 Welcome to vlog Thursday again For us not for you because the first vlog Thursday Is on this camera That has not been smashed yet yet is the operative word there. It will I Control my rage because the camera decided it was going to lock up I'm looking over here to make sure this one's not and it's usually still recording. Sorry. I was looking at You wonderful people on the other side of that lens, but uh this happened So I don't know what's wrong, but we are going to Google it because that's how we solve all of our technical problems here Luckily like Boy Scouts. We're prepared and just have we just happen to have an extra can in 70d laying around Yeah, because you know that's how good news is we are more concise the second time we're out Because we were all over the place the first time maybe maybe Anyways, this episode was brought to you by Lawrence systems again again Part of the reason we did this uh, we So I want to say brought to you by Lawrence systems because a little issue came up so I'm always willing to give a lot of information a lot of help and respond to many many forums and questions and Reddit responses as much as I Can within reason But someone didn't understand that we're a business and sent me like a to-do list of things They want me to log in and do and I said, okay Is this much I assumed it was like a business proposal like I don't understand I'm like what not well. I just need all these things sit up, but I'm not doing it for free Um, it was some point there is a business and we've talked about uh, this maybe mentioned in the past But uh as a reminder for those watching you I mean I give away eight someone sent me a screenshot Like I can't fix this and it was in red And I responded with my own screenshots of what I thought some of the problems might be In we have our forums where I one of the things I like about facebook forums is I Share a lot of screenshots people ask where's this menu and I can actually just grab a screen and drag it into facebook Without even saving downloading and uploading a file. These are reasons I like that so I can you know very quickly respond to be Uh helpful, but when you come up with a to-do list for me, okay You log in and set this up and this up and this up for me That is a price that's not a question. That's a Business there's a difference between sharing knowledge and doing something for you Yeah, so I'm always willing to share and help and I'm excited to get people into tech Which is you know big reason of this uh channel and share all this fun stuff with you I just did a video it is it's funny how some of the videos come about. Um, there's less a a uh Script and which is why I got to my phone on mute now and There's less a script and more a Uh, I have something to do so I share it with you and what I did was I uh did the unify update and I kind of showed our actual update process for doing the unify update So I walked you to that so it's not like I need a script to do some of these videos It's something I'm doing anyway, so it makes it easy to do the sharing Uh, but it likes it in the bottom line. This is a business So I just want to bring that up for those of you wondering we have rates We do these services and if you're an IT person who got a project so far, but needs help consulting with it Absolutely, that's part of our business model is helping people set this up You go, hey, I watched your video on unify controller, but I like to set that up myself You can contract us to do that. It's we're very reasonable on things like that We're experienced at it because managing the unify system is easy setting up the controller Requires a few steps. So that's we I have an entire video. I hold nothing back in my video It's not like my videos are a lead into something I because someone want to know what port support which actually just told them over the phone when they called I said if you just want to know that I Honestly, it's a google search to my video. Uh, but why not you called? I answered him, you know I'm one of my guys or I'm next to one of my took the call and gave it to him anyways Let's talk about patreon real quick. Yeah, all right. Thank you for those who are donating to us on patreon but I messaged each of you just before I started this because I wasn't sure if I should say your name's on the air And I see that because we get donations for the sunday morning. Let's review a podcast and we don't Some people actually specifically say they don't want to be mentioned, which is fine. I get that I absolutely want to respect people's privacy. So I don't assume because uh, you are a Wonderful supporter of us on patreon that you automatically want your name out there If you do let me know Some you a message or I asked a message just reply the message. I think I said I think I'm using patreon, right But I Hey, it's new and just because I do lots of tech things doesn't mean I automatically know how patreon works Right and we understand that you may want to support us but not be associated with us because We for whatever reason yeah, we we get that yes And uh, also it's the other things we're working on uh, something else came up This is really to the youtube channel, uh, phil says he wants to help make some videos with me So I will uh be working out some deals. He is a linux expert and um Yes, he does all kinds of stuff at a very corporate level with linux. It's his career. It's his day job It's pretty awesome. He's just amazing at it So he may do some videos on that because he he is my go-to I contract phil for work as needed So I will also contract phil to make some of the things because when it comes to certain ways things are set up I can easily maintain them but occasionally some structural things I had phil For example the way my automated certificate update Works I thought I had it right but because it's a security certificate. I wanted things very smooth I had phil run over and do a review and set up the automated It's worth it to have me contract phil is even myself as much as I do know I also know when it's time to contract someone you always have to have a guy You gotta have a person and um, and I reach out. Who does phil have? Dude the guy's a savant Phil Phil there's he's phil. All right, we're just gonna say that he's where it ends Yeah, it is the top guy. He's the top guy. I have a friend. Jason is like that He's a savant at windows server stuff man. The guy is just if I ever get stuck and I age rare I ever have a problem windows server stuff, but he's my go-to guy for that I just say Jason. I got an issue. Yeah, and uh, I love Jason's great He is also a savant in his own little planet. So He's uh, he's really good at what he does and that's really what he does Yeah, which is great. I actually appreciate the razor sharp focus Um that when Phil's over in my house, I did laugh though because phil always has he's Intently focused on things and marcus was trying to explain a game to him. Now my son Not the latest No, my son not focused and my son was making the rules up as they go So phil's watching this and not realizing that he's having an 11 year old fool Um, so he's trying to understand the rules and realizing the contradictions and saying but over here You said this and marcus. Well, yeah, that works like that too. Well, it can't it feels like analyzing You know, like phil just give up. I said he's he's pulling you and I look at my son just laughs because my son realized he had phil engaged So he just kept making up the rules for how the cards worked The meantime phil's brain is just going crazy. Yeah, like wait a minute This rule contradicts the rule you said in the beginning of this conversation and that's something phil says So, uh, yeah, all right business philosophy, uh-huh. This is an important thing And uh, so the maraki versus unify versus uh, a few other different corporate firewalls Uh, or devices or wi-fi units There's there's a lot of different products out there and people are always asking for comparisons, right? At least so there's there's reasons for that Um, and I'm gonna I bring up maraki and unify because I had a conversation with an it guy and I get it So these are how these two devices work. They both provide you wi-fi. That's the end user experience The back end experience though is very different maraki is a company wants I don't know five or six hundred dollars a year per device and licensing fees that you pay continually Maraki has their own cloud services maraki provides the updates, you know, they you stop paying licenses the device turns off So that's the business philosophy of that Whether or not you should use them some people just start out with I hate them because they have licensing fees And I'm like, no, no, no you have to understand there has to be a business model around things To keep them supported maraki's business model says we charge all these annual licensing fees and we automatically make all the stuff work So you as an IT person has to have very little knowledge But by not having knowledge You pay because you're paying the knowledge over here Unifies philosophy because someone complained about unifying not having great support You would be correct that you but unify has a lot of documentation and it has youtubers like me willy howe and chris for our people that come across rock solutions chris Um We create videos and have a lot of knowledge base and they kind of allow a middle market where you can consult with us on setting These things up for a reasonable price and because it creates a competitive market You get really good rates on setting up some of the unified stuff which does not have licensing fees at all Which of course fascinates people you can turn a unify on and it works forever And I kind of like the concept of you buy a product and you own the product But on the other side of that maybe you're an IT guy One man band you I just like muraki because I don't have to think and I just sign my I have clients with plenty of money So I make a 25 commission on all the licensing fees These are business philosophies and that aren't necessarily definitively a binary Yes or no right or wrong. These are just decisions you make when you're doing IT I get a lot of people asking me about this you know my decision as I went with unified We don't do muraki the thing that sometimes bothers me a little bit is companies like muraki use that money In a way to drive massive teams of sales and partner programs and everything else So they constantly are promoting that they're the best and greatest and they don't think they have a bad product But I don't think their products that much better than unified product But a lot of IT guys and this is where I have a problem in business So you think that muraki should take the money that they're making and like Put it back into like maybe developing a better or more advanced product They do they they keep a balance but one of the things they focus on is the old school sales team model They just have a bunch of sales people hammering their smiling and dialing And helping you out and giving you commissions on this and a lot of IT people just sell everything cookie cutter like that And make all the money on the commission So we've always tried to focus on the labor of things and there's some things we're going to make commission on And it's kind of just a different business philosophy But sometimes I realize that the business philosophy of doing what we do and selling product ownership Is a harder sell sometimes because everyone's familiar because of all the branding and all that But it's just something that you want to think about it comes down to ultimately your decision But it is interesting this way, but where where I have a problem. This is why I really draw the line with products is Some people will hang on to a product because the commissions are good. Yeah, and It's not great for the customer, but they're willing to deal with whatever the Downfall is of that in the minor inconveniences because the commission check I've actually talked to a sales guy. He actually applied here Um, it wasn't a good fit, but a super nice guy But one of the problems he had was he worked for a big IT company very big compared to mine like substantially larger And his problem was the owner golfed with the Owner of one of the big companies they supplied for they got nationwide big cool Well, the product wasn't doing well. I'm gonna leave all this table company has a lot of issues and Because of that they so committed themselves to the product that even though wouldn't solve some customer solutions They knew the commission was so good. They golfed together. There's like like look man This company pays out a quarter million and commissions a year to us. It's hard for us to switch product That's why we've tried to stay away. We do some commission products Well, we try not to become so dedicated to them That if the product doesn't fit the client We don't try to shove it down their throat because the commission's better and some people start making their decisions based on that You're gonna get this much commission selling this product and this much commission over here So you just sell the product based on the commission And that's that's something. It's always drove me nuts a little bit in the IT because there's so much of that going on There's not really a lot that we get any kind of commission or anything on Very little i'm trying to A couple of partner programs that we belong to but that is simply Products that we already used. Yeah, and And stood behind and so we said, you know, we'll recommend it to our clients It's not but again like tom said it's not a right fit. We're not going to You know, we've had have we've had clients We have a phone system that we would recommend it. Well, it wasn't right for the client So we didn't recommend it to them. It wasn't gonna do what they needed. We've done the ring central thing And it's one of those things we uh, well, we never really got into the partner program and it seems to be goofy right now We've been really digging into phone systems and we may start providing as a service because We like ring central, but we just we've had a few issues here and here and we're trying to sort out They're not major at all and they affect us more than they affect our clients because of the way we use the system Our clients have different use cases than the way we transfer calls And we're finding little bugs in the system that they've been helping us and our support's been really good But we're really thinking about it as a business model getting more into some of the phone services because ring central We have a few clients. It's just not a fit for and it's one of those if you have too many phones on premise Like we have a client that wants 20 phones, but never has more than four simultaneous calls Well ring central solution is we have sell them 20 lines. They're like, no, no They never have more than four simultaneous call They just have a large event place and they need a couple phones in each part of the building Where the events are held but don't have they it's just so mostly they can do internal transfers Ring central will do that. That's not a fit for them because they never have that many outgoing your incoming calls So we're exploring a lot more and we've learned a lot about phone systems. Some of you have suggested things I was actually talking consulting with chris from crosstalk. He's a Really smart guy when it comes to phone systems. That's part of what is does crosstalk solutions is a phone company Consulting company that is what he does and you know, even chris, even though I know him I'm going to pay him to do things so we understand it's a business and chris is a business So that's something else we're getting into and exploring Um website updates Yes So I started rambling a little bit about this before the camera broke. Uh, so I I have uh Sometimes to to the company's detriment. It's not going to cost us much money Yeah, because marvin looks at the money more. I actually marvin checks the bank account a lot Marvin keeps on top of the that stuff because I don't want to and uh, maybe that makes me not the best business man But I get so fascinated with creating videos and now I'm behind on a project and I'm like I can keep doing it next week And now a problem has occurred where uh, it's next week And I made videos instead of transferring what all's in the bottom line What is going to cost us so we removed everything over to a new hosting company There's a few things that didn't work on the moveover That uh exceeded some of the knowledge base that I had because a lot of the knowledge is in here of how some of this Weird stuff is set up and where the dns records are so all the normal word press sites are easy It's moving over some of these custom jumele sites because the code didn't just copy over And there was things that got us up So I have to go back and set some of those up and I mean because I was making videos and not doing that Might cost us a couple dollars in uh hosting leasing server space Because we overlapped it. I'll just be honest about that. These are things that occur This is why I need probably to get more money from videos because I love doing it But this now will cost me money. Hope you learned your lesson Oh god, I don't as long as there's no money in the bank for the sexy clear. I generally yeah, I go back out about my day I won't lie. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. Hey, tom. Is that you're done with that project? Yeah I should probably do that. That's a common conversation day on top of all the client projects Oh, absolutely because well if we didn't they would have a problem with it But yeah, sometimes there's internal stuff So that's that's all into works, uh, we did launch it We do have the new hosting steps all the new stuff anyone wants to send up a new site We have options for that So if you need hosting for your WordPress and want someone to help you with that That's something we do if you're looking for the cheapest WordPress go to anywhere else the sites We're not going to be the cheapest dirt if you're looking I want someone to charge two dollars a month There are people out there that is not us though But just like just like we were saying earlier with you know, you'll pay more and get these services from You know, like you could you we're going to take care of a lot for you I mean, you know, we keep it secure. We keep it updated. It can be a pain updating all of your WordPress. Yeah That's stuff we do we do make sure you take care of all you have someone to call if you have a problem If your website gets broken, you need someone to roll it back and you're not sure about the technical challenges These are things that we help so we try to offer a more premium service with a human touch Which is if you ever read our about page, you'll see that's making tech human again is something we've done for a year Absolutely And it's something we don't like to treat people as a just a ticket number that you get assigned to You can actually talk to people here, you know, and we're not the only companies not like this is a new idea I've always I use hover for a lot of my domain registration That's one of their theories is they don't just assign everybody a ticket They you can get someone on the phone and that's why I have a lot of my domains And it's only because I haven't transferred a couple of them yet from network solutions But majority of my domains are all transferred over to hover because they're a great company Even in their chat like right on there I was surprised like I had to use it one time and I was like, okay, let me get through their bot Yep, you know, but no it was like right away It was a person and took care of it and I'm waiting for them to be like, oh, well, you know, we can You know, okay. Well because we charge, you know, it's yes, you're a customer of hover But you know, it's going to be this much for us to Yeah, and I think that's like no, it really just helped me fix it and I care about that I hear about perceptions of my company a lot and that's something that's important to me So I've even talked to other IT people like Tom, you're missing the boat, man I outsource all this stuff that you probably are paying a guy way too much for and I outsource it to overseas and I'm like Yeah, and we also know that we have a client that we're prospecting that is upset like they like the low price But it's not that low And they're they're realizing that the support just sitting on the phone is not productive And sometimes their employees have to do that Same thing with the camera system. They thought they were saving money. We just did a camera system for a client and our price was double That's why they went with the other company And then after six months, they're upset because now they had us put a camera system in for the price We quoted and you're like, you know, I spent more and she goes with every bit of the process was easier with you guys I never got one of the outside cameras. They had this is a business. I've never worked properly. It was a constant You know being on the phone with them. She goes, I have so much time I wasted and you know, they own a business and they are very Frugal with their time. You're like, I know how much I'm not doing by sitting on the phone with tech support people Who aren't fixing my problem and it's a waste of my time. I can't just tell them the cameras out They want me to try this they actually had they have it's not that big of a system It's like eight cameras and one of them wasn't working Well, they told them it was Comcast. They can view all the cameras from one. They kept blaming Comcast You're like, no, I'm not techie but I'm gonna say that because seven out of eight work that it's not Comcast Oh, no until you get a Comcast out there. We can't help you further with your problem Like they do everything to deflect actually coming out and servicing it again And they finally ripped the system out and are just like so upset with them and trying to say what they're going to do about the company, but that we run into this a lot and Yeah, people they probably should have went with the lowest bidder before and they realized that and they're not Someone who generally does that but it seemed like double the price was a lot But I don't know these people who we aren't cheap hunting cameras. We aren't cheap on this stuff We only because I was like, well, I seen this one for sale at best buyer. I've seen this Thing at sam's club this but I'm like go ahead and get it if you want and I don't support it I have two emails respond to it more people that we quoted cameras or said well We think we're just going to go with this one at sam's club. No problem But they're now asking they're having problems. That's why they're emailing me and I'm like, well I can come out there and troubleshoot if I offer no guarantees I can make it work the way you want because there's problems with that system, right It's it's not like we arbitrarily set the price to this high The stuff costs more money But worth it but worth it also use rocd to your advantage if there's a camera out Tom's not going to stop until he knows why that camera isn't working. It's just going to it's just going to eat away at him We're very focused on doing this. I mean, we've even done performance reviews in troubleshooting with the unifies We contacted and wrote dude write-ups with the unified support in the forums We made the videos about problems we were having we did this whole thing because We had some problems with some of the unified cameras and we want to make sure they all got solved And you know, we're very open on the community that one we had some issues too That was to resolve and now we have some large deployments Which I have to do some videos about some of the deployments because we did some cool unique things We had some unique problem solving About how the unified cameras work and things like that for the newest version of software has become that much better It's little things like knowing you need a time server on there and we've done write-ups on this about what the updates are So I may even do another consolidated update because not everyone wants to go through more than one video And I mean we can more Consolidate video but for the most part they work really well. We just had problems with stupid things like sonic walls If you're setting up a point-to-point Understand from the client or make sure that the client knows they can't park a big semi truck in the way of Oh Yeah, we declined that the truck would come through every now and then and park right in the way of So, yeah, yeah, there's little things Oh last thing speaking of semi trucks Manufacturing companies as clients. This is something people like are puzzled by almost So we have manufacturing companies as clients and the reason I I've blown people's minds at this I'm like, could you imagine a company that does like, you know 10 million 20 million dollars a year without any computers in your building Most people go, huh? I'm in new york. What are you talking about? Is that possible? Yeah, that is absolutely possible. This is like a common problem kind of possible and uh Oh, hold on All right, sorry about the disruption We had to go get you ups was at the door and uh, we're the only ones here So because we do this early in the morning Anyways, relatively yeah manufacturing clients is is such an interesting thing The size of the building the size the immensity of the Presence down here. It also makes some of the things that we do in this area very tough for us Because they're not technology driven. They're like, we just need one computer. It runs quickbooks and literally this massive company they fix The I mean the hydraulic units that they're got their lays are big enough that I don't know What do you think that thing was like 20 feet long? Oh gosh? Yeah It means this is it was easily twice as long as this table. Oh, yeah, and like I mean just Unextended this big around. Yeah, unexpended the hydraulic units. They fix and they have Rosalie's doing this are about 20 feet Unextended and extend of course, uh, the hydraulics the way they work They'll extend double or even triple their length. This is for a giant barge Just the dredging system that comes out there and they're repairing the hydraulic units I mean, this is stuff brought in on special Wide load trucks heavy crane equipment in here. You're massive. They have a computer a a Singular with windows xp and when we're upgrading them finally to a windows 10 with quickbooks are running They're running, you know a 15 year old computer with peach tree on it. Now. Here's how that works in manufacturing You're going how do they do with all the technology? Well, that's actually really simple they For it probably costs $50,000 each if not more to repair these things they have a row of them They're repairing you just go in line out on the invoice the single computer makes the invoice going 10 units fixed at $50,000. There's half a million dollar sale With a computer but that and that's how many fashion works. There's a bunch of people employed There's a bunch of people out there Loading these crane operators zero technology. They have a punch card clock I've seen like physical punches holes through uh strips of paper to Or does some type, you know, yeah, I seen it's all the old school like you've seen in the cartoons Like yeah, people are like, what do you mean? This is how manufacturing works Very little of it because these companies have been around for 50 60 70 years Are automated in any way the most automated thing they do is delay this electric Electricity folks Doing good. We just got that last month. We're all right. And if anyone's ever seen old manufacturing We had a client and they finally Closed they were still operating it until they were under 90s. The guy was awesome I unfortunately I really wish I would have had some way to interview them or again camera They had a manufacturing plant that was since 1922 And they also had giant machinery now their machinery was ornately Still done how they do all the rounded edges on it I mean like handmade machines that were from the 20s and 30s when there was an art form to it It was an art form to it like in lays in the handles and they had a whole belt drive system still running there That just kept working so they did like from the like from the ceiling type of old belt Some of that was still there. Wow. And uh because it was so old where they had a central System they obviously swapped that out for steam and went to electric Yeah, some of this was at one point steam part it works because the business was older than that The building was older than that with some of the machines they had had it in the family since 1922 And uh, we used to like going there because they had one computer to do the building And it's the same thing each invoice was like for a hundred thousand dollars to fix these giant things that they did It was something incredible and it was just interesting. I mean, this is how manufacturing works a lot It's not like the new tesla factory that they built where so much of it's automated So much of the support service companies that support our automotives Even though the automotive industry has automated a lot of things some of these ancillary support companies that do things like that Aren't so that's a lot of our clients. They're unusual. Um, because they're lack of yeah Well, you said they were still using like a kerchunking. Yes. Like yeah, that's how they wrote the text to us They had a really they had a safe that was amazing looking the safe had all those inlays I mean this stuff all belonged to a museum. They had a kerchunking check machine I call it that because it's like you load the check in and you put the numbers You slide them over there and it pulls down and stamps the numbers onto the jack Yeah, it was really cool. That's still how they wrote checks and they used to write checks Just like I like I mean I want to cash it but I there's like art As opposed to now we just fire off a PayPal invoice and the person Wires money back to us. Yeah So we'll leave you yeah, we'll leave you with that before we have a lot about a bunch of other stuff We'll save some topics for another time. Uh, let me know your thoughts on some of my business things You know the maraki versus unified type of business philosophy of the two different companies What's your thoughts on some of them? I'm always interested to hear from you We also just in general love all the feedback that we get and I hear so many people say that Hey, you helped me do this. You helped me sit out my lab. I love hearing that You know, that's just great that I someone got inspired to get more into technology over a topic And that's about it. Yeah, uh, check out some of the other videos I covered I covered some controversy with pfcents yesterday. So, uh, Check out that video. There's some craziness. I linked to and I did our unify update one and there's plenty more videos coming But I do have to get to fixing the website stuff because I'm uh, hopefully finished that all two days Yes, he does. Yes, I do And I gotta fix this now. This is another Vlog Thursday number two. Let's do the website first. Yeah All right, thanks for watching like subscribe. Get us to 20,000 quickly. Yeah, we're at 15,000 20,000 20 tell your friends and uh, clickity click and uh, check our all we uh, I've been working on speed optimizations for our website. Uh, we realized I had just piled on the plugins Um, yeah, so if you want to check out large systems, we made it better So make it better over better It turned out to turn you don't want all the plugins on and there was a bit too much jQuery going on and we're like Install all the plugins Well, it's one of those things like because our websites, um, we not ever restarted We just keep moving forward with it. So we never deprecated old things that run here And uh, the other plugin list was so long. We're like, why is the website slow? Do you know how many plugins you have time? No, all right So Kyle's been working hard at that and he's got it very he did a great job He shaved off half the size of the website. Holy cow. He's like, what is all this? Yeah, all right, we'll see you see us on Tuesday for off topic Tuesday Yes, and if you have articles set them to us, but don't worry if you don't we will figure it out We're good at being off topic Yeah