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[00:00:34] Again with my Timu Elgato light dude, light worked fine. It was like Wednesday, eight o'clock
[00:00:40] at night I was on, I was the command control power podcast, which is a Apple based podcast.
[00:00:47] They've been around those guys have been around forever. Right.
[00:00:49] They finally have moved to StreamYard. I don't know when they switched to StreamYard
[00:00:53] They were doing a live broadcast while they were recording, which by the way, if you guys
[00:00:57] want us to do this live on YouTube while we're recording, you can ask. We're not going to do
[00:01:02] it, but you can ask. Anyway, totally fine all night long. Right. The next morning I came in
[00:01:11] had to get on a zoom went to turn on the light dead, dead light doesn't work. And I had to reset
[00:01:18] it. And like, it's taken me like 17 tries to reset the Elgato key light, air light honestly Elgato,
[00:01:26] if you're listening get your ish together in an ear, in an ear, in an ear.
[00:01:42] What's up everybody? Welcome to the all things MSP podcast. My name is Justin Escar with me
[00:01:46] always is my good friend podcast producer extraordinaire, Mr. Eric Anthony. Eric,
[00:01:52] what's happening in your neck of the woods? Well, you know, it's a pretty standard Friday here.
[00:02:01] Kind of just making sure that we have podcast episodes to record, you know, for the next
[00:02:07] as a good podcast producer should as the producer should. Right. We actually do. So
[00:02:13] we actually do have in spite of the fact that you and I are taking some time off for different things.
[00:02:20] And so we've stacked up some in advance. So we're good. We'll have one come out every week.
[00:02:24] We're still we're still okay. But getting into April, we've actually we've got a fairly good
[00:02:32] number stacked up. So we will be getting back to guests very, very soon.
[00:02:41] Well, that's good. We do have some good stuff coming up. I'm really excited for it.
[00:02:47] Not a bad Friday this week has been kind of actually like a little bit crazy like Monday was
[00:02:51] rough. Right. And I talked to our team and I was like Monday was a Monday if you know what
[00:02:55] I mean right? And then like Tuesday was a Monday and Wednesday was a Monday and Thursday
[00:03:00] was a Monday. And today they were recording on Friday. Friday is a Monday and I'm like,
[00:03:04] what is going on? We a couple of things happening in our world. We are making a massive
[00:03:11] aggressive push to get everybody up onto Mac OS 14.4, which is the latest OS. And the reason
[00:03:17] for this is Apple actually reduced this really awesome new tool in MDM called DDM because
[00:03:23] you know, God, the marketing department needs a paycheck. But DDM declarative
[00:03:29] device management, which is this awesome feature where the Mac can actually report back
[00:03:33] to the MDM solution with, Hey, I have an update I need to run as opposed to the
[00:03:38] MDM solution going, I think you need to run this the Mac going, I'm not sure the MDM
[00:03:43] going, I'm telling you and the computer going, don't tell me what to do. You're not my father
[00:03:48] and then the computer and then the MDM solution going, Luke says, I am your father
[00:03:52] and then it cuts your hand off. DDM just goes, the mattress goes, Hey, tell me what
[00:03:56] I got something telling me what to do. And so it gets it done, but it only works in Mac OS 14.
[00:04:01] And so we're making like this super aggressive push to do stuff. So I've been spending my entire
[00:04:05] week emailing everyone of my clients being like, can this computer has been on for a couple of days?
[00:04:10] We got to get an update or this computer hasn't been on for a couple months or like,
[00:04:13] why hasn't this computer been on, which you would think like we'd be more on top of it.
[00:04:16] But this is a great way also as a reason to reach out to clients. So we're getting back
[00:04:21] to people who we haven't heard from in quite some time. And like, let's be honest, it's not that
[00:04:26] we're bad consultants, just that sometimes clients fall off the map for a while. They're busy, they
[00:04:29] have jobs to do, they shouldn't be calling you. That's kind of the point. And so it's like
[00:04:34] really weird for me to write to like the operations person at a client or the administrative
[00:04:39] assistant or whoever it is being like, Hey, long time no talk, you've been paying us,
[00:04:44] we've been doing our job, everyone's happy. Just FYI, do this for me. You know what
[00:04:49] I mean? And it, you know, that's been my week is getting that stuff done as well as I'm still
[00:04:58] watching data move from one Synology to another, which has been going on three weeks now, which
[00:05:02] is unbelievable, which my client and everyone who's listening is going to relate to the story.
[00:05:07] We built out this entire Synology solution. We replaced their old broken ones with a new
[00:05:13] one with an expansion unit. We went from like four Synology so like one unit,
[00:05:17] it's in high availability. So it's really two units, whatever. We've been working on this project for a
[00:05:23] couple months now. We've been actively on it for six plus weeks. There was planning involved,
[00:05:29] yesterday they come to us and they go, Hey, we found a couple hard drives lying around.
[00:05:34] Can we get is there room on the server for this data? And I said, sure, how much data
[00:05:38] we're talking about? And the person takes out their notebook and goes,
[00:05:43] 20, 2008 to 2018 7.4 terabytes over six drives. And I said, okay, cool, 7.4 terabytes across
[00:05:51] six drives or on each of those drives. They go, no, no, no, across the six drives. I said,
[00:05:55] sure, we have plenty of space for 7.4 terabytes. Okay. 2019 to 2020, 108 terabytes. Are you
[00:06:05] kidding me right now? What do you mean you just found 108 terabytes? Where has this been? Not to
[00:06:12] mention this is video footage and only gets into 2020. What about the next four years? Oh, they're
[00:06:17] running about 25 to 30 terabytes per year of raw video footage. And they have nowhere to put it.
[00:06:24] And I'm like, why has this not been brought up to us beforehand? What are you doing? And if
[00:06:29] you're in the car and you're listening to this and laughing right now, please tell me
[00:06:32] you feel my pain. So now we have to build them a whole other box. And so we decided to go with
[00:06:41] the beast, which if you don't know Synology's, Synology's biggest model is a 16 Bay, it's a RS
[00:06:47] 4021 XS plus. And if you know, Synology numbers, you know that those last two digits of the year
[00:06:53] the device came out. So 4021 came out in 2021. And with that fully loaded and the expansion
[00:07:02] bay fully loaded, it'll get them about 400 terabytes of space for this for basically the same price.
[00:07:08] And there's no room for expansion. There's nothing else beyond that for basically the same price.
[00:07:12] We're going to buy them the HD 6500, which is the 30 Bay unit that is built for if you want to
[00:07:19] run your own private cloud out of your office because in total, if we buy them 4812 terabyte
[00:07:30] drives as opposed to 2818 terabyte drives, it's the same price and they still have 12 drives to
[00:07:37] expand with and they can slap on five expansion boxes in case they just magically find more stuff
[00:07:43] because 12 terabyte drives are $180 and 18 terabyte drives are $650. So like all of this came
[00:07:51] about yesterday when they were like, by the way, we found this drive in a drawer. Oh wait,
[00:07:56] and here's even the best part. We figured out the total they have right now is about 215 terabytes
[00:08:02] of data, right? Fine. The maximum storage pool on a Synology no matter what unit you buy
[00:08:11] is 200 terabytes. So we actually have to build it in such a way this way we don't end up with
[00:08:18] 200 terabytes and a 15 terabyte. Right. So it makes more like logistical sense within the
[00:08:25] volumes. See, and you guys think I only just like take care of Max. No man, I'm building out hard
[00:08:31] core synologies. Yeah, ridiculous, ridiculous. That's my story. So you're looking at almost half a petabyte.
[00:08:41] If we build out if we build out the 4812 on a RAID 5 will be something like 450
[00:08:48] terabytes of raw storage for them. Yeah.
[00:08:50] Yeah. Ridiculous, right? It is. But I also understand, you know, having done a little bit of video
[00:08:57] production myself, I understand why you keep that raw footage and just the
[00:09:06] massiveness of raw footage when it comes out of camera. Because when you shoot, especially if
[00:09:13] you're shooting it 4k or higher with 10 bit color, yeah, those things get huge like really fast,
[00:09:21] like four gigs a minute. I mean, I'm not going to deny that it's going to add up fast, right? Like
[00:09:27] there's probably plenty of reasons why they have all of this data and I'm not going to. And so I
[00:09:33] even said to them, I was like, what about backing this up because I don't know how we're going
[00:09:36] to back this up. And they were like, we don't need to back it up because we have the drives.
[00:09:43] These drives that they're working from is the primary. So this video vault, this video ingest
[00:09:48] vault is what I'm calling it, is actually going to be the backup for these drives that
[00:09:54] they're just passing around. And I was like, okay. Here's something you can get in writing
[00:10:02] and have them sign. Yeah, I'm quoting you too. And you're going to say only why you don't want the
[00:10:07] second one. So I don't know that so that's been my week with my Synology project.
[00:10:20] And I think now is a great opportunity to talk about two other sponsors of all things MSP.
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[00:11:11] core view. So this is this is what we're going to call the filler episode. This is one of those
[00:11:16] episodes where like we didn't really come to the table with a topic and we're just going to
[00:11:20] talk because we need to have an episode just we can stay on calendar. But there's a couple of things
[00:11:25] that I do want to make sure that we do talk about that it's very self-serving and you know this
[00:11:33] being our 15 member episode, you know, thank you for listening. Thank you. Thank you for
[00:11:39] being here. Thank you for being part of the family. Thank you to all that are in the
[00:11:43] All Things MSP Facebook group. I mean we're I in a past episode I think we said we're at
[00:11:48] 10,000 members but if I'm looking at the website right now it's 5.3 which by the way
[00:11:51] somehow or other don't ask me how this happened. If I go to type in Facebook into my URL in Chrome
[00:11:57] it just auto loads the All Things MSP group. No it doesn't even bring me to my home page.
[00:12:03] My home page is the All Things MSP group. Yeah way to go. So thank you to everyone that's in
[00:12:08] there. Thank you obviously to all of our sponsors that are that are sponsoring core
[00:12:13] of U superhouse movebot contact goes into an easy D mark. I'm sure there are others
[00:12:18] but I'm just reading the I'm just reading the graphic. We would love to we would love to like
[00:12:24] hear more from you if you're in the group. Tell us what you want to hear what you want us
[00:12:29] to talk about. Tell us if you want to be on the show because we want you to be we want
[00:12:34] this to be more about you guys unless about me complaining about my Synology clients. Well
[00:12:41] and to be fair if they want to tell us more about what kind of content they want what kind of things
[00:12:47] concern them conveniently we have a survey for that. And it's still open actually you know
[00:12:56] and I didn't get to explain this on the live stream the other night because I ran out of time
[00:13:01] but I'm leaving the survey up pretty much permanently because what I decided was
[00:13:08] I think this is a very good entry point for people who join the group when they get that welcome
[00:13:14] message that they get a link to the survey so they can fill it out and tell us why they join the
[00:13:18] group what do they want you know for joining the group. And you know there was a lot of
[00:13:24] good information that came out of the survey so if if you didn't fill it out please do so
[00:13:30] atmsp.link forward slash survey. And then also big announcement we've talked about this
[00:13:37] before but we do have a patreon now patreon.com slash all things msp and I'm sure Eric wasn't waiting
[00:13:43] was waiting for me to announce this or was hoping that I wasn't going to but I'm gonna do it anyway.
[00:13:49] We're building out some more in it right now we have two plans you can just be a friend of the
[00:13:53] group and get your name listed in our credits in the live stream and then our more expensive
[00:13:58] one we're gonna start doing some Q&A so this way you have like private one-on-one time like an
[00:14:03] open door kind of thing to talk to either Eric or myself about your business about what you
[00:14:06] want to do things like that as well as we're gonna start producing some exclusive content
[00:14:15] where it's sound like it's only fans. Well I was gonna say where Eric's just gonna keep saying
[00:14:19] Microsoft 365 by the way I've been telling that story for a week now it is a great story so
[00:14:27] check out our patreon and then where's our what's the threadless.com forward slash all
[00:14:34] things msp I think threadless.com slash all things msp nope maybe it's all things add msp
[00:14:43] we'll find it and we'll just it shows you where we're at with things
[00:14:47] all things msp.threadless.com now this is we're gonna make real good stuff anyway we do have a t-shirt
[00:14:52] store you can support us there we'll have a link to that or was it or a ball oh you can buy
[00:14:59] the puzzle or we'll figure out the link we'll post it somewhere um but yeah I mean do join all
[00:15:04] this stuff so we can talk about things I'm just gonna go real quick there's been some really good
[00:15:09] chatter in the all things msp facebook group other than you welcoming everybody and me just saying
[00:15:14] welcome welcome welcome to all things msp which is totally stolen from John Oliver.
[00:15:21] I like that people are not only asking questions but they are providing content to help everyone
[00:15:33] in the group right this is a really good group of people where it's not
[00:15:39] it's not a lot of keyboard warriors it's not a lot of people fighting it's people who are wanting to
[00:15:44] help and wanting to provide content there is one that picked that I did pick up on it it's from
[00:15:49] from earlier in this week Nate wrote I have a new client that will require me to fly to a few
[00:15:56] locations how do you calculate the travel costs and there have been eight replies so I
[00:16:01] and I'd read them I skim them but I do want to talk about it a little bit because I thought it was
[00:16:04] a really good question for anyone who didn't already see it and travel to clients is is a tough thing
[00:16:12] and I'm going to start with something we used to talk about almost every episode back in the
[00:16:17] beginning the beginning of the atm sp podcast time which is it should be in your contract
[00:16:23] even if you're not going to travel it should be in your contract because what's
[00:16:28] going to happen is someone's going to ask you for your travel it's in your contract and then
[00:16:32] you don't have to worry about it because it's in your country see where I'm going with this folks
[00:16:37] yeah I and I totally 100% agree right yeah but I think the question most often comes of
[00:16:46] how do you calculate this I think that's what sure a lot of people struggle with
[00:16:53] and there are a lot of great answers in this I can tell you what we did please
[00:17:00] economy flight plus hotel plus $50 per diem for food
[00:17:09] plus day right so like one is your travel costs and one is your work rate so like your
[00:17:15] travel was economy and I would always charge economy and then upgrade
[00:17:20] I never charged my clients my upgraded flight unless it's an unless it was like a last minute
[00:17:26] emergency kind of situation if you were like can you can you get to Florida by tomorrow yeah
[00:17:31] it's going to cost you a lot of money I don't care whatever fine but like if it's a plan thing
[00:17:35] economy hotel and to be honest all of you should have a hotel and and airline credit card for
[00:17:47] your business so make sure you're using those and like rack and some points
[00:17:53] I say $50 per diem for food that that part may vary and if you need a car or uber
[00:18:02] you know all of that should be laid out in your contract pretty easily and then you calculate
[00:18:06] on it then then comes your day rate right and if you're going to charge a day rate please
[00:18:12] realize that you need to be there from from nine to four nine to five to quantify that day rate so
[00:18:18] a great example is this client who we're moving this data for we quoted them for five days of my
[00:18:25] guy being on site he was only there for four but what we didn't we didn't think about when we
[00:18:31] quoted it was how much work I was going to be doing in the back end so we just made it a
[00:18:35] four day rate and then a one day justin's time adjusted for and made it the value of the day
[00:18:43] rate so the quotes still match up so they weren't like well kyle wasn't really here for five days we
[00:18:48] only here for four you know but you should separate the two items because I think a lot
[00:18:53] of people try to make it all one big thing and again this is not the time for hiding fees
[00:18:59] this is this is 100 transparency here when you're talking to your clients
[00:19:05] I would also ask your client if they have a preferred hotel that maybe they do work with so
[00:19:11] like my client who's in Miami when I used to go pre-covid I used to go down there once a month
[00:19:16] they had a hotel across the street because they had so many people coming to their office
[00:19:20] they had a better rate at that hotel so I would book the hotel using my credit card and
[00:19:26] then I would charge them for the amount but they knew what it was going to be because I was already
[00:19:29] getting a discounted rate right so like talk to your client about it and make sure that they
[00:19:34] understand and be clear with them if you quote them for four days and you're only there for two
[00:19:38] and you want to get out early that's on you because you're changing the plan
[00:19:45] and so you can cut them back the day rate but then don't you don't get to charge them for
[00:19:49] for the flight change right unless it was pre-established hey I'm coming down I'm scheduling you for four
[00:19:56] but if it takes two and I and I can get done in two please note that there will be changes
[00:20:02] and those will be adjusted for it and your client needs to sign off on that first hand
[00:20:06] but that's kind of the way I would do it clients should be paying 100% of your travel
[00:20:11] unless there's some crazy circumstances involved yeah there's there's a key piece that you you mentioned
[00:20:20] I agree with but you kind of just because you and I probably think we think a lot of like when it
[00:20:28] comes to some things like this and but it may not be obvious to other people and that is
[00:20:34] you quote the client ahead of time like you've already looked up what the flight's going to be
[00:20:40] you've already looked up what the hotel is going to be so that you can give them an accurate
[00:20:46] even if it's still a quote it's still an estimate of what that's going to cost right
[00:20:52] so that it's not a surprise to them and and that I think is a very important piece
[00:21:00] because surprises don't go over well right they never do they never do so I mean I think that's
[00:21:06] a solid question by Nate and I do like the the answers that are coming up and they're pretty
[00:21:13] much I'm fine with what we're saying before anyone even miss it but like don't don't the
[00:21:17] the travel part is not where you're making your money you're not trying to make your money by
[00:21:21] like gouging their airline you're not charging them to fly first on you know Singapore
[00:21:27] airlines comfort unless they're flying you to Japan if they're flying you to Japan from the US that's
[00:21:31] a different story right but like you know use discretion and then you get them on the labor
[00:21:38] side because your day rate doesn't have to equate your hourly times eight it can be whatever you
[00:21:44] want it to be because you could easily say well you know if let's say your hourly is 150 right
[00:21:50] 150 times eight is $1,200 but you're not able to help your other clients during that time so
[00:21:58] they should be paying more than that $150 per hour they should be charged you should probably charge
[00:22:04] them double for your day rate it's that exclusivity right that's a exclusivity yeah
[00:22:11] they can only work on that one client when they're traveling so well you know it's funny
[00:22:15] about that though so that client who I used to go to in Miami the old CFO uh somebody in the office
[00:22:22] not going to say who had told him that I was taking a call with another client while I was down there
[00:22:29] and he did not like the fact that I was talking to other clients while he was paying for my time
[00:22:33] and I said okay no problem and I was like I was like someone just called me it took me 15
[00:22:37] minutes but what I'll do is I'll tack on the 15 minutes at the end of my day to make up for
[00:22:41] and he goes okay great six my day ended at five it's now seven o'clock I'm still in their office so
[00:22:49] I've now gone past 5 15 I've done five now I'm 5 15 to 7 I'm still there working on other things
[00:22:54] and he's still there he comes in he goes what are you doing here I was like well
[00:22:58] so-and-so didn't do x y and z so I'm making up for all of that stuff and he's like oh cool
[00:23:03] cool cool thanks so much and I go but by the way I didn't charge you for the 15 minute call
[00:23:07] because I bumped it on the end but I've been here since past that time so I need to charge you time
[00:23:12] and a half for all the extra time I'm here and he goes you're joking right and I go well how serious
[00:23:18] were you about me not taking a phone call for 15 minutes on my lunch break to other people he goes
[00:23:23] this is why I like you and I was like I'm gonna go now and he's like thanks and he realized that
[00:23:28] like he shouldn't have nagged me on the 15 minute thing because I was gonna bite him back
[00:23:32] on it later but I had a good relationship with this person so it like worked out like you can't
[00:23:37] pull that ish with a lot of people but like no no you got to feel that out for that part of the
[00:23:43] relationship but still gotta love working for cfo's oh yeah I think we'll end it there I know it's
[00:23:50] a short one today but you know I did like this question I wanted to talk about it a little
[00:23:55] bit I wanted to just get some stuff out so a couple just last piece housekeeping so join
[00:23:59] facebook.com.com. group special all things MSP obviously if you're an MSP and you want to learn a little
[00:24:04] bit more about business check out acesconference acesconf.com for details that that conference is
[00:24:11] coming up real fast it's less than 60 days away Eric's gonna be there you're on that side according
[00:24:16] to this Eric's gonna be there at msp is hosting our dinner uh in between the two shows we're
[00:24:21] talking about marketing we're talking about management we have a professional we have an
[00:24:25] Olympian who used to work at the pentagon who also trains with the basketball wives talking
[00:24:30] about performance anxiety we have a world record skydiver coming and talking about courage and
[00:24:38] accountability we have a bunch of it professionals coming in talking about what they did wrong on
[00:24:42] their msp we have a bunch of it professionals coming in talking about uh commanding the room
[00:24:47] all these we have a marketing and a branding person coming we have amazing stuff plus we have a
[00:24:52] boatload of sponsors who are not sponsoring at msp so i'm not going to mention them but they're
[00:24:56] going to be there oh actually super ops will be there so super ops plays on both sides uh super
[00:25:00] ops will be there so a lot of stuff happening acesconf acesconf.com go get your tickets today
[00:25:06] and I think we have a coupon code called at msp which I think gets a 10% so check that out
[00:25:11] follow us on youtube.com slash at all things msp do the survey in our group this way Eric has
[00:25:17] more information about you because hey look Alexa already has it so why can't Eric and that's it for
[00:25:22] us for a very short quick self-serving episode I guess that's a fill up that's it bye
[00:25:35] thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform
[00:25:40] you can also follow us on facebook but better yet go ahead and join the facebook group
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[00:26:42] you