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[00:00:07] Happy Halloween, dude! Did you dress up as a pirate?
[00:00:11] I did not. And I don't know if everybody else experienced this or not, but we had very few trick-or-treaters.
[00:00:19] We don't actually get trick-or-treaters in this part of town. Everyone in our neighborhood goes to the other side of town, which is super awesome because we don't have to do anything.
[00:00:27] So everybody went there and I got stuck at work. So Michelle took the kids over there.
[00:00:30] But Roman went as Tony Stark. I had an old t-shirt with an arc reactor that was part of the t-shirt, so he used that.
[00:00:38] Michelle bought him the Edith glasses, which is even dead. I'm the hero.
[00:00:44] And we bought him this... They make an Iron Man glove that has an arc reactor and some lasers or whatever it is.
[00:00:52] But because Roman's nine, we bought him the T-Mu version of it.
[00:00:56] So instead of spending $200 on this thing, we bought a $10... It's called the Iron Action Red Glove.
[00:01:04] And the arc reactor is just this single circle with a very tiny 2-millimeter-inch LED that you have to push to turn it on, which never works.
[00:01:16] And the top has a little plastic dinky missile that you push.
[00:01:22] It's like a push-action spring that you push it, and it basically just slides off the end of your hand.
[00:01:27] Like, it was horrible.
[00:01:29] But he loved it.
[00:01:30] And then Simona went as Rey from Star Wars.
[00:01:34] And everyone's like, wow, she looks so good in that costume.
[00:01:37] It's just like an off-the-shelf Rey costume.
[00:01:40] The trick was that Michelle did her hair.
[00:01:42] Yes.
[00:01:43] She had the triple loop in her hair, and so she looked like it.
[00:01:46] And so they come home, and Simona opens up her bag.
[00:01:51] And she's got, you know, like a normal amount of candy.
[00:01:52] And Roman goes, I got four bags!
[00:01:54] And, like, dumps it all over the island.
[00:01:58] And, like, multiple full-pack Reese's peanut butter cups.
[00:02:05] Multiple full-size Hershey bars.
[00:02:07] And he's like, Dad, I got this for you.
[00:02:08] And he pulls out, like, this little tiny Kinder chocolate that has, like, an Iron Man wrapper on it.
[00:02:14] And I was like, I appreciate you.
[00:02:17] Halloween's weird.
[00:02:19] What was, like, the weirdest Halloween costume you've ever done as an adult?
[00:02:27] Not as a child, like as an adult.
[00:02:29] As an adult?
[00:02:30] Yeah.
[00:02:32] Does it have to be Halloween, or can it just be a costume in general?
[00:02:36] Well, I mean, like, when else are you dressed?
[00:02:37] I mean, I know you dress up for conferences.
[00:02:40] Yeah.
[00:02:40] Yeah.
[00:02:42] But you dress up as a pirate all the time.
[00:02:44] Not all the time.
[00:02:45] All right.
[00:02:46] Whatever.
[00:02:46] There was the time, and I still have it.
[00:02:48] I still have one of those blow-up cowboy costumes.
[00:02:52] So, like, you're the cowboy, but the blow-up part is the horse.
[00:02:56] Horse.
[00:02:56] And your legs are, like, the horse's legs or whatever.
[00:02:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:02:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:02:59] I've seen those.
[00:03:00] Those are funny.
[00:03:01] There was a lot of...
[00:03:01] At the Halloween parade, there was a lot of those blow-up costumes.
[00:03:04] And the funniest thing is that all those blow-up costumes that are usually, like, a big oval have little legs and little feet.
[00:03:09] And these are, like, you know, three third and fourth graders.
[00:03:12] So, they have these little legs that are, like, ding-ing-ing-ing-ing-ing, like, right across the...
[00:03:16] Yeah.
[00:03:17] What was the game that was very popular a while ago?
[00:03:23] I guess it took place in space, and you tried to figure out...
[00:03:26] Huh?
[00:03:27] The one where you had to figure out, like, who killed somebody?
[00:03:30] Yeah.
[00:03:30] It's called Among Us.
[00:03:32] Yes.
[00:03:33] Everybody goes to Among Us.
[00:03:35] We had two people come to the door last night that were dressed in those costumes, and they were blow-up.
[00:03:42] Yeah.
[00:03:42] The inflatable guys.
[00:03:45] One year, Michelle and I went as the aliens from Sesame Street.
[00:03:50] Remember the ones that would be like...
[00:03:51] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:03:53] Right?
[00:03:54] And so, in our old house, we had a lot of trick-or-treaters.
[00:03:59] And we would dress up like these things, and I would open the door and be like, trick-or-treat?
[00:04:05] And, like, the kids wouldn't get it, but the parents would.
[00:04:08] So I got real into, like, just being weird about it.
[00:04:12] So the parents would be like, oh, my God, that's so awesome.
[00:04:14] And I'd be like, that's so awesome.
[00:04:16] Like, I would just repeat what they say in the alien voice.
[00:04:19] Right.
[00:04:20] Oh, you're so funny.
[00:04:21] And I'm like, you're so funny.
[00:04:22] Like, I would just continuously copy them.
[00:04:25] And then they would leave, and I'd go...
[00:04:27] And I would...
[00:04:28] The reason I'm using my...
[00:04:28] If you're watching this, youtube.com, the reason I'm using my hand here is the mouthpiece
[00:04:33] was just like a piece of foam with two sticks.
[00:04:36] So I would have to move the mouth of the thing.
[00:04:38] I was standing in the costume, like, clugging myself with my hand, moving the two sticks
[00:04:43] and move the mouth.
[00:04:44] I'd be like...
[00:04:45] And, like, let people...
[00:04:46] It was very funny.
[00:04:48] I'm still convinced, though, that those were just repurposed puppets from Fraggle Rock.
[00:04:52] Oh, honeyp.
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[00:05:54] What's up, everybody?
[00:05:55] Welcome to the All Things MSP Podcast.
[00:05:57] I'm your host, Justin Escar.
[00:05:58] And to my left, because I'm looking at a teleprompter and reversing it, so I think it's correct,
[00:06:04] is Mr. Eric Anthony, podcast producer extraordinaire.
[00:06:09] What's up, dude?
[00:06:12] You know, Halloween was kind of crazy, but good crazy.
[00:06:17] So, you know, things are going well.
[00:06:21] I get to go to IT Nation next week, so looking forward to that, and I hope I see a lot of
[00:06:26] people there.
[00:06:26] Obviously, this podcast will probably come up after IT Nation, so...
[00:06:30] Look, I can't figure out that timing thing.
[00:06:32] I will just say thank you for everybody who came by the podcast.
[00:06:37] Hey, Eric, how was IT Nation?
[00:06:40] It was great.
[00:06:43] You saw Bob and Sue and Joni and Donovan and Derek and Joni.
[00:06:49] I saw all the people.
[00:06:49] All the peoples.
[00:06:52] Well, if you thought Eric and IT Nation, and now you're hearing this, it's weird for Eric
[00:06:58] because we're recording this before IT Nation, and now you're listening to it after IT Nation,
[00:07:01] so you're breaking some laws of physics.
[00:07:06] Weebly wobbly, timey-wimey.
[00:07:10] That literally, like, we could have an entire podcast just about that.
[00:07:13] There's a great, by the way, there's a great...
[00:07:16] You know the physics Brian Cox, right, from England?
[00:07:19] He's like a super famous physics.
[00:07:20] If you Google, and if you're at home, or if you're driving, pull over and write this down.
[00:07:26] He does a great...
[00:07:28] There's a YouTube clip of him explaining time and time travel and how we perceive time just by using...
[00:07:37] Like, he has a person from the audience facing the audience wearing, like, a helmet with a camera,
[00:07:41] and he's got just, like, a little LED ball on a stick, and he's just going up and down.
[00:07:46] But he's showing how we see time, like, in waves.
[00:07:49] But the difference between the person who's doing it and the audience and the camera and all these perspectives...
[00:07:55] And it's a very cool...
[00:07:57] Like, if you want to understand why we can't do time travel, because that's a big thing that MSPs want to do,
[00:08:05] watch this video.
[00:08:06] Brian Cox, time travel, I don't know, 15 minutes?
[00:08:10] Learn something.
[00:08:10] Data migrations are complex and irritating, creating days of frustration from setup to cutover.
[00:08:18] MoveBot was built from the ground up to fix that.
[00:08:21] MoveBot is the simplest, fastest tool for moving files and emails that there is.
[00:08:26] Fully hosted with no infrastructure, no virtual machines, none of that craziness.
[00:08:31] Sign up, connect, scan, and you'll be moving data in minutes.
[00:08:35] Move data like a pro at atmsp.link forward slash movebot.
[00:08:41] Move it all from the group because it's Halloween and we shut the group down for Halloween.
[00:08:45] So we're just going to jump right into things today.
[00:08:49] Actually, I do have something I want to talk about.
[00:08:51] You and I talk about this a little bit in the pre-show.
[00:08:55] And I find, like, a lot of MSPs have this problem.
[00:08:59] We all want to make our businesses efficient.
[00:09:05] We always want to make our business, you know, we're big on auto.
[00:09:07] Everyone's really big into automation and all these things.
[00:09:11] But I feel like so many of us get, like, 70% there.
[00:09:16] And we never get past that finish line.
[00:09:19] And then we just start another thing.
[00:09:21] And I can tell you personally, like, at Virtua, we have, like, 15 internal projects that are being worked on at any given time.
[00:09:32] And the reason we can't get any of them done is clients bother us for things.
[00:09:36] And it breaks your train of thought.
[00:09:39] Like, if you're working on something and then you get a client who calls us, like, hey, I can't use my computer.
[00:09:42] I get it.
[00:09:43] Right?
[00:09:43] It breaks your train of thought.
[00:09:44] It takes forever to get back into the mode.
[00:09:46] You got to backtrack all your work.
[00:09:48] And then sometimes it's the end of the day.
[00:09:50] You're like, ah, forget it.
[00:09:51] Like, and I find a lot of MSPs have the same problem because there's only so many hours in the workday.
[00:09:59] And unless you're the owner who's working 24 hours a day, your staff who's working on things are not going to work on things past six or five or whatever.
[00:10:08] So you get into this position where you have all of the – I've been calling them puzzles.
[00:10:16] Because, like, I'm looking for a puzzle master to, like, figure out all the puzzles that we have half done, finish them, mount them to the wall.
[00:10:23] Well, but the problem, though, in your puzzle analogy, which I like, by the way, though, even though I'm going to blow a hole in it, is that –
[00:10:34] Although I really – you know what?
[00:10:35] No, I'm not blowing a hole in it.
[00:10:37] I'm just showing –
[00:10:38] You're just going to flip the table.
[00:10:40] I'm going to use your analogy to describe what you already described.
[00:10:43] And that is the interruption by client emergencies because those do happen, right?
[00:10:50] But it's like little gremlins or little children coming along – they're pretty much the same – coming along and stealing your puzzle pieces while you're trying to work on the puzzle.
[00:11:01] The problem is those gremlins are your clients.
[00:11:05] And so you do kind of have to pay attention to them and get that puzzle piece back at some point.
[00:11:11] Much like gremlins, don't get your clients wet and don't feed your clients after midnight and don't help them.
[00:11:19] Yeah.
[00:11:20] Yeah, 100%.
[00:11:21] By the way, side note, puzzle thing.
[00:11:22] I always wanted to create a puzzle and have the box say 1,000-piece puzzle but only have 999 pieces in the box on purpose.
[00:11:30] And it's just going to be called the most frustrating puzzle of all time.
[00:11:33] And people will think it's because it's a very complicated picture.
[00:11:35] But in reality, it's because we're missing one piece.
[00:11:38] Side note, whatever.
[00:11:39] Yes, the clients get in the way.
[00:11:41] But there's nothing we can do about that, right?
[00:11:44] I'm sure there's someone who's listening going, but Justin – oh, I should have moved.
[00:11:47] But Justin, you could get your clients on a schedule or being proactive and reaching out.
[00:11:54] But let's be honest.
[00:11:56] Outlook's going to break when Outlook breaks.
[00:11:59] For those who are watching and watching me do this in real time, my microphone, it's because my producer forgot to tell me to move my mic closer.
[00:12:08] You're just rearranging your desk while we're doing a podcast.
[00:12:11] No, I'm yelling at my producer.
[00:12:12] He's over – I don't know which one of them.
[00:12:16] I'm on the other half of the screen.
[00:12:18] Just say it that way.
[00:12:21] But the problem here, like, you know, those things happen, right?
[00:12:25] We have to deal with those situations.
[00:12:26] So the question is, like, how do we get those projects done?
[00:12:29] And the other thing is, like, you know, there's that – everyone wants to follow the 80-20 rule, right?
[00:12:33] Like, if it's 80% done, it's good enough to, like, keep going.
[00:12:38] And I say that a lot, too.
[00:12:39] Like, when I talk about finding new tools – we've talked about this before when we talked about tool sets, right?
[00:12:45] If you're looking for a new tool, you're never going to find a tool that's going to do 100%.
[00:12:48] But if you find a tool that does 80%, you're good to go.
[00:12:51] Just use that tool.
[00:12:52] And the other 20% is probably bells and whistles.
[00:12:55] But if it's an internal project, like, you need to rebuild your onboarding forms or you want to build an automation to do these things or there's pieces that are – and really what gets even worse is when you need to get vendors involved to get things done.
[00:13:11] So, like, we have to reach out to Halo or to Adagute or whoever because, like, something – you know, we have this concept.
[00:13:18] We have this idea.
[00:13:19] We want to do it.
[00:13:20] But then there's something we're stuck on because either we don't know or there's some block or whatever.
[00:13:24] So that slows it down.
[00:13:26] Again, it's – honestly, man, like, I don't want to do this, but, like, I can rant about this for an hour and a half.
[00:13:31] Well, and, you know, you've been self-employed for a long time.
[00:13:35] So you probably haven't experienced this recently.
[00:13:39] But having worked for corporations in the past, it is very common to get paralysis by analysis, right?
[00:13:52] Or, in other words, trying to figure out how to do it perfectly before you just start doing it to get it done.
[00:14:01] And, you know, there's an old adage, done is better than perfect.
[00:14:04] And it's absolutely true because why would you waste your time trying to get something perfect and not getting anything from that?
[00:14:13] You know, it's like having – building a sequence, a marketing sequence, right?
[00:14:19] Build it, have people start calling, have people start emailing because that's going to generate revenue.
[00:14:24] Even if it sucks, right?
[00:14:26] Yeah.
[00:14:26] You can improve it later, but starting is much more important than getting it right the first time in a lot of these project cases.
[00:14:35] Now, one of the things that I want to say is that – and this is something you've kind of hinted at already –
[00:14:41] is that projects that you do for your own MSP quite frequently take a backseat to the projects that you're doing for clients.
[00:14:50] And you don't necessarily treat internal projects the same as you would projects for your clients.
[00:14:58] And I think that's where a lot of us stumble.
[00:15:01] And it's not even like we can be like – like, you know, there's all these tricks like, you know, to like get your mindset right or whatever it is.
[00:15:08] You know, people who want to be on time, set your watch five minutes early kind of trick.
[00:15:11] Like you can't even trick yourself to say like this project really is a client project.
[00:15:17] Here, great example.
[00:15:18] Great example.
[00:15:19] Okay?
[00:15:20] We've talked about this before on the show.
[00:15:22] We're going for our SOC 2 compliance, right?
[00:15:24] We're using one of the SaaS companies.
[00:15:27] We're going through the motions.
[00:15:28] We have our trust center up.
[00:15:30] We have the whole thing.
[00:15:31] We know that if we get through this internal project, we will look better to clients.
[00:15:38] We will potentially get new clients.
[00:15:39] We will become more sticky with our nonprofits.
[00:15:41] We will do these things.
[00:15:43] However, we are 80% done and then stuck, right?
[00:15:50] It's technically an internal project, but it's for clients.
[00:15:58] So there needs to be some, for lack of a better term, like stick a dynamite that blows the entire team forward like in a shitty action movie.
[00:16:10] You know what I mean?
[00:16:12] Mighty Morphin Power Rangers style where the thing is like 10 miles behind them and they're all like, oh, like that kind of level.
[00:16:20] To like get us over the finish line to finish it, just to get it done.
[00:16:27] It's so seemingly hard.
[00:16:29] And I think a lot of this is, to use just like another visual here, it's like scaling a mountain.
[00:16:35] The first 80% of that mountain is not all, it's not that steep.
[00:16:40] It's a pretty steady 30 degree angle.
[00:16:45] But you hit some point and all of a sudden that mountain peak just tilts real high.
[00:16:51] And now you're like on a 70 degree angle and it's way harder to get to the top.
[00:16:58] I always thought it was like feature creep, right?
[00:17:01] Because that's a software side of things like that happens.
[00:17:05] But like in project management, you're right.
[00:17:10] Perfection is the enemy of getting it done, right?
[00:17:12] So it's not a matter of even getting perfected.
[00:17:14] It's just like we're not getting, we're just not getting it done.
[00:17:20] And that getting up that steep part, like I run into this all the time.
[00:17:24] Like I really, I'm at a loss for my own topic because I don't know how to fix this.
[00:17:31] So, okay.
[00:17:33] So I'm going to put my productivity hat on.
[00:17:35] The answer is small wins, but you can bring it down.
[00:17:38] So, so yes, that is a component that you can use to absolutely show that you're making progress
[00:17:45] and kind of not lose steam.
[00:17:48] Because so many things can happen where you feel like you've stalled because you don't
[00:17:53] feel like you're making progress.
[00:17:54] So if you chop those things up into smaller wins, you can still feel like you're making
[00:17:59] that progress.
[00:18:00] That is absolutely something that's observable and doable.
[00:18:05] Uh, the other thing is because it's an internal project, we quite often stop having progress
[00:18:12] meetings, standups, whatever you want to call them to keep the momentum going week to week.
[00:18:19] Because what happens is, you know, they teach you this when you're trying to create smart
[00:18:24] goals, right?
[00:18:25] You have to have, it has to be time bound.
[00:18:27] Mm-hmm.
[00:18:28] And especially for larger projects, it doesn't just need to be time bound, like a deadline
[00:18:35] at the end.
[00:18:36] You need to have milestones because the smaller parts of the project need to be time bound.
[00:18:43] Uh, there's a great book called the 12 week year that really talks about the psychology
[00:18:51] behind setting shorter deadlines for things because, and I know I do this.
[00:18:57] I don't know if you do this, Justin, but I, you know, this is something that a lot of people
[00:19:02] do is they'll give a project the amount of room that it'll consume.
[00:19:10] Mm-hmm.
[00:19:11] And so if you give it, if it's something that should only take a week and you give it
[00:19:16] a month, it's going to take a month.
[00:19:18] Yeah.
[00:19:19] That's, that's a, that's like a whole, that's a whole thing.
[00:19:21] I was actually just, I knew you were going to go there and I wanted to give, I wanted
[00:19:25] to Google this for a second.
[00:19:26] Cause I don't remember what it was front.
[00:19:28] You keep talking.
[00:19:29] I'm going to look up the, who, who said that quote.
[00:19:31] Okay.
[00:19:32] So yeah, the 12 week we are is definitely, um, it was eyeopening.
[00:19:37] I definitely changed my own personal productivity system based on that book.
[00:19:43] And now I do things very differently in terms of setting things up and how I organize things,
[00:19:49] uh, by the week.
[00:19:50] I don't organize by the month anymore.
[00:19:52] I simply don't.
[00:19:54] I know what projects I have that are big, you know, far out kind of projects, but I can't
[00:20:00] focus on that.
[00:20:01] I need to focus on what I need to do this week to move that project forward.
[00:20:05] So when I'm organizing my bullet journal literally has in it two pages, one page is divided up
[00:20:14] by things I need to do for my day job, things that I need to do for my personal life and things
[00:20:19] that I need to do for the all things MSP community.
[00:20:22] And then the second page is all of the tasks that I need to do kind of random tasks that
[00:20:30] I need to accomplish that week, just because they're on the docket, right?
[00:20:34] Like I had to get my car inspected so we could get the renewal in this week.
[00:20:40] And, and so, you know, it was great.
[00:20:42] I, I wanted to make sure that I voted.
[00:20:43] So I had that in for the week, but then I don't, you know, try and plan everything out
[00:20:51] too far because next week doesn't matter if I don't get this week done.
[00:20:56] Yeah.
[00:20:56] But you're, but you're basically telling future Eric tough, tough noogs.
[00:21:00] Yes.
[00:21:01] Yeah.
[00:21:01] By the way, the, I knew I would find it.
[00:21:03] It's called the Parkinson's law.
[00:21:06] It's an old adage that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.
[00:21:12] That's the rule.
[00:21:13] And this is why calendar blocking works so well as, as well.
[00:21:16] It was originally coined by Cyril Northcote Parkinson's in a humorous essay he wrote for
[00:21:22] The Economist back in 1955.
[00:21:25] I'm talking about a 70 year old adage here that still humans cannot grasp or yet.
[00:21:34] And yeah, it's, it's, it's true.
[00:21:36] Like, uh, here's an updated example.
[00:21:40] You and your team have two weeks to complete a relatively simple bug fix.
[00:21:44] Realistically, it should only take a few hours, but because you know, you have more than enough
[00:21:48] time at your disposal, the project grows in scope.
[00:21:51] While you're looking at the bug, you decide to check a few other related issues.
[00:21:54] This prompts questions about what's causing those issues in the first place.
[00:21:58] And while those diversions may ultimately prove useful, they don't get you any closer
[00:22:02] to achieving the original object of handling the bug fix.
[00:22:05] But ultimately the thing that should have been simple undertaking becomes something that
[00:22:08] requires two weeks to complete.
[00:22:10] That's the Parkinson's law.
[00:22:11] And we've all done it.
[00:22:12] If you're sitting right now, listening to us going, oh yeah.
[00:22:16] Yeah.
[00:22:17] You're not alone.
[00:22:18] You're all, we're all in the same boat.
[00:22:20] Well, and what's interesting is I just thought about this is I think that
[00:22:26] this has changed a bit because everything has gotten faster since he originally said that.
[00:22:33] Right.
[00:22:34] I mean, back then we would have to wait days for supplies and things like that,
[00:22:40] where I can order stuff from Amazon and still have it this afternoon.
[00:22:45] Not a sponsor.
[00:22:46] And so we need to change the framing of how long things take because we can just get things
[00:22:55] done faster.
[00:22:57] Yeah.
[00:22:57] Yeah.
[00:22:58] I think the, I think the, the, that framing, the mental framing, setting those things, because
[00:23:05] I think that is part of the problem right now, right?
[00:23:06] Like right now, I think the projects that I'm thinking about in my head for the stuff that
[00:23:09] we're doing at Virtua don't have end dates at all.
[00:23:12] They're just ambiguous timelines.
[00:23:15] So there's no necessity to get it.
[00:23:17] Now, the other side of that is as the owner, it's hard to state an end date and then what's
[00:23:25] the recourse if you miss it, right?
[00:23:27] It's not like a school project where you don't get the grade.
[00:23:30] If I have, I mean, if somebody on my team has been given multiple end dates and they miss
[00:23:34] all of them, they can get fired.
[00:23:35] But like, if you miss one end date, I can't like necessarily fault you because there's
[00:23:44] also only so much time in the day, right?
[00:23:47] It may not be their fault.
[00:23:48] We may not have estimated for clients having emergencies.
[00:23:50] It's, it's, it's, it's, it's a very weird balancing act.
[00:23:56] And like, we're not clowns.
[00:23:58] We don't do balancing.
[00:24:00] No, but if you are a data person, okay.
[00:24:03] Cause I think this is something that varies widely by personality, right?
[00:24:08] But if you're a data person and you're really measuring your performance as to when you're
[00:24:13] doing deadlines, first of all, if you're a data person, you're probably going to have
[00:24:16] a deadline more likely than not have a deadline.
[00:24:20] But if you focus not on the deadline itself, but on how percentage wise you are getting close
[00:24:27] to that deadline, if you're a little late, that's okay.
[00:24:30] If you're a lot late, it's not okay.
[00:24:33] And the reason why it's not okay is because now you're encroaching on another project that
[00:24:39] you should be doing.
[00:24:40] So I think there's a way to measure it and be fair to your employees, right?
[00:24:46] To set expectations appropriately and not penalize them for unseen events or being 10% over versus
[00:24:55] being 50% over, right?
[00:24:57] There's a big difference between those two.
[00:25:01] And so doing that also, if you're a data person, you're looking at this and you're going, you know,
[00:25:07] I'm really crappy at estimating how long it's going to take to do these things.
[00:25:11] So I need to change the way that I do my estimating.
[00:25:14] And that's true because a lot of this stuff is stuff that we've never done before.
[00:25:18] How many times have you gone through a SOC 2 preparation and audit?
[00:25:22] Yeah, never.
[00:25:24] Right.
[00:25:24] This is my first one, yeah.
[00:25:25] You have no way of knowing how long it's going to take, right?
[00:25:29] Right.
[00:25:29] I thought it would take a month.
[00:25:32] And truth be told, I mean, this is the same thing if you go back a couple episodes where
[00:25:35] we talked about the internal audits we were doing, right?
[00:25:38] It was supposed to be like, it was supposed to be fixed the audit or audit June or whatever
[00:25:42] it was.
[00:25:42] And I was still talking about it in almost September by the time we decided that we're
[00:25:47] done with them, right?
[00:25:48] Like, yeah, if you don't, you don't know what you don't know.
[00:25:52] Right.
[00:25:52] And by the way, it's okay to adjust timelines because A, things happen.
[00:25:58] B, if you've never done it before, you're not going to be able to estimate it well.
[00:26:03] And so don't beat yourself up over it, but set another deadline.
[00:26:08] Set another deadline.
[00:26:09] And don't beat yourself up over the fact that you missed the deadline, but do beat yourself
[00:26:13] up over the fact that you still need to get it done.
[00:26:15] Because I think that's part of it, right?
[00:26:16] No, because I think that's part of it.
[00:26:17] Truthfully, like, if the deadline was set and you miss it, a lot of people would go, done,
[00:26:24] whatever, don't care.
[00:26:25] I missed the deadline.
[00:26:26] It's clearly not as, maybe it's not as important as I thought it was, right?
[00:26:30] Because a lot of, again, this is all mental balancing.
[00:26:33] Maybe that thing isn't as important as I thought it was, right?
[00:26:36] Maybe SOC 2 compliance, using this one as the example, isn't as important as I thought
[00:26:42] it was.
[00:26:43] Because if it was, I would have been pushing harder on my team to get it done, get the
[00:26:47] things that I need from them done, right?
[00:26:49] Yeah.
[00:26:50] But that's not true.
[00:26:52] It's very important, in my opinion.
[00:26:54] It's just that I got sidelined, you know, with another project or a client thing or a new
[00:27:01] client or whatever, recording, whatever.
[00:27:03] So like, I need to go back and beat myself up a little bit to just, because like, what
[00:27:12] happens in my opinion is like, sometimes you work on this project and the fire fizzles.
[00:27:16] Like everyone was on board for the SOC 2 thing when we first started.
[00:27:19] Everyone was like, yeah, this sounds like a great idea.
[00:27:21] It's not even mentioned in our weekly meetings anymore.
[00:27:24] Kind of like what you said earlier.
[00:27:25] Like it's not even done in the standups.
[00:27:26] It's not even talked about.
[00:27:28] Nobody's, the fire has fizzled.
[00:27:31] And I think that that needs to, there needs to be a way or there needs to be the fire starter,
[00:27:38] which by the way, great song from Prodigy.
[00:27:42] Should, I saw them live once, by the way, at Weber Hall.
[00:27:45] That was a crazy concert.
[00:27:47] But someone needs to be there to like, keep that going.
[00:27:51] And, and that might be hiring a project manager whose job it is solely to be the puzzle master.
[00:28:01] So yes and no, because most MSPs are not going to have enough staff to have a project manager.
[00:28:10] 100%.
[00:28:12] However, I think that you can replace that person in a smaller environment, right?
[00:28:20] Where it's not as complex.
[00:28:21] You can replace that person probably with something as simple as a spreadsheet.
[00:28:26] I mean, obviously there's monday.com.
[00:28:28] There's a million different project management softwares out there.
[00:28:31] And you can use any of those to try and do this, right?
[00:28:35] But I think minimally you can do this with a spreadsheet.
[00:28:37] And I think that if you had that spreadsheet with a list of all the different projects that you have on it
[00:28:44] and the different milestones going across the X-axis,
[00:28:48] and you use that spreadsheet in your weekly meetings to go, okay, where are we with this?
[00:28:53] Where are we with this?
[00:28:54] Where are we with this?
[00:28:55] You very quickly just hit them.
[00:28:58] You're less likely to lose something on the cutting room floor that way.
[00:29:02] Yeah, no, I agree with that.
[00:29:04] I think the idea of having it, there needs to be carved time to even talk about it.
[00:29:10] You know?
[00:29:10] And I think that the spreadsheet thing is a good idea because whenever you pick out like a software tool for –
[00:29:16] because you know what I hear a lot in the industry is people go, I need a project management tool.
[00:29:20] I need a project management tool.
[00:29:21] Should I use ClickUp?
[00:29:22] Should I use Monday?
[00:29:22] Should I use this?
[00:29:23] Should I use Asana?
[00:29:25] Doesn't matter.
[00:29:26] Really doesn't matter.
[00:29:27] Because, one, they're all the same.
[00:29:29] And, two, you got to get buy-in from everyone on your team,
[00:29:32] and as soon as you don't have buy-in from somebody, the whole thing is lost.
[00:29:34] And, three, you still need to be able to manage all the crap that's in there.
[00:29:38] So even if you're just doing it with a spreadsheet, it's less about the tool.
[00:29:44] It's kind of like cybersecurity, people process tools.
[00:29:47] It's less about the tool, and it's more about like what you said, having the regular cadence and talking about it,
[00:29:55] bringing it up in the meeting.
[00:29:55] Where are we with this?
[00:29:57] Where are we with that?
[00:29:58] Why is this project being held up?
[00:30:01] And keeping track of that, right?
[00:30:03] I think that's another piece of it.
[00:30:04] Like, we have a project that we're working on, and we're waiting for the vendor to get back to us.
[00:30:11] And I reached out to the guy on my team going, where are we at?
[00:30:14] And he goes, we're waiting on the vendor.
[00:30:16] And the next day I was like, where are we at?
[00:30:17] And he's like, we're waiting on the vendor.
[00:30:18] And the third day I was like, where are we at?
[00:30:19] He's like, we're still waiting on the vendor.
[00:30:20] And I was like, have you reached out to the vendor and said, hey, we are stuck waiting for this from you.
[00:30:26] We need this now.
[00:30:28] He goes, no, I'll do that now.
[00:30:31] Yeah.
[00:30:31] So in that case, because I've done this, where the next action is to get something from a vendor, right?
[00:30:40] However, that's not really what the next action is.
[00:30:42] The next action is to follow up with the vendor until I get what I need.
[00:30:46] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:30:47] Yeah.
[00:30:48] Pushing on them.
[00:30:49] It's weird.
[00:30:50] Like, do you have any recommendations for books or people?
[00:30:55] Because you know I don't read.
[00:31:02] I don't know if there's like a book for like project management steps.
[00:31:07] Like, who would have known?
[00:31:10] Like, we know this because you and I are smart.
[00:31:12] And this is why we talk and put this out there to help other people like get this knowledge.
[00:31:16] But like, who would know that the next step isn't get the thing from a vendor, that the next step is push for the answer from the vendor.
[00:31:25] Like, it seems like to me, it seems like a no brainer.
[00:31:28] But I'm sure there are people out there who may not think the way I think.
[00:31:33] Is there a guide?
[00:31:35] Is there a book?
[00:31:35] Is there a to do?
[00:31:36] Is there something we can put out for them?
[00:31:38] I am sure there is.
[00:31:40] Okay.
[00:31:42] I'm not familiar with one.
[00:31:44] I'll Google for you.
[00:31:50] You know, I think in the size businesses that most MSPs are where you're not going to have a professional project manager.
[00:31:57] Because if you have a professional project manager, obviously you have somebody who is well versed in how to handle projects.
[00:32:05] Right.
[00:32:05] And I think there are good ways and bad ways.
[00:32:07] And I think the topic that we're just talking about is figuring out the best next action is probably a very important part of that.
[00:32:15] Now, I would say that there's probably a pretty easy rule for that is do you control the action or does somebody else?
[00:32:24] And if the answer is somebody else, then it's not the right next action because you have something that you can proactively do to try and push that to the next place.
[00:32:37] And that is what I immediately thought of when you said that was like, I'm sure you can do this in Excel, but we're a Google shop.
[00:32:42] But in Google, you can make like a status of like, you know, who's controlling the next action.
[00:32:51] And you can have this because I feel like if I gave the status of like who would control the next action, us or them, if the status is them, you can quickly go through and go, no, all of this is wrong because you can call them out.
[00:33:02] So real quick, thanks to Reddit, reddit.com slash r slash project management.
[00:33:08] And this is a post from four years ago.
[00:33:12] So what are some of us reads about project management geared towards immediate to advanced PMs?
[00:33:18] And the number one book that shows up a lot here, which I think is an amazing book and I make everyone on my team read it, is The Phoenix Project.
[00:33:25] Yes.
[00:33:26] Yes.
[00:33:26] I forgot all about that.
[00:33:27] That's a great, the second book's not so good, but The Phoenix Project, the first book is great.
[00:33:33] It's about DevOps, but it's, they talk about the Kanban board.
[00:33:39] They talk about project management.
[00:33:40] They talk about information being locked to one person.
[00:33:44] There's so much there.
[00:33:45] I love that book.
[00:33:46] I totally forgot about that.
[00:33:47] There was a couple others.
[00:33:48] And then someone else wrote How to Run Successful Projects 3 by Fergus O'Connell.
[00:33:52] And a lot of people seem to have liked that one.
[00:33:55] And another one was, there's a bunch of like the art of project management, agile project.
[00:34:00] I mean, really, I guess I should have gone to Amla.
[00:34:03] Oh, Skunk Works by Ben Rich is another one, which is all about the, we've talked about Skunk Works before.
[00:34:09] Yeah.
[00:34:10] The Lockheed thing.
[00:34:13] So I would say, because you mentioned it and I hadn't thought of it either, is Kanban boards.
[00:34:19] And there are physical implementations of Kanban boards.
[00:34:23] There are virtual implementations, SaaS software.
[00:34:26] Probably the one that I'm familiar with most is Trello, which is really nice because you can use the simple version of it for free.
[00:34:34] Right.
[00:34:35] And if I were to trying to do projects on the cheap, I would probably use Trello.
[00:34:42] If I am more of a, I need to handwrite and do physical stuff, which sometimes I am, I'd probably get a big whiteboard and some Post-it notes.
[00:34:52] And have a physical Kanban board in my office.
[00:34:57] Because Kanban boards just are really good at keeping track of simple projects and having that very good visualization.
[00:35:07] It's something you said there, simple projects.
[00:35:09] Because the Kanban board only has three columns, to do, doing, and done.
[00:35:16] And like at base level, right?
[00:35:18] Yes.
[00:35:18] To do a simple project.
[00:35:20] Like, for example, like I did a brain dump the other, I did a brain dump the other day, right?
[00:35:23] And one of my items on my list is I need to get a hotel for ACES Conference 2025.
[00:35:29] That's a simple one.
[00:35:30] There's nothing complex here.
[00:35:32] But the other one is like, get sponsors for ACES 2025.
[00:35:37] That's more complex because I need to reach out and have multiple different conversations with multiple different people.
[00:35:42] The hotel one is like, hi, do you guys have rooms?
[00:35:44] Yes?
[00:35:45] Cool.
[00:35:45] Thanks.
[00:35:45] Bye.
[00:35:45] That's it.
[00:35:46] Like, it's a simple project.
[00:35:48] So the complexity, I think the idea of a simple project using the Post-it note, if you're just starting out.
[00:35:54] Or if you're good enough to be able to think through all of the pieces to make a holistic project, then you can use a Kanban board as well.
[00:36:05] Like a simple Kanban board.
[00:36:07] Yeah.
[00:36:07] Yeah.
[00:36:08] Now, you bring up something that we kind of skipped over.
[00:36:12] Because we kind of jumped right into how do we keep a project going?
[00:36:17] We didn't talk about how to get a project started.
[00:36:21] And what you just mentioned in terms of what you're doing in getting the ACES conference off the ground for next year.
[00:36:29] How do you brainstorm for a project?
[00:36:32] That's a good one.
[00:36:35] Drugs?
[00:36:37] No, I'm kidding.
[00:36:38] I'm kidding.
[00:36:38] I'm kidding.
[00:36:39] I'm kidding.
[00:36:42] I, for us, whenever, I'm going to have to pause my, I have to think about this.
[00:36:50] So I want to cut out the thinking time.
[00:36:55] The way I come up with new projects like this is a mix of a couple of different things.
[00:37:00] One is obviously going to conferences and hearing about things that other people are doing, going, oh, we should do that too.
[00:37:06] Right?
[00:37:08] Some or some variation of that.
[00:37:10] Two is thinking about efficiencies that I hear about from vendors.
[00:37:16] And three is just like, hey, I think this would be cool if we could do X.
[00:37:23] Now, the first one, going to conferences and listening to people, great example of this is at ACES conference last year, Brian Best, who's our, he's not the keynote speaker.
[00:37:38] He's a fortified speaker.
[00:37:39] Like, I actually called him, sidebar, I called him and left him a voicemail.
[00:37:43] I was like, hey, are you doing ACES 2025?
[00:37:45] Yeah, you are.
[00:37:45] All right, thanks.
[00:37:46] Bye.
[00:37:46] Call me later.
[00:37:47] And I just hung up the phone on him, like, because he's always speaking.
[00:37:49] But he made a comment last year about every month, every week, I think, he sends his clients a report.
[00:37:59] So one week, it's like, here's how many malware we caught.
[00:38:02] The second week, here's how many things we patched.
[00:38:04] The third week is like, here's the dark web hits, whatever.
[00:38:07] And then everyone went, how do you automate that?
[00:38:09] And he goes, oh, no, no, no, it's all manual.
[00:38:11] And we were like, what?
[00:38:13] Now, in my head, I immediately was like, we need to do this.
[00:38:15] And then he's like, it's all manual.
[00:38:17] And I was like, not like that.
[00:38:18] Like, right?
[00:38:19] So the project there is, how can we recreate these reports that Brian has such a great idea around?
[00:38:26] And then how do we automate it?
[00:38:27] So that's something you get at a conference.
[00:38:29] From a vendor, I always like to talk to vendors about looking at what are we using?
[00:38:39] Like, how are we using their software?
[00:38:41] And like, what are things we're missing?
[00:38:43] So for Adagy, for example, who's our MDM of choice, I've had multiple calls with PMs and people over there going, hey, are we using this to the fullest potential?
[00:38:53] And what are we missing?
[00:38:56] We use Watchmen Monitoring as our monitoring tool.
[00:38:59] And so internally, we were like, okay, we're getting a lot of monitoring tickets about people running out of hard drive space.
[00:39:05] So we're like, how do we automate this?
[00:39:06] Well, we have Adagy.
[00:39:07] Adagy can pop alerts.
[00:39:09] How do we make those things work and talk to one another?
[00:39:11] So that came out of like a vendor thing as well as a repeatable ticket thing.
[00:39:18] And then the last one, which kind of leans into that one also, is like, hey, this would be cool if.
[00:39:24] So one of the things we used to do when we had fewer clients when we were just in New York and we had fewer clients, it was a lot easier to do than we do now that we have clients nationwide,
[00:39:33] is we had this giant matrix.
[00:39:34] We had a giant Excel spreadsheet and we had all of these columns.
[00:39:38] Like, do they have Apple Business Manager?
[00:39:41] Do they have Ecom?
[00:39:42] Do they have what's their printer?
[00:39:45] What's their phone service?
[00:39:46] What's this?
[00:39:46] What's their backup?
[00:39:47] And we literally filled in all these boxes.
[00:39:49] It was very manual.
[00:39:50] Now with a tool like your PSA, you can put that stuff in and run reports.
[00:39:55] So we're like, okay, the next project is how do we get these?
[00:40:00] How can we pull more out of reporting?
[00:40:03] And what can it do for us?
[00:40:05] So there's a lot of different places where ideas come from.
[00:40:07] I will sit in a quiet space with my iPad and the Notes app and just brain dump.
[00:40:18] Like, if I'm on vacation, vacation is the best time for me because I'll go to like, I remember one time I went to like a spa.
[00:40:26] It was like a spa weekend with Michelle.
[00:40:29] And I'm sitting in the quiet room and I have my iPad and I just got a massage.
[00:40:36] So like, I'm like not stressed anymore about things physically.
[00:40:41] And like, the mental barf that came out onto that notepad.
[00:40:47] Like, I literally wrote three pre, I mean, this was years ago, but I wrote like three pages of a brain dump of like ideas and things.
[00:40:54] Whether it was for work or home or kids or whatever, it doesn't matter.
[00:40:59] But the amount of things and then those things are what like spark other things.
[00:41:06] Yeah.
[00:41:08] I do something similar.
[00:41:10] I use a mind map rather than doing a brain dump just straight to paper.
[00:41:15] It's something with the visual, you know, messed up brain that I have.
[00:41:21] If I'm starting a project, I think it's very similar to yours.
[00:41:24] I'm going to enumerate it this way, though.
[00:41:28] I put it into a sentence.
[00:41:30] If I do or create X, Y will happen.
[00:41:36] And I probably use, I use bad letters for that.
[00:41:40] Let me rephrase that.
[00:41:42] If I do or create A, B will happen.
[00:41:46] And here's why it was wrong in the first place.
[00:41:49] Is that that B side is the Y.
[00:41:53] It's the result that I want to get.
[00:41:57] And I can't use the letter Y for that unless I'm intentionally trying to make it.
[00:42:01] The Y is the Y.
[00:42:02] Yeah, the Y is the Y.
[00:42:04] I didn't want to make it confusing.
[00:42:05] And I just think I made it more confusing.
[00:42:07] Who's at first?
[00:42:10] What's on second?
[00:42:12] I don't know.
[00:42:14] He's on third.
[00:42:15] He's on third.
[00:42:16] No, I get it.
[00:42:17] If you do A, B will happen.
[00:42:20] And B is the Y of what you're working on.
[00:42:26] A defines the project.
[00:42:28] B defines the result.
[00:42:30] And then I can take that and turn it into a brain dump, a mind map, whatever I'm going
[00:42:38] to use.
[00:42:38] Because it's very similar, right?
[00:42:40] The only difference between your brain dump and my mind map is I'm drawing lines in between
[00:42:46] things.
[00:42:47] Yeah.
[00:42:48] Mine's a checklist in notes.
[00:42:51] And mine's a squid.
[00:42:53] And yours is a squid.
[00:42:54] Yeah.
[00:42:55] I mean, there's a lot of different ways to do this.
[00:42:57] I actually, when Michelle gets stressed out with work, I have her do kind of a brain dump,
[00:43:05] but I have her just write down the smallest bits of it in just an aligned notepad.
[00:43:17] And then I make her write down how much time everything takes.
[00:43:20] It's funny.
[00:43:20] It's like, I'm really good at helping her get through that stuff, but I can't do it myself.
[00:43:25] The either, either way, one, you have to get the information out of your brain and then
[00:43:31] you have to like organize it in such a way that you can keep it going.
[00:43:37] I think we've covered a lot though to this.
[00:43:41] So what I want to ask from you, the listener, is when you're not driving, because as we've
[00:43:46] established, you only ever listen to us in the car.
[00:43:51] What are you doing to manage your projects?
[00:43:53] Not what are you doing for project management?
[00:43:56] What are you doing to manage your projects?
[00:43:58] Are you brain dumping or mind mapping?
[00:44:02] Are you, what do you, how are you coming up with new ideas?
[00:44:06] Where are those things hitting you?
[00:44:07] And then how are you getting yourself to the finish line?
[00:44:11] And if, and, and be honest with yourself and be honest with us, if you're not, if you're
[00:44:17] not getting to the finish line, first off, that's okay.
[00:44:20] You're not alone.
[00:44:22] Tell us and let's see, maybe Eric and I can help you get through the, get through the finish
[00:44:26] line, because I do believe that the best way to get through the finish line is together.
[00:44:31] It's such a sweet, sweet little ending.
[00:44:33] And the only thing I would add to that is if you have any hacks that you also use that
[00:44:39] you have found either help get you started or help get you unstuck on a project, share
[00:44:45] those with us as well.
[00:44:46] Yeah, do that.
[00:44:47] We would love that.
[00:44:48] Well, this was another one of those heavy ones.
[00:44:51] I promise you the next one will be way kookier.
[00:44:55] Maybe we'll see what happens.
[00:44:57] Check us out.
[00:44:57] Facebook.com slash group slash all things MSP.
[00:45:00] Follow us at youtube.com slash at all things MSP.
[00:45:03] And if you do go to the Facebook group and tell me what color Eric's lights are right
[00:45:07] now.
[00:45:08] Also check us out on all of our, your favorite podcasting.
[00:45:11] I, I found out we're on Spotify podcasts the other day.
[00:45:14] That's cool.
[00:45:15] Who knew?
[00:45:16] Leave us a review somewhere, somewhere.
[00:45:18] And then tell us where you left it.
[00:45:20] Cause I don't need to go search the internet for my name anymore.
[00:45:24] I guess that's it.
[00:45:25] That's Eric.
[00:45:26] I'm Justin.
[00:45:27] Bye.
[00:45:28] Thanks for listening.
[00:45:29] And don't forget to subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform.
[00:45:33] You can also follow us on Facebook, but better yet, go ahead and join the Facebook group.
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[00:46:08] The all things MSP podcast is a biz pal LLC production.