Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?
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@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@travisdh1 said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said
If it is your job, you should be getting paid.
In order to get paid, you have to bill people.
In order to bill people you have to not do things for free.Agree 100%. I mean, a 5 minute discussion is OK, I think, but anything more needs billing.
NO one said sell them something they do not need. It was stated that they came to you for a server. So sell them the server they asked for, verify the basics, yes. You are a VAR, that is your job.
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.
No one comes to me just to buy a server, so I am never in this position, but if I was, I would tell said church person, that they have no idea what they need and they need to hire someone to actually figure that out. Me or another company I don't care, but hire someone who knows wtf they are doing to make sure you are not getting jipped.
JB, what do you do when said church person tells you they don't care about that.. that they just want you to sell them a server? Would you?
Or even better, when they say "yeah I'd llke to hire you"
Then you say "OK. Tell me about yourself."
They say "We are 3 people, with about 1GB of data stored"
You say "You don't need a server. Get Office 365."Done.
I can do that in 5 minutes without needing to charge them hundreds of dollars in consulting fees.
That is impossible to do in 5 minutes. You just screwed them because you did not do proper discovery.
Yeah, perhaps that was too dramatic an example.
What I think you were driving at is no, I do not charge everyone for a conversation like that. I charge it to marketing internally. I will get paid. I did work. But I also know I have to balance what I actually bill with my marketing.
I mean, I can say with 99% certainly no 3 person church needs a server. At least none I have ever worked with. Is there a white unicorn out there? Sure. But I'd like to think I could detect that.
I know of a couple around here that do live streaming around here, one installation I know of actually has a live switching board and 3 or 4 PTZ cameras. Still, none of them require an on-site server.
Actually, it would be possible to make good money around here and with short (30 minute) drives to specialize in doing IT consulting for churches. It takes a minute to drive by some of the properties they're so large.
Have had bad luck with churches over the years.
In IT, or just in general?
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@travisdh1 said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said
If it is your job, you should be getting paid.
In order to get paid, you have to bill people.
In order to bill people you have to not do things for free.Agree 100%. I mean, a 5 minute discussion is OK, I think, but anything more needs billing.
NO one said sell them something they do not need. It was stated that they came to you for a server. So sell them the server they asked for, verify the basics, yes. You are a VAR, that is your job.
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.
No one comes to me just to buy a server, so I am never in this position, but if I was, I would tell said church person, that they have no idea what they need and they need to hire someone to actually figure that out. Me or another company I don't care, but hire someone who knows wtf they are doing to make sure you are not getting jipped.
JB, what do you do when said church person tells you they don't care about that.. that they just want you to sell them a server? Would you?
Or even better, when they say "yeah I'd llke to hire you"
Then you say "OK. Tell me about yourself."
They say "We are 3 people, with about 1GB of data stored"
You say "You don't need a server. Get Office 365."Done.
I can do that in 5 minutes without needing to charge them hundreds of dollars in consulting fees.
That is impossible to do in 5 minutes. You just screwed them because you did not do proper discovery.
Yeah, perhaps that was too dramatic an example.
What I think you were driving at is no, I do not charge everyone for a conversation like that. I charge it to marketing internally. I will get paid. I did work. But I also know I have to balance what I actually bill with my marketing.
I mean, I can say with 99% certainly no 3 person church needs a server. At least none I have ever worked with. Is there a white unicorn out there? Sure. But I'd like to think I could detect that.
I know of a couple around here that do live streaming around here, one installation I know of actually has a live switching board and 3 or 4 PTZ cameras. Still, none of them require an on-site server.
Actually, it would be possible to make good money around here and with short (30 minute) drives to specialize in doing IT consulting for churches. It takes a minute to drive by some of the properties they're so large.
Have had bad luck with churches over the years.
In IT, or just in general?
IT.
I did have an associate pastor through a bible at me once.
Though, us drawing pentagram on the floor in the youth room and sitting in it with a Ouija board during an overnight lock in may have had something to do with it.
No one in the youth group liked her. The prior associate pastor was a great guy and we were all having problems adjusting to such a narrow minded person.
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@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@travisdh1 said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said
If it is your job, you should be getting paid.
In order to get paid, you have to bill people.
In order to bill people you have to not do things for free.Agree 100%. I mean, a 5 minute discussion is OK, I think, but anything more needs billing.
NO one said sell them something they do not need. It was stated that they came to you for a server. So sell them the server they asked for, verify the basics, yes. You are a VAR, that is your job.
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.
No one comes to me just to buy a server, so I am never in this position, but if I was, I would tell said church person, that they have no idea what they need and they need to hire someone to actually figure that out. Me or another company I don't care, but hire someone who knows wtf they are doing to make sure you are not getting jipped.
JB, what do you do when said church person tells you they don't care about that.. that they just want you to sell them a server? Would you?
Or even better, when they say "yeah I'd llke to hire you"
Then you say "OK. Tell me about yourself."
They say "We are 3 people, with about 1GB of data stored"
You say "You don't need a server. Get Office 365."Done.
I can do that in 5 minutes without needing to charge them hundreds of dollars in consulting fees.
That is impossible to do in 5 minutes. You just screwed them because you did not do proper discovery.
Yeah, perhaps that was too dramatic an example.
What I think you were driving at is no, I do not charge everyone for a conversation like that. I charge it to marketing internally. I will get paid. I did work. But I also know I have to balance what I actually bill with my marketing.
I mean, I can say with 99% certainly no 3 person church needs a server. At least none I have ever worked with. Is there a white unicorn out there? Sure. But I'd like to think I could detect that.
I know of a couple around here that do live streaming around here, one installation I know of actually has a live switching board and 3 or 4 PTZ cameras. Still, none of them require an on-site server.
Actually, it would be possible to make good money around here and with short (30 minute) drives to specialize in doing IT consulting for churches. It takes a minute to drive by some of the properties they're so large.
Have had bad luck with churches over the years.
The mega churches tend to just be mega bad more often than not, massive egos are normally involved. To get that big is another sign of bad leadership to me, if pastors are doing their job right they WILL drive people away, just how it is. I'm kinda surprised you've only had a bible thrown at you. Yet I'd describe myself as religious, go figure right?
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Minion-Queen said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Most churches (have setup many) need a NAS (a place to store files) but because they know they need to store their files they THINK they need a server (they heard it somewhere).
You would go NAS these days over Office 365?
It really depends. There are times when you need/want onsite storage. Editing pictures is one example. wouldn't want to upload/download, etc them all the time to do edits, etc.
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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?:
It's a car salesmen JOB to earn commission, it's their bread and butter, it's what they DO.
Exactly, just like you. They are Chevy affiliates. They don't "have" to sell a car, but they only get paid when they do.
Wrong. It's NOT my "job" to sell affiliate things. It's my job to do what a client wants. Period.
I, and the client, will only believe this if you never, ever accept money to do otherwise. You've stated that you want to be an affiliate. So the above statement is clearly untrue. You can't ever accept money as a salesman AND say you have only a job to the customer. Your two approaches can never cross. Both parties pay you to work in their interest, you work for both, period. End of story. Not even the slightest gray area. Both pay you exactly the same, I have no idea why you feel one is your master and one is not, they both pay you the same.
Why is the client your master, period, rather than the vendor your master, period, and the customer paying just the random person to ignore?
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https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1815633-question-for-it-consultants
Scott, I'm typing slower than you, you are not allowed to post there yet.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1815633-question-for-it-consultants
Scott, I'm typing slower than you, you are not allowed to post there yet.
and this guy nailed it already..
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
If you cannot get past this concept, we're done.
Then we are done. What you are proposing is simply unethical and you are irrationally trying to make separations that don't exist.
Here are some simple tests:
- We are having this conversation, everyone here and the market and your customers (you think) all agree that your proposal is unethical, two masters and unacceptable and potentially illegal (and is certainly illegal in many markets.) That we are even continuing this conversation tells us that you are emotionally tied to the vendor relationship. 400 posts of defending that relationship, think about that. Go back and read your responses. From reading this thread, you've totally sold me that you are totally beholded to the vendors and that your clients aren't your masters in the least (thou doth protest too much.)
- You say that the money from affiliates is small and doesn't matter. Yet it is so big that it is making you act, quite frankly, crazy. This whole thread is because you are trying to justify to yourself something that we all agree is totally unethical without question.
- You aren't willing, thus far in the discussion, to admit what you are doing to the clients. This, to me, is the end all of the discussion. If you HAVE to lie about it and hide it from them, then you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are unethical in this regard and ashamed. If the money is so trivial, why must you hide it?
- You aren't willing to not get the extra money (the double dip.) You claim that money is trivial and doesn't matter, but aren't willing to forgo it. So obviously, that's untrue. @JaredBusch and I know that the money is NOT trivial but our ethics require us to forgo it, period. I think you are missing both parts, it's more money than you are saying... and it is already influencing you very clearly.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I don't give a two-bit rats behind what an affiliate thinks about anything. So no, I don't work for them.
Again, this is untrue unless you don't get any money from them. Period. I'm so lost as to how you think we would not see through this statement. This is so clearly not true, it's not even plausible to claim. Of course you give a rat's ass. This entire thread is about how much you care.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
You keep suggesting that "making money" from a client is the exact same thing as "making money from affiliate" and therefore I have to be working for two people. Wrong again. Affiliates don't direct me, hire me, tell me what they want, have budget restrictions, goals about what it means for the job to be completed correctly. I don't consult them when someone hires me, I don't go download brochures about how best to up-sell them, they don't hold my hand in trying to convince customers to buy their stuff. They literally have zero to do with anything in my client relations.
They have zero say in the final analysis. I don't send them the estimates and invoices, they don't send me anything. If their product happens to be the right solution, then a bonus is there.
All of this is misdirection. "Do you work for them" comes down to one thing... do you accept money? Everything else is a red herring to try to make it less obvious that you are working for them. None of those things matter. Do you get paid, is all that matters. And you do, so you work for them.
Same for the customer. They pay you. If you listen to their needs or just sell them whatever you are an affiliate for doesn't matter, you work for them either way. So, again, your own logic shows that you work for both. I'm totally lost how this isn't crystal clear. How is there grey area here?
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But just to clarify, it is understood and expected that a VAR serves two masters, correct?
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
But just to clarify, it is understood and expected that a VAR serves two masters, correct?
No, a VAR has one master the companies they are reselling for.
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
But just to clarify, it is understood and expected that a VAR serves two masters, correct?
No, a VAR only serves one. No honest business serves two equally. A VAR works for the vendor, not the customer. That's why they are a seller's agent, not a buyer's agent.
http://www.smbitjournal.com/2016/06/buyers-and-sellers-agents-in-it/
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@coliver said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
But just to clarify, it is understood and expected that a VAR serves two masters, correct?
No, a VAR has one master the companies they are reselling for.
Correct, working for the "customer" would be unethical for a VAR because they are beholden to the vendor that pays them.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
This conversation is partially about ethics but it's also about business models. Having an affiliate link to one product does NOT necessarily turn my entire business into the "THAT THING VAR COMPANY" where I go around trying to force everybody to use that product only because that tiny payout is just so alluring I can't help myself.
Well, but it does. Either you are a reseller within the context of the consultation or you are not. It's black and white.
If you consult on something and have an associated affiliate link, you are not just a VAR in general, but you are a VAR in that situation. If you had an affiliate link for pinwheels that you like to sell, with zero connection to the consulting, that's different. It's clear and above board to everyone that you are a consultant in one thing... and like to sell pinwheels. Until you start recommending pinwheels, you are okay. It's unrelated.
If your affiliate link is for Digital Ocean, and you ever consult on something that might involve Digital Ocean, you are a VAR, as simple and plain as can be. You might be a poor one not selling much, but a VAR you are, even before you make a single sale. A store is a store when it opens, not when people start shopping.
Maybe you are only a reseller, not a VAR, but you are in the reseller camp without question. That is the business model.
Styling a reselling business as something other than a reseller business and not disclosing the reseller arrangement to the customer.... that's where the ethics problems come in.
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So......
Being a VAR is fine, and ethical, and you can still help the customer. But the world knows the system, and thus the customer should know you are giving (potentially) non-impartial advice.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
As mentioned earlier, people like me who are generalists kind of have to do everything. So for sure I don't call myself purely a consultant, nor purely a VAR. The very word "solutions" is in my company name in face. But AS a generalist, I do offer "consulting" as a line-item offering. Perhaps you would argue this is impossible??
I don't argue against that at all. I'm saying that you can't say that you are not a VAR / reseller and that any lack of disclosure of that is unethical. I think I've made this position very clear.
I'm not suggesting anything strange or non-obvious. If you want to be paid to sell things, don't deny it, just own up to it. Nothing more.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
If I truly wanted to be a VAR I would go all-in with any number of vendors with their maximum payout programs as well as become an expert on their stuff.
This is a silly statement. You do want to be a VAR and you are not doing that. So obviously that statement is incorrect. You don't want to be "that kind of VAR", sure. But you are painting VARs into a corner that doesn't actually exist.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
One thing I never thought to call myself is a reseller or VAR. In fact I don't think "resell" is the same as affiliate at all. I used to work for an IT shop who did reselling, they just quoted people products from Newegg with a 20% markup, kind of pathetic really.
That's reselling, not a VAR. A real VAR adds real value and is an important part of the IT ecosystem. What you are describing there sounds like a store. Some stores are VARs, but it is rare.
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@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@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?:
It's a car salesmen JOB to earn commission, it's their bread and butter, it's what they DO.
Exactly, just like you. They are Chevy affiliates. They don't "have" to sell a car, but they only get paid when they do.
Wrong. It's NOT my "job" to sell affiliate things. It's my job to do what a client wants. Period.
If you cannot get past this concept, we're done. Affiliates links don't make me beholden to a company in the least, not whatsoever. Why in the living hell would I bend over backwards for the $20 affiliate and screw over the $500 from the client by giving them twisted advice?
My only goal is do good for the client. I want their business, I want their repeat business, I want their recommendations and word of mouth, I want their good testimonial, and I want my solutions to work over and above their expectations.Then do the even better thing - tell that customer - hey as an FYI, if you buy this chevy, chevy is sending me $20 - just an FYI. Why don't you want to do that?
Right, that's all I've been saying. If you think it's trivial, you'd never want to hide it. If you are hiding it from the customers, I think we can all agree it's not remotely trivial.
