Tracking Vending Subscriptions

[00:00:00] . Welcome to the SMB Community Podcast with hosts Amy Babinczek, James Kernan and Karl Palachuk. Produced by Kernan Consulting and for the international MSB community. We are dedicated to making every IT professional a successful IT professional. Hey there this James Kernan

[00:00:26] with Kernan Consulting and I'm here to talk a little bit about the Mastermind Peer Groups. So with the Mastermind Peer Groups you get a powerful combination of customized coaching, accountability and weekly synergy sessions with like-minded professionals from all around North

[00:00:41] America. These peer groups are really focused on sales, marketing and growth. It's all about results and you'll experience weekly accountability meetings, monthly trainings and then quarterly face-to-face meetings where we all get together on a quarterly basis in fun cities all around

[00:00:57] America. So be prepared to take your business to new heights and see if you've got what it takes to be one of the Mastermind Peer Group members. Thank you. Well hello everybody and welcome to this edition of the SMB Community Podcast with me Amy Babinczek and James Kernan.

[00:01:14] Hey James. Hey hey good morning Amy how are you? I'm doing all right. What's new with you? What's new? You know what's new it seems like everybody's talking about M&A. Yeah they

[00:01:27] sure are. I'll be speaking at an event this week called ExitCon so that's a virtual event so that was an event that kind of popped up real quick but it seems like everybody wants

[00:01:40] to talk about M&A and then I've got an M&A workshop again later this month and then I know Dave Seibert's event I'll be speaking about M&A in October at SMB Tech Fest. So you know

[00:01:55] I was just at Channel Pro in Columbus and well the attendees really turned out for that. The room was packed so that was great to see but holy cow every vendor that got up on stage and

[00:02:10] spoke and half of the other speakers who got up on stage and spoke you know I thought we were hearing a lot about cyber security. We weren't we were hearing all about M&A M&A M&A M&A

[00:02:24] and you know one of the things that really caught my ear was speakers talking about running your business like you're going to sell it and I know that's been a catchphrase that some you know some folks have used and it's one that kind of rubs me

[00:02:42] the wrong way because I think I think you behave differently in your business when you're getting ready to sell it like you make as an owner you make different types of decisions

[00:02:54] when you're getting ready to sell it then you do when you are investing and growing and taking you know taking new risks. I worry that if you're running your business like you're going to sell it tomorrow that maybe you're not taking the risks necessary to really make your

[00:03:16] business grow. What do you think about that James? I agree with you that I think there's two key points one you're bringing up probably the most important that you're making you know short-term decisions that could adversely affect long-term profitability and viability and I think that's

[00:03:33] really important. That's a great point. The second one is I think it's a culture killer you know how can you run your business thinking of selling it tomorrow now I get you know cleaning up your books and getting as many contracts in place and implementing all the

[00:03:48] best practices that we talk about on this program. That's I think what they mean but can you imagine telling employees hey yeah we're packaging this up and get ready to sell it? I mean you talk

[00:04:00] about a demotivator you know you're unless they're part of the action which most of them would not be you know why would they work really hard? Yeah that's kind of that's very demotivating for an employee but it makes them uncomfortable because you selling the business

[00:04:16] is risky for them. Right. You know they're looking for stability not to work for a company that's going to be traded someplace so yeah I do agree I think what they're meaning to say

[00:04:30] at least I hope what they're meaning to say is that you should run your business professionally which is different than like you're going to sell it. They should expand on that because that's a that's an important point for sure. It's a very important topic and you know so

[00:04:49] my message my message to folks that are going to be speaking on M&A is let's refine that messaging some because it's not coming off well. Yeah you know what I wonder if it is if

[00:05:02] you were at the same event and multiple speakers are kind of saying the same thing what do you think maybe some of the marketing people at those organizations was using chat gpt

[00:05:12] to kind of come up? Yeah that's funny that could be yeah it could be too much reliance on chat gpt turns turns you into a parrot. But uh yeah that's uh you know what I'll take M&A

[00:05:30] any day of the week just something refreshing and new cyber security has dominated what we've talked about for two straight years. Oh yeah. Since the beginning of January it seems like it's AI AI AI so I'm just grateful that uh people are talking about other things.

[00:05:47] Right it's something something different to talk about for a change not to get off of the M&A topic and back onto security bandwagon but we kind of have to because

[00:05:58] um Microsoft recall has been such a hot thing in the news and last episode I said you know I was going to reserve my opinion on that and really you know my opinion was was honestly that

[00:06:12] Microsoft was uh going to make some changes there and I wanted to see what they were going to do because I have the general belief that Microsoft will do the right thing in the end

[00:06:25] and they're definitely moving in that direction so there was a really good article in Wired magazine this last week which was an exclusive where you know Microsoft did announce that it will be off by default and they're going to be introducing some new

[00:06:49] security parameters around it involving encryption and authorization in order to access that data so good things are coming on the recall front and remember it's not coming to your PC tomorrow right it's only on those cloud PCs right now and it was you know there's a future date

[00:07:13] coming when it will roll out to AMD and Intel processors but right now it doesn't run on those unless you know the funny thing is I said that on a social media platform and they said yeah

[00:07:26] but you can flip some switches and make it happen today and I'm like well what idiot would do that like let Microsoft do the right thing first and yeah yeah try to make something work

[00:07:39] on your PC that you know is a potential security concern just I don't know why that made any sense to them or why they thought that that was a thing but yeah just don't

[00:07:52] wait wait for Microsoft to ready it for these platforms in the world of work and the future here so we will end up with something on this recall thing but by the time it gets

[00:08:04] here I'm pretty confident it will be much more secure than you know what they've previously put out to the cloud surface PC environment so I know we've got an interesting question of

[00:08:19] the week that came in do you want to jump into that yeah let's do it this question of the week is how do you track those vendor subscriptions it's kind of like we all have

[00:08:30] this in our personal life too right we've got all these subscriptions to everything now and how do you remember which ones you have and how much you're paying and when do they renew and

[00:08:42] you know it's a it's a it's a real thing and also what the parameters are around changing or canceling that subscription yeah and yeah in in in some ways it's new it feels new because just

[00:08:59] the volume of them that we're having to deal with but we also had to deal with this back in the day right we had to know when our volume licensing contracts were about to renew

[00:09:11] um I know you know back when we used logmein they had a policy um for ever and ever they they had to give them 90 days notice on contract renewal if you weren't going to renew that

[00:09:24] contract um and of course a lot of MSPs do that with their own clients right they want their clients to let you know they have cancellation terms around their around their

[00:09:37] contracts too so keeping track of this stuff it's a big deal yeah and that and that's that's so sneaky the uh you know 90 day 90 day written notice and then it or it will automatically

[00:09:51] automatically renew you know for a one year two year three year term at the same price that you bought it initially or maybe even increased yeah and you know what's hard about

[00:10:01] that is who are you going to submit that in writing too because your rep is probably gone because they don't they don't last as long as a three-year contract they move around

[00:10:11] more frequently than that so you got to find the person to give the notice to that's true then you know we've all been through it you go to the website and the only thing list or

[00:10:23] not listed up there is how to cancel they never make that a help topic listed number one because they don't want you to right yeah i think i think that was a really interesting

[00:10:34] question and a couple tips i would say number one and we talked about this before with anything that you enter in some type of contractual agreement you always think with the end in

[00:10:45] mind you start with the end in mind it's like okay you know when you're talking to that rep hey i'll sign this but i need to understand what happens if or when we get to cancellation

[00:10:56] how do i do that you know walk me through step by step try to get that in writing if you can and then i like putting a little reminder on my calendar just like amy said if it's 90 days

[00:11:07] then put you know at 100 days out you know do it ahead of time you know put a reminder on your calendar with the contract link and contact info and whatever you need so you can

[00:11:17] look and analyze that so that would be another thing i would look at and i've seen i actually had a client once that just did this as a business practice because there are so many

[00:11:30] subscriptions out there you know if you want to see how much money you're spending most people do a horrible job of that in their accounting package and financial reporting but turn off your credit card you know turn off your credit card they would do that once a year

[00:11:45] on purpose and then all the vendors that they wanted to keep they would just give the new credit card to and that's what they did now it didn't always work that swimmingly you know right amy knows you know you're locked into some time longer contracts and you're going

[00:12:00] to pay one way or another this is kind of a call for a new spreadsheet and none of us really need more spreadsheets in our lives but um but this is probably one where it would be

[00:12:12] useful um but i'm with you with the calendar thing i always tell people you know if it's not on my calendar it doesn't exist so um you know so put it on the calendar and create the

[00:12:26] spreadsheet right this is just a good task too for for your bookkeeping staff to maintain that spreadsheet right because they will see subscriptions coming through and they can get them on the spreadsheet so that you everyone can be aware of those what their what their end dates are

[00:12:45] and the amounts and and all that's good information yeah and that spreadsheet that kind of plays right into one of the other topics that i think we had on the agenda to chat about is

[00:12:56] your profitability you know you need to keep track of the costs of all these tools that we're using uh you know to support our clients you know and most of these subscriptions are

[00:13:07] our tools that should be part of your cost of goods and um you know and subsequently helping motivate you to increase your pricing to your customers or add more value however you look at

[00:13:20] that but yeah i love the idea of tracking it as well we all need another spreadsheet oh how i hate spreadsheets i really do i i saw i saw an advertisement on social media for

[00:13:35] for a mug and we all know people that this mug would be appropriate for and it's just lettering and it says this calls for a spreadsheet right so we know people that have that reaction

[00:13:47] to thing that is not me but i am actually calling for a spreadsheet today because i think it would be useful yeah and there was a i saw also in the news ken patterson who had been with

[00:13:58] packs eight for a long long time involved in their community he's leaving packs eight and headed over to total which is another denver-based organization their total is a security platform that's headquartered right in downtown denver it's a great company you should check them out

[00:14:19] but yeah happy for ken he's going to lead up the community over at total t o d y l if you haven't heard of them i have heard of them i'm not super familiar with what their product

[00:14:30] but i know they've been around for a few years and i think that's a great move for him to to build up their community presence yeah yeah there are totals certainly growing like crazy and and they're seemed like they're every everywhere now and including

[00:14:44] they're they're going to be at our mastermind event later this month so exciting to get that update and we'll see if ken ken appears there we're actually um amy you and i have talked

[00:14:56] about this before i think some of the attendees of these conferences you know we've got to get a little bit more creative and do some different things instead of having these events at some

[00:15:07] big fancy hotel we're trying to do them behind the scenes at some of our strategic partners and we'll actually be at one of the quarterly mastermind road shows we're going to be in denver the end of september at totals office so we'll be there for two days and

[00:15:23] get a behind the scenes tour so if any of you are total fans and want to check that out just message me at james at kern and consulting dot com i'll get you the info

[00:15:32] that's cool i i really like that idea i know i'm going to be at your event um down in clear water at td cynics and getting some behind the scenes tour over there and that's a company

[00:15:44] that i did business with for ever i mean practically the entire existence of my msp so um yeah so pretty excited about that i'll get to meet the total folks and i'm going to be

[00:15:56] speaking on how to uh use copilot to the advantage of your msp and your daily tasks so yeah you you always have great presentations i'm really excited about the copilot you know we've talked a lot on this program about the opportunities there you know there's pros and

[00:16:14] cons to everything but looking forward to what you share at the mastermind event on on using copilot in your business and well as usual i have some really practical tips that's

[00:16:26] sort of who i am right what is this thing how do i use it how can i make money right that's sort of my my approach to my approach to all technology and that hasn't varied with

[00:16:37] copilot so um so yeah looking forward to seeing everybody down there um you know one last thing before we go you know i've got my my new microsoft 365 newsletter and uh the one

[00:16:51] that's coming out well as we're recording this so it'll come out later today but it will have been a couple weeks back by the time you guys are listening to this but you can still find it

[00:17:01] out there um i there's a i've got a five-part series on protecting your email and tuning up that process in microsoft 365 so um that's the highlight for that that newsletter that newsletter has got news and then there's always a section that is about practical stuff you

[00:17:20] need to go out and do this week so um there's a link to that newsletter in our our show notes here if you want to go ahead and sign up for that or you could just go over to third tier

[00:17:32] net and you should see the pop-up and put your address in there and look at yourself on that on that list as well all righty well thank you james for another edition of the smb community podcast we'll see you next week you bet see you next week thanks