Yes, that Allen.

Please start off by telling us a bit about yourself, your history as an Apple Consultant and where you are in the stage of Managed Services.

In 2000 I started a one-person army of a consultancy called "Hancock Consulting". I grew the business until in 2008 I changed the name to Mac Consulting Group, and opened a business office as an Apple Reseller. Not long after, I had two employees and gained Authorized Training Center and Apple Specialist designations. 

In 2011, as we were building out our new retail store, I accepted an offer to sell the Mac Consulting Group. This brought the lifecycle of my company to its successful conclusion with its sale to another Apple Specialist.

A key factor in my ability to sell was due to the Book of Business which our Support Agreement created. My company was earning almost $5000 per month via its monitoring and support agreements.

The time is right to grow from reactive consulting to offering Proactive Support Services.  The tools are out there: from Absolute, to JAMF's Casper in the Cloud, and my own Watchman Monitoring, Inc. 

The time is also right not be have to wait for your clients to remember to call you when there's a problem. By enhancing your break/fix consultancy with Proactive Support, you can increase your income, and provide better peace of mind to your end-users.

I just noticed that the $2 SnapNDrag, a part of the Yellow Mug Bundle has a feature to double click on snapped images, mark them up in Preview, and send them out.

This has got to be the coolest way to share ideas with people I've seen.. and I've tried a lot of solutions.

Snap an image, double click, mark it up, hit save, then share using SnapNDrag.

A plan is made after a great conversation with a friend or co-worker.

The plan seems simple, but it took a while to hammer out the details. Writing it down is considered, but wow, it seems so hard to get all the details on paper, when, the plan is so simple!

Joe, Jerry, and Sam are joined by Allen Hancock of Watchman Monitoring to discuss Allen's "hybrid" Managed Services model.

Allen describes a "Personal Support" option including unlimited quick phone calls and emails for $25/month per person. Allen identifies a common problem for consultants: how to track and bill for all those random emails and quick phone calls - Allen's solution: "Personal Support" @ $25 per month, per person; includes unlimited quick emails or phone calls. He estimates this part of his Support Agreement earns him about $2500/month after 1.5 years, based 100 people who subscribed. - Clients paying monthly for unlimited quick questions encourages them to call on a whim; this leads to billable work too, since anything over 15 minutes would be a billable consultation - He also offers a Proactive Monitoring service: collecting $10/month per computer; ($15/month for all the computers in a house) results in more billable work as machines report issues to consultant and consultant notifies client with recommended resolution - His monitoring service received much more uptake; 350 monitored computers bringing in an additional $3000 a month. - Had two techs on staff at the time. Mentions: - ProSoft Data Rescue Memorable Lines: - "Death by a thousand 5-minute emails" – Joe

The one from Baton Rouge, the ACN program, list moderator, general smart guy.

This is my new site, to speak about what's important.