Peer Power Blog

While that may seem like a strange question for this blog - it really gets to the heart of the matter.  Are you satisfied with what you are doing with your life?  This week again I have had opportunity to spend some time with folks who have invested their entire working career doing a job to earn a living and get to the end of it wondering where life went.  It happens over and over.  People are not finding satisfaction in life - because they settle. A Conference Board survey last year reported that only 49% were satisfied with their jobs, the lowest level in 22 years since they began their survey.  There are dozens of other surveys that show similar numbers - people just aren't happy.  So h... Continue reading

Recently MSPmentor released their Top 25 list of financial, lending and leasing resources.  It is a great list and unfortunately most of us in the channel take this area of business far too lightly.  The reality is that most SMB VAR’s and MSP’s live off the credit that is offered through traditional channel programs.  Distribution gives terms on hardware and software, service providers give terms on services and tools we use in our MSP business, the PSA and RMM providers are pretty generous in how they work with us as well.  We are spoiled – it is not so in all industries. Since it is somewhat easy – partners often don’t take time to really build the right kinds of relationships with these ... Continue reading

I spent three days last week in Joplin Missouri helping HTS and HTG8 member John Motazedi deal with the aftermath of a disastrous tornado.  I took a team of 10 others from HTS/HTG Harlan and were joined by HTG members from across the country – some face to face – some doing remote work – but all helping in the response efforts.  I learned some important lessons from the few days in the middle of the chaos.  Take a look at some of the things I discovered: You need to be your first DR/BC client You can't help anyone if you don't have your own house in order.  Before you can respond to other's needs, you need to be able to recover your own business.  Often we forget just how limited we will b... Continue reading

The Participation  To Be Qualified for assistance an HTG member needs to: ·         Be a member in good standing with Heartland Tech Groups or be employed by a company in good standing ·         Have a personal life and legacy plan completed and posted to the HTG portal ·         Have a company disaster recovery and business continuity plan completed and posted to the HTG portal ·         Be a contributing member to Hands That Give  The Process ·         Each member must have a disaster recovery plan and personal legacy plan in process or completed ·         A request is made to the Hands That Give board of directors via phone or  email with declaration form ·         Unaffected mem... Continue reading

The Big Moment It happened while at the CompTIA event in San Antonio in the fall of 2010 when Lester Keizer from Xilocore asked that we might sit down and visit.  He shared that there was something he wanted to talk about with me that might be a fit for HTG.  We met and as we shared our hearts that day to help people and give freely of what we had – it was obvious that we were on the same page talking about the same dream.  And so Hands That Give was born.  Lester committed a resource we didn’t have, and hadn’t even gotten around to understanding we would need, in Mike Semel who is a trained disaster recovery specialist and works for his company.  Lester and Mike have been instrumental in ... Continue reading