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From Startup To Sale | A Podcast For MSP's By MSP's
From Startup To Sale | A Podcast For MSP's By MSP's episodes
- S2E3: Building an Effective Sales and Marketing Program
I’m cautious about interviewing companies that provide services to MSPs. After all, you get bombarded by sales content day in and day out, and I don’t want to add to the noise. But when I interviewed Megan Killion of MKC Agency in Orlando, a revenue consultancy specializing in scaling MSPs and other channel companies, I was super impressed by the combined sales/marketing paradigm that she uses. Megan champions ethical marketing practices, elevating marginalized talent, and empowering businesses to thrive in competitive markets. She also has an offer for our podcast listeners: 20% off the first 4 months of her newest program IF you complete this worksheet before your first call with her (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gmqzRXv54EdZBFGtUxZAnqc-wLpMaIjDHIpv7H9tZFY/edit?usp=sharing, NOTE that you will need to request access). Here's what I learned in this episode:
- Why sales needs to be a function of your business instead of just outsourced
- MKC's value add is helping create a scalable internal program
- How Megan designed her sales offerings, and how you should too
- Megan's take on hiring sales talent the wrong way
- Megan's secret sauce for finding sales talent the right (and easy) way
- Can technical people become effective sales people
- Why technical owners are unlikely to create effective sales organizations without help
- Does the hunters vs farmers framework make sense
- Prediction, project planning, copywriting, social skills, time management: these skills and more are required to be an effective sales resource
- What size MSP is best positioned to benefit from her services
- What constitutes ready for growth
- Embracing the 'suck' of the middle (organic growth is not easy)
- You must understand your clients to build messaging
- How will AI affect your sales process
- The difference between inbound and outbound and how they go together
Financial Modeling Service provides M&A and Intermediary services to IT companies. As a former IT company owner, Jeff Greenspan understands your business and will work with you to achieve an optimal result based on your specific needs. You can reach Jeff at [email protected] or through his contact form at https://financialmodelingservice.com/contact-us/.
41 min - S2E1: A Billion Dollar Startup
S2E2 features a conversation with the US team of Ionos, a hosting and cloud provider looking to compete with Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. I'd heard that Ionos was a billion dollar company, but when I checked their market cap in late December, it was just over $3B! What's up with that? So I sat down with Seth Helgesen, Zachary Watson, and Brian Wick to get a better understanding of Ionos's potential value to you. Takeaways from the episode include :
- What are the key Ionos differentiators
- Is any hosting equipment required
- Where are the colo facilities
- Is redundancy available
- Ease of migrating to the Ionos platform
- What security features are built in
- Who does Ionos integrate with
- How does pricing work
- Direct and distribution channels
- Partner/Reseller programs with marketing dollars
- What does the roadmap look like
- Support for monolithic legacy applications
- Object storage just launched
- A special offer for podcast listeners
Financial Modeling Service provides M&A and Intermediary services to IT companies. As a former IT company owner, Jeff Greenspan understands your business and will work with you to achieve an optimal result based on your specific needs. You can reach Jeff at [email protected] or through his contact form at https://financialmodelingservice.com/contact-us/.
40 min - S2E1: An International MSP
With his company Olive and Goose, Ankur Kothari provides proof that you really can run an MSP from anywhere. From his not-quite-humble beginnings at Microsoft, he's built an impressive three-division IT company headquartered in Seattle but with an international clientele. And when he's not strategizing, he's enjoying the intellectual flavors of Barcelona, learning both Spanish and Catalan while connecting with the vibrant but quite different European startup community. Takeaways from the episode include:
- What roles does Ankur play in his company, and how that differs from expectation
- Europe is ahead of the US from a sustainability prespective. How might that affect US MSP's relationships with their clients in the near future?
- Be faster to hire, and faster to change
- The most common error made by young MSPs
- How Olive and Goose drives organic growth
- How to create a beachhead in a new area
- The hunter/farmer model
- The opportunity that AI presents for MSPs who are able to assist their customers with adoption
- Ankur's take on rollups for higher EBIDTA multiples
- Growth opportunities, no matter the type, must be evaluated to ensure that they offer value to all of the firms stakeholders
Financial Modeling Service provides M&A and Intermediary services to IT companies. As a former IT company owner, Jeff Greenspan understands your business and will work with you to achieve an optimal result based on your specific needs. You can reach Jeff at [email protected] or through his contact form at https://financialmodelingservice.com/contact-us/.
34 min - Ep. 14 : A tight affiliation of 170 MSPs
One way that MSPs increase their scope is by joining an affiliation group. There are many forms, and the levels and types of integration with other firms varies. In this episode, we interview Tim Conkle, whose company The 20 consists of both an MSP alliance with (currently) 170 members, and an MSP rollup that just completed their 37th acquisition. Tim is an interesting and passionate MSP, and this episode provides the opportunity to learn:
- How does The 20 work
- What are the three things MSPs need to do to be truly successful
- What does 'better together' mean, and why
- How Tim thinks about economies of scale
- Removing friction and technology debt
- Running both Connectwise and Kaseya inside the box
- What tools they've homegrown and why
- 2% of helpdesk calls are not the people who they say they are!
- Benefits of joining the affiliation
Financial Modeling Service provides M&A and Intermediary services to IT companies. As a former IT company owner, Jeff Greenspan understands your business and will work with you to achieve an optimal result based on your specific needs. You can reach Jeff at [email protected] or through his contact form at https://financialmodelingservice.com/contact-us/.
45 min - Ep. 13 : Dominating a Mid-size Market
There is incredible variety in the MSP space! Today's guest, Brian Strong, isn't buying and he isn't selling, he's just trying to run a top-notch MSP. Brian is the CEO of Ten Hats in Knoxville, TN, a company wholly owned by a large local healthcare provider. A significant pivot was required when he came on board, which presents an interesting opportunity to learn:
- How an economic upheaval presents both downsides and upsides
- How personal disasters also present downsides and upsides
- What it takes to turn around a company hemorrhaging cash
- The risks of losing clients outside of your geographic market
- Why Ten Hats uses a 'building block' approach to providing services
- Don't micromanage people, micromanage the numbers
- The critical CEO-level task set
- When to add new tech people, and how they grow specialists
- Which metrics Ten Hats looks at
- Why go to peer groups? To see what you're doing wrong!
- How to evaluate new technologies
- What changes does Brian see coming to the industry
Financial Modeling Service provides M&A and Intermediary services to IT companies. As a former IT company owner, Jeff Greenspan understands your business and will work with you to achieve an optimal result based on your specific needs. You can reach Jeff at [email protected] or through his contact form at https://financialmodelingservice.com/contact-us/.
42 min - Ep. 12 : Exit - Stage RIGHT! Optimizing your exit.
In this episode I've recorded and discuss the five key actions that you should take to be prepared for a sale regardless of the timing. These steps ensure that you will be able to optimize your exit, whatever that means for you. I've also broken down each step into its own short video and I'm publishing these on my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@FMS-Jeff (look under Playlists). In this episode we cover:
- Creating value by choosing the right business structure
- Understanding and communicating how your business creates value
- Eliminating bad habits that decrease exit valuation
- Removing impediments to a sale
- Preparing for due diligence
Financial Modeling Service provides M&A and Intermediary services to IT companies. As a former IT company owner, Jeff Greenspan understands your business and will work with you to achieve an optimal result based on your specific needs. You can reach Jeff at [email protected] or through his contact form at https://financialmodelingservice.com/contact-us/.
27 min - Ep. 11 : A Conversation with Jeffrey Newton and James Farrow at Cyft.ai
Today we take our second look at an AI-based technolgy available now for MSPs to work more efficiently. Our eleventh episode features Jeffrey Newton, CRO and recovering MSP, and James Farrow, CEO of Cyft. Cyft is focused on applying AI to make MSPs more profitable by solving unacknowledged problems within the four walls of the MSP. I was particularly impressed with their ease of implementation, but even more impressed with their long-term vision, which you will have to listen to! In this episode we cover:
- What key problems does Cyft solve
- What Cyft does
- Cyft's 'no-PSA touch required' interface for data input
- How Cyft supports higher profitability
- Cyft's high accuracy level
- Cyft's 'Speak It, Review It, Submit It' process
- What training is required for your staff
- How quickly Cyft can be implemented
- How much does Cyft cost
- Cyft is an AI on-ramp for MSPs
- Roadmap includes AI-based contextualized data out
- Cyft is looking for MSP investors
Financial Modeling Service provides M&A and Intermediary services to IT companies. As a former IT company owner, Jeff Greenspan understands your business and will work with you to achieve an optimal result based on your specific needs. You can reach Jeff at [email protected] or through his contact form at https://financialmodelingservice.com/contact-us/.
46 min - Ep. 10 : A Conversation with James Allen from Pia.ai
Everyone's heard about artificial intelligence, and today we start looking at two AI-based technolgies that are available now for MSPs to work more efficiently. Our tenth episode features James Allen from Pia.ai. Pia was born when a large Australian IT firm started running tickets through a small language model, and it has evolved into a combination AI / automation tool that reads tickets and moves them forward as far as possible using automation. Pia currently supports over 60 different types of tickets. For our listeners, Pia is extending their Q3 50%-off onboarding / 25%-off platform fee offer through the end of November. You will learn about:
- What metric clearly presages profitability
- On average, how many endpoints can a help desk tech support
- When is the best time to implement a tool like Pia
- What Pia does and how it works
- Pricing models
- How Pia support rapid economies of scale during acquisitions
- What does the client onboarding process look like
- What are the most common types of tickets that Pia automates
- Dispatchers can close tickets
- How clients can initiate onboarding through Smartforms, including approval processes
- Pia's roadmap
Financial Modeling Service provides M&A and Intermediary services to IT companies. As a former IT company owner, Jeff Greenspan understands your business and will work with you to achieve an optimal result based on your specific needs. You can reach Jeff at [email protected] or through his contact form at https://financialmodelingservice.com/contact-us/.
40 min - Ep. 9 : A Conversation with Paul Daigle from BizAdvisoryBoard.com
Our ninth episode features Paul Daigle from BizAdvisoryBoard. Paul is an 'old school' IT guy who started off in software development and morphed over time into an MSP. Early on he built many of the types of tools that MSPs use today, so he understands the needs of MSPs at a deep level! He's also acquired and divested numerous companies. BizAdvisoryBoard offers a free (and paid) tool for MSPs interested in their valuation and growth. Use coupon code 'FMSVal24' to get the free version and code 'FMSAcc24' to get 10% off the paid version.
You can reach Paul directly at [email protected], 407-461-0061.
In today's show, you will learn about:
- What do your clients really want from you?
- How do you get vendors to finance new offerings?
- The best, if not the only, reason to do project work.
- What happens to multiples when you break $100m?
- Why MSPs without cybersecurity will go extinct.
- How compliance requirements like PCI and HIPAA are driving the industry.
- Why Paul thinks the small MSP (under $2m) will be driven out of business within 2 years.
- Federal contractors take note: what are DoD CMMC scores?
- Who's driving the business train, the government or the insurance companies? Or both!
- What is the MSP Business Evaluator, and what can the free and Accelerator versions tell an MSP?
Financial Modeling Service provides M&A and Intermediary services to IT companies. As a former IT company owner, Jeff Greenspan understands your business and will work with you to achieve an optimal result based on your specific needs. You can reach Jeff at [email protected] or through his contact form at https://financialmodelingservice.com/contact-us/.
42 min - Ep. 8 : A Conversation with Rob Scott From Monjur With Guests Glenn Porter and Jacob Schultz
Our eighth episode features Rob Scott from Monjur, plus two of his clients! Rob is an attorney with exceptional experience in computer law, and he's turned the table on the IT space by becoming an MSP for MSPs! As a business broker, the first thing I check with new clients is their service contract. With Monjur, I know that your contracts are always as good as they can possibly be. Beyond contracts, Monjur offers M&A representation and a full suite of corporate services.
You will learn about:
- How to collapse the sales and contracting process into one online step
- Monjur's two pricing tiers, with a bump at $1.5m revenue
- What problems does Monjur solve for recurring revenue businesses
- Why federal and state data privacy laws affect MSPs
- Common mistakes that MSPs make with their agreements
- Why agreements that apply in the general marketplace don't map well to managed services
- How to avoid continuous margin erosion
- Early termination fees vs liquidated damages fees
- Aligning indemnity clauses in your MSA with the provisions of your insurance policy
- Why it's critical to get your contracts right BEFORE you consider a company sale
- HIPAA, PCI, and DSS - Oh my!
- Redirecting liability to your 3rd party providers
- Rob's risk paradigm, a MUST LISTEN for every MSP
Financial Modeling Service provides M&A and Intermediary services to IT companies. As a former IT company owner, Jeff Greenspan understands your business and will work with you to achieve an optimal result based on your specific needs. You can reach Jeff at [email protected] or through his contact form at https://financialmodelingservice.com/contact-us/.
30 min
About From Startup To Sale | A Podcast For MSP's By MSP's
From the publisher's feed
Welcome to “From Startup to Sale – A Podcast by MSPs for MSPs,” hosted by Jeff Greenspan, an MSP who sold his business and now provides M&A and advisory services to other IT company owners. Jeff was a full-on techie: he graduated with an engineering degree from The Johns Hopkins University in 1985 and started his business in 1986 providing custom software design and development services. That business morphed over 27 years until he sold it as a Managed Services practice in 2013. Since then he’s gotten an MS in Finance from the Warrington School at the University of Florida, and his M&A work and this podcast are all designed to give back to the MSP community.
In this podcast, Jeff talks to all kinds of MSP road warriors, and you’ll learn something that will impact your business in every episode! You’ll learn about operational maturity level and what it means to be best in class. You’ll hear what several large national MSPs are looking for when they consider an acquisition. Jeff talks to the MSP consulting companies, and they’ll tell you what mistakes they see most frequently and how to fix them. He also talks to owners who’ve sold their company to benefit from their experience. Finally, he talks to people just like you to understand how they got started, what they’ve learned from their mistakes, how they are growing, and where they see the IT industry going.
We hope you’ll do more than listen…we want you to participate! Sign up today and get notified when a new episode drops.