A deep freeze has gripped the UK.  Motorways are shut.  I circled Heathrow for 60 minutes waiting in the queue to land our Air Canada Airbus 330.  But, I made it to the hotel where our first bootcamp of 2012 is being held.

This morning our team from SPC is here in Oxfordshire to share business tips and advice with managed IT service providers in the United Kingdom.  Many of you are already in the know that I volunteer a number of days per year to give back to the MSP community through Ulistic’s partnership with MSPU and SPC International.

The weather is the topic of the day across much of England and Scotland.  Snow and freezing rain have disabled much of the motorways and airports around the UK and we are hoping that the weather does not have too much of an impact on our boot camp.  We will see who are the committed MSPs in the UK.

Weather is often one of the biggest excuses used for getting out on something.  Especially when we are only interested in something.  Committed to something brings different results.  I have used the weather in the past to get out of doing something that I wasn’t fully committed to.  However, we I was all in and totally committed, weather would never get in my way.

Allow me to ask you this? When have you used an excuse like the weather to get out of something?  Now, I am not talking about a snowstorm that shuts down the east cost of America.  I am talking about a slight bit of rain or a light dusting of snow.  You hop on this bad bit of weather and use it as your out.

This morning I plan to share with the MSP CEO’s around the UK that 80% of success is just showing up.

Where are you showing up?  What are you committed to?  Be honest with yourself.

I sat down with a dear colleague in California last week to discuss business and where I would like to take Ulistic in 2012.

Yeah, I know I should have had this all figured out as the first month of the new year came to a close.  Here is what I know to be true.  Ulistic is extremely busy and our clients are demanding much more from us.  Some are pushing the change because their businesses are growing and want our team to be more embedded with theirs.  Others we are trying to pull along, especially as we move more into MSP coaching and business development services.

Be careful what you wish for right.  

Actually, the reality is this.  I challenged our team of 8 professionals at Ulistic to step it up in 2012.  I looked back on our two year history and determined it was time to do something different.  The MSP marketing world is saturated with good and then again, some not so good solutions out there.   Marketing will continue to be the cornerstone of Ulistic.  But now, we are seeing more requests for MSP coaching, business development consulting and even help with how to make ConnectWise work.

But something needed to change internally.

Mirror, Mirror on the wall!  Be careful what you wish for.  It does come true. Thank you.

We need new challenges and we are getting them.  Larger engagements, more challenging solutions being drawn up.  In depth, business process discussions are occurring and our clientele is changing.  Today, $20 million MSPs are calling us.  We still get the small startups and I enjoy working with them and I will always make time for the small startup.  After all, we were all there once.  But new opportunities are presenting themselves.  Opportunities I would have never thought about 2 years ago is a grungy Fairview office in Calgary.

I still remember the words from my colleague and friend.  That was then Stuart, this is now!  Where do you want to be?  What do you want to do?  What do you want to create?

Some people have left and went onto new consulting firms.  Some have song our praises and others havent’ been the big fans.  Some shout for joy about the services we provide, while others bad mouth us to their peers.  That is cool.  Our team makes a difference!  Our team does awesome work and many of our clients hold us accountable and still love to work with us.

I am challenging myself to create something much more than me.  Figuring out ways to work with my top clients while getting out of my way and allowing the great team at Ulistic to shine.

When will I know…ask me in April.

Stuart

The world is becoming more mobile, and more people are using their smart phones to do business. Smart phones are lighter and easier to carry than laptops or tablets. People already use them to send emails, update their Facebook statuses and post tweets. So, Research in Motion’s (RIM) introduction of the BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft 365 is a welcome improvement for many.

With the Business Cloud Services for Microsoft 365 people can securely access and work on important client accounts, internal business reports and any other mission-critical data that needs their attention. Being able to safely do business on the go is important for salespeople and others who do a lot of traveling.

The trademarked BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365 became available to the general public in January 2012. With this new service for business and government organizations, customers can manage, in the cloud, the work they do on their BlackBerrys. It’s free and available to current medium sized businesses and enterprises that already subscribe to the Office 365 suite or standalone Exchange Online. The new offering is a blessing for IT professionals, too.

According to a press release on RIM’s website, IT professionals can “provision, manage and secure BlackBerry smartphones from anywhere.” Other bonuses include the ability for users to easily reset the device’s password or remotely lock it in the event that it is lost or stolen; “a web-based console allows IT administrators to have remote access to the devices to secure them or resolve issues, if necessary;” and managed service providers can use the cloud service to manage BlackBerry operations on behalf of their clients.

The collaboration between Microsoft and RIM could prove to be a win-win situation. BlackBerrys are popular in the enterprise world, so those who were reluctant to give Microsoft Office 365 a try, now have a chance to do so risk free.

What do you think?  Leave us a comment about how you think RIM and Microsoft will play together.

Have you ever checked out the MSP Help Desk blog sponsored by my friends at outsourced help desk provider GMS Live Expert?

I have a new blog post talking about being attached to the success of your business versus being committed to the success of your business.

Recently I shared some thoughts here on the MSP Help Desk blog that spoke about “interest versus commitment,” a very interesting article that led to a number of public and private side discussions with clients during our weekly consulting calls.  We easily identified key relationships inside and outside the business to which we were committed versus those in which we were just interested.

Read the blog post here.

For those Managed Services Providers (MSPs) that want to reach stratospheric success, Ulistic is right there to help.   We are business consultants who understand what it takes to make a great MSP.

Ulistic is so much more than the typical business consultant.  ULISTIC’s IT Channel and MSP business development consulting has been designed to work with technology suppliers and consulting firms like Agile IT.

When Agile IT first requested the services of Ulistic, the small, but growing, IT services company was looking to focus more on their Melbourne IT Support and Services.  After an initial discussion with the key decision maker, we were able to strategize a course of action with the following key elements:

• Marketing consulting
• Business consultation
• Best practices, strategies and execution on all aspects of marketing
• Provision of key performance indicators, training and much more

For those MSPs, Value-added Resellers (VARs) and Microsoft Partners that want a complete marketing solution and are committed to working with one of the leading business consulting masters in the industry, why not contact us now at (416) 840-9106.  Let’s get to work on helping you double (or triple) your MSP revenue, too.

I got this in my email today.  I thought I would share this with you.  It is amazing on its own without any comments from me. – Stuart Crawford

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives. People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality.

I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.

When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never
became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a
result.

We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.

It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical
details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end.
That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again. When you are on your deathbed, what  others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.