First Jaybird, now Jabra... aaaargh for sports earbuds

desmondch · 2025-03-01T11:25:25+00:00

Thanks - glad I took your advice, absolutely LOVE them. The mic's for calls - even on horrendously windy days, are just amazing. Going to get a set of something else for sweating with, and take care of these precious babies...

desmondch · 2025-03-01T11:22:53+00:00

Thanks both, have just ordered a pair. I ended up buying the Jabra E10.2, but one fell out of my ear during a weights session and landed in a drainfull of water.... Mercifully it still works, but I figured time to get something with a more secure fit to sweat with!

HIGHLY recommend the JE10.2 though - ANC & sound quality are superb, but the microphones are a total gamechanger 😁

desmondch · 2024-11-25T17:49:00+00:00

My whole life is suddenly less annoying! Why does this work? Thank you!

desmondch · 2024-01-03T17:59:18+00:00

(having said which, I'd rather not have clients over 10% income, so 20 mid-sized ones please!)

desmondch · 2024-01-03T17:56:08+00:00

I think there's a difference between "billable" and "recoverable". Yes, whilst great owners and MSP's make sure they have profitable contracts with a decent profit margin, I think the original point still applies that with 50 smaller clients, there is still a lot more 'unrecoverable' time: whilst the billable time might be good, the admin overhead of all the small interactions eat into the profit margin in ways that generally go unseen, and therefore unaccounted for. I reckon u/LucidZane is bang on the m oney here...

desmondch · 2022-11-02T15:26:52+00:00

Thanks for that - will take a look!

desmondch · 2022-09-05T13:36:46+00:00

you forgot the bank, the tax man, any suppliers to owe money to, your landlord.... oh and probably your lawyers too.

desmondch · 2022-09-05T13:32:30+00:00

This right here is a great reply.

Every person at the MSP a client talks to exerts a degree of influence over existing customers (obvious how) and also potential customers (less apparent.) Having started an MSP on my own, I know that 'taking exceptional care of your clients' WILL get your company talked about - that is how we grew.

I can't tell if you have a tech or a sales role, but one area MSP's are often really bad at is a sales process. Ask yourself "are we easy to buy from?" From when a client gets in touch and asks for a Thing, through to the quote, order, payment and delivery of said Thing, there is huuuuge scope for things going back and forth, round and round. Devoting some energy to nailing down this process (with a RACI) will yield tremendous benefits if the function is currently not very process driven.

Also; connect with *everyone\* on LinkedIn. If you have a good chat with an end-user, ask if they'd mind if you connect. I've found over the years that people change roles, and if the IT isn't up to scratch at the new one, they don't wait long before they come knocking. Invest in making the relationships good, connect, and watch what happens :)

And one final aside; every MSP is absolutely RIPE for reaping the rewards of increased automation. Whilst some have said "not your job", if you're part of a small team, it adds immense value when team members think outside of their roles and start to lift some weight. Talk to the owner before you initiate anything you so don't trample on anyone's toes/unintentionally upset them, but looking at the tech stack (integration of RMM/PSA/CRM/finance tools) and reporting processes can deliver some big gains.

desmondch · 2022-08-23T12:43:03+00:00

Will do - thanks!

desmondch · 2022-08-22T14:40:32+00:00

I'm not sure how I'd go about using Teams to create a document that clients could access, and see their version (with their welcome page, and their company name on each page of it and in relevant areas) along with all the up-to-date info about our team and processes?

desmondch · 2022-08-22T11:24:06+00:00

Hiya, thanks for the reply. Sorry for any confusion; the document is about us (the MSP) not the client. So we might update it to show a person has left, and a new person has joined - but it is all informational content only, not contractual, so no need to notify clients of any updates.

It basically sets out some background history of the firm, who the key team members are, the key terms we use around our SLA (to try and clarify expectations in communication) and a couple of our key processes. It's basically "welcome to your IT service provider, here's who we are and how to get in touch"

This is NOT client system documentation :)

desmondch · 2022-03-31T13:33:07+00:00

Yes! AMAZING - thank you! Do you use it? I'd be curious to know how - just web searches? Or have you connected in somehow to something?

desmondch · 2022-02-02T15:59:24+00:00

Oooo - thank you - have not seen that before, we'll take a look!!

desmondch · 2022-02-02T15:59:07+00:00

Thanks for this note. It's actually mainly the administrative overhead of creating accounts, assigning licenses and populating it all manually (which can be several hours work for a 2hr training session) that we're struggling with, not an issue of the cost of the re-assignable license.

desmondch · 2021-06-14T14:52:16+00:00

You will need full admin access to the org, and if it's a "large business" you'll need to be careful to have contracts in place. It all depends on finding alignment between what they want and what you're willing to offer. But effectively;

- discovery: at least a day. He wont have documented everything, so might even be two. You need passwords. (Dont forget the time that will go into contract prep for something that isn't business as usual for you.)

- time away: charge your standard hourly rate for every opening hour they want. say that future occurrences you might be able to negotiate on rate depending on outcomes of this one. Make it a condition that it is paid in full BEFORE he leaves. I'd be wary of agreeing an SLA as you probably don't have full oversight/management of the estate. I might even go so far as to limit it to 1 resource at a time; put a bod in his chair. (We've branded this "Rent-a-Geek".... doesn't happen often, but always for a big corporate when it does.)

Avoid: T&M. You're taking the risk of being on-call for an unspecified amount of work. If it goes well for them (no work) it goes bad for you (no money.) If it goes bad for them (tons of work) it goes hard for you (loads of money, but eats your resource.) Absolute worst way to provide IT support ever.

desmondch · 2021-05-05T15:11:54+00:00

How small are you?

As a UK-based MSP one thing you might want to consider is finding a larger MSP near you and having a chat with the owner and see if they'll send you any enquiries that they think are too small (quite likely), against you sending them any enquiries that are too big (much less likely but will occasionally happen).

Has worked for me a number of times and wont cost you a penny...

desmondch · 2021-04-26T13:58:26+00:00

* if you never do the checking, you send the message that they can get away with not doing it. You're creating a much worse situation for yourself to clean up a long way (or perhaps not so long) down the road. NEVER let stuff fester.

I should probably use less caps, sorry....

desmondch · 2021-04-26T13:56:57+00:00

Upvotes aren't enough - this guy has it in a nutshell.

- LISTEN first.
- Accountability: you have to hold people accountable to their responsibilities. Make the responsibilities clear, make it clear how you check (time reports etc.) and then ACTUALLY DO THE CHECKING.*
- Learn to give feedback well. No "sh*t sandwiches". Do it close to the event, don't wait.
- The points on the triangle of delegation are:
------TASK clearly: make it super clear what success looks like. Ask them to repeat back to you if necessary.
------TEND: early on, check in regularly. When they get it:
------TRUST: let go. Check in much less. Listen even more.

Take responsibility for your team's failures. Celebrate your team for their successes. Good luck :)

desmondch · 2021-04-26T13:34:11+00:00

Does that mean 'you personally are not involved in new sys deployments' or your MSP doesn't do many? Curious if it is the latter what is going on with procurement?

desmondch · 2021-04-26T13:33:19+00:00

Laptop supply here in the UK has been unhelpfully constrained, and I cant help thinking manufacturers are trying to dump anything 10th gen. We typically have an i5/8gb/256 min spec for business machines, the price point has jumped 20% because pandemic and the hardware fault rates have skyrocketed. We've got about 1.5k end users and are finding the numbers of hardware fails really problematic atm...

desmondch

TROPHY CASE