business

5 Years Running

May 9, 2022 By Rowell Leave a Comment

It’s been 5 years since Packet6 became an LLC. What started off as a blog later transformed into a side hustle business.

Many organizations getting help from IT providers weren’t happy. They weren’t seeing the outcome they desired.

IT providers did not have the Wi-Fi expertise in-house to solve these Wi-Fi problems quickly and efficiently.

This is why Packet6 focused on enterprise Wi-Fi. It wasn’t easy at first. The first few clients were difficult to get when no sales team or marketing existed.

Instead, I relied on writing. By targeting the issues I knew different organizations faced, I was able to get paying clients from Google search. After speaking to these clients, I learned they’ve been burned by other IT Providers. They felt that no one could fix their Wi-Fi problems.

I knew specializing in Wi-Fi would be beneficial for Packet6. People want a specialist to solve complex issues.

Later, I realized customer service was also lacking in our industry. My goal was to always be of help to clients. Even if it meant helping them for free, when another IT provider would try to make profit from just having a conversation with a client.

The last 5 years have not been walk in the park. Packet6 is still a side hustle but it’s a serious one. I have to juggle my time carefully. And be strategic with my vacation hours with my full-time employer.

But the real value in this side hustle are the opportunities it has opened up for my family. We’ve been able to purchase real estate, bring home additional income, and create new relationships. Sometimes, my family travels with me. After some client work, we have a mini-vacation.

Today, we’re thinking of new strategies to work on the business instead of in the business. How can I free up more of my time, mentor others, and delegate work. We’re working on processes for growth.

The next 5 years will be interesting. And I’m looking forward to it!

Mid-Year Review

August 2, 2021 By Rowell Leave a Comment

Keeping up with the craziness that started at the beginning of this year has me gasping for air. In January, I published my big audacious goals or Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for 2021. Today, I set aside time to reflect mid-year.

This is when I take a step back and look at my progress and whether I’ve met any of my OKRs. It’s also an excellent time to learn from my set backs to note any changes or pivot. Life happens, and a decision to pivot or eliminate a goal will happen. One of my most significant learning moments for me is to maintain a healthier lifestyle. The adverse effects have significant ramifications. Hear an episode on Clear To Send about tackling mental health and burnout.

Let’s break it down.

Packet6

Increase Sales by 70%

Sales is hard. I’ve read books on how to be better at sales. It’s all mindset. But you need to understand how people buy. Then I have to take action and pick up the phone!

Earlier this year, the goal was to target $900k in revenue. So far, we’re 41% of the way. This year, there was an emphasis on hardware sales. We’re 42% towards our goal of $450k. Being a VAR has its own set of challenges where I have to question the whole process. But that’s another story. The professional service’s target is $350k, and we’re 31% there.

The lesson here is I’m just one person doing sales and professional services. Efficiency is critical, and processes need to be in place. Sales cycles are long, and it gives me time to think of how I can improve.

Compared to 2020 this year-to-date, Packet6 is up 42% in professional services, and hardware is up 674%. The changes and goals we’ve set appear to be working!

Produce Consistent Content

Creating content has proved to be challenging for me. With only 14 blogs published this year, I’ll need to adjust my workflow for higher efficiency. But 14 is not bad!

I’ve accepted the fact I can’t produce videos in the style I desire. Through this process, it’s more critical for me to get something published. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

Initiate a Marketing Plan

I have not started on any marketing plan. But I have been reading books in preparation. Some of the valuable books are Building A Story Brand and Marketing Made Simple.

The process is still in the early stages, but the priority should be increased. I’ve made progress by changing the website to speak more to client challenges and the goals I’m trying to achieve.

Build Proficiency with Python

Have not had the capacity to focus on Python scripting. My son and I have plans to learn Python together and I think that will make a fun project for the both of us.

Personal Website

Build a Technical Presence

There’s a method to my madness for building a technical presence. This hasn’t been a priority due to the projects I have taken on. Part of the plan involves creating authority and developing courses.

It would honestly be amazing to create my own income by helping others in IT.

Publish Content Consistently

This year-to-date, there have been 8 blogs published, with 5 from Q3 alone. The lesson learned here is to create a content calendar.

One of the few things I enjoy is creating content based on my own technical and business experiences. I haven’t published a full video since January 2nd, 2021. There’s a lot of planning and producing involved. I may need to adjust my expectations in video production quality and simply aim for content quality. But the downside of publishing videos and blogs is getting eyes on the content.

Earn Certifications

Earlier in the year, I was able to finally obtain my CompTIA CTT+. The goal of acquiring the CTT+ certification is to develop courses under my own name and for Clear To Send.

With my capacity being at an all-time high, I haven’t spent time developing any courses. A certification I am now adding to the list is the PCNSA. I’ve now decided to drop CCNP and CCNP Wireless for now. Interests change, and the Cisco certifications aren’t interesting to me anymore.

Clear to Send

Build Exposure

Publishing and maintaining a podcast means building an audience. Our goal is to get to the ears of many IT professionals who want to learn more about Wi-Fi.

In doing so, we’ve achieved 69% of our goal to 1,500 email subscribers. This is how we reach out to our listeners on our own platform. We have email signup options on our podcast website, and we’ve made PDF downloads which require people to join our email list.

Every month we range between 7k and 15k downloads. On average, we’re at 6k downloads per month. That’s only 24% to our goal of 25k. We still have a long ways to go to increase the exposure to the podcast.

In building our CTS community, we’ve made 94% of our goal of having 550 members in the Slack workspace. We funnel people into the Slack workspace through Twitter, LinkedIn, and our email list.

Increase Social Media Following

In conjunction with building exposure for the podcast, we’re growing an audience through social media using Twitter and LinkedIn.

Our primary method of communication is through Twitter, where we’re 69% to our goal of 5,000 followers.

On LinkedIn, we are 43% to our goal of 3,000 followers.

We track our follower count to gauge our reach and to drive more listeners to the podcast. We attribute much of the podcast’s success to social media. Without listeners, we may not have Clear To Send.

Create Three Courses

Following the creation of A Practical Guide to Wi-Fi Site Surveys, we wanted to focus on creating courses for CWNA, CWDP, and CWAP.

Our lives got really busy, which took away time to developing the curriculum. CWNA is still up next for us, and we have a portion of the curriculum completed.

We did not want to rush into these courses. We always aim to put out quality work.

Final Thoughts

It looks like I have a lot going on. And I do. There are many of my OKRs I simply cannot complete. My tactic is to jot down everything I want to achieve. Keeping track of progress is done through Todoist but I am now using Notion for extensive planning.

The most important takeaway for me is to focus on one thing at a time and put out my best work. It’s planning, execution, and perseverance.

My Q2 2021 Income Report

July 8, 2021 By Rowell Leave a Comment

Here is the second installment of my quarterly income report. I use the income report to summarize what has been happening in the business, where revenue came from, analyze my expenses, and reflect upon what actions have positively or negatively impacted the net income.

Table Of Contents

Highlights of Q2
Lessons Learned
- Travel
- Sales
Income/Expense Analysis
What’s Next

Highlights of Q2

There’s no shortage of work. Packet6 is a small business operated by my wife and me.

Happy Birthday

Q2 marked the year Packet6 turned four years old! It’s remarkable how many clients we’ve been able to help in that period. And this quarter, we thought about the processes we can improve to make the business run like a well-oiled machine.

A Yearly Retreat

One decision we made was to include a yearly retreat. For our second annual retreat, that meant spending two days without the kids, thinking about the business’s past, present, and future. We change our surroundings to keep our minds fresh.

It involves thinking about what worked well for us, what didn’t work, and what needs to change.

Security Is Everyone’s Responsibility

Adding to our list of expertise, Packet6 became a Palo Alto Networks (PAN) reseller. When working with our clients, we’ve found that they come back to us asking if we can work on other parts of the network. That includes switching, routing, and firewalls.

I consider PAN to be a strong vendor in the security landscape, so I decided to become a partner and resell their solutions. It’s primarily the NGFW products, and it could branch out from there. Baby steps.

Lessons Learned

Travel

Wearing a mask has never bothered me, and I also received my vaccination in March 2021. It made me confident to travel for clients that relied on Wi-Fi.

Using my stockpile of vacation from my full-time job, I flew to Kansas City, St. Louis, New Jersey, and Seattle. While I like traveling, trying to condense some of those trips as short as possible can be draining.

Sales

In Q1, I spent time reading as much as possible about creating a sales process and sequence to generate a sales cycle. It’s not easy holding multiple roles, but it challenges your mindset.

Discipline is at the heart of sales. I wouldn’t say I like doing it, but there isn’t any revenue if there aren’t any sales. I’m not as consistent as I’d like to be. It just means I need to change my system to be more efficient. Set goals around how many calls/emails/connections to make each week.

I did not make one conversion from my sales process this quarter.

Income/Expense Analysis

	Current Quarter	Previous Quarter	Change	% Change
Revenue	$209,419	$32,853	$176,566	537%
Expenses	$67,156	$43,719	$23,437	54%
Net Income	$145,991	-$10,845	$156,836	1,446%

Professional Services	$59,236	$26,805	$32,431	121%
Affiliates	$55	$25	$30	118%
Hardware	$156,889	$17,412	$139,477	801%

In previous Income Reports, I’ve talked about decreasing costs to increase the net income. It’s easy to say, but as you can see, expenses rack up! People like to focus on the revenue number. But after you subtract the expenses, then you’re left with the take-home money.

I wanted to highlight some areas of revenue. Professional Services wasn’t isolated to a specific metro region. There was an increase in professional services, primarily Wi-Fi design, configuration, troubleshooting, and validation. That’s where I begin to reach my capacity and need to look for additional resources.

The reason why I highlight Affiliates is due to its form of passive income. On this blog, you’ll see links to resources I use. Some of those resources are affiliate links, mainly from Amazon. I receive a percentage of a purchase made through one of my affiliate links. It’s not much, but I also do not focus on Affiliates.

A significant shift in Q2 came from reselling network equipment. It was a mixture of Meraki, Juniper/Mist, and Palo Alto Networks. As a network engineer, I have the insight into creating an accurate bill of materials. I’ve seen other resellers try to sell over the moon with hardware, upselling more than required products, even for growth. So you won’t see a sleazy sales guy from me.

The challenge is being consistent with those hardware sales, and the struggle is real. We don’t have a dedicated sales rep to increase these numbers. That’s me.. for now.

Where we can improve is in the expense category. There’s room to decrease expenses. We’re probably paying for too many web app subscriptions. One of our goals is to analyze what we’re paying for and whether it contributes positively to the business. If not, it goes—Marie Kondo style.

What’s Next

It’s time to implement systems and processes. I’m only one person. We’d love to bring on an additional engineer to help with Wi-Fi projects. We want to be sure it also fits within our budget. More backend business work needs to be implemented to support this plan.

Professional Training is another area we’d like to grow, but it’s percolating as an idea for now. More planning needs to happen.

Then there’s buttoning up the business. The training we need to take for specific processes, like bookkeeping, which we will eventually outsource.

Exciting things are happening!

Cheers 🍻

What do you mean I have to do sales

January 3, 2021 By Rowell Leave a Comment

You can start a business, but to keep it afloat, you have to bring in sales. It doesn’t come automatically. An IT consulting company needs to bring in revenue to survive. That means doing sales.

Are you starting your own IT consulting business?

I’m going to be sharing my own tips, how-to’s, and experience with the tools and resources I use. Learn from what works and doesn’t work for me. Download my 3 Beginner Business Tips PDF.

I’ve been fortunate to have had referrals and repeat business from existing clients at Packet6. Those referrals will eventually dry out and are certainly not consistent or predictable.

I recently published my OKRs, creating the most significant pressure for myself as an entrepreneur, thus pushing me outside of my comfort zone.

Watch this video on YouTube

Watch the video version of this post

One key result taken from my 2021 OKRs is to earn $350k in professional services. That’s a huge mountain to climb. To put it in perspective, Packet6 brought in $148,912 in professional services last year. In 2019 it was $218,739. How do I accomplish $350k in one year?

In September 2020, I decided to develop sales fundamentals and implement a sales strategy. You can see my attempts from my book list. I’m about to embark on a new experience of prospecting for clients.

By looking at my average deal size in 2020, I can estimate how many deals I’d need to close this year. That key number is $2910.40. I divide that into my target of $350k to come up with the total number of 121 deals I need to close (rounded up.)

Next, I divided 121 deals by 11 months because of me taking approximately a month’s worth of vacation from working.

I need to close 11 deals per month!

This number intimidates me because of a few things.

I have a full-time job
I don’t have any sales experience
I’m the sole technical person at Packet6

I have to spend my time wisely to prevent anything from compromising my responsibilities to my primary employer. I’d have to do prospecting early morning and late afternoon.

Without any prior sales experience, I’d have to learn it on my own, execute, and learn from the failures. I could very well hire a seasoned salesperson, but I just don’t want to. I’d like to take a stab at it myself for a while.

To fulfill 11 deals per month, I’d most likely need to bring in some help, a subcontractor I can trust.

So that’s where I’m at now, with 11 deals per month to close without a formulated sales strategy. Let’s see where this takes me.

Want to learn more about starting your own IT consulting business?

Rolling up my sleeves for 2021

December 29, 2020 By Rowell Leave a Comment

Now that the Christmas holiday is behind me, it’s time to create a strategy that will set me on a path to be better than 2020.

I take a big bold approach. If you’ve seen my 2020 Year in Review, there are objectives I have not met. Measuring how I’m doing is important but what I find more critical is the act of doing.

Using Todoist (affiliate link), I can see whether or not I’m being productive. And most of the time I understand I have to be a realist. But there’s no harm in being an opportunist

This is the second year in a row I am using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). My goals are objectives. But to add substance there are key results for each objective that I have decided as a way to measure whether that objective was a success.

The areas in which I have built OKRs around are:

Packet6
This blog (rowelldionicio.com)
Clear To Send

Table Of Contents

Packet6
Rowell Dionicio Blog
Clear To Send
My Thoughts

Packet6

Increase Sales by 70%
Target $900k revenue
Target $450k hardware sales
Target $350k professional services
Remaining $100k in courses or other projects

It was obvious there was going to be a decrease in sales in 2020. With a vaccine being distributed, my hope was business would begin to pick up again. I still need to take precautions for health but 2021 would be a year for learning how to do sales.

To increase my revenue to $900k means I’ll need to build salesmanship and resell hardware. I’m a partner for Cisco, Meraki, Mist, Juniper, and Ruckus. I need to leverage my partnerships and technical knowledge with some form of selling. My target for hardware sales is $450k.

Professional services is how Packet6 got started in the first place and is really where the revenue comes in. If I could continue to leverage pro services + hardware, that could be a winning combination. My target for pro services is $350k.

The remaining $100k I would like to earn building training with courses or through other projects.

Produce Consistent Content

6 posts per quarter
1 video per quarter
6k page views per month

A sore spot on Packet6’s website is a lack of content. I’ve been producing content elsewhere but really neglected the business website. The highly technical content I used to write on Packet6 is now being done on my personal blog. My mind now needs to shift towards writing content for decision-makers like CIOs, IT Managers, and senior staff members within organizations. Writing to address pain points is very different from writing technical tutorials. But I can do it.

My key results for producing consistent content is publishing 6 blogs per quarter and 1 video per quarter. With consistency, I’d like to increase the Packet6 page views to 6k a month.

The end goal is to receive more visitors that may convert to clients.

Initiate a Marketing Plan

5 social media updates a week
Grow email list to 1500
Generate 36 MQLs

A little piece of me always thinks about why I started a business. In doing so that means spending less time on my core expertise – the technical aspect. Packet6 is a small company and doesn’t have enough resources to hire other technical people full time. In the meantime, I need to wear many hats.

One of those hats involves creating a marketing plan to help grow the business. I can probably outsource much of this but I am a person who loves to learn. I’ll at least take a stab at this and create a marketing plan. Then in the near future, have someone else take over this section.

To start, I’ll focus on keeping Packet6 social media updated with at least 5 posts a week. In previous years I was able to grow an email list of potential clients. I’m going to kick start that again with a key result of 1500 new email subscribers. With more eyes on Packet6, I can hopefully reach another key result of generating 36 marketing qualified leads.

Build Proficiency with Python

Automate C9800 tasks
Automate Mist installations
Build a reliability script

Distinguishing yourself from the competition means being uncomfortable. Network engineering is shifting towards network automation.

This creates an opportunity for me to learn Python and build a solution for companies that don’t have the expertise in-house.

Rowell Dionicio Blog

Build a Technical Presence

100 active members on the Discord server
5,000 Twitter followers
200 email subscribers
3,000 YouTube subscribers

My personal brand works alongside my side business, Packet6. The latter is B2B. My personal brand communicates with other technical people.

And lately, I’ve been sharing my business experiences such as this post.

Publish Content Consistently

6 published blogs per quarter
6 videos per quarter

Consistency is key. What helps keep chaos at bay is a system for productivity, healthy choices, and my eagerness to learn.

That’s why I’ve decided to aim for publishing 6 blog posts per quarter along with 6 videos on my personal YouTube channel.

Earn Certifications

CTT+
Mist AI
JNCIA DEVOPS
CCNP
CCNP Wireless

I’d like to call myself crazy for adding 5 certifications to my long list of objectives. But it is part of my learning progress in which I share with others. It helps fill a need on the vendor partner side and provides content for the blog.

Clear To Send

The podcast has been my favorite project and what I’m most proud of. There’s been a new episode every week (nearly) since August 2015.

For a few years we haven’t had any serious goals other than publishing better episodes.

As the podcast has developed, we have wanted to make it even better.

Build Exposure

1,500 email subscribers
25,000 monthly downloads
550 Slack members

Most of our listeners find us through social media. We don’t do any form of advertising.

We communicate with our listeners mostly through our website and our email list. More recently it has been our Slack workspace.

Increase Social Media Following

5,000 Twitter followers
3,000 LinkedIn followers

We will continue to use our Twitter account and would like to expand on LinkedIn. This involves giving value to those who follow and to prospective followers.

Create Three Courses

CWNA
CWDP
CWAP

As a way to sustain our podcasting efforts, we’ve decided to build courses. We were not keen to traditional sponsored episodes and wanted to keep the content highly valuable and easy to consume.

Naturally, the content we record lends itself to certification studies. This is why we will be working on more courses.

My Thoughts

In previous years I had not planned to this much detail. Goals were not written down. And on my second year of doing OKRs, I’m really shooting for the stars. When I look at the list, it looks daunting and unattainable. But I’d be really happy to achieve some of these goals.

Who really knows what 2021 will look like. I at least have a plan of attack and if things do not pan out during my quarterly check-ins with myself, then I can pivot.