Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?
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@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said
Do you care if you hire a mobile car mechanic and they install a starter from ABC company that they get a kickback for ABC starters? OMG I thought my mechanic was going to have pure, unbiased opinions about starters! Na, probably not, probably they install all their starters from ABC because they've found over the years they have the least amount of problems with them, they last a long time, have good warranties, etc.
I believe the response to this is going to be:
"Yes, but he mechanic is a VAR. It is understood he has a relationship with a parts house. He is not giving you a recommendation on what part is best."
That is correct sir.
I may not agree, but I can quote the other side.
I think that means I should have been in debate club or something.
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@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
What they said was that there is a "Chance" that the consultant's opinion could be swayed by the fact that they could get paid because of the recommendation. That is all! Is that change worth it?
I dunno. Maybe the tech sleeps with his Dell rep? Should that be disclosed? Maybe there is a "chance" it causes bias too.
Maybe they worked somewhere where they paid him a handsome sum of cash to go to Dell training and now he kinda feel obligated to use that training and knowledge. Should that be disclosed?
Maybe he just really really likes Dell and they gave him a free sandwich once at the college Dell job fair booth. Disclose?
Maybe his favorite podcasts and screencast shows play Dell ads all the time and have Dell products and he's somewhat brainwashed because the costar is hot and there is a lot of subliminal stuff going on. Disclose?Why is it a that a consultant is expected to just overcome ALL other biases to do a good job, and that's ok, but ONLY particularly monetary bias it's impossible to overcome ever because there might be one "chance" the bias wins? Some people would probably rather sleep with the Dell rep than get a few affiliate bonuses here and there. Seems a much bigger bias to me.
If all we're saying is it should be avoided due to one possible chance at any time ever, then this pretty much condemns ALL forms of bias, cause they might win sometimes too. We might as well just disclose that we are humans, and we might like some stuff better than other stuff. And that we can only be controlled by our lizard brains whenever money is involved but never for any other reason.
I get it that people have heard many stories of companies being hurt by biased consultants or VARs or whatever, I get it.
But the allure of the bias is also based on need, not only want. If a tech company builds into their revenue structure a dependence on affiliate income as a core strategy, they will be in trouble.
Just like I don't go shopping on an empty stomach, I throw everything in the basket and spend twice as much. If a company builds their structure on a dependence of commissions, they are in trouble.
Not only will be more willing to get the sale, but they'll be more willing to not disclose, because after all, it's a value added service, they get a better rate because we depend on the commissions. I'll help you get what you want as long as you get it through me because my business depends on it.On the other hand, if commissions play no part of your business plan and you don't need them. It's just a tip jar and inconsequential to the work, nor does it effect your fee. Nor do you care if the client uses you or not for the things they buy.
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@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
If someone is looking for a VAR, nothing wrong with being the VAR. If they want a VAR and get a consultant, that's not good either. Why someone would want that, normally is for bad reasons, but it is their own reasons.
this is an interesting point that you have brought up before. I'm not sure that SMB typically go in search of a consultant vs a VAR - and this is a pretty big rub. I think that most of us by know realize that the SMBs rarely know what they want or way they want it. We realize that they probably really do NEED a consultant to design the correct solution for them, but they don't understand this (because they aren't doing business, instead they are playing at it, as Scott would say).
No, they go in search of "buying a box", which means that they are looking for a VAR, but they come at is from a "I want to buy a THING" instead of a "I want help" perspective. That that brings that to looking for a VAR is just the result.
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@dafyre said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
If someone is looking for a VAR, nothing wrong with being the VAR. If they want a VAR and get a consultant, that's not good either. Why someone would want that, normally is for bad reasons, but it is their own reasons.
this is an interesting point that you have brought up before. I'm not sure that SMB typically go in search of a consultant vs a VAR - and this is a pretty big rub. I think that most of us by know realize that the SMBs rarely know what they want or way they want it. We realize that they probably really do NEED a consultant to design the correct solution for them, but they don't understand this (because they aren't doing business, instead they are playing at it, as Scott would say).
And as a result, they wind up using the folks that have a team to "help them".... when that team is really designed to help the VAR / vendor.
Right, if they don't look after their own interests and/or hire an IT/MSP/ITSP person or company to do so, then they are just throwing themselves to the VAR/vendor wolves.
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@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
So if a 3 person non-profit church comes in and wants a $5K server. No questions asked you just sell it to them? Not me. Because I know they do not know what they need. They know the term server, but have no idea what it means, and what it is for. And how for 1/100th or less of the cost they can have a much better solution.
If they didn't come to you for advice and you refuse to sell them what they need, that's kinda weird, right? Hi, we want to buy something from your "store". But you say "sorry, I don't agree with your desires, you can only buy what I think is right for you."
LOL I just think of going to Best Buy - I want to buy a 100 in TV, I'm sorry sir, how large is the room you are putting this in? 10 x 10, OMG that room is way to small for this TV, you should buy the 65 in TV.. lol
Good analogy. You don't appreciate a "store" when you want advice. But you don't appreciate advice once you go to the store.
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I still cannot get past you don't question what your customers really need. And yes, I do know what they need.
Because if they don't ask for advice (and aren't on a peer review forum) it's not polite or warranted to give it. If they are looking to avoid advice, why force it on them? Once in a VAR role, just giving unrequested advice doesn't help you and can only make the customer unhappy. No one wins.
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
But they DO come for advice. That is what I am saying. Am I not getting that across properly?
They don't come asking specifically for a server. The think they might need one, and what do I think?
In which case they would want a consumer advocate, a consultant, right? Every case would be very unique.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Is AWS the uncommon choice for building a cluster of app servers? Is Azure uncommon when they want offsite management of AD?
In the SMB space, absolutely. Neither of these are even on the radar for proper SMB solution sets. Not that neither is ever an option, but pretty much that the SMB space even knows these names is because of VARs pushing big commission products instead of looking at customer needs. These are not products that have any purpose in the normal SMB ecosystem.
If you are looking at the enterprise, then this category is common, but only AWS is super common. There are many providers and you could never use one without a good knowledge of its limitations and features.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Why must one be a VAR before they can have some favorite tools in the toolbox?
You must be a VAR when the solutions you favour pay you to favour them (you can say you aren't ruled by this or whatever, but nothing changes the base fact that they pay you to favour them.) That's the sole reason that they pay you.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Why must one be a VAR before they can have some favorite tools in the toolbox? Or pull out some "common" options when a particular need comes up?
Having a solution that you are paid to favour (or accept money for favouring) or exchanges money in any way... makes you a VAR.
The favoured solution bit is totally wrong and something you added. Favouring a solution doesn't have anything to do with it. A consultant can favour a solution and not be a VAR. A VAR can have all solutions available and have no favourites. The two are unrelated.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Why must one be a VAR before they can have some favorite tools in the toolbox? Or pull out some "common" options when a particular need comes up?
Having a solution that you are paid to favour (or accept money for favouring) or exchanges money in any way... makes you a VAR.
The favoured solution bit is totally wrong and something you added. Favouring a solution doesn't have anything to do with it. A consultant can favour a solution and not be a VAR. A VAR can have all solutions available and have no favourites. The two are unrelated.
This could be a record setting post for most UK spellings of a word.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I still cannot get past you don't question what your customers really need. And yes, I do know what they need.
Because if they don't ask for advice (and aren't on a peer review forum) it's not polite or warranted to give it. If they are looking to avoid advice, why force it on them? Once in a VAR role, just giving unrequested advice doesn't help you and can only make the customer unhappy. No one wins.
I understand this point fully. But at the end of the day when they "find out" that YOUR solution wasn't "really" fixing what they "thought" they wanted. Who gets the blame? Of course they blame you. You become a "bad" company to avoid because they do things that "don't work" and cost a lot of money.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Is AWS the uncommon choice for building a cluster of app servers? Is Azure uncommon when they want offsite management of AD?
In the SMB space, absolutely. Neither of these are even on the radar for proper SMB solution sets. Not that neither is ever an option, but pretty much that the SMB space even knows these names is because of VARs pushing big commission products instead of looking at customer needs. These are not products that have any purpose in the normal SMB ecosystem.
If you are looking at the enterprise, then this category is common, but only AWS is super common. There are many providers and you could never use one without a good knowledge of its limitations and features.
I think this is not true any more. Grabbing an Azure box for $20 a month or whatever the "pay as you go" comes out to, can be quite handy.
The AWS ecosystem where you can grab all kinds of servers/services that are all managed under one account is easier than not for some applications.I think of a friend of mine who is the tech/web guy in a small business in the video/tutorial/courseware market. About, I dunno, 6 or 8 employees. They still work out of the boss's house or the bakery at the mall.
They have moved almost their entire infrastructure to AWS because they can do everything from complete video transcoding to website hosting to video/courseware hosting to server/NAS backups to you name it, all under one roof with wicked fast backend network speeds. It makes it easy to cluster any given service and do round-robin ad-hoc scaling. By using block storage he can now scale micro-servers from a few to a few dozen in minutes to handle any load, and then this scaling can happen automatically.Obviously they still needed my tech friend to manage it all day, but previous solutions cost more, had to work from many different vendors, had slow transfer speeds between them, etc etc. Moving everything to AWS has simplified management and costs are much lower.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Why must one be a VAR before they can have some favorite tools in the toolbox? Or pull out some "common" options when a particular need comes up?
Having a solution that you are paid to favour (or accept money for favouring) or exchanges money in any way... makes you a VAR.
The favoured solution bit is totally wrong and something you added. Favouring a solution doesn't have anything to do with it. A consultant can favour a solution and not be a VAR. A VAR can have all solutions available and have no favourites. The two are unrelated.
They may be unrelated but it's the motive behind it that you twist against my words.
"You must be a VAR when the solutions you favour pay you to favour them"
Except that I already favored them for years, then I decided to sign up, nobody made me. I get it, you are using the absolute definition behind the terms, but I don't like the way you handle the motivations and underlying relationship with the vendor with the language you use.
Being "paid to favor them" is NOT the motivation. It might be true in reality as something that happens, but it does NOT have to mean that this is the technician's primary motivations or the reason why they favor the thing in the first place. It does mean in the least that the commission changes the way they work for the client one iota. It does not HAVE to mean that, not logically, not at all.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Why must one be a VAR before they can have some favorite tools in the toolbox? Or pull out some "common" options when a particular need comes up?
Having a solution that you are paid to favour (or accept money for favouring) or exchanges money in any way... makes you a VAR.
The favoured solution bit is totally wrong and something you added. Favouring a solution doesn't have anything to do with it. A consultant can favour a solution and not be a VAR. A VAR can have all solutions available and have no favourites. The two are unrelated.
Again, CDW is a great example.. they don't have a favored solution save for which ever one this week is giving them better incentives to sell their product. But they most definitely are a VAR.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I still cannot get past you don't question what your customers really need. And yes, I do know what they need.
Because if they don't ask for advice (and aren't on a peer review forum) it's not polite or warranted to give it. If they are looking to avoid advice, why force it on them? Once in a VAR role, just giving unrequested advice doesn't help you and can only make the customer unhappy. No one wins.
I understand this point fully. But at the end of the day when they "find out" that YOUR solution wasn't "really" fixing what they "thought" they wanted. Who gets the blame? Of course they blame you. You become a "bad" company to avoid because they do things that "don't work" and cost a lot of money.
Here's the question - do you care? You don't WANT to work for those people. They clearly don't value IT. If they did, they wouldn't be in that situation.
That said, tons of companies exist solely in this situation and they make a killing at it.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Is AWS the uncommon choice for building a cluster of app servers? Is Azure uncommon when they want offsite management of AD?
In the SMB space, absolutely. Neither of these are even on the radar for proper SMB solution sets. Not that neither is ever an option, but pretty much that the SMB space even knows these names is because of VARs pushing big commission products instead of looking at customer needs. These are not products that have any purpose in the normal SMB ecosystem.
If you are looking at the enterprise, then this category is common, but only AWS is super common. There are many providers and you could never use one without a good knowledge of its limitations and features.
I think this is not true any more. Grabbing an Azure box for $20 a month or whatever the "pay as you go" comes out to, can be quite handy.
The AWS ecosystem where you can grab all kinds of servers/services that are all managed under one account is easier than not for some applications.I think of a friend of mine who is the tech/web guy in a small business in the video/tutorial/courseware market. About, I dunno, 6 or 8 employees. They still work out of the boss's house or the bakery at the mall.
They have moved almost their entire infrastructure to AWS because they can do everything from complete video transcoding to website hosting to video/courseware hosting to server/NAS backups to you name it, all under one roof with wicked fast backend network speeds. It makes it easy to cluster any given service and do round-robin ad-hoc scaling. By using block storage he can now scale micro-servers from a few to a few dozen in minutes to handle any load, and then this scaling can happen automatically.Obviously they still needed my tech friend to manage it all day, but previous solutions cost more, had to work from many different vendors, had slow transfer speeds between them, etc etc. Moving everything to AWS has simplified management and costs are much lower.
Holy shit - tech term soup!
That situation you're talking about might be a one off, so they MIGHT need that. But most SMBs don't. Most SMBs aren't based in tech, they need email, some data storage for spreadsheets/documents, etc and a CRM. Those things don't require the services of AWS or Azure in most cases.
You can't look at a single case and suddenly assume that's the norm.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
But no one is defining it that way. Maybe in your mind that is what VAR means, but not to anyone else. VAR means you do sales and add services.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable conclusion. The problem is now that VAR is established, many many negative words were introduced to describe them.
Their ONLY job is "selling as much as possible."
They are "beholden" to the vendors.
The vendors are their "masters."
Their opinions are wholly "biased", if not totally "corrupted."
They cannot ethically/morally/objectively do any "consulting" when possible reselling is on the table.I see nothing negative there. Why do you see it as negative?
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
What I reject is being told I am essentially as good as a pushy vacuum salesmen, whose only job is selling for the man and so I can't be trusted for the best advice. Or that I've become a car lot and my whole job is selling the most expensive car.
Well, you can reject it, but that's the facts. If you are making money selling things, you are associated with the vacuum salesman. You get paid to make sales. If you don't like it, you are free not to do it. If you are okay with it, you are free to do it. But we can't fix your feelings about salesmen, only you can come to terms with being that.
I'm sure vacuum salesman and car salesman hate that feeling too. They want to feel that they are getting you a good deal and a vacuum that you need or the right car for you... but YOU feel that they are motivated by the bottom line. Just like we feel about any VAR. So if you hoist that feeling onto the car salesman, it automatically hoists it onto any other VAR.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Just don't do the reselling portion Like you said, it's trivial money, no skin off your back. So just skip it, problem solved.
Well yes, trivial. Like maybe the tune of $400 in the last few years? Thus I've only thought of it as bonus money, pocket money, lunch money, coffee money. Not something that changes my entire business model, focus, and how I go about working for people.
Well, but define trivial. How much were you paid for that specific advice during the same period? For example...
If you are paid to consult on a project and one piece of that project is picking a cloud host. How many minutes did you bill for that decision versus how much were you compensated by Vultr?
So for example, did you spend one minute, ten minutes, one hour, ten hours determining the best host for the client in question? Pretty typically with a client I'll spent 20 minutes to an hour on that kind of decision. And I don't get any affiliate money for doing so. So if I make $20 or $200 on that decision, I'm paid to dig into it.
But if you spend under, say, thirty minutes on that one aspect of decision making, the money from Vultr is a non-trivial percentage of the whole. It's trivial in absolute terms ($5 or $10) but it is non-trivial in relative terms (20%, maybe 50% of the pay for that one decision.)
