again, just use the code FallBlog23 to save big right now. All the details at itspu.com.

-- -- --

PLEASE send me your calendar updates for any events you plan to attend in person.

That's the news for this week. Let me know if I can help you with anything.

Please share this newsletter if you enjoy it.

Have a great week. And stay safe.

:-)

Links below in the events calendar - or at WhereInTheWorldIsKarl.com.

Taught by Karl W. Palachuk

Author, Coach, and Community Builder

- Five Tuesdays

- September 19th - October 17th

BONUS: Class registration includes a free copy of the latest version of Service Agreements for SMB Consultants

Delivered by Karl W. Palachu, author of Service Agreement for SMB Consultants and Managed Services in a Month.

Includes five weeks of webinar classes with related handouts, assignments, and "office hours" with the instructor.

This course is intended for business owners and managers. It is particularly useful for the Owner or Operations Manager.

Meets Certification Requirements for:

This class will be recorded. Each unit is generally posted within 24 hours of the live class. These recorded units will become the On-Demand class and you’ll have lifetime access to it.

SMB Community Podcast - New episodes drop every Thursday

Our YouTube IT Consulting channel now has more than 9,200 subscribers and 712,000 views!

Subscribe today and don't miss a thing!

You can always check out my YouTube Channel and subscribe at https://www.youtube.com/smallbizthoughts

OR my Relax-Focus-Succeed Channel at https://www.youtube.com/relaxfocussucceed

My brother Manuel has been a technology savant for more than three decades. He has run and managed managed services business across the U.S. and coached consultants from all over the world.

Manuel has a great keynote speech entitled The Culture Imperative. He'll be our special guest on the Small Biz Thoughts Roundtable, the first Thursday of September. That's September 7th at 9:00 AM Pacific.

Open to all members. Join us!

Members find out more. Click Here.

No need to register. Just show up. The link is in your Community Dashboard.

-- -- --

All New Roadmap!

This is a special Roadmap for two reasons.

First, the content is a direct result of member request. I met with a member who is completely new to the IT consulting business. He asked where to start with the "absolute basics" of building a network.

Second, this Roadmap is focused on the technical side rather than the business side. Our other Roadmaps are all intended to help you to be better on the business side of your business. This one is 80% technical and 20% business.

So I created the classes on TCP/IP and networking. Then, we bundled those with previous materials on DNS and the use to TCP/IP to grow your business. And, along the way, I revised a lot of forms related to network documentation and cloud services. This Roadmap brings it all together!

Members can access here . . . or just click on "Roadmaps" from the top menu.

Other Roadmaps include:

Here's the last Community News video:

UN-related to Jimmy Buffett . . . Ted Giesler is always in search of the perfect margarita!

This calendar lists two kinds of things: LIVE in-person events from any organization that focuses on the SMB consulting community; and MY events, whether live, webinar, etc.

Sept. 6-7

Boston (New England)

More Info: https://events.channelpronetwork.com/channelpro-smb-forum-2023-boston

More Info: https://getnerdio.com/nerdio-training-camp/#trainingregister

More Info: https://www.thechannelco.com/events

September 20 & 21

Chicago, IL

More Info: https://events.ascii.com/

More Info: https://www.canitcon.ca/events/canitcon-2023-banff-1

Sep 18-21

Huntington Beach, CA

More Info: https://summit.sandlerpartners.com/2023

Sept 28-29

Scottsdale, AZ

More Info: http://bit.ly/kernanmastermind

Oct. 2-4, 2023

Miami, FL

More Info: https://www.dattocon.com/

More Info: https://getnerdio.com/nerdio-training-camp/#trainingregister

More Info: https://www.thechannelco.com/events

XChange Emea

October 10-11

Amsterdam, Netherlands

More Info: https://www.thechannelco.com/xchange

Oct 9-11

Washington, DC

More Info: https://msspalertlive.com/2023

Oct. 10-11

Atlanta (Southeast)

More Info: https://events.channelpronetwork.com/channelpro-smb-forum-2023-atlanta

More Info: https://www.thechannelco.com/events

Oct. 16-18

Miami, FL

More Info: https://promo.acronis.com/summit-2023-pre-register.html

More Info: https://getnerdio.com/nerdio-training-camp/#trainingregister

More Info: https://www.thechannelco.com/events

More Info: https://www.smbtechfest.com/registration.asp

October 18 & 19

Washington, D.C.

More Info: https://events.ascii.com/

October 19

London, England

More Info: https://www.thechannelco.com/xchange

More Info: https://www.smbitpro.org/conference-2023/

Oct. 30-Nov. 2

Miami Beach

More Info: https://www.channelfutures.com/channel-events

More Info: https://events.channelpronetwork.com/content/2023-events-registration

More Info: https://www.connectwise.com/theitnation/evolve/agenda

More Info: https://getnerdio.com/nerdio-training-camp/#trainingregister

More Info: https://www.connectwise.com/theitnation/evolve/agenda

:-)

More Info: https://web.cvent.com/event/70970f2a-39dd-46ad-9469-1c6e7733071e/regProcessStep1:74825d1d-ed84-4213-ac63-741430f5a2d4

More Info: https://www.thechannelco.com/events

More Info: https://navigate.ascii.com/

Dec 7-8

Phoenix, AZ

More Info: https://kernanconsulting-mastermind.mykajabi.com/mastermind-event

More Info: https://getnerdio.com/nerdio-training-camp/#trainingregister

:-)

Send us your updates

March 3-5

Orlando, FL

More Info: https://www.thechannelco.com/xchange

March

UK

More Info: https://www.thechannelco.com/xchange

More Info: https://www.channelfutures.com/channel-events

More Info: https://www.thechannelco.com/events

Send us your updates

More Info: https://www.mspgeekcon.com

June 2024

East Essex, England

More Info: https://www.thechannelco.com/xchange

More Info: https://www.thechannelco.com/xchange

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