Welcome to the MVP show . My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills . If you have not checked it out already , I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP . The link is in the show notes . With that , let's get on with the show .
Today's guest is from Plainfield , illinois in the United States . He's a founder and CEO of Visual SP . He was first awarded as MVP in 2007 . So he has been an MVP for a heck of a long time , a lot longer than me . He has been training , consulting , mentoring and speaking at conferences on Microsoft technology since 2002 .
He has authored several books over the years for Wiley Publications . You can find links to his bio , social media , et cetera in the show notes for this episode . Welcome to the show , asif . Thanks very much , mark . Great to be here .
Good to have you on the show , and I feel you've got some interesting stories to tell , being that you've been an MVP for so , so long and you've run your own company . How many years has your company been going ?
By the way , just saying what you just said right now made me feel really old . The company started in 2005 , but it was not Visual SP what it's called right now . It was very much about me going out there and training people in classes three-day , four-day , five-day classes . From there it morphed a few different times .
The company that it is right now , which is a product company , a SaaS product , that's been there since 2012 . But even then , the focus of that used to be on Microsoft SharePoint only . Then it went into SharePoint online , from on-premise to online . Then it became focused on Dynamics 365 and then Power Platform and now we support any web application .
So quite some long time .
Amazing , amazing . That's as long as I've been an MVP , so I got awarded in 2012 . So it gives me a feeling for the time and the distance . Food , family and fun what do they mean to you when you're not working ?
Food , family and fun . Wow , I'll start with family first . So , as you mentioned , plainfield , illinois is where I live . It's a very small suburb , by the way , in Chicago , actually , it's by another suburb called Naperville , which is actually a city by itself . Chicagoland is where I've lived for the last 35 plus years .
I live with my wife , my three kids one in college , one in high school , one in middle school and all graduating next year actually surprisingly all of them . So graduation college , high school and middle school , which again is making me feel older as I say that , but a blessing for sure .
In terms of food , I am from Indian descent , so there is a lot of Indian food that I eat at home . My wife is a wonderful cook , so some of the things I can put out there think about that as butter , chicken and keema Some people might recognize what that is mutton , biryani and I'm salivating just talking about that stuff . It's awesome , good stuff .
But of course , I like all kinds of food Thai food , greek food , lebanese , italian , chinese , all kinds of stuff . I like American steak . I love steak . In terms of fun , you know , since the beginning of this year I picked up pickleball . That's one of the only few sports that my knees can support now .
I used to love playing basketball , football , volleyball , all the jumping sports , but I've kind of cut back on all of them right now . But pickleball picked up quite a bit . Table tennis I used to play a lot and I still do fair amount of competing competitions . So that's my fun .
I love sports and so forth and hanging out with kids and just doing a lot of good stuff with my wife and extended family as well .
Nice Isn't pickleball like taking off in the US at the moment . It just seems to be a craze around it .
You know , the weird thing is , of course , you're also really really far from where I am located , so you could appreciate this that I was in 2010, . I was in Europe I can't remember exactly which city it's still escaping me , unfortunately but in 2010 , I remember I was right below a bridge somewhere .
I remember seeing a sport being played which looked much like tennis and I'm like what is this ? This is not tennis , it's not badminton , but it's got a net and I went over . I talked to the guys over there . They're like oh , this is called pickleball . To the guys over there , they're like oh , this is called pickleball . I'm like what the heck is pickleball ?
And that was my first exposure to pickleball . I'd never heard of it in the United States , never came to the United States for quite some time , but the last few years it's taken off quite a bit . It's ridiculous . It's like everywhere . Were you born in India ?
I was born in Pakistan , came to the United States yeah , 88 , 1988 , and I've been here ever since .
Because in those sports you never mentioned cricket .
Yeah , I was still fairly young so the listeners can probably guess my age by what I'm saying right now . So I was 12 and a half almost 13 years old in 1988 . Now you can do the calculations yourself . Maybe they can put in the comments how old I am . I was at that time .
Before that I was in cricket field hockey , soccer , football I called it over there , but I gave up all of them because I just picked up all the American sports playing football , basketball , soccer and other things here volleyball why did you move to America ? Studies , studies .
It's one of those things where a lot of people from indian descent I say indian because I'm categorizing pakistan , india , bangladesh , anything in those countries come here for opportunities for education .
So my parents at that time , you know , sent me here something that not a lot of people in our community even know , that I did not live with my parents for the first few years . I came here to stay with my aunt and uncle very challenging , did not know the language , uh , did not know the culture .
It was very challenging still , you know , I was just becoming a teenager at that time . You know how teenagers are . But it was all a blessing because it , uh , it really made me the man I am today , so I wouldn't change anything .
So who instilled in you the entrepreneurial spirit ?
I was an accidental entrepreneur . The spirit well , a lot of my uncles and aunts , and even my father , have owned businesses , some larger than others , but no one has a software-specific business like I do .
And I call myself an accidental entrepreneur because I was not intending to start this business either into it with the people that I was training back in 2010 , 2011 , where people said you need to take what you have , productize it and take your training and help many other people when you're not there in person , and that's when I started thinking about what can
we do ? So that's when we made a plugin for Microsoft SharePoint on-premises specifically at that time called it Visual SP and at that time it was supposed to be just . You go to what's called a help tab in the ribbon if you remember the ribbon right back in the day .
You click on the help tab and you see all the context-sensitive videos and tips and things like that to help the users sensitive videos and tips and things like that to help the users . I've always been very passionate about mentoring , training , helping , supporting and that was , I almost felt , an extension of what I was doing or anyway .
So I was very , very happy that we got the opportunity and knowledge from our customers to start that , and that's just been evolving . And now , in 2024 , I can't believe I'm saying this 2024 , where have the years gone ? We support any and all web applications .
So still the same premise where you , as a user , as an employee , an organization , doesn't matter where you are , you can always count on the help to be there on top of any web application , like Salesforce , sharepoint , dynamics , microsoft 365 , workday ServiceNow , whatever and it's always there , it's always available to you on top of the product .
Right and so correct me if I'm wrong . So basically , it gives you the help and support in context of your business process .
Would that be correct , rather than , um , how you create a new sharepoint site which , if that wasn't something you need to do , you could use the inbuilt help from microsoft , but is it specific to the business processes that are built into the organization ?
I appreciate the clarification mark . That is exactly correct . See , when our customers come to us , they don't come to us saying that , well , I don't like Microsoft training or I'm not comfortable with all the stuff that's out there .
It's more about how do I support and train our users at their moment of need on the business processes that we have in place , the way we do business , and that's what they can do using our application without any code .
Very quickly , within a minute , you can make a quick what's called a guided walkthrough or an announcement banner or an inline help icon to make it for your users to feel supported wherever they are .
It's so important for years when I've talked about change and adoption . You know , organizations do , let's say , a big transformation piece . They put in a big app solution , whatever it might be , and they train all their staff and they forget about the employee that starts in two weeks time Right , or the employee that starts in three months time right .
They weren't at that training . They didn't get the train , the trainer , the hands-on type stuff . And the beauty of what you've done there is you've created a tool that doesn't matter . When they start in the business , how do I add a new customer ? How do I reconcile an invoice , whatever it might be , in context of their business ? You're providing that help .
That's exactly it . I mean , you've , of course , talked about some scenarios from Microsoft Business Central that we would support , or Microsoft Dynamics , customer engagement . Same thing in any of those things .
I want to make a new contact , a new lead , I want to create a new invoice , or I want to understand what is the next step that we should follow as a salesperson to do the next thing .
It's all available to you at your moment of need , right there , and the beauty of the whole thing is the user should not have to think how to do it , it should just be there . It's kind of like the example I give is , if you don't mind me taking a little bit of tangent , I was booking an airport . What was that ? Airport Parking ?
I don't know if it was as simple as that . And at O'Hare Airport , chicago , o'hare , people have a love-hate relationship with that airport . I'll flow through it .
I'll flow through it . I was booking that thing , I'll stay there .
You know what I mean . But when I was booking this thing this is years ago I remember still very , very succinctly that the subtotal it gave me for the booking was $65 or something similar to that . And then I see the total at the end step and it said 85 or something ridiculous . I'm like what's going on ?
It's 20 bucks more , but there was a small inline help icon where I hovered over it and it gave me all the different fees that it needed to collect because of the city , because of the airport , and I'm like I have to pay it .
I didn't like it , but they kept my business because they had that information there , without saying well , you just got to pay some extra $20 for no reason , and because of that I was able to go through that process . I converted as a customer .
Same thing , it should be that easy within our intranet , within our Dynamics applications , sharepoint applications and within our intranet , within our dynamics applications , sharepoint applications and workday service . Now , whatever , it should just be intuitive .
You could put a small inline help icon that's pulsating , or put up a banner that comes up at the right moment of need or a guided walkthrough . That's the impetus of all that stuff . Just make it easier for the users to have to think about it . They just get support when they need it .
It goes back to the old adage . Don't make me think it should be intuitive , right ?
there's a book about that as well , which I have , and it makes .
Yeah , it's like it's just that simple craig kirk , kirk , the guy auth that , yeah , I , I remember reading it way back in my uh , you know I came into this via web design and it was a big part of web design thinking . Um , because you know , back then there were so many bad web designs that you had to like what is going on here .
Um , tell us about the books you wrote I have to sigh before I say them , because all of them are paperweights now , because I wrote them on technologies which don't exist anymore , unfortunately . So the first one was microsoft sharepoint designer 2007 . That was right , and I , when I became , I became an MVP right around that .
Sharepoint Designer 2007 was the first one . Sharepoint Designer 2010 was the second one . Sharepoint Designer 2013 was the third one . There was another one where 22 MVPs got together and wrote a book Real Life Experience . I can't even remember the name , but that was also around the same time that came out .
I had a chapter in there regarding business processes , regarding SharePoint designer and stuff like that . And then there's one standalone book that I wrote for power users , I believe also for SharePoint 2013 . It's been so long I can't remember some of the names , but it was a thin book . I made it into a regular paperback .
And also a really cool thing which many people commented on at that time where , if you get it on Kindle , you can actually have embedded videos directly in there . And at that time we're talking about a decade ago it was pretty cool . You could just flip into the content . You see an embedded video , you click on it , it starts playing .
It was very , very cool , cool . Many people told me so uh , yeah , those were the folks I'm gonna tangent all over the place . Embedded video uh , what's your screen recording software of choice for your company yeah , well , there's two different ones .
This is actually my personal choices . Camtasia is what I've used for decades now , literally , and then recently I've been using Microsoft I'm sorry , not Microsoft . I've been using Loom quite a bit . There's also Microsoft Stream . I was just about to say that . But , just to be honest and straightforward , I do not use the stream recorder .
It's good , but I don't need it . So I don't need it , so I don't use it . I have other tools that I've paid for and use that . So Loom , camtasia , are my tools of choice . Adobe Acrobat long time ago . Play with it a little bit , but not Acrobat Adobe , I'm sorry , what was it called ? Yeah , I'm talking about that .
There's another Adobe product I can't remember Anyway .
Yeah .
Used that a long time ago but it was too complex , Didn't make sense . I'm a simple kind of guy .
I do remember there was an education training material type tool that Adobe used to have . That was used a lot . It's interesting . I've stopped using Camtasia and I use Microsoft Clipchamp for everything now Much lower footprint . Microsoft Clipchamp for everything now Much lower footprint . It's hyper-modernized .
Microsoft bought Clipchamp from an Australian company about the last two years , three years , and man , I've done hundreds of hours of content now in it and , yeah , it's brilliant . It's brilliant in that as an MVP , you get a full license to it . But I love the screen recording functionality Brilliant .
It'll give you prompts about how you can even improve how you're doing like with AI . And then the captioning is just on point . They're using AI to do the captioning . It's really tight . So before I put anything to YouTube , I won't rely on YouTube captioning . I'll do it in there . It gives me the STR files or whatever they are for closed captioning .
I get my wife to run through it and correct all my um mistakes or my kiwi isms from coming from new zealand and um , and then upload that with the youtube clip and it's on point . It's uh , you know , accurate . It's brilliant .
Um , there's still some features that I wish it had , um , but you know it is a solid , robust tool I've been using for some time now and yeah , yeah , it's as I say , since I've had it on , I've not opened Camtasia once , which is still on my computer . And I tell you I still do use the TechSmith product which is their Snagit . I still use that .
I like the way you can overlay , put arrows . I just used it in the last hour to send off instructions . But the other one you had their Loom . I was on Loom from day one and I still pay for a full subscription of that . I just find it , particularly working with contractors , it's so much easier for me .
Rather than type a whole bunch of me , I just do a recording , pop it out and I've shown them on screen what I'm meaning , et cetera . Really solid , solid tool .
We are on the same wavelength . The only thing I'll add over here is that another reason for Camtasia that I still keep on using is we're paying for it , and one of those things where you're paying for a product , you feel like , well , I might as well use it every year .
I'm paying for it , but I appreciate the tip feel like well , I might as well use it every year .
I'm paying for it , but I appreciate the tip , I'm gonna dive deeper into it . I've never paid for it because , once again , it was an mvp benefit . Right , camtasia was always anymore .
Used to yeah not anymore .
Exactly exactly and I mean when they took those benefits away is when all these modern ways , these new modern tools that have come out , you know um , but yeah , it's interesting . It's interesting , it's interesting . Tell me the great things that you've noticed and then , off air , we will discuss anything else , love it .
Politically correct question . Okay , in the beginning , 2007 , when I first became an MVP , there were a lot of benefits , a lot of benefits in terms of hotel private room that you get , you know , lots of expenses covered . You get a huge benefit to spend on the store .
There were , I think , 70 , 80 , not more than that , maybe even less MVPs in my discipline , which was Microsoft SharePoint at that time , on-premises in 2007 . It was very tight-knit . It was a really tight relationship with the MVP lead as well .
Everything has expanded , some for the better , some we'll talk about offline , but you know , the program has grown so much . So many times . I can't , I don't even know the account exactly of mvps .
They're out there and I've gone from being a microsoft sharepoint on-premises mvp to online , to microsoft 365 and now I'm in microsoft dynamics slash business applications mvp . That's where iitated towards . So I've been in a bunch of different technologies . At one point I was a Microsoft Viva MVP as well . I don't think that's the case anymore .
Yeah , that was for a couple of years .
Microsoft Viva . The Viva products seem to have taken some unusual directions or features , particularly things like like topics . I think it is in sharepoint . They seem to be disappearing viva topics and it's gone topics is gone yeah , and I and I can kind of see , in the age of purview and the ability to auto metadata , auto tag etc .
Like why do you need people to manually do that ?
It was very time-consuming a huge human-intensive process which never really caught on , to be honest . Otherwise , the premise behind Topics was awesome . So , to cap what I was saying recently , I've had to miss one or two MVP summits here and there , but I used to go pretty regularly before . It's still a very valuable event to go to Really enjoy it .
The main reason I'm sure if you go and I go and others we go to meet and talk to the community , talk to the product team and that by itself is the main value from the Microsoft MEP program to be able to give your opinion , your thoughts about what's working , what's not working .
I've noticed that the product team , especially the last few years , have been very receptive to the MVPs . At one point there was a little bit of a lag , I think in some days , but now it's been a lot better . And then , of course , the networking with MVPs around the world . I mean we've got MVPs from everywhere coming in one location .
You know it's almost like a pilgrimage that we all make once a year , so wonderful to be able to do that .
Totally agree , SF . It's been great hearing your story . Thank you so much for coming on the podcast .
My pleasure , Mark . Thanks so much for coming on the podcast . My pleasure , Mark . Thanks so much for having me .
Hey , thanks for listening . I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith , otherwise known as the NZ365 guy . If you like the show and want to be a supporter , check out buymeacoffeecom . Forward slash nz365guy . Thanks again and see you next time . Thank you .