The ASCII Effect: Joe Balsarotti (EP 918)

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, and we are broadcasting here at the ASCII Cup, the last event of the ASCII EDGE Series for 2025. We are here in the Sheraton in downtown Philadelphia, and my first guest is a long-time member of ASCII. He is the longtime president of Software2Go. 

They are an IT provider based in Missouri. Joe Balsarotti is with me. Joe, how are you? I'm doing well. 

Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining the show again. And I should probably ask you, because I was almost going to say St. Louis, Missouri, but I don't think you're in St. Louis, are you? No, well, we're in the metro area. 

Okay. But St. Louis is one of those strange places. It's actually a trivial pursuit question. 

Oh, really? There's a county in Missouri called the City of St. Louis. Okay. And it tends to be the downtown and the inner city area. 

It's surrounded by another county called St. Louis County, which is all the suburbs, and then across the Missouri River is St. Charles, and that's where we are. Okay, that's very interesting. Trivial pursuit question. 

Must be nice. Nice. So Joe, let me ask you, you were on the show, was it last year? Yeah, a year ago. 

Tell me, how's business been in the last year? This, for a variety of reasons, has been our best year in about 10 to 12 years. Really? Yeah, I haven't done the final numbers, obviously, but just what we've done and how I'm projecting it. And a bunch of things is all coming together at the right time. 

Really? Any special projects, new clients, anything you can attribute to them yet? A little of everything. Okay. The Windows 10 to 11 migration finally got some of the clients to move. 

But at the same time, the economy has really picked up. We have an architecture client who really got decimated during COVID. Nobody was building anything. 

Nobody wanted designs. They laid off more than half of their staff. And all of a sudden, I'm getting calls that we're hiring another two. 

And they had stretched their workstations as far as they were going to go. And those partners had said, can we get another six months out of it? Can we get another year? And we did. We made some additions, upgrades, and kept them going. 

And then all of a sudden, they're like, we're ready. We got financing put in place. We want to redo everything. 

We want the absolute best. What you put in for us six, seven years ago got us that far. We want that level of equipment again.

And we hope we don't have to push it that far. So we had that. We've got the 11 upgrades.

We did pick up a handful of new clients. Just through happenstance and some referrals. We weren't really looking because we're more of a I guess you'd say concierge level.

High service, white glove type deal. Exactly. And we don't actively go out and say we want everybody. 

We're just somewhat picky. And the right kind of clients just happened at the right time. Now, I know everybody, I'm trying to say this in a gentle manner, but you're kind of like grandpa to a lot of folks here. 

You've been at this a while. I look, this is my 45th year in this. I was going to say 45. 

Is it true you started at age 15? Yes. I don't think we talked about that before. Yeah. 

Electronics got me interested in computers, even though the high school didn't have one. We were selling donuts in the morning so that we could get, you know, $1,700 together to get an Apple II plus to share. For the school or for the club? Yeah. 

The physics teacher spearheaded that. What was a physics teacher doing looking for a computer? He saw the future. They did do one computer class at the high school, but it was on the district mainframe.

Okay. Yeah. It gave you an idea right at that time. 

But I was interested in electronics. I taught myself the Apple II, went through the book, wrote a program to use absolutely every command that was in there, and ended up realizing, oh, you know, you can make these cables. I became known to the one that was close and at the same time had bugged my parents for three years. 

They finally said, we're tired of this. Fine, we'll get you a computer. Nobody does, but we're done. 

I ended up when my car was in the shop, driving the company car to high school. Nice. So 45 years. 

Now, I know I've asked you, and for some reason it escapes me, when did you actually become aware of ASCII? Because you were in existence before ASCII. So when did you first hear about the group? We, Software2Go, joined in 92. 92. 

Okay. And I think we were not the first, but one of the first non-software centers, you know, because it started as a group of software center franchises. When that went defunct, they wanted to keep working together. 

So I think we were one of the first non-software center, you know, independents to join. Interesting. What made you want to join? Well, especially back then, it was very easy to see the benefits because they were tangible. 

I mean, you were getting X percent discount from SoftSell or, you know, Ingram. I'm trying to think of who was around before the mergers and mergers. Well, D&H was around. 

They're about the only ones who have emerged unscathed. But, you know, in those days you could say, well, my volume is this, and if I'm going to save that percent, you know, it was a no-brainer. And then there were other things. 

But ASCII evolved over the years, you know, just as my business has evolved. And you got more now non-tangible benefits, you know, referral network, the brain trust. I mean, I, you know, I'm in the Midwest, but for the West Coast people, this is great because if there's a bad update gets rolled out, or if there's some problem, everybody on the East Coast here, they're already doing, you know, dealing with it. 

And by the time the people on the West Coast wake up, you know, I've seen some of these posts are like, man, I just got to the office. I look, you know, I've got a half dozen tickets about this thing, and you've already figured it out for me. I don't have to do anything.

You know, and that's kind of what ASCII has become. Those things you can't immediately put a price on. But it's a definite benefit. 

Right. Yeah, I do see you active on the forum, which is kind of like the email version of a ASCII help desk, I guess, and stuff. How much are you actually on there? Because some of you guys are posting, you know, multiple times a day.

I mean, it depends. It depends on the topics. Some of them don't apply. 

You know, the delete key is your friend when you've got 100 or something messages coming in a day. But, you know, if it's a business topic, especially for, you know, a newer member or newer business person, you know, that's one that I definitely will chime in on. And then certain technical things. 

I mean, you know, like you said, I'm like the old guy. You know, you can't parole me out of here. And if people are dealing with old equipment, right, you know, then all of a sudden, I'll go talk to Joe, talk to Joe, you know.

Yeah. Has there been anything that has stood out to you lately that you can talk about as a benefit of ASCII that, you know, is, like you said, non-tangible or, you know, not dealing with the discounts and stuff? Have you had anything recent that you could tell everybody, hey, I got this because of ASCII? Yeah, another member, a longtime member that I know, contacted me and said, one of my friends, colleagues who's in this business, who was not a member, but he kept trying to get him to be a member, is going to pick up a new client who has offices in the St. Louis area, and they immediately want to consolidate the two offices. And, you know, he needed boots on the ground in a variety of things. 

And, you know, through ASCII, we were put in contact with him and ended up that we did the site survey for the existing locations and where they're going and documented the equipment for them. And when it comes time for them to actually move, then we'll be doing the disconnect and reconnect when the movers have done their thing. So, you know, that's definite money. 

I mean, we're getting paid our normal rate. And it's business we would not have gotten any other way. Yep. 

It's definitely a benefit from being an ASCII member. Yep. About who you know, somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody can benefit. 

So, well, one of the sad things that we are doing at this conference is we're honoring the passing of the founder and CEO of ASCII, Alan Weinberger. Because you have been around so long, I know that you've, you know, more than myself. I mean, I've had conversations with Alan. 

I did not have a longstanding relationship. But is there anything that you can share about, you know, your relationship with Alan, how he has helped you in any way over the years? Yeah, Alan and I knew each other for about 30 years. And the first time I met him was at Comdex. 

ASCII actually had a booth out there in Vegas at the old Comdex show. And, you know, we were a member and I walked up and introduced him. Oh, the founder is here working the booth, you know, which struck me as interesting, you know, my kind of person. 

And we just hit it off and would talk regularly. I mean, Alan was very good about sending emails, he would see an article on something about, you know, astronomy, you know, science, all types of science, all types of business. And he'd send an article, what do you think about this? You know, some of it was can we apply it ASCII, some of it was just general business, we would bounce things off of each other over the years. 

You know, as well as the social aspect. If I was in the DC area, you know, call him and we go out to lunch or just do things like that, in addition to all the ASCII events. But, you know, he definitely was a visionary. 

You know, he saw a need and found a way to fill it that no one else had done. He was very passionate about wanting to make a difference and wanting to improve, you know, the members and the companies of the members, as well as the people. You know, he wanted to see everyone do well and worked his butt off to try to get it done.

So, of course, you know, the people left to carry on, you know, Jerry, Jesse, Alysia, Lynn, you're very close with them as well. I'm sure you've had conversations. How much do you think that they will continue to carry that torch? Well, it's a large torch to carry. 

They're splitting up the duties and, you know, moving forward. The one thing Alan knew, you know, I know as a long-time business owner, is nothing stays the same. And especially in this industry, absolutely nothing stays the same, you know, even for 10 minutes. 

So, things need to change, you know, they need to evolve. ASCII's evolved, you know, my company has evolved. So, I think, you know, just normally there will be changes.

It's not necessarily because Alan is gone. It's because we've always changed. But the mission stays the same and I'm on the board of directors for ASCII. 

So, when I put that hat on, I've got a part in making sure that the mission stays the same and that we continue to have benefits for everybody that are meaningful. So, with that board responsibility, I'm sure that one of the things will be, you know, the continual recruitment of new ASCII members. I know that at each of these events, there's always new folks and stuff. 

What advice have you or would you give to somebody that's, you know, looking at the group, maybe considering or not considering? What advice would you have for them? Well, I mean, ASCII is a really good deal. You know, basically, you know, round it up, it's about a thousand bucks a year and compared to a lot of peer groups, you know, marketing groups, etc., we're a steal. So, if it's a new business, if it's a one person, you know, one man band, one woman band, ASCII can be of extreme help.

Because the programs that are in place fill some of those gaps that the smaller firms can't do it. You flip it around that the, you know, the 5, 10 million up businesses, they see other benefits because, you know, at their scale, having access to the vendors, you know, on a personal base of them. Nowadays, when can any of us of any size actually sit down with a rep from a vendor? This is one place where you can. 

And that's powerful for businesses of any size. All right. Well, Joe, thank you very much for your time. 

I do have one last question. As the last event of the year, the ASCII Cup, big old celebration, which Star Trek character are you dressing up as for the ASCII Cup? This is not a sci-fi. This is the Rocky show here in Philadelphia. 

So, I'm going to let the others do that. If we go back to sci-fi, that may be a different story. Okay. 

All right. Just thought you might pull something out and turn it into a Rocky thing. You know, Quartz as Rocky or something. 

Yeah, not this time. All right. Joe Balsarotti, folks, thank you very much. 

Software2Go and a long time ASCII member, board member, friend of Alan. Thank you very much. And we'll see you out and about.

Thanks for having me.