Chip Reaves, Computer Troubleshooters

End of one Chapter, Beginning of Another

2012-01-03T20:08:00.004-05:00

Today I announced my resignation from Computer Troubleshooters Global & CTUSA. It's definitely an interesting time, with mixed emotions all around, but I'm convinced that now is the right time for me to do something new. (Not entirely sure what that something will be, but I'm looking forward to finding out!).

Here's my resignation note as sent to the Computer Troubleshooters franchise system, slightly redacted to remove some trade secrets:

Dear CT family,
Thirteen years ago I took a huge leap of faith by partnering with an Australian couple I barely knew in order to start building the world’s best IT service franchise. At some point along the way you became part of that journey with us, and I could not be prouder of what we’ve accomplished together. Today, though, I’m announcing another “leap of faith” as I step away from Computer Troubleshooters.

I leave knowing that CT is in great hands. We have an amazing team with our Assistant National Directors, National Directors, and CT-Global staff, plus our partners at Merrymeeting, so I’m confident the transition to the new leadership team will be seamless.

Words can’t express what an honor and privilege it’s been for me to work with all of you. I have so many great memories of CT over the years, from the early CHIPTECH days with Dennis and Charles to the “Mexican Sequined Thong” incident to countless inappropriate versions of the Happy Birthday song. I’m proudest of what we’ve accomplished in terms of recurring revenue though: being the first franchise to embrace managed services with BEST and HOST, and our partnerships with Dell, Fonality, and Autotask. When I first joined CT I probably could not have picked out Australia on a map, but CT has enabled me to visit and learn about 14 countries and gain friends in countless more.

I know you will undoubtedly have some questions about my transition, so I’ve put together a little FAQ section below:

Q: “Who will run CTUSA / CT-Global?”
A: John Davies, Merrymeeting’s CEO, will be leading the CT management team for 2012 and possibly beyond. Additionally, Kim Weinberger will be joining the CT corporate management team as a full-time employee. As most of you know, Kim has many years of experience as a CT franchise owner and Assistant National Director. John will be issuing a separate memo summarizing CT’s plans for 2012.

Q: “When will you leave CT?”
A: We have planned for my last day to be March 2, 2012, however, John has asked me to stay on in a consulting capacity for several additional months. This will give me plenty of time to wrap up outstanding projects and be available to help with issues that may arise in the near future.

Q: “What will you do after you leave?”
A: I’ll be more involved with the local franchise, Computer Troubleshooters of Anderson, that my wife and I own with our local partners. I’ll likely do some coaching & consulting on an interim basis as well while I work on a new project I’m very passionate about, tentatively called Bigger Brains (www.bigger-brains.com). I’m hoping that the Bigger Brains project will be an opportunity that can benefit your Computer Troubleshooters franchise as well, similar to Fonality or OWN, and I’ll provide more details this summer as the project develops (or doesn’t!), so “stay tuned”.

Q: “How does this affect my fees/my benefits/upcoming events/etc?”
A: Nothing should change regarding your fees or benefits, except that I personally won’t be involved anymore after March 30. Your CTUSA/CT-Global management team, the National Directors, and our partners at Merrymeeting are committed to making sure Computer Troubleshooters stays the world’s best IT services franchise. Things will change, just like they always do, because we’re in a very dynamic industry. The new CEO will bring a fresh perspective and new energy to the organization, and I’m sure will have some great ideas on improvements we can make in the franchise system. As a soon-to-be-franchise-owner myself I’m looking forward to that, and I hope you are too.

Q: “What is the future for Computer Troubleshooters? Should we focus more on managed services, or Cloud, or VoIP, or SEO, or mobility, or ???”
A: This is always the big question with absolutely any technology company. To survive and thrive we must have a business model that allows us to make a profit while providing a solution our clients want and can benefit from. This is just as true for franchise owners with their small business clients as it is for CT-Global with our franchise-owner clients.

The good news is that everything I see tells me we are heading into a period of unprecedented profit opportunities for IT solution providers. The bad news is that it’s going to be very different from what we’ve done before. Based on the research we’ve done this year (and which you’ve seen me present in past conferences and webinars) I believe the foundation of what we do will continue to be a recurring revenue, “managed services” business model. But I also believe we’ll see two substantial shifts in what “managed services” means.

First, I think what the customer wants out of “managed services” will shift from ‘outcomes’ to ‘value’. I’ve heard other IT pundits argue that we’re heading into a period of outcomes-based selling, meaning that you sell the customer on the outcome (“trouble free networks”, “no IT headaches”, etc) of your service plan. I think we’ve been there and we’re moving on, into a period of selling on value. The reason for this is because of the ongoing commoditization of IT – if a customer wants a trouble-free network, one option is they could replace all their PCs with iPads, adopt only cloud-based apps, a heavy-duty wireless router and be done with it. I know, there are lots of reasons why this is a BAD idea, but that’s where selling on value comes in – we need to sell the customer on why our solution is better for them (a better value, which does not necessarily mean a better PRICE) than the other solutions they’re aware of or may be introduced to by others. Small business owners have always had a strong Do-It-Yourself streak, and as we see more easy-to-use consumer-type solutions becoming capable of handling business operations we may see that DIY streak get stronger. So we need to roll with that, assemble a great set of services that these Do-It-Yourselfers can use, sell them at a reasonable but profitable margin, things like:
• redacted Cloud Solutions
• redacted Phone Solutions
• redacted BDR Solutions
• redacted SEO/SEM Solutions
(And it’s not a coincidence that CT has launched partnerships with all of these over the past year!). Plus lots of smaller vendors like Box.net, Google Apps, RingCentral, 1and1, ShockeyMonkey, etc should also be an important part of your client portfolio. (And I’m hoping my Bigger Brains project will be a part of that also.)

So our sales focus will become more focused on providing value to the client via solutions, which takes us yet another step away from the olden days of “trading hours for dollars”. Secondly, and as part of that, I believe we’ll see a decreased need for technicians. This can manifest itself in one of two different ways – either your team of techs will be able to service a larger number of clients without adding more staff, OR it means you can reduce your techs and still serve the same number of clients. In fact, we may return to the days when Computer Troubleshooters was primarily a one-person, work-from-home business but be providing a completely different set of solutions than our old virus-removal, hardware upgrading days. When hardware is increasingly reliable and increasingly replaceable, and tools like CTMS make it easy for one tech to manage and maintain a larger number of systems by using advanced integration, monitoring, and automation, it may be feasible for one CT to manage hundreds of client systems with a single technician.

The key is to always be focused on the value to the customer. I’ve always described our mission statement as “Helping Small Businesses Make the Most Effective and Efficient Use of Their Technology Investment”, and as long as you keep reinterpreting that statement based on what small businesses should be investing in today, and do so in a profitable way, you’ll see increasing levels of success.

The same is true with the Computer Troubleshooters franchise. As a franchisor we have to continually reinterpret how we add value to your business, and find ways we can do it profitably. The new Email Marketing service and the Rackspace & Fonality partnerships (which pay a commission back to CT-Global) are the latest steps in our continuing evolution as a successful franchise system.

So with that said, I will miss being CEO of the World’s Greatest IT Franchise. It’s been a great ride, with more than its share of ups and downs, but a great adventure with lots of great people along the way. And I look forward to continuing my journey together with you as a fellow franchise owner, coach, potential vendor, and friend.

Best Regards,
Chip
chip@ct-anderson.com
www.ct-anderson.com
www.bigger-brains.com (coming August 2012!)

Satisfaction is King

2011-10-20T22:36:00.003-04:00

Every year Franchise Business Review does an independent survey of all Computer Troubleshooters franchises in the US. They use the results in their annual "FBR50" rankings each year, but the complete survey results are also available to anyone researching the Computer Troubleshooters franchise opportunity.

So if you want to know what Computer Troubleshooter franchisees REALLY think about our franchise system - along with any complaints, compliments, dirty laundry, and all their unfiltered, unbiased opinions, check out the full survey results here:
http://report.franchisebusinessreview.com/register.php?m=674V1XO

SBA Registered!

2011-10-20T18:37:00.004-04:00

Computer Troubleshooters received notice that we are now an SBA-registered franchise opportunity, for the second year in a row. Only a handful of technology service franchises apply to be SBA-registered, which helps our potential franchisees with easier loan processing. For more info check out www.franchiseregistry.com.

Online Privacy - Where We Are Today

2010-08-11T11:00:00.003-04:00

I read an article recently about how "microtransactions" are revolutionizing the video game industry. For anyone who has dipped their toes into Facebook games like Farmville or Mafia Wars it's easy to see how this can happen - you get started for free, and then you have the option to spend very small amounts of money to get little online in-game benefits.

What concerns me lately is the rise of the information capturing industry, and how they take snippets of data about things you do online - call them micropayments of privacy -and sell them to businesses who compile them to make money. Now I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything like that, and I do see the good side to all this information analysis - for example the ads that I see online are more often targeted to me, so they're more interesting and relevant than things I might have seen just last year. But I do wonder where all this might go.

The Wall Street Journal has done a great job of investigating this side of the industry in a series of articles here, here, and here.

Another site I didn't see mentioned in the WSJ reports was welikeit.org. I see this site come up all the time on Facebook, mostly (but not entirely) from teenage friends and family who use it to "Like" certain things. For example you can like "Pretending to text or listen to your ipod to avoid awkward situations". 64,000 people have "liked" that phrase (idea? not sure what to call it), and by doing so have given WeLikeIt.org access to their personal information stored on Facebook. The Welikeit website is very vague about who runs it and owns it, but their privacy policy is crystal clear -they're going to use whatever information they can get however they can get it, and they're going to plant cookies on visitor's PCs to gather even more info. Thousands of people a day use this website, so what does WeLikeIt do with the data?

I don't know, and I've not found anywhere on the internet that has looked into it. But it reminds me of the "Create Your Quiz" app which was extremely popular until Facebook shut it down for spamming and other unethical behaviors.

So buyer beware! These small things, like visiting websites and "liking" things on Facebook do come with a price tag, and only time will tell if these micropayments of privacy come back to haunt us someday.

Chip

CT Annual Conference Report

2010-06-10T14:35:00.003-04:00

From Richard Warren, Ass't National Director for Communications:

COMPUTER TROUBLESHOOTERS CONFERENCE
“BEYOND THE HORIZON”

Computer Troubleshooters just completed their 11th annual North American Conference in Decatur, Georgia, on June 7th. This year was rather unique in that the conference was held at the highly regarded Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA. The Agnes Scott campus was a perfect fit the technology franchise’s needs. The main theme of this year’s annual event was “Beyond the Horizon”.

Chip Reaves, CEO, stated, “Keeping your eye on this horizon is important for any business, but especially for a technology-based company like Computer Troubleshooters. If we are going to keep our status as the world’s best IT network we need to be thinking about where we want to be as an organization five years from now. During our time together we explored our future together. Some of the exploration will be technology, so we are pleased to have many great vendor partners who attended”.

Reaves continues, “What can we do together to maximize our opportunities in the future? That was our main topic for some sessions. We have a team of over 450 locations around the world and over 1200 of the smartest folks on the planet. We have a great foundation to build from, and we have a newly reorganized Assistant National Director team along with the CTUSA office to help focus our efforts and goals for going ‘Beyond the Horizon’”.

Three new franchisees were trained prior to the conference which adds to the strong growth of over 1200 worldwide technology technicians. The conference started with the Computer Troubleshooters Growth Club business coaching workshop. Four new sales videos were shown throughout the conference. These were received quite well by the franchisees and will be available for them to use in their local areas.

Franchisee attendees came from all over the United States and Canada to attend this annual conference event. The five day event was a tremendous success and was packed with many training seminars, one-on-one workshops, and vendor presentations as well as a town hall type meeting where the franchisees and their ideas and suggestions were heard. Computer Troubleshooters has always been a franchisee orientated business and with this town hall meeting it gave the franchisees another venue to express their ideas and suggestions.

Franchisees received training during these workshops and presentations on new technology such as cloud computing, SEO & SEM (Search Engine Optimization & Marketing), HaaS (Hardware-as-a-Service opportunities, and MSP (Managed Service Plans) to name just a few. Computer Troubleshooters and their 450+ worldwide franchisees were one of the very first to introduce MSP (Managed Service Plans) to their clients. Other new technology that was covered during this conference will be introduced to old and new clients as the attendees return to their local businesses and communities.

Numerous Awards were given to the franchisees including the Franchise of the Year award, Gold, Silver and Bronze sales achievement awards, the Rising Star Franchise award, the Fast Growth award, and tenure awards for five and ten year franchisees.

As Computer Troubleshooters looks forward, “Beyond The Horizon”, I am certain we shall see this leader in small businesses clients, home office clients, and the residential customer grow to reach new horizons that will again keep them ranked by Entrepreneur Magazine, Franchise Business Review, and AllBusiness.com as a top technology franchise.

Small Business Advocate interview

2010-04-07T11:05:00.002-04:00

I've done several interviews now with Jim Blasingame, and today we talked about cloud computing and Computer Troubleshooters upcoming initiatives in that area. Jim also got a little personal.... you'll have to listen to find out more.

What to do?

2010-02-03T21:16:00.002-05:00

I like to think that Computer Troubleshooters is a good partner to our vendors. We're sometimes a little slow to review and sometimes a little disorganized, but overall we've got a great relationship with top vendors like Zenith Infotech, Dell, Robin Robins, MSPU, SuperAntiSpyware, Fonality, SUTUS, etc.

But there are a handful of vendors I would just as soon never hear from again, usually because of past unethical behavior. American Registry is one of those (americanregistry.com). They make these special plaques for companies who win awards, except they're really pushy about it. Seven years ago I had a problem where they shipped me a giant plaque with a note saying "if you don't like it you don't have to pay for it". I hadn't asked for it, and didn't like it or their sales technique, so I threw it away. For months afterwards I kept getting harassing phone calls from their staff demanding money.

Seven years later, they are STILL annoying me. Every time Computer Troubleshooters wins an award - and we do win a lot of awards (shameless plug) I can count on new emails and phone calls from American Registry. So far this year I'm averaging one email every 3 days, and a voice-mail about once a week. "Congratulations from American Registry on being recognized by Entrepreneur.com in its selection of Top Low-Cost Franchises." (or Top Home-Based Franchises, or Top Franchises, or Top 25 Franchises in Atlanta, etc.

I have asked them time and time again to stop emailing me. I've asked them to stop calling me. It's a minor thing in a way, but every time I hear from them I remember the scam they tried to pull in 2003, and it just irritates me.

So, internet friends, what would you do if you were me? Is there a way I can get these folks to stop bothering me or should I just grin and bear it?

All Your Questions Answered (Well, 2 Big Ones)

2009-08-26T18:39:00.004-04:00

So when people ask me what I do for a living, I have a really hard time answering that question. If I tell them I own a "computer company" they'll immediately start asking my advice on how to fix some strange thing going on with some strange relative's computer. If I tell them I own a "franchise", they for some reason assume it's McDonald's or something.

The best I can do is explain that my job is helping technology entrepreneurs be successful, which is really what Computer Troubleshooters does. Every day most of my day is spent supporting the 480+ Computer Troubleshooters locations around the world, and the rest of my time is spent working with people who are interested in joining the CT team.

That latter group always has certain questions, as you might expect. After all no one just decides to spend $20k buying a franchise license and jumping into the self-employed lifestyle without doing some research. And that's a good thing, becuase the folks who really dig into the details and do their due diligence almost always decide that Computer Troubleshooters is right for them.
So if you fall into that category, if you're considering starting your own IT solutions business or if maybe you're already in an IT solutions business and you're considering joining a franchise, I want to help you out by answering your two biggest questions:

#1: How Much Money Can I Make?
Yep, this is a popular question. Understandably. But it's also a really hard question to answer, for two reasons. First - I don't know you. Your income in any business venture is fundamentally based on you. If you sit home watching daytime TV your income is likely to be less than that of someone who uses that same time to reach out to potential and past clients, for example. More importantly, the FTC regulates franchising in the US and I can't answer that question unless I can back it up with some good statistics, which is hard for me to do because we aren't a royalty-based franchise and I just don't get good data from a lot of our locations. I can tell you that most of our franchisees came from high-paying IT jobs, and the fact that we're ranked higher than any other technology franchise by Franchise Business Review (based on franchisee satisfaction) should mean something. But I can't give you specifics - nor should you believe me if I do. Franchisors who do provide income guidance are often basing it only on their top performing locations, so it may or may not be indicative of what you'll make.

Now 5 years ago it was pretty easy to guesstimate your income. Almost everything we did was billable by the hour, so if you estimate how many hours your techs are likely to bill on average, and multiply it by your expected bill rate... presto, you've got your estimated revenue. But our business model today is increasingly complex (for good reason), with multiple revenue streams. You'll make money from hourly billing (break-fix) sure, but also from supporting customers on BEST service plans (our version of Managed Services), from commissions on Cloud hosted solutions, from VoIP installations, hardware/software sales, and more.

To help you plan your income I created the attached spreadsheet here. I still can't tell you what you can earn, but you can use this spreadsheet to better estimate how much revenue you expect from the various income streams. Use this, and talk with existing IT solutions businesses (if you're in the CT due diligence process now ask your sales coordinator to send an introductory note to all the CT franchisees in your country so they'll make time to talk with you) to see if they think your figures are reasonable.

#2: Why Should I Join Computer Troubleshooters Instead of Doing It On My Own? (Or Instead of Joining Geeks On Call, Fast-Teks, or CMIT, or Friendly Mobile?)
Also a popular and important question. I asked the same thing before I joined CT back in 1999. Even though we're one of the least expensive franchises on the market, $19,500 (the list price for a franchise territory in the USA) is a lot of money. What exactly do you get for all that, and would you be better off spending $25k on another franchise or better yet save your money and do it all yourself?

You might suspect I'm a little biased on this one, but I do honestly believe you get more for your money by purchasing a Computer Troubleshooters franchise than through any other alternative. And to show you what I mean, I took the time to document each and every benefit you get from Computer Troubleshooters, in nine categories, and put them all in THIS spreadsheet. And I left room where you can enter your estimated costs for any alternative business method - another franchise or the "DIY" option. And even though I entered what *I* think is reasonable as the value for each benefit, I encourage you to go through, think about each one, and change it to what you think is fair. As you can see, you get a LOT for your money in Computer Troubleshooters - especially over the five-year span in the spreadsheet (we look even better over longer periods, but 5 years seemed like a good basis for comparison).

Note that I also left you some blank room on each page where you can add things you think we're missing and that someone else may offer - but let me know if you do, because it may just be that we forgot to list something.

So, how much money can you make as a Computer Troubleshooter? Use the revenue spreadsheet, talk with existing (and former) CT's, and find the real answers for your personal situation. Why join CT instead of doing it yourself, or joining another franchise? Use the comparison spreadsheet to judge for yourself.

Today's economy depends on successful small businesses,and successful small businesses depend on technology. We've worked hard to make Computer Troubleshooters the BEST solution for small business IT support, and we're growing all the time. If you're looking for a franchise opportunity in a growing industry, do the research and check us out.

Chip

Being a Mac Guy: The 1-year Review

2009-08-26T09:08:00.002-04:00

So about a year ago I ordered a Mac. I've always been a PC guy, from my first 8088-based machine in collge up through the HP notebook I carried around last year. And as a "techie" I think there's still a certain expectation that you're supposed to be a PC guy - after all don't techies enjoy showing off all the obscure Windows commands that other folks complain about? (And, in fairness, I did teach a friend how to Alt-Tab for the first time yesterday, and it was a huge benefit for him).

But I'd heard good things about Mac and wanted to "play with" it, so I bought a used Macbook Pro on Ebay and started playing. A month later it had become my primary work machine, and a few weeks later I was blogging about my experiences as a new convert to the cult of Mac. Still, some of my PC friends were telling me things like "Yeah, yeah, you like it now because it's new and shiny, talk to me 6 months from now and you'll be back to a PC."

Well, it's been a year, and my regular computer HAS in fact changed again - to a brand new MacBook Pro (15", 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM). I think at this point it's official - I'm a Mac guy. I still use VMWare Fusion every day to run my Microsoft Outlook (can't wait for the Mac version of Outlook due next year).

Why the switch? The main reason is that I'm a really busy guy, and using the MacBook Pro saves me at least 15 to 30 minutes every day. On my old Windows notebooks they would always take too long to "wake up" when I move from home to the office, or when I'm trying to get some quick work done in an airport or on a plane. Plus I'd get that frustrating "pause-for-no-apparent-reason" at least a few times a day, interrupting my workflow and just generally bugging the heck out of me. The Mac wakes up in seconds, and mostly very reliably (sometimes Outlook running in the virtual environment can't find the Exchange Server when it wakes up, but I've found an easy workaround). When I'm done I just close the lid and it sleeps - no waiting indefinitely while Windows tries to suspend it's programs. I reboot once a week or so, and in over a year of use I've had maybe 3 system "freezes" that required a shutdown & restart to correct. On my Windows machine that seemed like a daily occurance!

Now not all is perfect in the world of Mac. Apple software in particular has some wonderful features which are often missing from their Microsoft counterparts, like the ability to record a slideshow (Powerpoint) presentation with narration. But some of those features don't work (the audio narration invariably gets out of sync with the slides very quickly), and others only work if you are using only Apple software (like Apple's iMovie only being able to import pictures from iPhoto - which makes it almost unusable for me). Say what you will about Microsoft's Powerpoint and Movie Maker, but at least the features they do have actually work and don't require you to use other Microsoft products!

Still, the pros outweigh the cons, and I find I'm MUCH more productive now on my Mac. Looking at Apple's sales figures I'm obviously not the only one who thinks so, and in fact here at Computer Troubleshooters we've started doing some limited tech training on Mac Support as well (starting with a workshop last February where two Mac-certified trainers showed us the ins and outs of the Mac OS).

So for all my techie friends who still haven't tried the Mac, I'd say this: Try the koolaid, it's better than you might think!

Clear Internet - The WiMaxiest

2009-07-06T22:22:00.002-04:00

We had a problem in our office. Our T1 stays pretty busy because it handles our phones, internal internet, and one of our FTP servers serving files to franchisees all around the world. The result: sloooow internet. Last year we signed up for Comcast Business Cable, but after several months of wrangling we couldn't get the owners of our adjacent parking deck to give Comcast access rights to run cable to our building.

The only choice we had really was DSL, which means AT&T. To be honest I just dread dealing with AT&T so much (based on past experience) that I kept putting off ordering the circuit. Then I ran across an ad for Clear (aka Clearwire), a new soon-to-be nationwide WiMax service provider. I'd heard about Clearwire in the industry press, but what I'd heard was somewhat skeptical - the "let's see if they can really make a business out of this" sort of thing. But they launched service in Atlanta on June 16, and the price was certainly right ($55/month for 4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps up) so I figured I'd give it a try.

That was two weeks ago. After a great experience at work, I ordered it for my home ($40/month) and set it up tonight. Here's the thing - I've been setting people up on the internet for 15 years now. I know my way around a router, and I've seen about every possible way to get online that's ever been invented. This Clear system is hands down the best I've ever seen in terms of setup. It goes like this:

You order the service.
A box arrives at your door (actually I had to go to Fedex to sign for it, which was pretty annoying)
You open the box.
You remove the modem.
You plug modem into your computer (or router).
You plug modem into an electrical outlet.
You are online.

It really could not be simpler. No codes, wiring diagrams, drivers to load, nothing. Open, plug, surf. Very nice. AND, if I ever move somewhere else, or if I'm going to be staying with a friend for a few days or something, I can just unplug the modem, take it with me, and plug it back in wherever I go. As long as I'm in a Clear coverage area, it just works. This is SWEET.

Coverage can be a problem. You can see a huge speed difference just by moving the modem a few inches left or right, and it's going to work best when it's near an exterior wall or window. The nice thing is there is an easy 5-light indicator on top of the modem that makes it easy to see when it's getting the best signal.

Right now Clear is only available in Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Portland but they plan to roll it out to several more cities this year. For me my $40 Clear bill ($45 with a leased modem) let's me cancel my $100 AT&T home phone & DSL service (since I only use my cell phone anyway). That's a net savings of $55/month or over $600/year - PLUS I don't have to deal with AT&T customer service, which is an extra bonus.

Time will tell, but so far I'm definitely a Clear fan.

Entrepreneurship Lessons from the Third World

2009-04-27T21:48:00.004-04:00

Last month I had the opportunity to spend 4 weeks in Kenya, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And even though most of the trip was not business-related, I couldn't help but notice some significant entrepreneurship lessons in all three countries. These probably won't shock anyone as they aren't really new, but they helped me rethink some of the assumptions I make about my business, so maybe they'll do the same for you.

Right off the bat let me say that the lessons I saw were very clearly divided into two categories, call them micro-entrepreneurship and macro-entrepreneurship. Let me start with the lessons from the micro (individual business) level.

Nowadays we don't tend to refer to places like Rwanda as the "third world", we're more likely to call them "developing countries", and that's very appropriate. Most of the people I met were living perilously close to what we would think of as "just surviving". Incomes - when they had incomes - of $10 to $20 per month were very common, and things like electricity, running water (or clean water), health care, or even a second set of clothes were rare. No one I met was starving - food is plentiful and easily accessible, and things like flour and bananas may be boring but they'll keep you alive. But for people living at this subsistence level, any development that improves in their standard of living can be huge, so even though they may not have formal educations many of these people have lived through a crash course in entrepreneurship.

This was especially true with the people I met who were clients of (or who wanted to become clients of) GodCares' micro-financing program.

(a GodCares micro-finance client, who buys charcoal wholesale and sells it on a street corner in Kigali)

I have to admit I've never really understood micro-finance until this trip, so let me share what I learned in case you're in the same boat. Micro-finance programs are typically setup to loan small amounts of money (anywhere from $20 to $200 US) to entrepreneurs in developing countries. So how does this help?

The clearest example of a micro-finance success story I can share was the lady who sells used shoes. Before the micro-finance program she had a small stand in Kigali (capital city of Rwanda) selling used shoes (which is a big thing in a country where many folks don't have shoes). The problem she had was that her inventory was typically only 8 or 9 pairs of shoes, so when customers came by there wasn't much to choose from, and it was unlikely she would have a pair close to their size. The micro-finance program loaned her $40, which was enough to buy over 20 additional pairs of shoes for her inventory. Her monthly sales jumped from an average of 4 pairs to about 12 pairs, tripling her income (from around $8/month to $24/month).

In the village of Buqarama we talked to the residents who were requesting help to be part of a micro-financing program. They're a very poor village. The adults in the village mostly work as day laborers (even though some are way too old to be doing manual labor), and earn anywhere from 40 to 80 cents per day working in someone else's field. But if they could borrow $200 they would be able to rent their own "block" (a section of a field), raise their own crops, and sell them at the market. Instead of earning $50 for 6 months work, they would earn $200 - quadrupling their income, and their standard of living. (For perspective, pens cost 10 cents, and health care for kids is $2/year).

Micro-financing programs, when run properly, are highly beneficial to the recipients, and generally have a 90%+ repayment rate (GodCares reported 98% of their clients were paying back their loans, generally on time). But nothing is 100% successful, and what I noticed was that while GodCares screens the people who receive the funds and loosely checks their idea, they really don't have a good way to verify that the new business venture will be successful. They're counting on these budding entrepreneurs to come up with good ideas for how they will use the money to build a more effective business. Usually that works, sometimes it doesn't.

For example many of the clients we met had chosen some sort of distribution business, often buying goods in bulk and selling them locally. Several ladies in Kigali had setup businesses selling charcoal, which they purchase in bulk from a distribution truck and then sell in small buckets to local residents. That works well, but others in the Byumbe refugee camp had decided food distribution was their best option, so they would purchase rice, flour, or cooking oil in bulk from the nearest market (several days walk away), and resell it to local residents in the camp. Not a bad idea, but because several of them were doing the same business, and the residents of the camp didn't have enough money to support all the businesses, their businesses were unsucessful.

Lesson learned: Find something people need, and will pay you for, and you'll be successful. But keep an eye on your competition, and make sure there is a market for what you’re selling!

(at a gas station in Butare, this kid sells nuts, and does a little dance to get attention)

Kids are natural entrepreneurs, and this is very evident in Africa (and elsewhere). Not in the “lemonade stand” sense of entrepreneurial efforts but more in the “find a skill that brings reward” vein. Begging is an entrepreneurial skill, and is commonly employed by kids in many countries, but we didn’t see much of it in Rwanda. But instead, in the rural villages you’d find kids who had practiced specific english phrases, which they were taught would help them make an income from white visitors. “Give me money.” was not uncommon, but more often I heard “give me pen”, “give me paper”, and “give me bible”. Now the interesting thing when you hear these phrases – which by the way are difficult requests to refuse when given by a pitiful looking child – is that you forget these kids don’t really know english. So no matter how you respond, they don’t know what you are saying. They just hope that your pen, paper, bible, or cash will find it’s way from your hand to theirs. Trying to explain to them that you only have one pen, and you need it, will get you nowhere because they don’t know what you mean. They also ask for empty water bottles – the disposable kind that we throw away every day. In rural villages they’re useful, so much so that they can have a noticeable impact on a family’s standard of living. (Remember they often have to make daily treks to fill up a 5 gallon container with fresh water from a source that may be miles from home).

The reason they ask for pens, paper, and bibles, as was explained to us by teachers at a school in Buqarama, is because they don’t have anything to write with, write on, or read. In school the teachers will fill a chalkboard with information, then wait patiently as the kids stare intently at the board and try to memorize what’s there, then they have to erase it and write the next lesson and the cycle starts again. Having a pen, a simple 10 cent pen, can dramatically change a child’s ability to learn, and so it’s worth all their time practicing “can I have pen?” just in case a visitor might one day give them one. Everywhere we went, whether we were talking to kids or parents or local officials, one thing was clear – the “reward” everyone was most interested in was a better education for the children.

Lesson learned: Investing in your own skills, whether it’s learning a few english words or getting through a difficult education, is the best reward for any entrepreneur.

Finally one thing that really stood out to me about my time in Africa was how much government matters in issues of entrepreneurship. Don’t get me wrong – even in the most inefficient & corrupt countries entrepreneurship can flourish (in fact you could argue that the Somali pirate situation is an example of unchecked entrepreneurship gone bad), but governments have the power to create an environment where entrepreneurship can grow and thrive, and as a result lift the entire economy. I call this macro-entrepreneurship.

Consider Kenya. Long considered one of the more stable African countries (despite last year’s violence), Kenya has advantages that help local businesspeople be more successful. First and foremost, because the government is (relatively) stable, there are some fundamental things that those of us in the “west” may take for granted. Authority, for example, so that crime is limited. A stable and connected banking system, so businesspeople can get loans, deposit money, send and receive money overseas, and even accept credit cards (a rarity among African economies). A fair justice system, so a business’s assets and rights are protected. And a democratic government (though some would argue that point), which means continued improvement because the voters demand it.

More specifically, Kenya’s leadership has recognized that Kenya has some unique assets that could help it’s businesses compete globally. It’s a former British colony, so most people speak english, and the education system is above average (for Africa). This means that outsourcing companies, similar to those that have been such a huge boost to countries like India, Indonesia, and the Phillipines in recent years, could easily setup shop in Kenya and take advantage of very low labor rates. The big weakness there for land-locked Kenya is their internet connectivity: right now everything is via satellite, which makes it very slow, and very expensive. Since 2005 however the Kenyan telecom industry has embarked on multiple projects to bring fiber-optic connectivity to the country, from the middle east (UAE) and from South Africa. When the first links begin operation this summer, the speed of Kenyan internet connections will dramatically go up, and the cost of internet connections will drop. It’s a win-win for any Kenyan with a Facebook addiction, but especially for businesses who will now have a level playing field with other BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) countries. This is expected to stimulate a lot of economic activity in the country, even during the current global recession. (See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/16/AR2009041600941.html and similar articles).

Rwanda’s government is making similar efforts. Recognizing that their country lacks oil or minerals that might be a traditional way to improve their economy, the Rwandan government has decided their best hope for an improved lifestyle will come from positioning their country as the Communications and Technology hub for eastern Africa. Already Rwanda boasts a nationwide 3G cell phone network (very handy for me), which is not uncommon in developing countries – it’s cheaper and easier to build a network of 3G cell towers than to run old-fashioned copper phone lines to each and every village. Rwandan universities are turning out computer science and electrical engineering majors to help build and support tomorrow’s networks, and just in the last few months Rwanda has changed their national language from French to English. This was partly a political move (tension has been high between Rwanda and it’s former colonial powers, France and Belgium, since the 1994 genocide), but also an economic one as Rwanda realizes that English is becoming the world’s business language.

On the other hand you have countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Poor despite possessing great natural wealth in it’s mineral deposits, corrupt at all levels of the government, and with an infrastructure wracked by years of war (5.4 million people have died in DRC since 2002), Congo is not exactly a haven for entrepreneurs (particularly in the east). But even here there are signs of change. Seeing the success of Rwanda to the east, and Kenya to the north, and realizing perhaps that they’re missing out on a better way of living, Congo has seen many signs of improvement lately, especially in terms of government, authority, and justice. Whether it will be enough, and whether the government will have the will to continue along this path is still up in the air, but the people I know there are hopeful that things will continue to get better.

So what does all this teach us as entrepreneurs in the west?

1) In concept, entrepreneurship is easy. Find something you can do that people are willing to trade value for, and do it.

2) In practice, entrepreneurship is hard. Competition, funding, suppliers, and customer loyalty are universal concerns for any entrepreneur.

3) Government can’t make entrepreneurs successful, but it can help create an environment that fosters innovation and growth. To do this requires authority, justice, banking, and infrastructure.

One last consideration: even in the current global recession, African countries are seeing economic growth far above any so-called “developed” countries. Even with a recently reduced forecast, the IMF expects annual growth in Rwanda, Kenya, and the DR Congo of between 4% and 10%. That compares with negative growth in the US and most European countries (i.e. recession). For true entrepreneurs, now is a GREAT time to bet on Africa. (See http://www.ratio-magazine.com/20081113290/News-Analysis/Rwanda-News-Analysis-IMF-Projects-Slowdown-in-GDP-Growth-to-6.html)

PC Repair, Jungle Style

2009-03-22T00:28:00.000-04:00

GodCares, the organization that invited me on this trip to rural Africa, has two volunteers/members in Rwanda, Prosper and Isaac. Between them they have had one notebok computer to use for typing reports and keeping track of things like our micro-financing program. That is until, in Prosper's (translated) words, the notebook was "possessed by the devil". Prosper joined us for a day in Cyangugu yesterday and I asked him to bring the possessed machine so I can work on it.

So last night he arrived at dinner and after dinner while the others met I went to work. It was somewhat urgent because there had been photos on the machine of our projects in Kaliba, and if they were sufficient then we wouldn't have had to try and sneak two of us (Wolfgang and myself) back into Congo today to get new ones.

The notebook itself is a 2004 HP with a Pentium M processor, and when I plugged it in and turned it on the power light and fans would run for about 20 seconds and then go off. No other lights, no video, no audio. This isn't good- I'm guessing it's a faulty mainboard at this point but with no replacement parts within a few hundred miles (at least). At this point I'm kicking myself for not packing my USB-to-harddrive universal converter (which I did seriously consider packing) so I could connect the HP's drive to my MacBook Pro (which Prosper also brought for me, courtesy of my friend Jean). But it's not here so to start I have an all-but-dead machine and no idea if the hard drive is still intact or if it has the photos we need.

I decide I may as well try some things. Reseat hard drive. No change. Reseat memory. No change. Remove memory. No change- and that tells me the mainboard isn't responding correctly because I should have had audio and/or visual error signals when booting with no memory. Not good. I figure there's maybe a 5% chance I can do anything with this here- especially considering I'm in a Catholic Guest House (hostel) without much light and with no equipment to speak of. But 5% is still something, so I decided to disassemble the machine to see if I could find anything fixable.

I'll spare you the details, but it took about an hour to reduce the machine down to component parts. The rest of our team kept circulating by and taking pictures- I always forget that most people, unlike me, probably don't disassemble their own computers just for fun like I do.

When fully disassembled (just a mainboard +cpu left) I plugged it back in and tried again. This time- something different! (When diagnosing different is always good because it let's you triangulate which pieces are having problems). Without a screen there was obviously no video, and there was still no audio, BUT this time the three keyboard lights flashed, then began a slow blink, and this time the power and fans stayed on! (This is normal behavior for a mainboard- the keyboard light flash is an error message that would tell me more if I had enough internet access to look it up). But I felt like a doctor who thought his patient was dead but sudenly has a pulse! Something at least is still working here.

Leaving the computer disassembled I managed to reconnect video and reinstall the memory. Success! We have video! I powered off and added the hard drive. Not good- it went back to just a power light and fans, no video and no flashing lights. Removed the hard drive, still the same.

Long story short I was able to get the notebook working again, but with a weird caveat. The first time you turn it on you usually get the "dead condition" - power light and fan, nothing else, and it powers off after 20 seconds. But if you TAP ON THE CPU before pressing power, it works fine nearly 100% of the time. (Yes, I've removed and reseated the cpu and it's heat pipe several times).

I've had to leave some pieces out (internal braces and the top piece of the keyboard) so that the cpu is easily (?) accessible for "tapping".

My best guess is that there is either a short or electrical problem in the vicinity of the cpu, and that the "tapping" is fixing it enough for the computer to start- for now. I have no doubt that this won't last for long. But for now we were able to recover all the files and reports to a thumbdrive and make our plans for today.

So I've had lots of "firsts" on this trip. First time in Congo, first time kicked out of a country, first time having to use my high school french to get around. And now I can add "my first 3rd world notebook repair". :)

Africa So Far

2009-03-18T05:53:00.003-04:00

OK, I've not been able to update my blog as often as I expected to. I thought I had everything planned - I knew I would have wifi for my first two days in Nairobi, and then either i would buy a USB 3G modem in Rwanda or I would use my blackberry.

The Nairobi part worked, but only barely. Kenya's problem at the moment is that they have no high speed internet connections out of the country except for satellite, which is slow and expensive compared to cables. The good news is that Kenya is getting two fiber-optic backbones into the country this summer, which should make their technology market explode. But for now guys like me have to do what we can on a slow connection, which for me meant staying caught up on emails but no time for blogging.

In Rwanda all I've had is my semi-trusty Blackberry 8830. It's working great, the problem is me: I was so smart, I knew we would be spending days in areas with no electricity so I brought only my USB cable (figuring i could charge up from my notebook when we had power) and my car charger (knowing we'd mostly be in vehicles), plus I bought a fancy solar charger too. Of course the solar charger is sitting on my desk at home, so that's no help. And I didn't want to risk bringing my notebook on the 2 weeks in Congo, so I left it at a friend's house. That leaves the car charger, and there are two problems with it. First, many of the cars here are so old and heavily used that either they long ago used the fuse for the car's cigarette lighter for something else, or they have been rewired so many times that whatever voltage is coming from the car is too bizarre or weak to charge the phone.

The second problem is that our plans have gone awry. The short summary is, the Congo threw us out. Literally! A squad of police "escorted" our luggage onto the border crossing bridge over the Rusizi river. We don't know why, but there qre many theories. We thought for a while that a friend of mine had betrayed us, but today I think this is less likely. But since 95% of our work was in Congo, and the rest is a full days drive away, we're hesitant to drive away while we're still appealing to the UN and DRC gov't to help us find out why we were kicked out and to get us back in.

So for now I beg the nuns at our Catholic guest house to plug my phone into their computer, and they always happily oblige, but then they bring it back a few minutes later thinking it's done. The bottom line is, the blackberry is working fine but I haven't had the battery charged over 5% in at least a week.

Otherwise things are good. The team, who I met for the first time here are truly wonderful people and we get along great. Languages are a challenge- of the 9 of us two speak only German, four speak German and some english (two of those also know a little french and swahili), one speaks only kiswahili, kinyarwandan, kifree, and some french, I speak only english with a little french, and Nelson speaks everything but German. It can be frustrating when we have team discussions and you want to ask a question but you have to wait through two translations, then ask the question and have it translated twice. It takes a while! But it can also be funny, when Nelson (who has great talents for language otherwise) gets confused and translates English to English (e.g. "Ask Isaac what he thinks about that idea", "OK, he wants to know what you think of that idea.", "Nelson that was English", "oh, sorry, kwa m'tana....."

But for now we mostly sit and fill our time with planning and meetings.

I'll update more when I can, and when I can find an english keyboard. Right now I'm at an internet café in Kamembe after ,aking photocopies of the letter we're sending to the UN plus six Congolese government agencies asking for help. I was proud that I managed to tell the taxi driver to bring me here so I can work and pleqse come back for me in two hours, in french. At least I think that's what I said. I guess the proof will be 1 hour and 20 minutes from now!

Also I have hundreds of photos and videos so far, but no way to upload them. I am updating my Facebook status with news as I can, because I can do that quickly and then turn the phone off to save the battery.

So: things are good, albeit frustrating, and everyone is fine. More to come later.

Fundraising so far

2009-03-09T00:06:00.002-04:00

So my least favorite activity of this trip so far has been fundraising - I *loathe* asking for money. But I did ask, and received generous donations from my church family, from Computer Troubleshooters, from friends, and from my business partners at MerryMeeting. One thing I did want to make sure of though is that all the monies donated are spent with total transparency and accountability. So here's where we are so far:

Before I left we had collected $1658.33, which I brought with me in cash (there are no ATM's and almost no places here take credit cards). So far I've spent:

$613.98 on two Garmin GPSMap 60CSx handheld GPS units from Amazon.com. These will be used by ARDR - I found out they had been having to rent these from other companies at a cost of $70USD per day in order to complete some projects. Now not only will they save that money for use in their Rwandan rural projects bu they can be a source of income by renting these to other companies.

$249 plus tax on an Asus EEE netbook. Not sure if this will be for ARDR or GodCares yet, it depends in part on where we allocate the other computers - both organizations have requested computers to help with their projects in Rwanda and Congo.

$200 to provide support for Ivette, the 15 year old girl from Congo currently living as a refugee in Kenya (see my photos on Facebook for more information)

And today I'll be venturing into Nairobi's computer supplier market to purchase $800 in used notebooks and possibly $250 in a used desktop, these also to be allocated between ARDR and GodCares based on need. I expect to pay $100 in freight to get them to Kigali too.

So the total spent so far is $1063, plus the $800 to $1050 I expect to spend today, which will already take us past the $1658 received so far. I'm happy to help from my own funds of course, but I'm also paying all my own travel expenses, which will run around $3000, so I could use more help.

My big concern so far is there's no money raised for the village roofs in Kalingi village. These are people who currently live in mud huts with grass roofs but are making mud bricks to build new, better homes for themselves. We had hoped to raise $700 per house to buy sheets of tin for their roofing so they won't have to use grass thatch again (which provides little protection from rain and wind), and there are 55 homes in the village, for a total cost of around $40,000. It's a huge number, and maybe we can't reach it - but I'm hoping we can try.

If you're able to help us help these folks, please visit my fundraising page at www.godcares.us for more information about the projects and how you can make a donation. Thanks!

Business in Africa - the bright spot

2009-03-08T15:17:00.002-04:00

Here's something that I'll bet a lot of folks don't know about Africa: taken as a whole it's one of the fastest growing (and still growing) economies in the world. Up until recently economic growth in sub-saharan Africa (including the three countries I'll be visiting on my trip) was expected to grow by between 6% and 7% in 2009 (compared to economic shrinkage in most western countries, including the US). And even though those estimates recently got revised downwards, growth still continues despite historically low prices for many of Africa's mineral and petroleum exports.

The problem with business in Africa has essentially boiled down to three things: Culture, Violence, and Infrastructure.

While each African country is unique and stereotyping is very unfair, generally speaking Africa is still a land of hunters, gatherers, and farmers. There is a lot of history here - Ethiopia has some of the oldest churches in the world, Egypt is considered the birthplace of civilisation, and Morocco has Casablanca, my favorite old movie - but by and large almost all African villages and most of the population is agriculturally based. Business, in the modern sense of commerce, is a relatively new thing, but is really booming in many ways.

Violence is still an unfortunate part of life in too much of Africa. Last year's violence in Kenya, which was (and still is) considered a highly progressive and strong African country, showed just how deep tribal conflicts can go. There are numerous signs of ongoing problems - the arrest warrant for the President of Sudan, the suspicion of foul play in the wreck that took the life of Kenya's prime minister's wife, and the coup in Madagascar (all of which happened just this weekend). But one thing that can really help reduce violence is commerce: as people's standard of living improves they either care less about the divisions of the past or find new ways to deal with them. Plus they don't support things that can reduce that newly found standard of living - which often means their support of any causes that may lead to violence is greatly reduced. We're seeing this in Kenya and Rwanda today, where the tensions between groups of people is still present, but all sides realize that if they don't find a peaceful way to resolve their differences it can cause long-term harm to the standard of living for everyone. This is part of why Kenyans hope their truce-government holds together, and much of why DR Congo allowed Rwandan and Ugandan troops into their country to help extinguish some of the militias that have plagued eastern Congo and hampered their ability to benefit from their rich mineral reserves for decades.

Infrastructure in some countries is advancing rapidly. Here in Kenya the big news is that their first major internet backbone, between Nairobi and Dubai, will be completed this year. Right now almost all internet traffic in the country is handled via satellite connection, which is slow and expensive. Right now I'm downloading a 60MB file. Back home it would take a couple of minutes, tops. Here it's about an hour, and sometimes just stops for no reason. And it's costing me $20/day for that. And only a few hotels even offer internet. Starting this June that should all change - as Kenyan internet gets exponentially faster and exponentially cheaper, we should see an explosion in IT services (and Computer Troubleshooters will be ready!), which should lead to even more business opportunities. Rwanda and Kenya are two countries that have realized the importance of IT infrastructure, and are investing heavily in it.

So despite the economic downturn you can expect business development in certain African countries to grow much faster than the rest of the world for years to come. And I'm happy to say that Computer Troubleshooters is here riding that wave, thanks to some smart Master Franchises in South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Botswana, and Cote d'Ivoire. And interest is increasing - we expect to open in Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Zambia, Morocco, Uganda, and Tanzania over the next few years.

Today I had dinner at Galito's, a popular chicken franchise. Two interesting things about Galito's - it's not US-based like so many other food franchises, it's a South African company. And it's biggest competitor is Nando's, another South African franchise. While the KFC's Colonel has nothing to be worried about anytime soon, if they're smart they'll do what a lot of smart businesses are doing today - invest in Africa.

First stop - Nairobi

2009-03-08T04:53:00.004-04:00

Hello from Nairobi!

One of the hardest parts about traveling to somewhere like Rwanda or Congo is that it takes forever to get there. There are few if any direct flights to this part of the world, and even when they are they are very expensive. Here are some well known but worth-repeating tips for folks considering similar journeys:

Use kayak.com. This site is your best friend in booking cheap travel, because it scans most of the common airline and travel sites looking for flights that meet your criteria.
Book your "from US" travel using a major international airport - usually JFK, LAX, or IAD will get you the best flights to/from Asia, Africa, and Europe, and Atlanta, Miami, and Houston have the best flights to South and Central America. For example if I try to find flights from Atlanta to Kigali, I'll find nothing. But searching JFK to Kigali finds some flights using British Airways, and searching IAD to Kigali finds the best deal on Ethiopian Airways.
Try to find which airlines serve the airport you're going to, and check their websites to find their flight schedules to the airport. For example Kenya Air flies daily from Nairobi to Kigali, but Ethiopian Air (which has the best rates from the US) only flies to Kigali 3 days a week. So if you use Kayak.com and look for a round-trip flight from IAD (Washington-Dulles), if you pick departure OR arrival dates that don't match with one of those 3 Ethiopian air flights your best rate will be $3000+. If you take the time to match your dates to those 3 daily flights you'll get a rate of under $1500, which is a great deal.
Layovers are unpredictable. On my trip I was able to include a 2+ day stopover in Nairobi for less than $300 extra, which was useful for me to check on Computer Troubleshooters Kenya and meet with my friend's sister. But a stopover in Ghana, which would have also been helpful, was $1400 - almost as much as the ticket from the US! Airline pricing is magical, and has nothing to do with actual costs and everything to do with the perceived value of the ticket.
Travel Agents are your friends. For a small fee they can do alot of the searching for you, although I find it still helps to do your own search first so you can know if what they find is really a good deal or not. And often, especially with African airlines, you'll find you cannot pay them except through a travel agent. Major African airlines - Ethiopian, Kenya Air, South African Airways, Egypt Air - do try to take credit cards via their websites, but it's not uncommon for it not to work. For my trip I did manage to successfully pay Ethiopian through their website (first time that's worked for me, out of 4 attempts) but I could not pay Kenya Air - they kept insisting my credit cards were declined, even though all 5 of the ones I tried insisted there was no problem on their side. I had to call in my friendly neighborhood travel broker to pay them through the Sabre system, and I paid them via credit card plus a $35 fee.
Speaking of money, examine your money before you come. US dollars printed prior to 2004 may not be accepted, nor will torn bills. I ran into this trying to buy my visa for Kenya - one of the $20's I handed the immigration official was torn, and she refused to take it. Fraud is a big problem here, so they're hyper-vigilant about some details.
On the bright side, most places will take US dollars, although local stores and restaurants may prefer (or in some cases require) local currency. Many places may take Euros and South African Rand as well, but your safest bet is to carry local currency and USD. Keep in mind that panhandling is very common here so keep some small bills or coins ready, and also theft is common so keep your wallet, purse, or whatever close to you. I keep my wallet in my front pants pocket here, because back pockets are too easy to "pick".
Go with the flow. Airports and airlines are mostly designed to be easy for novice travellers to navigate, so just follow the signs (which are almost universally in english plus the local language, or sometimes in french + local). Be friendly, follow instructions, read signs, and everything will go smoothly.

My main flight was an interesting group of people. Lots of missionaries, including a college-age group and several individuals (I think my mother, who worries about ME traveling alone, would be surprised by how many young women are on these flights by themselves, but it's really very safe). Also a singing group who were booked for a lounge show in Ethiopia, plus the usual tourists and returning residents. Ethiopian is an OK airline - I think it will improve drastically once they start getting the new 787 Dreamliners next year. Right now they fly older 767's with limited entertainment options, but the service is good and their safety record is decent.

So after 20+ hours of travel, which included a 8.5 hour flight to Rome where we refuled then continued for 5.5 hours to Addis Ababa (Ethiopian's hub, naturally) and a 2 hour connection flight to Nairobi, I finally arrived. I was very fortunate in that Vincent Njoroge, owner of Computer Troubleshooters Kenya, offerred to pick me up at the airport and take me to the hotel. All I wanted to do was sleep and take medicine (I've had a cold for about a week, which makes air travel even less fun).

I did wake up in time to take a stroll to see some local sights last night. Nairobi is a big city by African standards but would be considered a "town" back home. My hotel is right downtown, surrounded by office buildings and a sea of people (especially on a Saturday night, which is clearly "date night" here too). Adjacent to the hotel is a square where the matutus (local minibuses) all gather to get passengers. It's hard to describe the scene, but imagine 30 or 40 15-passenger minibuses all crowded onto the same street with both a driver and a hawker shouting out their destinations and trying to woo local business. Meanwhile thousands of people walk through the buses looking for one going to their destination, and dozens of street vendors walk around selling cigarettes, flowers, fruit, etc. Diesel exhaust is everywhere, and the art of walking between moving buses and traffic takes some getting used to, but the easy way is just to find someone walking in the general direction you want to go and follow them -closely!

Kenyans are friendly folks, and several tried to strike up conversations with me as I walked around. Since it was 7pm locally I was trying to find a local Nando's which was supposed to be close by for dinner (Nando's is a South African fast food franchise). No luck. But as I walked along a man named John struck up a conversation, about where I'm from, how long am I in Kenya, what do I think of Nairobi, etc. He also helped me to fend off a panhandler on one street, though I did give the guy 500 shillings (about $4), much to John's disappointment. (He said it was for crippled children, not sure if that's true or not but it's hard to pass up.) John asked where I was going, and I told him I was looking for somewhere for dinner. "Are you vegetarian?" he asked, which I thought was strange. "Because if you are not vegetarian, there is a place down there which is good local food." I asked him if he would join me, and he agreed so we headed towards the place he recommended, which turned out to be this little hole-in-the-wall joint. I like local hole-in-the-wall joints, so it looked good.

Kenya is an easy place for Americans to visit because, as a fellow former British colony, English is widely spoken and almost all written materials are in English, which included the menu in this restaurant. Still I only recognized a couple of things which were clearly Indian (Chicken Tika and Chicken Curry), but I chose something called "Beef Fry". It was served almost immediately, and turned out to be some sort of beef-bits in a gravy, with something like spinach, and a large slab of something starchy like polenta or dry grits. It wasn't bad, and I washed it down with some sort of tangerine-soda. (By the way, Coca-Cola, who distributes most soda in Africa including the tangerine thing I had, still uses original Coke formula in glass bottles here - wonderful!).

During dinner I got to know John a little - he has a wife and 3 kids, ages 22, 15, and 11. The 22 year old is a step-son. He does temporary jobs for an Indian contractor in Nairobi, but work has been slow lately. He is often surprised that I know things about Kenya. He expected me to know that Obama's family is from Kenya (and, btw, Obama signs, stickers, and books for sale are very prominent in Nairobi). He was somewhat surprised that I had heard about the violence and problems Kenya had last year. He was completely floored when I said "You mean the violence between Kikuyu and Lua?". I explained that I have many friends who are in Kenya or who have been to Kenya. He found out I was Christian and he asked me about my church, and my mission trip to Congo next week, and told me about his "born again" experience.

He also asked me about America. Does America have panhandlers like we have here? Yes, maybe not so many but we do have them. Do Americans have problems finding jobs like we do? Again yes, but maybe not as bad. Why would America elect a black president from Kenya? Because we felt he was the best choice for the job. Are black people equal to white people in America? Legally, yes, but in reality the situation is more complicated. Do Americans have malaria? No, not like Africa. Do Americans have HIV/AIDS? Yes, but not like Africa.

And then, "Do Americans realize how fortunate they are?". No, I conceded, most probably don't.

After dinner we exchanged email addresses, and parted company. John headed to find a matutu, I walked back to the Hilton. I gave him a few dollars to help with his son's school bills, and he said he would pray for me next week. All in all, it was a great way to start my month-long Africa journey.

The journey begins?

2009-03-02T17:05:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I took some friends to lunch at the SunDial restaurant in Atlanta. The goal was to find an interesting place where my friend Paul could get pictures taken of him, his wife, and their kids that he could show to his family back in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Now any trip to the SunDial is always interesting - for those who don't know the SunDial is the restaurant on top of the tallest hotel in the western hemisphere. It's a rotating restaurant on the 73rd through 75th floors of the Westin Peachtree Plaza hotel in downtown Atlanta, and normally offers gorgeous views of the entire metro Atlanta area over the course of a meal. But Sunday was different. Sunday was snowing. Hard. And since the SunDial's glass elevators are still blacked in after last year's tornado damage, you really couldn't tell we were 73 stories up. All you could tell was we were in a big restaurant with giant windows and a big swirling mass of clouds and snow outside. The SunDial's best asset - it's view - was totally useless.

In a way though that's a good place to start the story of my trip. Becuase the pictures Paul was taking, and is still taking in fact, are for me to bring to his family when I visit them in Kenya, Rwanda, and DRC this month. I'm spending most of March on a mostly personal trip into rural Africa, partly to help an old friend and partly becuase a new friend invited me. Mostly because I feel called to go, and I can't really explain why becuase you'll think I'm crazy. But I do know that what I usually think of as my best assets - my tech skills, and my business skills - are going to be as useless as the SunDial's view when I'm walking through a region with no electricity, no phones, and no businesses.

People ask me why I'm going, and when they do I've noticed there are two very distinct types of question. One is the question asked with a look that clearly indicates the questioner is trying to determine exactly how crazy I am and how much longer they can politely talk to me before they step back into somewhere or some topic that's more comfortable. It's the same way I treated the homeless woman shuffling through a Denver burger shop last month, who included each table in turn in her one-side conversation about how her kids had never been on welfare in Kentucky. "That's good." I told her, as I focused my attention on my french fries. "That's interesting" is the response I get from my uncomfortable friends as they too find something more comfortable to munch on.

The other people ask me why I'm going with a sense of envy and excitement and anticipation. These are the people who I think will seriously consider joining me on this trip next year, and hopefully some can make it work. It's not an easy thing to get away from work and civilization for a month, and I don't know that I'll be able to do it again either. But these are the friends who either understand the need of the people I'll be visiting, or the understand the need to see what life is like for a completely different culture than mine, and they share my excitement and my nervousness and my sense of responsibility, and I appreciate that.

So this Thursday the journey begins. I'll leave Thursday for DC, leave DC Friday morning for Kenya (28 hours from first takeoff to final touchdown, yikes!), and after a couple of days working with Computer Troubleshooters Kenya and buying some supplies I'll head to Rwanda where the real heart of the trip begins. The first week and last week of my 4 week trip will be spent in Rwanda, with my friend Jean's organization ARDR, helping them in their mission to imrove the quality of life for people in rural Rwanda, especially widows and orphans of the 1994 genocide. I was there last year and saw some of the work they do, and it's overwhelming in every sense of the word how much need there is in that part of the world. I met a woman in Rwanda last year who lost her family in the genocide, but still has a banana field. Once a month she cuts down a bunch of bananas, takes them to the market, and sells them for $20, and that's how she lives. Her dream in life is to one day be able to buy a wheelbarrow so she doesn't have to carry the bananas on her head.

The other two weeks of my trip are the ones I'm more concerned about, because we'll be going into areas where the woman with bananas would be considered well off. South Kivu is a province in DRC which has seen more than it's share of war over the last decade. It's relatively peaceful now (unlike North Kivu) but there are no guarantees it will stay that way. I know people from South Kivu, refugees I've met over the last two years who live near me and who sometimes go to my church. The stories they tell are often horrifying to American senses, and I won't repeat them here but suffice it to say that massacres, killing, raping, and starvation are a sadly normal part of their life. Their government is poor, far away, and really unable to care for them. The local armies only care about what they can use from them. The international community is rarely even aware of them. So into this world where injustice and poverty are the norm, a Christian group from Germany is going to show them that even when no one else cares, God cares for them. Thus the name of the group: GodCares. It's one of GodCares principals who invited me, a man named Nelson Mukiza who grew up in this area and is now a Canadian citizen. Nelson invited me, and I realize this is not an invitation that comes along every day, so I am going. I don't know what I'm going to do when I get there - my vision on that is just like yesterday's view from the SunDial, nothing but haze and fog and swirling shapes. But I know that I'm invited, and even if they don't have electricity or businesses to run I know I'll find some way to be helpful.

If you're following my blog, I would appreciate your prayers and support too. I will do my best to keep this space updated while I'm over there, and I've included some photos and other information on my other website, www.godcares.us. If all goes well I'll be back in the US on April 4th, no doubt exhausted and thinner and with many more interesting stories to tell.

Do You Have to be Crazy to Start a Business in 2009?

2009-02-03T16:29:00.005-05:00

Earlier this month I knew it was long past time for me to do a webinar for potential Computer Troubleshooters,so I started thinking about content. Normally I'd put together something about all the new features and benefits we added to the franchise over the last year, or some case studies of existing franchisees. But this year, given all the economic news we hear about constantly, I figured I should start with the big question every potential entrepreneur has to ask themselves right now: "Do I have to be CRAZY to start a business this year?".

Having settled on a title, now I had to fill in the details, so I started doing some research. Fortunately we've got a lot of experience with this, since I've personally started four businesses now and two of those were started during previous recessions. I also researched outside sources, including business publications and news articles. And I found some very interesting information - the consensus among all the experts I researched was that a recession is a GREAT time to start a business, but you have to be careful. You need to think about your business, and focus on what it will take to be successful. But if you do build a successful business during a recession, you'll be well poised for even greater success when the economy recovers. And you'll be in good company: Microsoft, HP, Google, Disney, and McDonald's are just a few of the well known companies who were started during a recession.

Why is a recession good for business? Generally speaking there are 8 benefits that any business owner will see in a recession:

Wages are lower
Top talent is readily available
Office space & Retail space is cheaper
Used equipment & furniture is cheap and plentiful
Advertising venues are more willing to negotiate prices
Poorly managed competitors may fail
Building a strong foundation now can lead to explosive growth when the economy improves
Forced frugality and tight focus are common in long-term successful companies

But to be successful, we identified 9 principles for business success during a recession:

Must have a Strong Business Plan
It's that old adage, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. A strong business plan will guide your actions as you get your new business off the ground, by focusing on who your customers will be, how you will reach them, and how you will make money serving them.
Must use Strong Financial Management (i.e. Waste Nothing)
Success in a recession is all about efficiency. Every dollar you spend needs to do it's part to improve your business - there's no room for waste.
Must Use Smart Marketing
This builds on the financial management principle. Not all marketing is created equal - you want to identify and implement the marketing methods and messages which will give you the most bang for your buck with your target customers.
Must Use Personnel Effectively
The reason why layoffs are so endemic in a recession is because businesses start taking a hard look at which positions truly help them reach their business goals. As a new entrepreneur it's critical that you hire the right people, compensate them fairly, and manage them well.
Must Focus on What Sells
This sounds obvious, but it's often forgotten. What sells well during a recession? Every industry has opportunities, but there are five general categories that do better than others when the economy is on the rocks:
a. "Essentials" (groceries, office supplies, internet connections, pc repair)
b. "Discounts" (dollar stores, thrift stores, pawn shops)
c. "Small Indulgences" (spas, candy, hair salons, massage parlors)
d. "Nesting Accessories" (home entertainment technology, some appliances)
e. "Productivity Boosts" (some training, some software & consulting, websites/SEO)
(And it's worth noting that Computer Troubleshooters fits in 3 of the 5 categories!)
Must Invest In Technology & Tools
Being competitive in a recession means being more efficient and effective than your competition, and that often means better tech & tools.
Must Network
The best marketing in a recession is one-on-one, doing business with people you know.
Must Treat Customers Like Royalty
Self explanatory - customer service always goes up in a recession.
Must Stay Inspired
This one surprised me, but several authors mentioned it in some form, and it makes sense. It's easy to let the daily barrage of bad news get you down, and that's especially true during the challenges of a first-year business. You need a way to stay upbeat and focused on your long-term goals. Mentors, inspirational literature, entrepreneur groups, or franchises can really help you stay positive and stay successful.

If you'd like to view the webinar recording, it's available here:
http://comptroub.com/downloads/webinars/ProspectWebinar1.30.09/lib/playback.html

Opportunities in '09

2009-01-14T13:32:00.003-05:00

Whatever else happens, 2009 is unlikely to be "business as usual" for anyone. Some industries are struggling, some regions are struggling, and pretty much every small business is taking a hard look at their expense sheet to figure out where they need to "get lean". Downsizing is rampant, prices are falling, and people in general are just anxious about the overall state of the economy.

For the most part small business IT consulting has not been as directly affected by the downturn as other industries. For me personally I started my computer consulting business during the recession of 1991, grew pretty strongly during the recession of 2001, and the feedback I'm getting from our franchisees is that for the most part things are going well for them in 2008/2009. But there are some challenges, and some opportunities too, so I wanted to take a minute to outline some of the major ones:

Challenge: Downsizing Everywhere
Opportunity: New Hiring Opportunities! Many small business technology firms are historically reluctant to hire, especially in areas like sales, marketing, and business management. Most firms, including most Computer Troubleshooters, are started by someone with a technical background who may not feel comfortable managing additional people, particularly in areas that aren't directly income-producing like Sales & Marketing. But there are a LOT of highly qualified people looking for work right now with backgrounds in sales, marketing, management, and accounting, and they're often highly motivated to look at more flexible salary structures (perhaps wholly or partly commission-based) than they may have considered in the past. Why not help them out and let them help you grow your business?
Challenge: Reduced Business Spending
Opportunity #1: Higher demand for maintenance, repair, and upgrades! While many businesses, even the ones who are doing well financially, are reluctant to invest in significant new capital projects right now because of an overall lack of confidence in the economy, their businesses still depend on technology. And while spending $4000 on a new server project may be put on hold, spending $500 to upgrade an existing server can be an attractive short-term alternative. Truthfully as a service provider we'll earn just as much for our time performing an upgrade as we would on a new install, so these sorts of short-term alternatives are a win-win for both sides: the customer gets better performance without a huge initial expense, and the service provider gets continued business and income.
Opportunity #2: SaaS Solutions!
Another similar opportunity is the shift to SaaS or cloud-computing solutions. For a small business who can benefit from new services, for example Microsoft Exchange or calendar & project sharing via Sharepoint or Webex's Web Office, spending $50/month on a cloud-based solution can be much more attractive in the short term than paying $1000 or more to have the same solution configured and installed locally.
The value proposition to shift existing services to "the cloud" is also strong but harder to quantify on a short-term basis: for example shifting a 10-user office to Hosted Exchange would cost maybe $150 per month, and that same solution if already installed and working is essentially costing nothing - right now. But a typical Exchange implementation will cost $2000 every 3-5 years in new software, $1000 every 2-4 years in new hardware, plus on average $1250 per year in maintenance and service costs. Over 5 years the locally hosted solution cost between $9000 and $12,000 or more, plus bandwidth, power, and backup costs, while the SaaS solution is a nicely predictable $9000.
(BTW, Computer Troubleshooter's SaaS portal with 15 cloud-based solutions is launching in February!)
Opportunity #3: HaaS & Leasing Solutions! While businesses want to hold on to their cash, they still need new technology. That's where having a strong financing or leasing program is a huge help - during times like this a small business may balk at a new infrastructure project for $10k, but give them all those same benefits for just $300/month and it's great for everyone. That's why CT is happy to have some great financing partners like our HaaS partners MSP On Demand and our traditional lease partners Popular Equipment Leasing and Wirth Business Credit.
Challenge: Downsizing puts more demands on remaining staff.
Opportunity: Technology Solutions that provide REAL Productivity Enhancement. Businesses who must downsize will look to get more work done with fewer people, and the way to accomplish that usually involves technology. Computer Troubleshooters is ramping up support for the productivity solutions we see as being key to this: CRM, VoIP, Search Engine Marketing (more effective and less expensive than traditional marketing if done right), electronic document management, telecommuting, managed service plans, and collaboration tools.
Challenge: People are cutting back expenditures on restaurants, vacations, and new cars.
Opportunity: Since they're spending more time at home people are looking for Better Home Technology. This is the classic "nesting" behavior we've seen in past recessions, and it's in full force today too. And it helps that today's recession is coinciding with some really exciting new home technologies, like Windows Home Server, Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Video-On-Demand, and more. Look for the launch of www.ctonline.tv next month to show off our capabilities in these areas. But even basic tech, like setting up a media PC connected to the family big-screen so they can watch YouTube and Hulu.com videos from the couch is something we're seeing a lot of demand from these days.

As you might expect Computer Troubleshooters is tracking and monitoring all the challenges and opportunities we see in today's environment so that we can continue providing the best support to our franchisees and their customers. What other challenges and opportunities do you see in 2009?

The Economy is No Excuse!

2008-12-23T06:42:00.002-05:00

Officially we're 12 months into this recession, and let me tell you there's one thing I'm already very tired of - people using the economy as an excuse! Yes, times are bad. Yes, credit markets are tight, financing is more difficult. Yes, more people are unemployed, and exponentially more people are anxious about the future. Some industries are struggling, particularly some real estate, automotive, and tourism-related areas. Some geographies are struggling, particularly parts of Florida, California, Michigan, Ohio, and some pockets around New York City and Washington DC. If your business is heavily dependent on these factors, then you are being impacted by the bad economy, and there are few if any businesses entirely unaffected right now. And there is certainly no doubt that businesses and individuals are hurting right now, and I'm not meaning to minimize that pain.

But I've been in this industry for three recessions now (four if you count the post-9/11 downturn), and even though this situation is unique among all of them, one thing is still the same - people like to blame things on the economy. Having a bad sales month? It's not your lack of marketing or a bad sales staff - it's the economy! Need to let an unproductive employee go? It's not you making a management decision - it's the economy! Going out of business? It's not poor management, it's the economy!

It came to me this morning when someone sent me a news item about one of our competitors, who is reporting their 7th straight annual loss (this one nearly $5 million), is being sued by 10 of their franchisees, and had to report that their auditors expect them to run out of cash and potentially shut down operations within 6 months. In their regulatory filing do they accept responsibility for the problems? Of course not - it's the economy! They mention the "current financial turmoil" in the banking industry, and blame the lack of franchise sales on the inability of candidates to get financing. If they do go under, as appears likely, will they apologize to the orphaned franchisees for not running a healthy organization? I don't think so - the economy is too easy a scapegoat for that.

The thing is, anyone who scratches beneath the surface can see another picture. They haven't ever had a profit - ever, not since they started in 2001. Their fiscal 2008 operating expenses were $5 million more than their revenues, and their revenues were $2 million less than the previous year. (Just for comparison's sake Computer Troubleshooter's franchise network is double theirs, and our total franchisor operating budget is a comparatively miniscule $600k/year - apparently we're the "lean & mean" franchising system here!). What exactly in today's economy caused them to lose money in 2001, 2002, 2003, etc? And how exactly, if we were not in a recession today, would spending $5 million more than you bring in look like a smart move?

No, the economy gets the blame but the economy is just the magnifying glass today, showing all the faults in the systems people previously claimed were healthier than perhaps they really were. Today's recession gives management teams carte blanche to escape any personal responsibility in the failings of their businesses, and that's doubly-unfortunate since its' that same lack of responsibility on a larger scale that seems to have gotten us into this mess!

Now I'm not intending this diatribe to make it sound like I'm the perfect manager. Lord knows I'm not! In fact we just got the new Entrepreneur magazine with the Franchise 500 rankings for 2009, and for the first time since 2001 Computer Troubleshooters is not ranked. At all. Even though we're by far the largest in our industry, even though we grew by 5% last year, we got no ranking at all. Why? Entrepreneur doesn't disclose their formula for rankings, but I'm sure it's based on our financials, and because the rankings are done in July they use the financials from our last full year, which for us was fiscal 2007. And in fiscal 2007 we posted a substantial financial loss - well, substantial for us anyway, since we lost $111k that year. (By comparison our parent company, MerryMeeting, posted a nearly $4 million profit, so we're definitely the small fry in the family as far as financials go). Still, a loss is a loss, and our $111k loss was due entirely to a write off of $198k in bad debt - old receivables that we never cleaned up or monies that we didn't do a good job of collecting. As the CEO for Computer Troubleshooters that loss is entirely my fault, and thus our lack of Entrepreneur ranking for 2009 is entirely my fault as well. (But our 2008 financials are strong, and we're seeing a TON of new folks opening new CT franchises, so watch us bounce back strong in next year's ranking!)

My point though is that business is business and management is management, and if you want to run a business you have to be prepared to manage it during economic booms and economic busts. The world has not stopped turning just because unemployment has hit 7%. The economy has changed, in some ways temporarily and in some ways perhaps permenently, but there is still an economy, and that means people are buying and selling goods and services right now. Some of the buying patterns have changed, and a good manager needs to adjust for that.

For example what we're seeing with Computer Troubleshooters is that nervous business owners are less likely to buy our "all you can eat" BEST plan (managed services), which is normally our best seller. But we offer 4 plans, and we're finding that there's good demand for our next plan down the ladder, so we're adjusting our monthly marketing upates to focus more on those. We're also seeing that as people cut back on discretionary spending on things like vacations and eating out, they're exhibiting traditional "nesting" patterns by spending more on things they can enjoy at home - so we've ramped up our focus on our residential managed service plans and home entertainment offerings. I can't give away all our secrets of course, but things like flexibility, customer choice, and clear productivity enhancement are the buzzwords that are driving a lot of our marketing development for the first half of 2009.

Today's economy is an opportunity. It's an opportunity for stronger, healthier companies to distinguish themselves and grow, sometimes by acquiring other less healthy companies (and yes, CT may do some of that as well). It's also an opportunity to make excuses for poor performance, but don't fall into that trap. Use this opportunity to start or grow your own business - there are customers out there right now who need you. And the economy needs you too.

Choosing your Managed Services platform, part 1

2008-12-07T21:08:00.006-05:00

Lately it seems the whole managed services industry has been turned upside down. Major vendors have suddenly changed how they operate - not so much changing prices as much as adding, changing, or outright removing key features. Frankly it's caused more than a little frustration for those of us who depend on those platforms for our managed services offerings. Computer Troubleshooters is in the midst of reviewing all our managed services partners, so I thought it would be helpful to share what we're looking for.

First, let me clarify and expound on one of my great pet peeves. "Managed Services" doesn't mean anything. Or, rather, it means so many different things to different people that the term is meaningless. It's like saying "IT industry", as if software developers and hardware manufacturers and network consultants were somehow a homogenous group. (I know, I know, most non-IT folks think they are, leading to the popularity of things like this.) Those of you who have been through CT's training on our managed services program (B.E.S.T.) have heard me talk about watching the video discussion among three people identified as the industry's top managed services gurus, and how midway through the discussion they began arguing about things like whether or not managed services as a concept even applies to desktops and notebooks.

For Computer Troubleshooters, our target clients are small businesses (another vague term which I'll probably expound on in another posting later), specifically those in the 5-25 seat area. That's not to say that we don't service smaller clients with 1-5 computers, because we do, and some CT's have been known to service networks of 100 or more. But as an organization we've always targeted the 5-25 seat business, because as a market those small businesses (which are most small businesses) have a high demand for outside IT support from people who understand their needs. So when we talk about "managed services" for this market, we're talking in general about a program that does 4 things:

Provides a baseline for "best practices", showing our clients how their systems compare to our combined wisdom on how computers and networks should be configured for maximum productivity and minimum downtime.
Provides proactive support via 24/7 monitoring, alerting, and management tools.
Redefines the traditional financial relationship, where the service provider was only paid when their client has problems, to one where the service provider is paid to prevent problems from happening, and where the client's budget (and service provider's income) is more stable.
Once the client's technology infrastructure is stabilized with parts 1-3, look for new technologies which can enhance the client's business. This means going beyond the basic recommendations like which anti-virus or backup solution to use, into more complex but more beneficial technologies like search engine marketing, IP Telephony, electronic document management, or hosted CRM solutions.

Now if you are targeting different sized clients, like mid-sized businesses or enterprise businesses, your definition of "managed services" will be radically different. And even among those targeting similarly sized businesses you may not agree with all four of our points. But this is the strategy Computer Troubleshooters adopted for our BEST program, and it's worked very well for us and for our clients.

But in order to make this work, we need vendor partners who can supply critical parts of the managed services strategy. In this post I want to look a the basic pieces of a managed services platform today, and in my next post we'll look at what new pieces might be added in the near future. At the moment, these are the pieces of our managed services platform which we look for from our vendor partners (including internal CT vendors/departments as well):

Remote Monitoring & Management tool (RMM): This is the most fundamental piece of any managed services strategy. In theory you could sell managed services without RMM, but it would be like selling a car with no wheels - it sort of missses the whole point. A good RMM tool should be easily installable at a client site, and provide a good range of monitoring and alerts for all desktops and servers on the network, including mobile machines (laptops, and optionally smartphones as well). It should be easy for the technician to use, provide reasonable diagnostic & remote support abilities to allow the tech to quickly respond to any alerts produced, and it should generate easy to read executive reports for our clients.
The RMM tool market is the most associated with managed services, and includes vendors like Hyblue, Bird Dog, Zenith Infotech, Level Platforms, N-Able, Kaseya, IT Control Suite, LogMeIn IT Reach, Paragent, and MSP Center Plus. (As well as others I'm sure I've forgotten to mention).
A NOC (Network Operations Center) partner. As managed services has evolved, so has the dependence on a NOC for maximum support. Using a high-quality 24/7 NOC partner allows local service providers to guarantee high levels of service to their clients, without the high expense of hiring excessive technical staff themselves. Some NOC partners work specifically with one RMM tool, others may support a variety. Ideally you want a NOC partner who will not only help you manage the alerts which come in, but who can also accept work on-demand, particularly for work which is best done after normal business hours. NOC examples include Zenith, Seismic, MSPSN, NetEnrich, ITVista, and others.
Integrated Anti-Malware. This was not originally part of the managed services model, but Zenith started it and it worked extremely well in our models (unfortunately Zenith no longer supports this in the small business market). And when CT started offering residential managed service plans, integrated anti-malware became essential. Including anti-malware (anti-virus & anti-spyware) with managed services is a great bundle for any clients, and can be done a la carte using hosted McAfee options, licensing Trend Micro on a monthly basis, or via vendors who integrate the protection directly into their RMM products (Kaseya, Hyblue, or Zenith for larger businesses).
Integration with industry-leading PSA (Professional Services Automation) software, including Autotask or CT's own TOPS program. Having one ticket system which interfaces with the RMM system and the NOC is a great time saver and productivity enhancer.
Helpdesk. Most MSP's include unlimited telephone support in one or more of their service plan offerings. In our case it's included with BEST Proactive and BEST Trouble-free. For smaller service providers it can be money well spent to hire an outside helpdesk to handle those incoming calls for you, thus providing your clients with faster access to qualified telephone support. Helpdesk vendors include Dove Helpdesk (my personal favorite), MSPSN, Zenith, PC Helps, and more.
Advanced Management Tools. In this category I would include things like software deployment, employee activity tracking, internet traffic control, and desktop imaging. In the small business world these are nice to have, but not essential.

Those six make up the bulk of almost any managed services platform today. Individual service providers can "roll their own" solution by combining any of these, but in a franchise like Computer Troubleshooters we're able to do some screening and negotiating internally to make sure we're picking the best partners for our market, and to negotiate group volume discounts as well.

What's missing in this list? I haven't talked much about backup solutions, including NAS options or online backup. I haven't talked about virtualized environments or hosted (i.e. "cloud computing") solutions. There are also anti-spam options to be discussed, and even more advanced management tools. These aren't technically part of "managed services" today (although they're often added to or included with BEST plans), but they may play a larger role in the next generation of managed services. I'll talk about that more in my next post.

Agree or disagree with me? I'd love to hear your ideas on managed services, and how your implementation fits with (or doesn't fit with) the structure I've outlined here.

Mac Guy on the Road

2008-10-20T10:31:00.003-04:00

My "MBP" on the job in a Hong Kong hotel today

So it's been three months since I purchased my Macbook Pro (used, on Ebay, because I'm cheap). Many of my PC friends were wary of my early enthusiasm, and several said "Yeah, well, it's a new toy right now, but talk to me in two months." Three months later I'm still a Mac guy, so I wanted to share some updates on my Apple experience thus far.

First, the things I don't like - and it's a short list. I traveled to the UK earlier this month, and realized before boarding my flight at ATL that I'd forgotten to bring my power adapter. No worries I thought, I'll just pick one up somewhere. Several electronics stores in Hartsfield sold "universal" notebook power supplies - but none worked with any Apple notebook. No worries, my hotel in Liverpool had three large electronics stores within walking distance - but none of them had Mac power adapters either, even though at least one sold Mac notebooks! I was very fortunate that Liverpool has an Apple store, so I spent half my first day figuring out how to get there so I could get my replacement power cord. (the local Computer Troubleshooter in Liverpool graciously offered to bring me one, but searching for an Apple store seemed as good a way as any to explore the city so I decided to go on my own). Similarly becuase the Macbook uses the DVI port instead of VGA, I have to bring two adapters with me if I expect to plus into a projector somewhere. (Two because I have a history of losing one and need a backup just in case).

Other things that I don't like: no SD card slot (but I have a USB/SD card reader that I can bring with me). Battery life is only about 2 hours per battery for me, and you can't hot-swap the batteries on an airplane (I carry 3 batteries with me for long trips, but I have to Sleep the notebook before swapping). And occasionally my Windows environment (I run Windows on the Mac simultaneously with the Mac OS using VMWare Fusion, mostly so I can use Outlook) loses sound for some reason.

So that's the bad list - but there's a much, much longer list of things that I love. I haven't had a crash or lock-up except once, whereas my old PC notebook used to hang at least 2 or 3 times a week (in fairness to the PC, I tend to run a LOT of unusual applications, so having occasional crashes doesn't surprise me). Most operations are faster than they were on my PC, even though this is a 2.16GHz Core2 Duo and my PC was a 2.2GHz machine. The wireless network connects faster, which doesn't sound like much but if you're trying to download your emails during a 10 minute airport layover, that's helpful. The backlit keyboard is surprisingly useful in dark hotel rooms (like as I'm typing this right now).

The two things I like the most right now are VMWare Fusion, and Front Row. VMWare Fusion lets me run my Windows environment inside my Mac environment, which is necessary for me since many applications I use (including Microsoft Outlook) only work in a Windows environment. VMWare Fusion gives me that ability, and more than that it allows for near-seamless file sharing between the Mac and PC sides of the system (whereas in the old days you used to require a translation program of some kind to let one OS see files on the other). So I have one "Desktop" and one "Documents" folder, and both OS'es see them the same. Cut & Paste also works between the OSes, which is amazing and helpful.

Front Row is the newest thing I've started using. It's integrated with iTunes, so that any music or video you have purchased or ripped into your iTunes library is available in Front Row. By using the Mac Remote Control (a tiny little thing) I can choose to listen to specific music or watch specific TV shows or movies - which is really handy. For example when I was in the UK I missed the season premiere of "The Office" back home, so I was able to download it on iTunes and watch it from my hotel bed using the Mac Remote. I've also used it to watch movies during long flights, or to listen to music while getting dressed in the morning. Sure, there are similar programs in the PC world, but this one is built into the Mac OS and the Mac hardware, and it just works.

So, so far my "Mac enthusiasm" shows no signs of abating. More and more we see our small business clients migrating to the Mac environment, and now that I've "drunk the koolaid" I can see why. For businesses where most of their work is web-based, or based on Microsoft Office, you can likely accomplish 99% of your work in the Mac, making it a valid option for businesspeople today. And for those who still need Windows apps, programs like VMWare Fusion make that an easy option too.

Why Everyone Should Buy a Ford Flex

2008-10-13T09:03:00.004-04:00

In my post yesterday I talked about how the current economic situation is affecting Computer Troubleshooters in general - today I want to talk about one way I've used the current downturn to my advantage, by posting a review of my new Ford Flex.

To provide some background - I was not looking for a new car. My CT-wrapped Subaru Baja had served me well and was paid off. It was also one of the best cars I've ever owned. BUT, in just the month of September my Baja was stolen, recovered, wrecked (while parked), and then erroneously impounded by the Dekalb County police who apparently forgot to note in their database that it was no longer stolen. When it was taken the first time I started looking around to see what I might want to replace it with, and came across the Ford Flex. After the wreck and the impounding I started to think that maybe someone was trying to tell me it's time for a new car after all.

Then I read stories about how automakers have been hard hit by the recent economic conditions. Dozens of dealerships around Atlanta have closed, including the Subaru dealership near me. To try and stimulate sales many manufacturers are offering some pretty strong incentives to potential buyers, especially those with good credit. I got an email from a local Ford dealer offering me $4000 under dealer invoice on a new Ford Flex, plus they gave me full trade-in value for my Subaru even though it was wrapped and wrecked, plus they gave me some service incentives as well to help a friend whose having some car troubles. All in all it was a deal I couldn't pass up. If you're in the market for a car, now is a REALLY good time to go shopping because there are some great deals to be had.

So now I'm the proud owner of a Ford Flex, and honestly it's the best car I've ever owned. It's incredibly comfortable - the giant leather seats have all kinds of adjustments and even seat warmers (not really needed here in Georgia but still nice). The headrests could use more adjustment options, and as other reviews have pointed out it would be nice if the steering wheel telescoped, but having adjustable pedals helps. My Flex also has "egress assist", which means when I pull the key out the driver's seat slides back automatically to make it easier to get out, and when I put the key in the seat moves forward back to it's memorized position. This is slightly disturbing since for a brief second I always imagine myself in the trash compactor scene in Star Wars as the seat pushes me towards the steering wheel, but overall it's a nice feature.

For a gadget lover the Flex has everything you could ever want. Seperate climate controls for the driver, passenger, and rear seats. Lots of power ports everywhere you can think of, plus an AC outlet built into the center console. There's even a USB port inside the center console which can charge a USB device as well as connecting any MP3 player into the sound system. And speaking of the sound system - I got the 10-speaker Sony-built system with Microsoft Sync technology, and it's really amazing. I wasn't sure what to expect of Sync, but the voice recognition is remarkably accurate even when I ask it to call friends with hard-to-spell names (it connects to my cell phone whenever its' within Bluetooth range), and the sound quality is fantastic. There are almost too many options in the sound system (I don't know how I'm going to find time to fill all 30 presets for the AM/FM radio, or the other 30 presets for the Sirius satellite radio). And the onboard computer lets me keep track of things like my average miles per gallon (which is only around 18 for me so far, but I only drive about 10 miles a day and through a lot of stops, so I expect it will get closer to the advertised 24mpg when I'm taking longer road trips). It's the most fuel-efficient vehicle of it's size, but you'd never know it by how powerful and responsive the engine feels.

Gadgets are great, but the Flex really shines in style and functionality. I've had the car for 10 days and already several people have stopped me at traffic lights or parking lots to ask me about it. I also got a chance to test the cargo-friendly fold-flat seats when I took some tables to a festival this past weekend, but I'm really looking forward to utilizing all 7 seats the next time I drive for a youth event at church.

So if you're in the market for a cool, functional vehicle that can carry a large family or a lot of customer computers, take a look at the Ford Flex. Besides getting a great car at a great price, you'll also be helping your local car dealers stay in business during these challenging times, which is good for your local community and your local economy too.

CT and the Economic Crisis

2008-10-12T19:49:00.004-04:00

A popular question I get these days is "So how is the economic crisis affecting Computer Troubleshooters?". Interestingly I get this question mostly from strangers - someone in the elevator who sees the logo on my shirt, for example.

First of all let me share this site from Money Magazine which I think does the best job of summing up how the current financial situation is affecting most Americans. The truth is that despite the gloom and doom in the headlines every day, most Americans are not directly affected by the financial meltdown. True, many retirement funds (including my parent's) have been diminished, and some people are seeing a direct impact on their personal finances: I heard this week from a college-age friend who was laid off from his restaurant job, and from another friend who owns a handyman business and who told me he's seeing less work right now. But most of us are OK.

Like every business I suppose CT is affected by the economic crisis, but not always in the ways you would expect. We've seen isolated incidents of collections problems, mainly with small business clients in the home building or auto sales industries. At least three CT's have had to close because the owner was affected by some poor decisions in the real estate market (these were mostly in southern California and Arizona). But other than that, business appears to be booming for many of us.

Take our small business clients. Even though most small businesses aren't directly affected by the economic situation, there is some anxiety in the marketplace. This may manifest itself in a reluctance to increase expenses, either for large-ticket purchases or for hiring new staff. But for us, as the "IT Department for Small Business" [tm] this just means that those same businesses are more likely to incur higher maintenance costs as they keep older servers & workstations in service longer, and it means they're more interested in looking at ways to work more efficiently with a smaller staff (which is right up our technological alley, so to speak). With all the uncertainty in the market small businesses are also more eager to look for ways to reduce and stabilize their IT budget, which is exactly what our B.E.S.T. managed services program is designed to do. And we've done well in ramping up services this year that small business clients find most helpful during recessionary times - services to help them improve their productivity and their profits through better use of technology such as our new VoIP and Search Engine Marketing services.

We're even taking that one step furthur by expanding our HaaS (Hardware-as-a-Service) offerings this fall. HaaS allows a small business to get the latest & greatest hardware & software, plus a complete Proactive service plan, for one low monthly fee. A typical example would be a small business who gets a a new Dell Small Business Server, four new state-of-the-art workstations, all fully loaded with the latest Microsoft Office, plus our premium data backup package. If purchased up front that could approach $10,000, plus $520/month for our total service package. For a small business worried about conserving capital, that's a lot of money. But in a HaaS offering we could do the whole thing for no money up front and around $800/month. Considering that this includes everything they'll ever spend to cover any normal IT problem (i.e. no surprise bills in the future), that's a bargain -and so far it's proving to be very popular with our small business clients.

As an interesting side note I was talking with one of our funding partners for the HaaS program last week I asked him the same question everyone asks me - "How's the economic situation affecting YOUR business?". Thinking that if it affected anyone I knew, surely it would be affecting a financial guy. But he said it really wasn't - he said that 80% of his funding sources were completely unaffected by the larger financial meltdown, and even for the ones who were it was only a minor blip. Approval rates and interest rates are comparable to what they were a year ago. I guess that's the nice part about working in the world of small business - we're a lot more stable than some other businesses.

There are two other areas besides our core small business clients where CT could be affected: our residential business, and franchise expansion. What we're seeing, both internally and from external news reports, is a "nesting" pattern among our residential customers. This means they're pulling back from external expenses, like expensive vacations or new car purchases or even going to the movies, but they're investing in their home entertainment experiences. And for most residential customers, "home entertainment" is becoming more PC-oriented. In my own living room I've got a PC connected to my HDTV so I can watch shows from hulu.com, and apparently I'm not the only one. Residential customers are spending more on their home technology, and that's good for us in general but especially good for our H.O.S.T. managed services plans - the industry's only managed service plans for home technology.

And franchise recruiting is going well - we've added 5 new US locations in the last 8 weeks, plus locations in Australia, Canada, the UK, and South Africa. During times like these more people feel uncomfortable in the corporate world and look to "take control of their own destiny" through self-employment, so CT benefits from that as well. True some have more trouble getting financing, and those looking to use our 401k conversion program may be less likely to tap into their retirement funds if the funds are 22% lower than they were last month thanks to the stock market pull-back. But we're expanding our internal financing options to compensate, and I expect our growth will continue to improve.

So as strange as it sounds, the economic crisis has been pretty good for Computer Troubleshooters so far. Granted there are always exceptions and not everyone is doing as well as we'd like them to, but overall things are good and improving. This looks like it will be my third recession as a small technology business owner, and so I can tell you from my past experience that there are good things that come from a recession. As a business owner you may find that things like office space and some services are cheaper because of the reduced demand. Gas prices are coming down, which for a business that does a lot of our work at the customer's location is important. And finding good employees, particularly right now if you're looking for salespeople, general administrative help, or level 1 technicians, can be easier and less expensive than it would have been two years ago. It's also a time when some of our weaker competitors (usually the poor-quality, low-price ones) will close down, leaving more potential clients for us.

It's not all doom and gloom, no matter what the headlines say. I know there are people affected by the economy today, including friends of mine. But I believe very strongly that as business owners we have a responsibility to be successful and profitable, so that we can add value to our employees, our clients, and our communities. And everything I see tells me that Computer Troubleshooters is doing very well, and will continue to be successful for the forseeable future.

Innovation

2008-09-18T12:19:00.005-04:00

(Our 2008 Solutions Catalog with all our client programs -
ask your local CT for a copy!)

Last year when we started our partnership with Merry Meeting, it gave me a chance to formalize our business plans for the first time really since we got started back in 1999. I copied some of the format of Merry Meeting's business plan and added some touches of our own. The business plan gives us clear strategic objectives, tactical plans, and highlights our Mission and our Values.

When it comes to our Core Values, many are the same as any company should have: start with Integrity & the Golden Rule, build with clear Objectives, commit to Excellence, and earn a Profit. We added two that I feel are critical to this particular business: Innovation, and Balance. Balance is a topic unto itself, but the demand in this business is so strong it's easy to get overworked so it's something to keep front and center in all that we do. Innovation though is what I want to talk about today.

I'm very proud of the Innovation we've done at Computer Troubleshooters over the years. We've been at the cutting edge of our industry in literally hundreds of areas, being the first or one of the first computer service franchises to:

expand overseas

build a franchisee intranet

offer employee hiring & management assistance

offer a web design & hosting service and content-managed franchisee websites

offer an optional CT call center service

create a robust managed services program

create a National Account program (and more recently a National Client program) to drive more work to our franchisees

create a content-based marketing system with automated marketing portals

This year we've gone even furthur. We start with the premise that our job is to help our small business clients be successful. A big part of that is making sure their computers & technology are running smoothly and are as trouble-free as possible. Beyond that though there are many ways we can help small businesses be more successful through technology, so this year we've added:

The ReImage tool. While it doesn't work in every situation, when it works it's a HUGE timesaver for us and for our clients.

Search Engine Marketing and Optimization services, in conjunction with ReachLocal and others. Over the last three years we've seen a marked decrease in the effectiveness of traditional advertising (notably Yellow Pages and Newspaper) and a similar increase in the effectiveness of online advertising, particularly with search engines. Our new program not only ensures that our franchisees get the most bang for their online advertising buck, it lets us offer those expert services to our small business clients as well.

An Electronic Document Management program. Of all the programs we've rolled out in 2008 this one is probably the most boring, and the most useful. Every business has at least one file cabinet (if not a dozen or more), and many even wind up renting storage space to hold old files for retention purposes. Now we can offer inexpensive systems that let them store all their paper files on one computer database, and access them from any PC on the network (with proper authorization, of course). Saves time, saves money, and just makes good sense for small businesses everywhere.
Our IP Telephony program. The telephone world is rapidly shifting from the proprietary PBX systems of the past to the new, feature-rich & low cost VoIP-based systems of the future. We're making sure that Computer Troubleshooters everywhere are in the best position to help our small business clients migrate to the new systems by aligning with the best partners and creating internal support & training options for CT's and their technicians. CTUSA has been running on a Fonality IP-PBX system for years so I can speak from experience - once you get a VoIP system it's hard to imagine going back.

"Cloud Computing": The big buzzword this year seems to be "cloud computing" - it's almost (but not quite) what "managed services" was last year. The idea is that some applications are better when run from the web instead of from a local server - and this is more often true with small businesses than it is with larger ones, becuase it's a better value for a small business to pay for a hosted application instead of hiring staff or paying us to support a local server. Hosted Exchange is a great example: an 8-person law firm might want the benefits of Microsoft Exchange, but setting up and supporting an internal Exchange server could be cost prohibitive. Hosted Exchange gives you all the same benefits, but someone else handles all the server management responsibities. The challenge of course is partnering with the right providers, so CT has been busy lining up the best hosted services for our small business clients. So far we've got Hosted Exchange, Sharepoint, email, office, database, CRM, online meeting, and collaboration tool applications, and we're reviewing more. While it's not right for everyone, we're making sure CT's can help their small business clients choose the solution that's right for them.

There are dangers in innovating though. You have to start from a strong foundation, because it's easy to get distracted by the promises of "something new". So taking care of a client's basic hardware, software, networking and services needs has to be the core of what we do, THEN we can look at new options to enhance their business. And not every innovation works out - for example a few years ago I was approached by a company who was going to put an end to spam by making people pay to send legitimate emails. Needless to say that idea never went anywhere, but some other ideas like our CT Software Development service are good solutions but for relatively rare situations (we still operate the CT-SD and they do great work, but most small businesses don't need much custom-written software).

I often tell people that the best part about Computer Troubleshooters is that we have the best R&D department in the world: 500 franchise locations all over the world, all looking for and trying out new solutions every day. The best ones rise to the top and make it into our Solutions Catalog. The rest tend to be discussed and dropped fairly quickly. But by constantly finding new solutions, new vendor partners, and new technologies we're sure that CT will always stay out in front when it comes to effective innovation.

Thank You!

2008-09-08T09:55:00.006-04:00

Photo from the IP Telephony Workshop

I'm home - and after 6 days in Cleveland, it's good to sleep in my own bed again. CT Conferences always wear me out - there's so many little things that pop up during the event that need to be handled, and so many people to talk to and workshops to listen to that I feel like I'm running a marathon 24/7 until the end. So today is my traditional post-conference recuperation day.

I do want to thank a LOT of people who worked hard to make this year's conference so successful:

To Kroll OnTrack, NTR Global, and all 40 of our other sponsors - THANKS for making our event as special as it was. Your participation and special CT offerings were a huge part of the conference this year, and we all appreciate our partnerships with you.
To Jim Greenfield (CT-Manhattan), Alan from Adtran, Mike from Fonality and Mike from CommPartners - THANKS for making our "IP Telephony 101" workshop such a smashing success.
To Randy from Cabinet NG - I think we're all going to be looking at electronic document management options for our clients now thanks to your workshop - thank you for being part of our event.
To Crystal & Stuart from ReachLocal and Nipa from Jenesys Group - I think your presentations will have the most tangible benefit to our small business clients and to our own websites, and we're looking forward to our national deals with both of you - THANKS.
To Marsha from EMSI - your PR 101 workshop was the "crossover" hit of the conference, attracting franchisees from all our sister-brands as well. And your performance during the "CT Idol" event was spot-on perfect, and a great highlight for day 2 of the event - thank you.
To Matt Makowicz from Ambition Mission - thanks for not one but TWO workshops on Selling Managed Services, and for the bootcamp & book deals. Several CT's told me your workshops were their favorite session of the conference, and I heard the bootcamp 'prize' definitely made Friday night's poker game more interesting - thank you.
To the eight CT's (Bill, Brian, Jim, Roy, Rob, Jay, Marcus, & Chris) who were brave enough to talk about their business strategies, successes, and challenges during the BEST roundtable and the Successful CT roundtable - THANKS. Many people - including me - always find these sessions to be the most valuable because it's "real" experience, not just theory. Thank You.
To the six CT's (Mary Ellen, Charles, John, David, Marcus, & Raine) who bravely entertained and educated us all during the "CT Idol" competition - thank you. Congratulations to Charles for winning the event, and special thanks to John for teaching us all that bribery doesn't pay. :)
To Ramsey from MSP On Demand, John from 19Marketplace, Crystal from ReachLocal, Jamie from MSPSN, Rob from Microsoft, Mike from Zenith, and especially to Brian for filling in for SecureMyCompany - THANKS for making our Recurring Revenue workshop a smashing success.
To Mort from Meraki and the guys from DattoBackup - I think you're tied for the most innovative new products we saw this year. And to Patrick from DRG and Mitch from DrBackup - I think you're tied for most reliable conference sponsors. We appreciate you all being part of our event - thank you.

Thanks also to my staff, Fayola, Chris, Audrey & Glenn, for excellent work this weekend, and thanks to all our partners at MerryMeeting for organizing a great event. And thanks to Corey from CT-Independence for getting our own routers setup so we didn't have to pay the crazy hotel internet rates!

And special thanks has to go to Allyn Davies, who worked tirelessly to organize everything. Putting together a normal CT conference is never easy, but I can't imagine putting together combined conferences for five different MerryMeeting brands - I think at one point we were using 10 different meeting rooms simultaneously, with multiple lunches & breaks & speakers & social events & the walk for charity.... I can't imagine putting all that together, but it all worked out really well. THANK YOU.

Next year we're just starting to make plans but we're looking at a late April / early May date - mark your calendars! If you're a CT or a CT vendor, look out for some surveys coming out soon to solicit your input on content & formats for next year's event.

Thanks,
Chip

Cleveland Rocks!

2008-09-06T04:42:00.004-04:00

We're about halfway through the main part of the Computer Troubleshooters North American conference here in Cleveland tonight, and so far it's been an excellent event. This is the first time we've combined conferences with the other MerryMeeting brands, and even though we don't see them much (all but one of our sessions is CT-specific) it's made for a much larger, more energetic event than we've had in a while.

I think though that there's something else different about this conference. Mark Mitchell, owner of Computer Troubleshooters Lansing, said something yesterday that really seemed to sum it up - he said "Two years ago everyone would have been discussing the best way to defrag a customer's hard drive during a tune-up. Today everyone's talking about the right technology solutions for their small busines customers." And it's true - almost everything this week has been about finding the right technology to help our small business customers improve their organizations through technology. Whether it's finding new ways to customize our BEST (managed services) programs to meet a customer's needs, or whether it's exploring new opportunities in backup, IP Telephony (VoIP), or Search Engine Marketing, everyone this year is enthusiastically taking on the role of IT consultant rather than computer fix-it guy, and that's a good thing.

Technically the conference is going into it's fifth day tomorrow, but the first two days were just training three new franchisees (San Diego, Phoenix, Colorado Springs) so that's not technically part of the conference proper. The real conference began on Thursday with our Regional Directors day, where we analyzed data from successful and less successful franchisees around the system to come up with better ways to coach and support them. My favorite from this day is that our RD's are going to restructure one of their monthly training sessions so that they're functional instead of geographic - this means that every CT in the US & Canada will have TEN different training courses they can take every month (and that get recorded to store in our archives), and three coaching & support calls.

Today was the first day of the main conference, and we wound up with about 90 attendees from CT plus 250 from the other brands. We also had an awesome vendor turnout with over 20 great vendor partners here to update us on (or introduce us to) their products and any CT special deals they have with us. We started the day with a keynote from Sam Tyler, a PBS documentary filmmaker who has interviewed business motivation legends like Tom Peters, Stephen Covey, Jim Collins, and most recently worked on a film about Lance Armstrong. He shared his analysis of what we can learn from each of them, along with some very motivational video clips.

Then we got into our CT sessions with an opening presentation followed by our (extended) BEST roundtable. Four Computer Troubleshooters who are among our top managed services oriented locations talked about their businesses and offered advice and insight to the rest of us in a 90 minute Q&A session. (Big thank-you to Brian, Bill, Roy, & Jim for teaching us!)

Following a lunch break we watched Sam Tyler's video on Lance Armstrong (excellent), then the CT's chose one of two tracks: either a Selling Managed Services workshop with Matt Makowicz (author of books on Selling and Marketing managed services and a fantastic sales traininer), OR an IP Telephony workshop featuring gurus from CommPartners, Fonality, and Adtran, and lead by our own VoIP guru Jim Greenfield (Computer Troubleshooters NY Metro). I got to sit in on both sessions - both were amazing. (We also had a "Women in Business" session midway through the afternoon - I did not sit in on that one, for obvious reasons).

The day ended with a combination local beer tasting & vendor expo, which for any conference planners out there I have to say this is something everyone should do because it gives the attendees a reason to spend a lot of time talking with the vendors in a very comfortable atmosphere. We followed that up with our CT awards dinner, which went well even though we had some technical glitches with the awards themselves and some were missing! We'll fix that. It was impressive as always to hand out the 5-year award pins to the CT's who've been growing their businesses since 2003 (or longer if they didn't pick up their pins at last year's conference). Next month will be even more interesting as I hand out our first-ever TEN year award pins at the Australian conference - it's amazing to think that four of us will have been in business for a decade now!

(And I won't mention the after-hours poker game that I'm completely unaware of, but congratulations Tomás for winning the Matt Makowicz managed services boot camp prize!)

I'm really pumped up about the new energy in our group this weekend. It's easy to see why we're the world's best computer service / technology solutions franchise!

Almost a Mac Guy

2008-08-24T18:13:00.008-04:00

It's been two weeks now so I guess it's official - I'm now a regular Mac user. I realize that by announcing this I'm risking all my true techie credibility, but I'm convinced it was the right choice.

A few months ago I knew I'd be trading in my trusty Compaq for something faster & cleaner, so I started reviewing the options available. I'm a very picky computer user, and I have very specific needs:

I keep archives of all my past emails (you'd be surprised how often this is helpful), which means over 20GB of Outlook PST files. Besides needing a ton of storage space, speed & memory is a handy thing (even though I don't have all these files open at once), and naturally I need Microsoft Outlook.
I also like to keep a local copy of our FTP server, so I can grab any past marketing document when someone asks for it, so that's another 40GB of space needed.
I travel alot, so lightweight is helpful, but strength is good too - I don't need something that's going to break down on me when I'm halfway around the world on a 3-week Computer Troubleshooters road trip.
Battery life and easy access to spare batteries and power cables is also a must-have when I'm on the road.

Besides those I need the usual features: multi-core, 802.11g, bluetooth, lots of USB & Firewire ports, an SD slot, good screen, etc. So I started looking a newer Compaq's, Dells, Lenovos, Sonys, and Toshibas - the usual suspects.

I became intrigued with Macs though for three reasons. First, I read this article from PCWorld magazine last October which showed that the fastest Windows notebook they tested was - a Mac! A Macbook Pro to be specific. Since the introduction of Apple's OSX and Bootcamp it's become easy for anyone to run Windows on a Macintosh, and the advantage of Mac's "closed design" is that the hardware tends to work much better together typical Windows-based PC's. The combination means that a modern Mac can do a really good job of being a Windows machine now.

Second, when I was up in NY earlier this year visiting my friend Jeff Leventhal (founder of OnForce.com), I noticed that he was using a Macbook Pro for his primary computer too. If Jeff, who is one of the smartest people I know and very much a "techie" can use a Mac, I started to think that maybe it's OK for the rest of us.

But the final push for Mac came when I started working on the CT operating plans for 2009 and beyond. Three trends are factoring heavily into our projections for business in the future: "Cloud Computing" / Web 2.0, Virtualization, and the resurgence of the Mac. As we move more towards a "cloud computing" environment where applications are mostly or entirely web-based (i.e. Google Apps, Salesforce.com, etc) the local Operating System becomes less and less important. Virtualization is revolutionizing the server side of our business but desktop virtualization programs like Parallels and VMWare Fusion let Macintosh computers run Windows (or Linux) side-by-side with the Mac OS. And with Macs becoming more popular (more and more CT locations are starting to service Apples) I just wanted to see what all the fuss is about.

So I took the plunge last month - I bought a slightly used Macbook Pro on Ebay (I didn't want to spend too much on it since I wasn't sure if it would work for me or not), added memory and a larger hard drive (the latter being much more difficult than on a PC), and added VMWare Fusion. What I've found is that my Windows apps work just as well (actually better) than they did on my older Compaq, but the little things that Mac does so well are making things much more efficient and pleasant for me. For example, when I go to the office the first thing I do is plug in my 2nd monitor. On my old PC this would involve taking a minute or two to go into the Windows display settings and setup the resolutions for both screens, and before leaving I'd have to make sure I didn't have any apps open on the 2nd monitor before I hibernated the PC or else they could be tricky to find again when the PC woke up in single-screen mode. With the Mac, I just plug in the screen, and the system automatically activates the screen at an appropriate resolution. If I unplug it any windows that were open on the 2nd screen automatically move to the first screen - with no work on my part. It all takes just seconds, and works so well it's amazing I put up with doing things the old way for so long.

Other little things that I really like: the magnetic power cord is really amazing. It saves me probably 4 or 5 seconds every time I plug in, which doesn't sound like alot but it adds up. I like the fact that the Mac knows if I have external speakers plugged in or not, so it remembers what volume I left it on for the speakers versus using the internal ones. The double-finger scroll is amazingly useful too. And the overall interface - including the Dock and Expose', are much easier and faster than the Windows OS.

And although it's not strictly a Mac thing, there are some amazing features in VMWare Fusion's new beta. For example, when I'm in Windows and access the "My Documents" folder, it's really accessing the "Documents" folder on the Mac partition. This is amazingly helpful since the two OS'es don't easily see each others' files, and it does the same thing for the Desktop. It also manages sharing drives, DVD's, USB ports, and bluetooth connections for both operating systems.

However there are some things that Windows does better. I still haven't figured out how to do the equivalent of ctrl-selecting multiple files in the Mac Finder, for example. And I like Napster's music library interface better than iTunes. Also it's much easier to fix things in Windows, or to use utilities like FTP on the Windows side of things. And since Microsoft discontinued the Mac version of Outlook a few years back I'm forced to keep using my Windows version of the app to keep up with all my files. The MacbookPro keyboard is also not as easy to type on as my previous Compaqs and Dells.

Still overall I like the Mac better, and I can see myself migrating more and more to a Mac-only environment in the future. However, as Doug Smith (CT - Newton County, GA) keeps pointing out, the 'newness' hasn't worn off yet so maybe I'll feel differently in a few weeks.

So what about you - is there a Mac in your future?

Screenshots: (top) my Mac desktop including Outlook running in a VMWare Fusion virtual environment.
(bottom) the same desktop "exploded" by clicking on Expose' to show all windows.

Remote Tech Support

2008-07-21T21:39:00.001-04:00

CT is featured in this article about Remote Tech Support services from Processor.com.

Reimagining Computer Repair

2008-07-21T14:49:00.002-04:00

Computer Troubleshooters has always been on the cutting edge of new improvements in our industry, and one recent example is our early support for a new tool called Reimage. When we first got introduced to the Reimage team back in early 2007 I thought they had a GREAT idea for a tool that could revolutionize the computer repair industry. I also thought they'd never be able to built it into an actual product.

But, lo and behold they did, and Reimage became an official part of our Preferred Vendor program this summer. A recent article in an Israeli newspaper highlights the benefits Reimage brings to Computer Troubleshooters and especially to our clients, by reducing repair times considerably in some common situations that used to be very difficult and time-consuming.

You can find the article here.

Life after Managed Services

2008-07-17T16:53:00.004-04:00

Many Computer Troubleshooters have heard me tell the story about how, when I first got into this business almost 20 years ago, everyone used to think my business was destined to be a huge success. And I would disagree, becuase (as I often told them) most of my work was in helping small businesses install and troubleshoot hardware and software, and since hardware and software were getting easier to install and more reliable I probably wouldn't have a business for long. I usually predicted 5 years, which since I got started in 1989 probably means I would have closed somewhere around 1994.

Fortunately, everyone else was right and I was wrong. What I didn't realize then was that no matter how much technology changes, businesses still need someone to be their liaison to the world of IT. Originally it was installing and troubleshooting, later it was networking, then setting up internet & email & websites, then defending from spam & spyware & viruses. Today the popular trend is so-called "managed services", which is sill the hottest buzzword in the IT press. Managed services is so hot that an entire industry has sprung up around it: companies like Mobilize SMB and MSPU help independent companies learn how to structure managed services plans, Robin Robins will help you market them, Matt Makowicz will help you sell them, Ingram Micro will help you with the software. And when Dell got involved by buying Silverback last year, the industry got a little nervous wondering if big companies might start to push us little guys out of business. In fact there's so much news on managed services that I've set www.mspmentor.net as my home page just to keep up with it all!

So the biggest managed services news lately has been the prediction by Akash Saraf, the CEO of Zenith Infotech (one of the largest providers of managed services tools & infrastructure and a very popular vendor partner of Computer Troubleshooters) that managed services has a limited lifespan. Akash is considered extremely prescient in the IT community, and has made some truly brilliant moves in the way he's developed Zenith's product offerings and especially it's revolutionary BDR device (which btw is EXTREMELY popular with CT's small business clients). So when so much of the SMB IT industry considers "managed services" as the way of the future, it's remarkable when someone of Akash's stature reminds us of the truest maxim in all of IT: things change.

It shouldn't be a surprise really. Looking back on our business it seems that if you pick any 5-year period our business in the 5th year is very different than our business in the 1st year. And things that are bleeding-edge today will be tomorrow's bread & butter. We've been hearing about cloud computing and virtual environments for years now, and we're finally at the stage where some companies like ExternalIT are offering legitimate hosted desktop/server environments using traditional Microsoft Windows & Office environments. We're also seeing some organizations, especially in the developing world, choose to build their entire IT infrastructures around hosted environments like Google Apps or SugarCRM.

If the whole premise of "managed services" is to help clients better manage their IT infrastructure, how does that happen when there isn't a local IT infrastructure anymore? That's the point that Akash and others are raising.

Not to worry. When CT launched our BEST program back in 2006 (our flavor of "managed services"), we future-proofed it by incorporating a concept we call "enhanced vendors". These are technologies that can help our small business clients take their businesses to the next level, and this year we've really been ramping up our training for those technologies. IP Telephony, Document Management, CRM solutions, and Search Engine Marketing are just some examples of the "enhanced vendor" programs we've been developing.

But I'm also reminded of the Gartner study in late 2005 which warned that service providers who didn't adopt a managed services model by 2007 would be out of business. Much of our industry is still using the older break/fix model but is still in business, although there are certainly many indications (inside and outside of CT) that those who are focusing on managed services are seeing higher revenues and lower workloads).

IT will always change - that's inevitable. But as long as small businesses depend on technology, Computer Troubleshooter's role is to be the ones helping our clients make the most effective and efficient use of their technology. Or as one CT put it this week, "to be the glue between the service and the serviced". For the next few years that means saving our clients money & frustration through managed services. After that it'll be supporting hosted environments and coordinating enhanced vendors. And after that? We'll just have to wait and see.

Chip on Dr Pat

2008-07-15T18:00:00.002-04:00

Recently I was interviewed on the "Dr Pat" radio show, here's an MP3 version of the show (click on the picture):

Small Business Advocate

2008-07-09T11:51:00.002-04:00

This week I was honored to be a guest on Jim Blasingame's Small Business Advocate radio program (See http://www.jbsba.com/ for more info about Jim, and some good links to small business resources).

Here's a link to the recording itself:

Dates to Remember

2008-07-01T17:51:00.005-04:00

If you're considering joining the world's best computer franchise, now is a GREAT time to do it, and we've got three events for potential CT's where we'll explain why:

Prospect Webinar, July 10, 7pm eastern
Prospect Webinar (draft), July 3, 5pm eastern*
Discovery Day, Atlanta Offices, August 2nd, 9am

We're especially interested in recruiting people with existing IT businesses, with strong technical skills, and/or with a sales background (with or without IT skills), so if any of these describe you, please do contact Chip (chip@comptroub.com) or Glenn (gcox@comptroub.com) for information about current incentives and how to participate in these upcoming events.

My Vacation Pictures (St Louis 2008)

2008-07-01T17:43:00.003-04:00

I don't often (or ever) share my vacation photos in public, but I did want to share these becuase while I was away last week I had the unusual opportunity to include another CT in my vacation.

Every year since 2001 I've chaperoned a group of youth from my church on their annual mission trip. This year we went to St Louis, Missouri and the work we were doing was helping an organization called Metro Homeless Center which provides an emergency shelter, transitional housing, and some limited social services and food supplies to homeless women in the St Louis area. The first day we worked on cleaning up a basement and organizing supplies, painting walls, and clearing out store rooms. But I heard one of the shelter staff say something about "the computers" so I told her I was a computer tech if they needed help with any of that.

It turns out they had been trying to build a tech center to teach computer skills to their clients and to give them better resources to use to look for work, apartments, etc. They had acquired some donated PCs but they were being stored at a staff person's home because the room they wanted to use was full of junk and they had no funds to wire the room or setup the computers. They showed me the room, and I told them we could make it work. But being without things like cable testers & crimpers and all the usual comforts of my home work bench, I was a little stuck. So I called the nearest CT, Rick Cohen (Computer Troubleshooters of Clayton, just a few miles away).

Not only did Rick agree to let me borrow his tools, he let me borrow himself as he donated a full day's work to help us get the center setup. Besides being just a generally great thing to do for the community, we're hoping that the shelter will become a regular customer for Rick as well, since a very similar shelter here close to me has been a customer of mine for years. And I found out that one of our youth (we had 15 kids with us from ages 12 to 18) told her mom that her favorite part of the mission trip was when Rick taught her how to crimp RJ45 connectors. (seriously)

It was a great week for me, and made all the more so by being able to share it with another CT. Thanks Rick!

-Chip

P.S. one of the pics is Rick with some of the youth while the room was still a work in progress, the other is Rick's photo when he came back and finished the room. Note that I could only get 7 of 12 computers working, which is why I'm not a tech anymore.

CT in CostCo Almanac!

2008-06-01T17:36:00.002-04:00

For those of you with CostCo's near you, pick up a copy of the 2008 Costco Almanac at your local store and check out the computer tips from CT on page 30.

For those of you without a nearby Costco, or who are too cheap to buy your own copy, check it out online here: http://www.costcoconnection.com/connection/2008almanac/

More CT on TV

2008-05-05T08:36:00.002-04:00

CT has been featured on several more TV segments recently, including Fox morning news shows in Philly and Detroit (Detroit's video is here: http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/myfox/MyFox/pages/sidebar_video.jsp?contentId=6463026&version=1&locale=EN-US).

We were also recently featured nationally on BusinessWeekTV, see http://www.businessweek.com/mediacenter/video/businessweektv/1d7b842f08d686fbabf95eb95bb90236caecf6e4.html

This was a fun segment to shoot - Jill Bennett and BusinessWeek wanted to do the shoot at a customer's location but in Manhattan near their studios. Fortunately Jim Greenfield in our NYC offices suggested his customer Steve Carroll, and their 5th avenue apartment was a perfect location. Steve was also very generous and agreed to be on camera too, which worked well.

We also owe a special "Thank You" to our partners at ReImage who gave us the "dirty" PC we used in the segment. Reimage has developed a tool which lets us restore a damaged or infected Windows XP system to a clean, useable state in just a few minutes, and so they've built up a "library" of bad system images which came in handy. Otherwise I wasn't sure what to do when the producers asked us if we could "show a computer virus" on camera!

Chip

Profits in Kuwait

2008-04-26T18:00:00.002-04:00

Our partners Gulf Franchising Corporation posted a profit for Q1, thanks in part to improvements in their Computer Troubleshooters operations in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Dubai.
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/kuwaitnews/pagesdetails.asp?nid=15907&ccid=12

My first TV

2008-04-18T20:07:00.003-04:00

This week was interesting for me as I did my first three TV interviews, all in Cleveland. Our National Marketing Council (an elected group of CT franchisees) did a good job hiring a PR company this year, and so after several weeks of print & radio promotion we're now moving into the TV phase of the campaign, and I think it's off to a good start.

First up I did the "That's Life" show with Robin Swoboda on WJW (Fox, channel 8). What a fun way to get started! Robin and her crew are a real hoot, and their idea to smash a computer with a baseball bat, plus the great on-screen graphics, really made it a fun segment to do. You can see it by clicking the "Video" link on this page.

Next up I was welcomed on News Channel 5 at Noon on WEWS (ABC). Paul Kiska interviewed me, and the whole staff was extremely friendly and very well organized. I don't have a video link for this one yet, but I'll add it when I do.

Finally I ended my Cleveland trip with the team at "Good Company" on WKYC (NBC), where I had the honor of being interviewed by Cleveland TV legend Fred Griffith. (See the video here.). Interestingly Fred and I had a chance to chat a bit before the segment, and he'd just recently had spyware problems on his own computers (which he and his wife use to write their popular cookbooks).

Speaking of media legends I should also mention that I was interviewed on The Wills & Snyder Morning Show on WTAM radio (AM 1100) by Bill Wills. I'll post an MP3 of that interview soon too.

All in all I really enjoyed my time in Cleveland this week, and I'd like to especially thank the media folks who made the trip so easy for me. Hopefully we were able to share some information and have a little fun too. But the important part (for me anyway) is that our CT locations in northeast Ohio got some extra exposure and quite a few phone calls from new clients too. Next week: New York!

The next 30 days

2008-04-14T23:49:00.003-04:00

The next 30 days are set to be really busy and really exciting for Computer Troubleshooters, as you can probably tell from this email I just sent around the USA group:

Hi folks,

The next 30 days should be pretty exciting for CT. Between now and the middle of May, we will:

1) Be featured on BusinessWeek TV! (tentative April 26 or 27, check your local listings or their website for your local air time). This is pretty good national TV exposure for us.
2) Be featured on local TV news shows in Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Austin
3) Be featured on the national radio program "This Week in America with Ric Bratton" (http://www.talkzone.com/show.asp?sid=528#MoreDetailedDescription)
4) Be interviewed locally on radio stations in Cleveland (WTAM), New Jersey (WNJC), Florida (WWBA), Pennsylvania (WXTU & WOGL), Texas (KLGO), and more.
5) Be in CostCo's customer magazine (in May, we think)
6) Be in Home Business Owners magazine (also in May we think)
7) Be ranked in Entrepreneur's Top Home-Based Franchises issue (and later on in their Top Low Cost Franchises issue)
8) Begin our 2nd print publicity campaign (working on topics now)
9) Enjoy an excellent CT mini-conference at the Philly-based Mid-Atlantic Conference (the only CT conference by franchisees for franchisees)
10) Finish collecting your annual reports (thanks to everyone who's submitted thus far) and begin releasing the results.
11) Supposedly launch a new direct mail portal site (there is some question about this now because of possible vendor issues)
12) Release a newly updated ENGAGE marketing manual
13) Release the first draft of the new RD manual (to RD's)
14) Launch the revised version of BEST Basic, and the first official version of HOST
15) Announce more sponsors and topics for the big conference in Cleveland, Sept 4-6 (already announced: Dell is a Gold sponsor, and Matt Makowicz is doing a 3-hour managed services sales workshop)

The publicity push detailed above is thanks to your elected National Marketing Council - they did a great job in reviewing and choosing a good PR company for us to work with. The next step for the NAF is reviewing and choosing the SEO company who will overhaul our national and local website templates -this has been slightly delayed because we have a possible partnership with a major national SEO franchise in the works which, if successful, will not only help us improve our websites but also give us an international network of extra salespeople promoting our services. Watch for announcements about that in hopefully the near future.

If you live in any of the cities where our radio interviews are taking place, and are able to record them, please send me a copy. Likewise with the TV interviews - these should be saved for future promotional use if we can get decent copies.

Next week I hope to see a lot of you in Philly at the mid-Atlantic conference!
As always, Fayola, Chris, myself, Audrey, and Glenn are always here to assist you if needed.

Regards,
Chip

Our TechRepublican CT

2008-04-02T11:22:00.002-04:00

Erik Eckel, owner of CT-Louisville in Kentucky and occasional correspondent for TechRepublic.com, recently released an online TechRepublic Photo Gallery on "How To Setup Your Own Mobile Office". It's some great info on how Erik has setup his mobile office in his Computer Troubleshooters vehicle.

SMBNation

2008-04-02T11:06:00.002-04:00

I really enjoyed this past weekend's SMBNation East conference (see www.smbnation.com). Harry Brelsford always creates an enjoyable and productive event, and each one is unique. This year the agenda was skewed towards longer, more detailed presentations ("deep dives"), which is a popular request we hear too so I expect our annual conference in September will be similar.

From a Computer Troubleshooters perspective it was productive both because we met a lot of independent SMB IT business owners who we think would make excellent additions to the CT family, and also becuase we built relationships with a good number of high quality vendors who were in attendance. Some are already in our Preferred Vendor program, like Autotask, AVG, Acronis, etc, and some are going through the review process now (Google, HP, Kaseya). We also met some brand new potential partners, including Matt Makowicz who authored the new book "A Guide to Selling Managed Services".

I also had the opportunity to meet and "talk shop" with the CEO of CMIT, and two franchisees from Expetec (both are "friendly competitors" to CT). All very nice guys, and (unlike a few bad apples in our industry) all seem to be committed to taking care of the customer while building a successful business for themselves along the way.

Thanks to Chris Radak (CTUSA) and Randy Crainin (CT-Freehold) for helping me out at the show, and a very special THANKS to Harry Brelsford for inviting us to a wonderful event.

Australian Financial Review

2008-03-27T17:32:00.002-04:00

As I'm heading out the door for this weekend's SMBNation event in New Jersey, I heard about an article in the Australian Financial Review which mentioned CT. Here's a link:
http://www.afr.com/home/viewer.aspx?EDP://20080325000020460578&magsection=weekly-enterprise&title=Professional+geeks%2c+sensibly+priced&source=/_xmlfeeds/enterprise/feed.xml

Also I noticed our Aussie cousins are doing a better job keeping their website updated than we are - you can check it out at http://www.comptroub.com.au/html/home.

-Chip

Upcoming Opportunities to Learn about CT

2008-03-20T15:39:00.005-04:00

Our excellent publicity team keeps on rolling - here are some upcoming opportunities to hear more about what Computer Troubleshooters can do for you:

Radio interviews:
WBT-AM 1110, Charlotte, NC, 3/23/2008 at 7:50am
WWBA-AM 1040, Tampa, FL, 4/26/08 (airs during the following week)
"This Week in America" (syndicated to 100 stations), 4/12 to 4/20

TV interviews:
WJW (Fox), Cleveland : April 16 during "That's Life"
WKYC (NBC), Cleveland: April 17 during "Good Company"
WJBK (Fox), Detroit: May 5 during "Fox 2 News Morning"

Online:
TFM blog: http://todaysfacilitymanager.com/facilityblog/2008/03/seven-steps-to-healthy-computer.html
Florida Weekly: http://www.floridaweekly.com/news/2008/0221/Top_News/010.html

In Person:
SMB Nation East conference: www.smbnation.com (March 29 & 30)

New Zealand

2008-03-17T15:10:00.000-04:00

New Zealand was the second country Computer Troubleshooters ever operated in (beating the USA by a couple of months), and as such the CT-NZ team has always been very proud of their place in the CT family, and rightfully so. This was my first time ever attending a CT-NZ Conference, so I was looking forward to it.

The conference this year was in Christchurch, a nice, friendly city on the south island of New Zealand. I loved the downtown area - very walkable, lots of shops and restaurants and gathering areas, and very scenic too. Lots of local ads offer all sorts of day trips outside the city, whether you're looking for wine tasting or hiking or skiiing - there's plenty of opportunities. Tourism is obviously a huge industry here, and I can see why - it's a great place for a vacation.

And a great place for a conference. About 30 people attended the CT conference, hosted by our NZ National Director Dave Mudford:

(Here Dave explains his theories on time travel)

Like the conference that started my trip in South Africa, much of the focus here was on ways to work smarter and provide better support for our clients - namely through B.E.S.T., which came up in several sessions. We also had some great vendors participating in the event, including our global partners AVG, OnTrack, and Microsoft.

One of the more interesting parts of the conference was a new competition between Australia and New Zealand, christened the Trans-Tasman Cup. The competition this year was the best 10-minute sales pitch for BEST, and featured two very tough competitors. Representing the "home team" was Dennis Jones (CT-Hamilton North), who did a presentation based on the cost savings a typical small business customer would see by implementing a BEST plan. It was very compelling! But representing the "visitors" was Sonia Cuff, who was one of six Aussies to attend the conference. Sonia used a unique and creative detective story, "on the prowl to find the culprit robbing small business owners of their time and productivity". Very brilliant, very creative presentation, so you'll notice Sonia's husband Tony holding the Trans-Tasman Cup in the group photo below:

All in all I had a great time in Christchurch, and it was a great way to wrap up my 3-week round the world CT tour. I've had a great time and met some great people, but now it's time to start the 22-hour trip home to my own bed, my own shower, and a fresh change of clothes!

Meanwhile, Back at Home

2008-03-15T20:24:00.003-04:00

It's an odd feeling to be thousands of miles from home and hear about serious problems in your city on the news. Atlanta has had some very unusual tornados and storms over the last 24 hours, which has caused extensive damage in the downtown area. Hotels, office buildings, and two stadiums (stadia?) are apparently in pretty bad shape, at least one smaller building has collapsed, and a state of emergency has been declared for the downtown and Cabbagetown areas. A small number of people are dead but thankfully the injuries overall are small considering the damage involved.

I called my brother to make sure they're all OK, and apart from spending some time in their basement as the tornadoes come through they're all fine. The weather report right now looks like the worst is over, which is good news for me since I hope to be landing at the Atlanta airport in about 48 hours.

For more storm news and photos see www.ajc.com.

Australia

2008-03-14T17:56:00.006-04:00

Well, after visiting one of the newest CT countries (Malaysia), I traveled to the ancestral home of Computer Troubleshooters - Australia. My plans (which went awry) was to have an 8-hour stopover in Sydney to have lunch with my original business partners and dear friends, Wilson & Suzanne McOrist. Wilson & Suzanne are the founders of CT, and up until a few weeks ago they ran the global company while I handled operational support, program development, and the USA operations. At the end of January, after a lot of planning, Wilson & Suzanne decided the time was right to step down so we arranged a transaction where they essentially sold their shares to MerryMeeting (our partners here in the US) and my job changed to "Global CEO".

So I was looking forward to catching up with my friends and finding out how their "retirement" is going. Unfortunately I was so focused on the meeting that I neglected some important things - like verifying where my luggage was going, or confirming my next flight. This would cause problems later on!

But I arrived at Sydney's international terminal, took the bus to the domestic terminal, and found the McOrist's sitting an airport cafe'. We took a taxi to Coogi Beach and enjoyed a nice chat in the sun followed by lunch at a beach cafe. All very nice. Later we took another taxi to visit Steve Paino, the Regional Director for New South Wales and the oldest CT in Australia. Here's a photo of the five of us (including Steve's wife Lorraine) in Steve's retail shop:

Steve has a nice, highly visible shop for handling computer service requests in Botany (his territory). Its' on the corner of two main streets, and the green & orange CT logo stands out well.

Afterwards I spent some time with Wilson & Suzanne at the airport before they left on a 3:30 flight back home (they live in Coffs Harbour, a vacation spot in between Sydney and Brisbane). I sat around waiting on what I thought was a 10pm flight to Christchurch, New Zealand. However, long story short, it turns out my flight ARRIVED in Christchurch at 10pm, it actually DEPARTED Sydney at 5pm, which is about an hour before I actually bothered to check on the flight. So I realized I'd be spending an unexpected night in Australia!

The problem with unexpected overnight stays is finding accomodation. And it doesn't help that I'm a pretty cheap guy - until this cropped up I was proud of the fact that my 21-day, 7-country trip was going to cost less than $7000 total (mostly for the airfare). So after some internet research (because the airport hotels were more than I wanted to pay, or were full) I found a lovely run-down motel in Blakehurst for only $80/night. Plus $25 for the taxi ride out there. Plus whatever medications I'll need later on for whatever diseases I'm sure I caught from the lovely lopsided motel bed. Seriously, this place was bad - the TV got 7 channels of static, several light fixtures were missing, and there were many mysterious stains around the room in all sorts of intriguing colors and shapes. I didn't sleep well. BUT I've been in worse places, and I did meet some interesting people. One gentleman who was checking in behind me offered to give me a ride to the airport the next morning, which I accepted. Turns out he was driving a 23-seat bus, so there was no shortage of space. He and his wife do tours for visiting university students in Australia and New Zealand, and he'd just dropped off a group (along with his wife) that day so they could travel on to NZ. Very nice guy - we had a nice chat on the way to the airport at 6am, and it saved me $25 in taxi fare!

(my motel room was equipped with state-of-the-art 1974 technology,
including this handy bank of switches next to the bed, for switching on and off
some of the working lights, the TV with no reception, or the leaky air conditioner).

The benefit to my overnight detour is that I wound up on the same flight as Australia's CT Director, Nick Roche. Nick's a great guy, and so we were able to talk some business on the flight and share a taxi once we arrived in Christchurch.

The exciting thing for me though is that Christchurch is my last stop before I head home. Three weeks on the road is starting to wear on me a bit, and I admit I'm looking forward more and more to my own bed and a better selection of clothes!

Next Stop: Christchurch!

InsiderPages

2008-03-14T17:56:00.001-04:00

John Goodman, our CT in Princeton, NJ recently received a great review on Insider Pages:
http://www.insiderpages.com/b/15240155154?notification=1

Great job John!

Chip

Malaysia!

2008-03-12T23:00:00.004-04:00

(That's Yio on my right, Gerald on my left, and a very jetlagged me in the orange shirt)

Country number 5 on my trip is also one of Computer Troubleshooter's newest. Yio Lim Han and Gerald Oo converted their existing IT services business less than six months ago when they took over as our Master Franchise for Malaysia (operating in Kuala Lumpur), and they've recently been joined by Patrick Chan & Anthony Lim (operating in Petaling Jaya). Already the Malaysia CT team is making great progress, especially with B.E.S.T. (our managed services program).

BEST has been a common theme in my travels. South Africa is just launching their managed services initiative, building their BEST program along with a local remote monitoring company. Egypt is still mostly selling non-managed service plans (our CAP and VIP plans), but is looking at applying some BEST principles (mostly just remote monitoring and support) to improve profits and service. India is looking at combining BEST managed services with IT staffing to create a new managed staffing business model. But here in Malaysia, CT is finding that the BEST works just as designed.

Like Egypt & India though Malaysia has to work around some economic challenges. Because the typical income in Malaysia is lower than in the US, some things like hardware & software are proportionately more expensive than they are elsewhere. To help their customers CT-Malaysia implements a lot of thin-client solutions, where multiple users share the use of one PC. This reduces hardware expenditures and some software costs, although some software manufacturers require multiple licenses in thin-client situations so the savings is not always huge.

I had less than two days in Malaysia, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. I arrived at 7am on Monday, where Yio & Gerald were kind enough to pick me up (KL's airport is over an hour outside the city itself). We had a quick breakfast then went straight to their offices to meet their staff and discuss plans. CT-Malaysia has been the first to adapt a new business plan format we introduced recently for local use, so we spent some time discussing that. Later Patrick Chan arrived and we went out to a local restaurant for lunch ("enjoying" a thick Malaysian rainshower along the way).

After lunch they dropped me at my hotel: The Prince Hotel & Residences. Best hotel I've stayed in on this trip, thanks in part to the very low cost of living in Malaysia. It's a 4-star hotel but was still one of the least expensive on my trip (I paid around $120 for my one night there). You just can't beat this view:

That's of course the famous Petronas twin towers in the center. The tower to the right is the Maxxis (local cell phone company) tower, which was helpful since it has a giant digital clock at the top. At night it was very easy for me to tell the time just by glancing out the window!

Monday night Yio, Gerald, Patrick and I ate dinner at a restaurant called Top Hat, which is also one of Gerald's clients. Great food, and great company. Afterwards we tried to go to KL tower, but it was late and the observation deck was closed, so we went to a bazaar in chinatown instead. It turns out Gerald is a fearsome negotiator when it comes to getting bargains! I purchased a famous-name watch (clearly counterfeit based on the price, but you couldn't tell by looking at it) as a souvenier. It was listed at $988 RM (Rinngit Malaysian, or about $320 US). The vendor offered it for 120RM, which seemed like a good deal to me. Gerald insisted 25 was a fair price. After considerable haggling we got the watch for 70RM (about $20), which Gerald insisted still left the vendor with a good profit. We did some similar bargaining for a few more souveniers, then we said our goodbyes and called it a night.

Tuesday I needed to catch up on some work, so I spent the morning doing that, then checked out of the hotel at noon. I got a much-needed haircut, then set out to walk around and maybe do some more shopping. I really wanted to get a nice shirt - for some reason I like to buy clothes as souveniers, since they'll be more use to me than just some trinket sitting on a shelf, so I have shirts from Las Vegas and Cairo, and a sportcoat from Bucharest. I figured adding a shirt from Kuala Lumpur would be a nice addition, plus it's as good a reason as any to walk around the city.

KL is a gorgeous city - clean, lush, modern, and safe. "Tehksi"s can take you almost anywhere for about $5US, but I prefer to walk. Having been told the Petronas Towers were too far to walk I started out at a local shopping district called Buket Bintang, but after a while I decided to see just how far the towers were so I started walking that way. It's not too bad, so in 30 minutes I was there. Underneath the towers is a huge mall called KL City Center, so I went into a local coffee shop in the mall for a liquid lunch of iced coffee. Outside the mall is a nice plaza area with ponds and waterfalls, so I wandered through there for a bit before deciding to head back. I took a tehksi to Buket Bintang, still in my quest to find a shirt. I did find a shirt, and bought the largest size they have (XXL), but later I learned that Malaysians are generally much smaller than Americans, so the shirt was nowhere close to fitting on my (and I normally wear XL back home). Ah well, it'll be a souvenier for someone else.

My last memory of KL was a visit to the KL tower with Yio and Gerald. Like similar towers in other cities, an observation deck high in the sky gives a clear view of the city and the surrounding countryside, so that was enjoyable. But all good things must come to an end, so Yio and Gerald drove me back to the airport where we had time to eat a quick dinner in the food court. There's something symmetrical about starting and ending my Malaysia trip with airport food. I said goodbye to my Malaysian hosts and teammates, and caught my flight on to my next destination - Australia!

India

2008-03-10T01:59:00.001-04:00

My 4th stop on this trip was Gurgaon, India. And unfortunately for me, the effects of 9 days on the road finally took it's toll on my innards, so I spent most of my first day in my hotel room praying for recovery (or sometimes praying for a quick death). Fortunately my health and my mood started to recover on the second day and I could get down to the tasks at hand - namely, working with our Master Franchise to improve our operations in the country.

India is a challenging country because of it's dynamics. In the last decade India, and particularly Gurgaon, have become the "back office" for every major corporation in the world. Indians answer phones, prepare tax returns, and provide technical support, and the volume at which this transformation is occuring is staggering to see up close. Skylines are changing overnight, with at least a dozen large buildings (some larger than cruise ships) growing up from the ground within a mile or two of my hotel. The city is busy 24/7, and it's clear that the infrastructure is struggling to keep up. Traffic is terrible, power outages are very common (I experienced at least 20 in my 3-days here), and it's clear that roads and sewers and amenities in general have a long way to go.

India has been a challenge for Computer Troubleshooters as well, and while our traditional "break/fix" model has some limited success here, newer models like BEST simply aren't working yet. The key is India's low but changing labor costs, and the effect this has on our target customers. Technicians can be hired full-time for around $150 USD per month, so many larger small businesses just hire their own. Smaller businesses frequently take advantage of the AMC or Annual Maintenance Contract offered by their PC seller for a few hundred rupees, which is often interpreted as unlimited onsite PC support for any issue (even though it's not specified that way). But things are changing.... IT salaries are increasing 15% per year on average in India, so the traditionally low labor rates of the past may not last much longer.

During my stay I was able to interview our Master Franchise, Vikram Chopra, and meet some of his own technical team in New Delhi. I also met with several other current and former IT business owners to get their perspective over what works and what doesn't work in this marketplace. We also met Ajay Budhiraja and Vinish Kathuria of BuyBizSellBiz (an Indian affiliate of our sister-brand Sunbelt Business Brokers). Using their information and advice Vikram and I sketched together a new variation of our BEST plan which takes advantage of the parameters of the Indian marketplace to provide better benefit to CT and to our small business customers. I'm very excited to see that new model go through the R&D stages over the next few weeks!

pictured: Myself, Vinish, Vikram, Ajay

Next Stop: Malaysia!

Cairo

2008-03-07T13:28:00.008-05:00

Egypt is legendary for great hospitality, so I always look forward to my visits here. This week is no exception, as I arrived very early (1am) on Wednesday for a quick 36-hour stopover on my round-the-world trip. I was met at the airport and quickly whisked off to a 5-star hotel (InterContinental CityStars) to get some sleep before we started our work.

(The recently-renovated CT sign high above the streets of Heliopolis, Egypt)

Computer Troubleshooters Egypt saw strong growth early last year, followed by a great deal of management turnover shortly afterwards. In any other country either event would generally cause some problems, and both together would be a recipe for disaster. Certainly it's not made things easy for CT-Egypt or the franchise owners in the country. But the team at CT-Egypt is very talented, and I'm impressed with the progress they are making, and by their plans for the future.

My goal for our time together was to review their progress and offer my advice to help them get back on a path for growth. What I found is that they've embarked on several different strategies to promote the Computer Troubleshooters brand in Egypt and to drive business to their franchisees, but that perhaps because they have so many good ideas there was some confusion over exactly what CT-Egypt as the Franchisor should be doing for their franchisees. So we worked on structuring the value offering for the local market, which due to the cultural and economic differences is in many ways uniquely Egyptian.

Computer Troubleshooters is in a great position to dominate the IT services market in Egypt, and to accomplish that they're developing a plan similar to the ones we use in other countries, including elements such as:

Service Plans (our traditional CAP and VIP plans, possibly with remote management tools incorporated, although Managed Services plans per se don't seem applicable to the local market at this time).
Business Management Tools (our own TOPS application, customized for the Egyptian market).
National Promotion, primarily through a shared marketing fund (all franchisees contribute to the fund, and unlike other countries CT-Egypt also contributes to the fund in a matching contribution). National Promotion is also done through a uniquely Egyptian and uniquely effective National Clients program, which I'll discuss below.
A central 0800 call center with direct call transfer to the nearest franchisee (for national advertising).
Training, Coaching, and Support (including central technical training classes every Saturday, another uniquely Egyptian benefit).

On top of those items, CT-Egypt is also developing some very impressive new programs, including a Services Catalog and their National Clients program.

(myself with some of the CT-Egypt team: Mr Ahmed Taha El Saadany (Financial Director), Mr Mostafa Selim (Managing Director), and Mr Islam Mahmoud (Director, Hospitality Division))

Because there is a strong attitude among many potential customers of "I'll fix it myself", Ct-Egypt has developed a Service Catalog with specific targeted IT solutions (similar to the Enhanced Vendor program in the US). CT-Egypt will produce a high quality, full-color catalog of the solutions which CT's can review with customers and potential customers to help make sales, and CT-Egypt will also make available training and support for each solution to help franchisees get up to speed on each one.

The National Clients program in Egypt is very well developed, despite the long lead time often needed to develop these sorts of nationwide partnerships. Mr Mostafa Selim (Managing Director, CT-Egypt) works with Mantrac, a company which sells thousands of PC's each month mostly through Egyptian schools. CT provides support for all those PC's, which leads to work for both CT-Egypt and the franchise owners.

And an entirely new division, organized and designed by Mr Islam Mahmoud, targets hospitality businesses, especially hotels. Through this new division Computer Troubleshooters offers wireless and wired internet access, video-on-demand, Voice-over-IP phone services, and more to hotels and their clientele. They have already completed the contract for a major install at a resort by the Red Sea (see my last post about publicity).

Overall I think the future of Computer Troubleshooters is very bright. Mr Ahmed Shaheen, owner of CT-Egypt has assembled a top-notch mangement team which includes a good mix of IT visionaries (like Mostafa Selim), managers (Islam Mahmoud), engineers, technicians, and sofware developers, and most importantly the group is kept well organized by Nancy Samy and by Financial Director Mr Ahmed Taha El Saadany. The key now will be to harness all of this talent in a way that yields great profits and success for the Computer Troubleshooters franchise owners and for CT-Egypt, and in that regard I'm very certain they're on the right track.

(Most of the CT-Egypt team)

Regretfully all good things must come to an end, and so it was for my latest visit to Cairo. On Thursday I headed off to the airport and on to my next destination: India!

More Publicity

2008-03-06T12:26:00.000-05:00

Even while I'm traveling I'm hearing about more and more news outlets picking up stories about Computer Troubleshooters.

The Dunn County News (WI) ran our article on "Tips for Keeping Your Computer Healthy".

SilconRepublic.com ran an article about our newest location in Ireland.

And while I was in Cairo the major newspaper AhRam ran an article about a major deal closed by CT-Egypt's new Hospitality Division to install wireless internet and other services in one of Egypt's largest hotel chains, the Domina group:

pictured: Mr Ahmed Shaheen, owner of CT-Egypt (top),
Mr Islam Mahmoud, director of the CT-Hospitality division (bottom right)

Rwanda

2008-03-05T01:01:00.000-05:00

So my trip to Rwanda is the one leg of my journey where I won't be meeting with any CT franchise locations, becuase there aren't any here. But there is a CT connection, which I'll share in a moment.

My friend Jean and his wife met me at Kigali airport early Monday morning (March 3), but we didn't stay in Kigali. Jean and Janeen work in Rwamagana, about 40 minutes outside Kigali in a more rural settting. Jean is Rwandan, and is the Executive Director of ARDR, the Association Rwandaise pour le Developpment Rural, a local NGO which works to improve the lives of widows and orphans in rural areas, and Janeen is an accountant with another NGO working with HIV/AIDS programs in the country.

For those unfamiliar with Rwanda, it's a very small country in central Africa with a relatively high population. The population mostly speaks Kinyarwandan, but about half also speak French and maybe 1/3 speak English. It's a beautiful country, very green and lush, and is best known for it's mountain gorillas, and for the genocide you may have heard about which culminated in 1994 and resulted in the death of around a million people (the country's population today is 8.5 million). There is no one in Rwanda whose life was not affected, often traumatically so, by those problems (more on that later).

Nonetheless, I found the Rwandan people are moving forward in a remarkably positive way. Hundreds of aid organizations provide assistance in various forms to the country, and Jean's' ARDR was created after a Japanese NGO pulled out of Rwanda in 1999. The rural parts of Rwanda in particular are struggling more than the urban areas (Kigali), and there are many widows, orphans, and child-lead households as a result of the past problems. ARDR works with these groups in an association/cooperative format: members pay $2USD per year to join the association, and from that $2 they get health insurance for a year (including full retrovirals for HIV treatment, thanks to the Rwandan government), functional literacy training, agricultural traning and support (bannana and pineapples are plentiful here), and other support. I'm pleased to announce that Computer Troubleshooters will join ARDR as their first business member, and I've also joined as a personal member (we both paid more than $2 of course) and I'm looking forward to providing whatever support I can to assist in this very worth cause.

After a quick nap at my hotel (Hotel Dereva, in Rwamagana, which is a lovely place and I'll definitely stay there again, but it does make you appreciate some amenties other hotels have such as hot water, toilet seats, and no bed nets!), we toured some ARDR field operations. I met a woman who grows bannanas on a good sized plot of land (several acres). And we visited a group of women who were making crafts as another way to be self-sufficient. I wasn't expecting it, but they had prepared a reception for me including a presentation of some woven baskets & containers they make (which are quite extraordinary), and also some singing and dancing (in which I had to participate, but fortunately there are no photos of this). I did get some video of the girls dancing, so I'll post that eventually.

We also visited a kindergarten ARDR supports, where the children were learning to count by moving rocks on a bench:

That evening Jean and Janeen hosted a dinner at the ARDR offices, which included members of the Gideon's organization in Rwanda (which Jean recently became involved with), and the pastor of Jean's church (Jean and I originally met at my church in the US, while he was in the country part of last year). The food - everywhere in Rwanda actually but especially at this dinner since it was prepared by Janeen - was wonderful, the people were very friendly, and enjoyed the time thoroughly.

The next day we drove into Kigali and visited the Genocide memorial. This is something you have to see, but it's not for the faint of heart. It's hard to convey the feeling of what that time must have been like, with a significant portion of the population targeted for extinction by their friends and neighbors and even family members of the other tribe (Hutus vs Tutsi's). The images are painful, especially an exhibit which showed the photos of smiling children, and included facts like their favorite foods, their favorite songs, the games they played.... and the way they were killed (hacked by machete, grenade thrown in their room, etc), their last words or last images, etc. Very painful. More painful is the portion of the exhibit that shows in great detail how the international community knew what was happening and wouldn't respond. Again, very painful to see. The genocide touches every aspect of life in Rwanda today, but there is encouragement in how quickly the people have moved past the problems of the past and learned to work together to build a better life for themselves and their progeny. Rwanda is rapidly growing, and improving, and can teach all of us alot about forgiveness.

After a brief tour of downtown Kigali (including a failed attempt to use Kigali's first ATM machine), it was time to go. Jean dropped me off at Kigali airport that afternoon, and we said our goodbyes but I'm hopeful I'll be back again soon.

Me & Jean relaxing on the Hotel Dereva's patio

Traveling On

2008-03-03T00:41:00.002-05:00

Sunday, March 2nd I was supposed to fly from Johannesburg to Bujumbura (Burundi) and on to Kigali (Rwanda) for my next stop. But fate had other plans, and our first plane had to turn around and return to JNB for an emergency landing due to what the pilot called a "slight flight control problem". Which was OK by me because there was something moving in the oxygen mask compartment in the seat in front of me, and I think it was a snake (seriously), and I wasn't looking forward to four ours of wondering if it was going to come out.

Back at JNB I met some very interesting people - an army officer from Rwanda, a retired gentleman from Burundi, a former South Dakotan woman who now works for USAID in Kigali, a South African engineer working on power generation ideas for Rwanda, and a travel agent from Canada on a three month African vacation by herself. But I also learned that Rwanda Air (our airline) had not had a successful flight from JNB to KGL in over a week, and that the previous two attempts had been cancelled so many of the people I met had been in hotels around the airport for several days now. I began to get worried that this flght may not happen either, which would jeopradize my entire itinerary since the next scheduled flight was for Wednesday and by then I needed to be on my way to Egypt. Rwanda is the only non-business stop on my trip, and it was the stop I was looking forward to most, so I was worried I would miss it entirely. I was also concerned about what to do if I arrived late, since Kigali is not a 24-hour airport, and if we landed at 3am (instead of our planned 9pm) I wasn't sure I could get a taxi or a hotel room for that matter.

Eventually things worked out, at least for me. After many hours of excuses and waiting, Rwanda Air found another airplane (which I don't want to guess the age of) and we left Johannesburg around 1am and headed out over the jungle. We arrived in Kigali around 5am, much to the disappointment and concern of my new friends from Burundi since we skipped their stop entirely (and Rwanda Air did not help the situation by refusing to make allowances to put them in a hotel in Kigali or accomodate them on a flight back to Bujumbura - in case it's not clear from the rest of this post, I DO NOT recommend Rwanda Airways to anyone, anytime).

But for me, I was thrilled to see my dear friend Jean and his wife Janeen had in fact waited all night at the airport for me, and they were there to meet me when I landed. What a relief!

(Kigali International Airport, in the daytime)

South Africa

2008-03-02T00:06:00.004-05:00

South Africa has been a great experience. I arrived in Johannesburg late Wednesday and was met by Peter Edwards, one of the owners of CT - South Africa. Peter drove me out almost two hours from the city, to a game lodge called Mothabenga, owned by another CT-SA owner, Hugh Wason.

Mothabenga is rural, and although the lodge is beautiful and the staff could not possibly be nicer, there is no high speed internet and even the dial-up can't get past 14k bps. Fortunately my new blackberry is picking up 3G signals most of the time, so I'm not entirely without email!

I'm here primarily to participate in the first South African Computer Troubleshooters conference. The event is to be Friday & Saturday, and I'll give four presentations during it, including the frequently requested overviews of our BEST managed services program and our ENGAGE marketing program. But Thursday is mostly spent trying to get over the jetlag from a 22 hour flight, so I woke up, had breakfast, took a nap. Woke up, had lunch, took a nap. It was a very stressful time! :)

Thursday afternoon Peter and I (who had the entire lodge to ourselves at first) were joined by Hugh and also by Arjen Van Zwieten. Arjen was our original master franchise for South Africa, but made a smart decision to include others in his team last year - I'll share more about that in a minute. Together though the four of us went to Pilanesburg National Park that afternoon, which is South Africa's 2nd largest game reserve and requires several hours if not days to completely tour. We drove around the park for about an hour and got some good photos of hippos, zebra, elant, wildebeest, and other game animals in their natural settings, but we also came back later on Sunday hoping to see elephant, lions, or giraffe. On the latter we were not disappointed:But the main event was the conference itself. Saturday morning we were to start at 10am, since many participants were driving in from all across South Africa and Botswana. About 30 people were expected, but at 10am less than 15 were present. We heard stories about a traffic problem which was holding people up somewhere. As we were standing around outside the conference room, suddenly they all arrived at once, lead by 4 of the fully-branded CT Vans which South Africa has standardized on. It was really impressive seeing that "fleet" of identical vehicles all arrive together -seriously, I got goosebumps! We tried to make some video to recreate the experience, but it's not quite the same: you can download it from http://www.comptroub.com/sa_van_fleet.zip.

The conference itself was wonderful, and remarkable in several ways. We had 100% attendance of all franchisees in South Africa and Botswana for starters, representing 13 locations. In the US we tend to only get 50% to 70% attendance at our conferences, so this was impressive. But also there is a great energy in South Africa, especially since they've grown from 3 locations to 13 in just the last 12 months, so many locations are new and excited and growing fast. That sort of growth is also remarkable within the CT system, and can be attributed to Arjen's decision last year to include Peter and Hugh in his management team, and to the new recruiting strategy they developed together (I'll be sharing that with other CT country directors too).

At the end of the conference we held a feedback session and people were enthusiastic about BEST and ENGAGE and many of the vendors (Microsoft, WSI, and others) who came for the event, but the comment heard over and over again was that everyone was most excited about being able to work together as a team to share ideas, support each other, and dominate the South African computer support market.

I really enjoyed my brief stay in South Africa, and I learned alot from them and hopefully was able to share some knowledge as well. They have a great team, both at the national level and across all thirteen franchisees, and I'm hoping to come back next year to see what they accomplish next.

(Group Photo from the first South African Computer Troubleshooters Conference:
Kneeling: Hugh, me, Arjen, Peter)

7 Countries in 21 days

2008-02-26T00:03:00.000-05:00

Feb 26: Today I left Atlanta for a 3-week trip visiting 7 countries, mostly with the intent of learning more about how Computer Troubleshooters operates in each one. My trip will take me from Atlanta to South Africa, then Rwanda, Egypt, India, Malaysia, Australia, and finally New Zealand before returning home on March 17. It's going to be a long trip with way too many flights (17), but several of these countries are ones I've not traveled to before, and I've heard bits and pieces of things CT's are doing in each that might be beneficial to the rest of us, so I'm excited about the trip.

--Chip

More Publicity for Computer Troubleshooters

2008-02-22T15:28:00.002-05:00

It seems like every day more media outlets are picking up great stories from Computer Troubleshooters, including newspapers like the Worcester Telegram, the Kitsap Sun, and the Florida Weekly. I was also recently interviewed by ITbusiness.ca, Home Business Magazine, and Costco Connection Magazine - watch for those soon.

We're also getting more attention from business shows on talk radio, with live interviews this week with WQMX in Ohio, WMBI in Illinois, and a recorded interview with the nationally-syndicated Issues Today radio show (to be broadcast in mid-March). This week also saw the broadcast of my previously recorded interview with Mike Carruthers on the national "Something You Should Know" program (click here to listen to that archived broadcast).

Next week I'll be leaving to visit with Computer Troubleshooters in Africa, Asia, and New Zealand, but our excellent media relations team already has interviews scheduled for when I arrive back home in April - watch for more updates about that right here!

2008-02-11T15:22:00.000-05:00

Our worldwide mission to eliminate computer problems is getting picked up by savvy talk show hosts around the country. Chip was interviewed this morning on WFLA radio in Florida (with Jack & Sharon), and later on the www.moneymatters.net "Daily Bear" show with Lou Michaels.

Next up: an interview tomorrow (Tuesday Feb 12) on WGST morning radio with Randy Cook in Atlanta, then:

KAHI AM 950 in Sacramento, CA on Feb 15 at 1:30pm with Mary Jane Popp
WNTN AM 1550 in Boston, MA on Feb 18 with Paul Roberts
syndicated nationally on Mike Carruther's "Something You Should Know" program the week of Feb 25.

On these interviews Chip discusses the problems small business owners have with their computers, and more importantly how the computer service industry (and especially Computer Troubleshooters) are adapting to eliminate computer problems altogether through managed services (like CT's B.E.S.T. service plans).

2008-01-28T15:29:00.000-05:00

Welcome Computer Troubleshooters Russia! George Bulatov and Ilya Rudinsky spend last week in our offices at CTUSA going through the normal new franchisee training (along with Kathleen Rystead, a new CT in Minneapolis) in preparation for opening our first franchise location in Moscow in the next few weeks. George then flew on to visit a business associate in San Francisco, while Ilya stayed behind to enjoy the sights & sounds of Atlanta and ride-along with some existing CT's to see how they handle their day-to-day operations.

Pictured in the blurry cell-phone picture above (our digital camera's battery died): Jeff Weatherford (technician with CT - Covington, GA), Ilya Rudinski (CT - Rus), Doug Smith (owner, CT - Covington, GA), and me (Chip Reaves, CTUSA).

New Year, New Blog

2008-01-12T21:32:00.000-05:00

Hi folks,

There's always alot going on around the Computer Troubleshooters family, sometimes so much that it's hard to keep up with. Hopefully this blog will help us keep up with most of it!

Chip
P.S. Also see my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/s.php?q=chip+reaves&init=q
or my LinkedIn page at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/440/235