The Law of Compensation - We're going Stratospheric!

Compensation and Stratospheric in the same sentence? Is it possible that in a few paragraphs, I can make you rich? I hope I can!

We continue our journey through the "Five Laws of Stratospheric Success" as described in my favorite little red book, The Go-Giver. Hopefully you have already read about the first law (The Law of Value) in my previous posting. More importantly, hopefully you've already applied the first law! If not, STOP! Go back and read "Stratospheric Success! Really? Stratospheric?"

LAW TWO OF STRATOSPHERIC SUCCESS

The Law of Compensation

Your income is determined by

how many people you serve

and how well you serve them.

As I mentioned in my last weblog post, I'm not about to give a play-by-play of the book, but instead I will explain what I take away from it. There are three pieces to this law (income, how many and how well).

"How many" and "How well" are easy. The more people you serve and the better you serve them seems obvious to me. If you limit how well you serve, or you limit how many you serve, you can be successful. But you can only be compensated on that limited scale.

Income is the most interesting word to me. If the word "income" were not in this law, the law would be easier for me to grasp. Compensation doesn't have to be about money. I am compensated daily by the satisfactions of solving problems, working hard, helping a friend/colleague/client, getting a hug from one of my boys, etc. But none of these compensations have anything to do with income.

I think (actually hope) that this law validates something that I have said hundreds of times over the past 10 years. If I/we deep down care about every individual client and their business (truly care - not just going through the motions), and we take personally their concern/problem/business, the money will take care of itself. I have tried to live this way from the first day that I went into business.

The Condition... Remember "the condition" from the last post? Laws are great, but if we don't practice them, then we are not allowed back to learn the next law. And as I mentioned, they are easy to execute. Here's my example of what I have done recently to reach out and try to serve. I'm not sure that I hit a home run with this one, but I'm learning too.

As I was reading The Go-Giver, I had many thoughts of the group of people who I influence (and who influence me) on a daily basis - specifically the team that makes up ITConnexx. The day after I finished this little red book of genius, I ran out and bought 10 copies. I shared a copy with every person in our company. I don't expect that handing out 10 copies of a book will fill my bank account. What I hope is that we build a company of Go-Givers. I hope that every day, every person lives the Go-Giver lifestyle. I hope that every day, every person is personally compensated in the same ways that I am. And I hope that as we live this way, the money will take care of itself.

I'm sure that in a few paragraphs, I did nothing for your personal bank account. But I hope that in at least one way, I could help make you rich.

Still to come... Three more laws!!!

Brian O'Shaughnessy

President/Go-Giver

ITConnexx, Inc.

Green Bay, WI

Stratospheric Success! Really? Stratospheric?

I have a new group of friends. We call ourselves HTG15. I don't think we are a gang, but I've been working hard on a new handshake.

HTG15 is a peer group. We are a group of 12 owners of IT service companies. We meet once a quarter to share everything about our individual company to the rest of the group. For each other, we are a virtual board of directors and support group. Our first meeting was in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and in January we meet in Dallas.

I could write 20 pages about the group, the experience and how it has already changed my life. But that's not today's topic! Today's topic is about Stratospheric Success!

When the group left Council Bluffs, IA we all left with a small red book. The book is The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann. The little red book spills a secret. The secret of how to obtain "Stratospheric Success!" The little red book is fantastic, takes about three hours to read, and completely changed how I interact with people all day long. You read me right STRATOSPHERIC SUCCESS!

Now I'm not about to give you a play-by-play on the book. Go get it and read it. In fact, the first person to send me an email will get my copy.

The secret is simple. Give. Give. Give. Give unconditionally and with no expectation of reward. There are five rules (and coincidentally, five nice blog topics).

LAW ONE OF STRATOSPHERIC SUCCESS

The Law of Value

Your true worth is determined by

how much more you give in value

than you take in payment.

This one is easy! Give more in value than you take in payment. If you receive nothing in payment and give any value, you are giving more. We can all do this all day long. Hold a door, pick up a piece of garbage from the sidewalk, give a real smile and say good morning to a stranger in line when you wait for a cup of coffee. Give a genuine "thank you." Doing any of these things give value to the recipient, and you take no payment. Give more to your employer than you take in a salary. When you are hired to perform a task, or complete a job, exceed the expectation of the client (and exceed by far). It really is easy to live this way.

As you read The Go-Giver you will learn that there is "a condition" required to learn the secret and the five rules. The condition is doing. If you don't execute the rule on the day that you learn it.... you are not invited back for the next rule. Execution isn't as hard as it sounds.

I'm reluctant to do this, because a true Go-Giver doesn't give for notoriety, but I want to share how I execute the laws. My hope is to show how easy it is and give you ideas to do the same.

The day after I read my little red book, i was cold called by a sales person. This sales person (James Wing, Enterprise Account Representative, Xandros, Inc. - I wont post his email address without permission, but if you want it, email me) had sent me an unsolicited email message a couple of days prior that I scanned and ignored. James was trying to sell me a Linux-based equivalent of Microsoft Exchange that I could resell as a service. Unfortunately, my Linux skills have all but evaporated and this was not a product for us. For the last ten years, I have made a habit (and some times a sport) of being mean to sales people.

But now! I'm a Go-Giver!

Instead of blasting James and asking that he never call me again. I made him a promise. I promised him that I would print out his email message and put that piece of paper on my desk, and that I would shuffle that paper around for a month. And every time I picked up that piece of paper, I would try to come up with a prospect or lead for him. Unfortunately, I haven't come up with one (yet). But I'm sure that I've put more effort into helping James in the last month than any other person he called that day (or maybe this month).

Just today, somebody asked me if I knew of anybody that was looking to hire somebody with his skills. His resume is now a stack of three pages on my desk, to be shuffled around for a month.

Just today, the president of a website development company called. One of their best programmers received an opportunity that he couldn't refuse and is advancing his career. The phone call asked if I knew of a programmer that knew PHP and Access/SQL database programming. Unfortunately I don't (if you do, let me know and I'll pass on the word), but there is a full sheet of paper with a typed note that I'll shuffle around my desk for a month to keep me thinking for them.

I'm no genius, and I'm not wonderful. In none of these cases, could I solve the problem, but I am doing everything I can to not blow them off. I'm doing everything I can to provide more value than I take in payment.

I promised HTG15 that I'd have this posting done before Thanksgiving. I also promised that I'd write another entry about the Second Rule of Stratospheric Success before the weekend was over. So come back soon.

Brian O'Shaughnessy

President/Go-Giver

ITConnexx, Inc.

Green Bay, WI

ITConnexx featured in Green Bay news story

In a recent story about how local business is preparing to "weather an economic storm", ITConnexx CEO Kevin Scholz described how our business will be impacted.

I know... they called him Ken.

I know... they said that the two, six year old companies that we merged together three years ago, just opened last week.

I know... they called our business technology consulting company an "Internet support business."

I guess we need to do a better job of describing ourselves. Of course, you can find those details at our website (www.itconnexx.com)

We appreciate the opportunity and exposure, and look forward to the next time we can share our opinion with the local media (and next time, I'll be in front of the camera).

Enough of the anticipation... Click here to watch Kevin (or Ken). Click here to read the story.

Brian O'Shaughnessy
President
ITConnexx, Inc.

Test Time! - Backup Part 2 of 2

Welcome back!

Let's review... If you haven't read Part 1 you should stop now and come up to speed.

Traditional backup = Tape and the responsibility of a human to switch on a daily basis. Take a tape offsite, not lose it, and bring it back to the office.

Latest backup technology = Automated, online/offsite backup, encrypted in data warehouse with a local copy stored on a virtual server to reduce the amount of time to access data from days to hours. NO HUMAN INTERACTION.

Obviously, the online backup is a better solution than tape. Your data is extremely valuable, and just as important is the productivity of your staff. Most small and medium businesses have one server (think about eggs in one basket). The availability of that server is vital, absolutely vital, to the productivity of your business.

OK. Here's the test, I hope you studied...

1. If your server were turned off right now, and were not available for two business days, how much money would your company lose in lost sales, poor customer service, employee wages and productivity? Actually try to put a number to it.

2. When was the last time you had a successful backup? No assumptions. When did it happen?

3. If your building burned down (or flood, vandalism, theft) would your backup tapes burn up with your server? Tapes in a fire proof safe is not a good answer. Tapes melt from heat not fire. They have to be in a heat proof safe.

4. Who switches your tapes every day? Do they take the tape offsite? Are they stored in a safe place?

4a. If the person taking your tape off site left one sitting on the bar in a tavern, how would you start the letter to your clients that their private information was carelessly lost by your company? (By the way, this is a true story)

5. Are you losing sleep at night because you are worried about your data and your backup?

6. Convince me that whatever you are using for a backup is better than an automated online backup with a virtual server to minimize downtime.


All tests will be graded, and I will personally follow up with you.

Hopefully this opens your eyes and makes you think about what is happening in your business. And according to our old friend Yogi Berra "You can observe a lot by watching"

Brian O'Shaughnessy
President
ITConnexx, Inc.

Your backup is not about the backup - Part 1

Huh? Is Yogi Berra making a guest appearance? Not exactly, it's time for the ITConnexx University's Backup 101 class... listen up! There will be a test!

We all know what a backup is, we learned about that in high-school. Hopefully we all know the two reasons why we perform a backup. Don't worry class, I'm gonna tell you.
1. Create a second copy of your extremely valuable data to allow to recover from a loss of the first copy (hardware failure, data corruption, human error, etc.)
2. Store a copy of your extremely valuable data in a second physical location, to be used in the event of an environmental disaster (fire, flood, theft, vandalism, etc.)

Most of us know the traditional method for creating a backup, tape. Every day, a staff member walks into the server closet, views the job log, ejects the previous day's tape, inserts today's tape, and immediately takes yesterday's tape off site. To the safe deposit box. Right? Does this sound familiar to all of you tape users?

Or does it go like this? When our staff member remembers, they go into the server closet, ejects the previous day's tape, inserts today's tape, puts yesterday's tape on the shelf, then goes back to work.

How do they know if yesterday's backup job even ran? How do they remember to switch the tape at all? And honestly, how often do they forget? When do they take a tape off site? And when they do, where is it stored? Remember what's on that tape (shhh... don't tell anybody but it's your client's information and your trade secrets).

Let's take a break here and all think about our business and our data. Is your current process really protecting you?

Break's over. On to a better solution.

Online backup and virtual servers! Now this class, is exciting...

Picture this... all data is stored to a second server in your server closet, and a copy of that data is encrypted and stored in a data warehouse. Sounds simple? It get's better... Remember that staff member with the tapes? Well they are busy doing their regular job. They don’t have to remember anything (other than to make coffee when the pot is empty). They don't have the responsibility of taking your extremely valuable data home. It's all automatic, in fact it's magic - smoke and mirrors type stuff. Impressed yet? Well listen to this...

Your extremely valuable data is now stored in four places. One of those places is the "virtual server." in your server closet. Let's do a little role playing...

ring ring...
Me: Good morning Happy Client. How are you today?
Happy Client: Brian, you will never believe this! Nobody can get to our server! Our extremely valuable data is not available! What will I do? My staff is running around franticly.
Me: {yawn} Don't worry HC, I’ll take care of it. Tell your staff to tidy up around the office. I'll call you back shortly.
Happy Client: What are you going to do? How much will this cost?
Me: HC, I said don't worry. This won't cost you anything; everything is covered under your "Computing as Promised" Agreement. I'll call you back.
Happy Client: Thanks Brian, you are my hero.
Me: Thanks Happy, I'll call you soon.
{click}
Me (to myself as I reach for my white hat): I love being a hero.
ring ring...
Happy Client: Hello Brian, what did you do? I see our server is back on line and we are productive again. That didn't take long at all.
Me: I was able to activate the virtual server with a back up copy of your data. Your production server is still down. I'll start on that when we hang up.
Happy Client: I can't believe what good service you provide and what a fantastic solution we have.
Me: It's all in a hard day's work Hap.

Exciting stuff eh?

Homework: Read about Backup & Recovery Services from ITConnexx, Inc.
OK... Test tomorrow.

Welcome - A Blog?

Why am I writing a blog? Really, why? Who will read it? Will anybody read it? As I embark on this journey and open my brain to spill my thoughts on the use of technology in business, I say… Why? To be honest, Im doing this because the marketing guy said that I have to.

All day long I talk about computers, and networks, and how they work, and what doesn’t work. By the time I get home, I feel like a broken record. But when I think about it, I may have the same conversations day after day, but I never have every conversation with every person I talk to or work with.

Maybe this is a place for me to share my conversations and thoughts? Maybe if I publish my conversations and thoughts, I can spark an idea…? Or maybe I can help someone be more efficient…?

So as I drift across the ocean of technology topics, I write a blog to be a better partner and to share my experience in an informative, yet entertaining way. If you’ve gotten this far, I guess somebody will read it. And after all, maybe a marketing guy can be right. It took me 25 less years to realize this than it did to realize a parent can be right. Am I growing up?

Brian O'Shaughnessy
President
ITConnexx, Inc.