Welcome to Episode 293 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

Are you ready to take the MSP experiment? How would you do if you had to win a load of new clients within the next 90 days? Yes, just 90 days to find and sign up new managed service clients. The reason isn’t important, it’s a thought experiment, but does the sound of having to do that make your blood run cold? If so, let’s dig into why it’s such an important test and the real world benefits to your MSP.

This is kind of based on a question I was asked on a podcast I appeared on a few months back. I can’t quite remember which one it was right now, but the host asked me if I had to start an MSP from scratch, what would I do? And I think he was waiting for me to suggest which RMM I would use and which PSA and what my tech stack would look like. But the answer I actually gave was that I would figure out all of that stuff only after I’d won some clients.

I’d focus all of my time, effort and energy into creating a pipeline and then shaking that tree until some new business fell out of it.

Yeah, I know I’ve mixed up my analogies there, but you see the point I’m making, right? I’ve never actually owned or run an MSP, but I’ve been a business owner for 20 years and there’s no point getting your operations ready and perfect if there are no clients to put through those operations.

So let’s make that a real life question for you. Not what would you do if you started again with your MSP, but if you absolutely had to generate new business in the next 90 days, what would you do? Don’t get too hung up on the why’s about this. Just imagine you’ve lost a big client or your personal circumstances dictate that you just need more cash. The reason is not relevant. What’s more important is to talk about what you would actually do.

A quick aside, if that was a real situation for you and you desperately needed more cash in the next month or so, that cash is going to come from your existing clients. There’s always more revenue and certainly high levels of profit to be made selling something to your existing clients than winning new clients. But for the purpose of this piece here, what would you do to win new clients in just 90 days? Well, let me break this down into a series of suggestions.

The first of those would be actually the way that you think and the way that you act. One of the reasons that many MSPs really struggle with marketing and winning new clients is because they simply don’t take it seriously. If you’re only spending 20 or 30 minutes a day or even a week on marketing, how can you expect to get momentum on that? How can you expect to get traction? There are MSPs that have full-time departments of people who are generating leads, warming up those leads and turning them into clients. And I appreciate these are probably bigger businesses than yours, but they’re properly resourcing what is a critical function of growing a business. So if you need new clients in the next 90 days, you have to throw yourself into that task. That means a minimum of 90 minutes every single day working on your marketing, and that really is the minimum. Depending on how urgently you needed new clients, you’d spend more and more and more time.

I’ve always thought in the back of my head that if my business was in real trouble and I needed to generate new revenue urgently, I reckon I could free four to five hours a day, just things I could just drop in my day and it might create a bit of chaos and I’d be calling in all sorts of favours from colleagues and perhaps even parents to help ferry my child around to afterschool clubs and stuff. But if it came to it, I could arrange that within like 48 hours, and that means that very quickly I’d have four to five hours a day of extra time to invest into new marketing to win new clients for my business. And in this kind of emergency situation, the 90 day thing, you’d have to be willing to do the same thing, even if that creates some short-term pain. Because it is only short term and it will ease quickly once the new clients start coming in.

Time is a necessary resource. And also cash. You need a bit of that as well. It always shocks me how little some MSPs spend on marketing, how little they invest when there are some amazing marketing resources out there. And obviously I’ve got to give a shameless and blatant plug for my own service here, the MSP Marketing Edge, which is for as little as £149 or $199 per month, and we only work with one MSP per area, but I’ll just leave that one there.

So, you need a mindset of total urgency that’s vital and you need to resource it properly. Those are kind of a couple of the basics. And two other of the basics that you need is to make sure that your website and your LinkedIn are as good as they can possibly be, without spending tons of time on them. When someone’s thinking about talking to you, they will check out your website. They’ll have a look at your LinkedIn as well, both your personal profile and your business profile. And it really doesn’t take that much effort to get both of these assets to be as good as they can be. The basic rule is to make them reflect who you are as a person and the benefits of working with you. People will choose you or not choose you based on their ability to relate to you and how you can make them feel.

If your website is cold and it’s all about tech and stock images and looks the same as all the other MSP websites, then you’re going to get the same results as all the other MSPs, which is a poor pipeline of prospects. Never be afraid to stand out, to be a little bit different, although not by using a gimmick. Be human, be real and talk to people in their language. At this point, let me mention the three step lead generation system that I’ve been recommending for years and years in which my MSP Marketing Edge is built upon. We help MSPs to implement it. It’s six words, super simple but incredibly powerful. Step one, build audiences. Step two, grow relationships with those audiences. And step three, convert relationships. Now, I’ve got videos on YouTube and podcast episodes dedicated to this system, but if you’ve only got 90 days, we want to do the super speedy version of it.

Let me give you now a version that takes more time and more resources, it’s more intensive if you like, but it should give you results faster. So it’s not something you’d build for the long-term, it’s the emergency version. You start by auditing what you already have. Very rarely in an established business are you really starting with any marketing from scratch. More likely you are already sitting on a bunch of assets that you are not leveraging enough. So what data do you have of prospects in the business that you’re not using? Do you have a draw full of business cards of people you’ve met at events over the last 10 years that you never really followed up on? Do you have inquiries on your Outlook of all the people you spoke to years ago and you have no idea what’s happening with them today?

These are all marketing assets that you can leverage because you can email all of these people, you can phone them, you can add them on LinkedIn. And yeah, some of them are dead, but some of them are also no longer the one man bands or one person bands they were 10 years ago. Now they’ve got 25 staff and they’re dissatisfied with their incumbent MSP, but you have no idea until you reach out to them. So look at emails, notes from calls, find old notepads, read everything from back in the day, Any old interaction from anything up to 10, even 15 years ago. It could be a relationship you could renew in the next 90 days. That’s step one, which is to build audiences.

Now, step two, grow relationships. And the first thing there is to invest some of that time that you’ve created each day into spending time on LinkedIn. The key to marketing your MSP is to get the right message in front of the right person at the right time. So every day on LinkedIn, I suggest you focus on the four Cs: connect, contact, content and comment. That means connecting to new people, sending them a message to contact them when you are connected, putting content on LinkedIn every day. In fact, one piece of content every 24 hours works best right now for the algorithm. And then finally commenting on other people’s posts.

And it’s this commenting which encourages people to connection request you. So it’s not just a flood of one-way requests from you to other people, it’s two-way traffic. LinkedIn is an amazing place for MSPs to go farming for new clients, but it isn’t a fast place. It’s really hard to speed it up. It’s farming, not hunting. So for that reason, I suggest you get out networking, not the cables, the early breakfast meeting people in a hotel room, that kind of thing. See if you can find one event every single weekday for the next 90 days and go attend it. And that might not just be in your town, but other nearby towns. Or you might look at vertical specific events, but your goal is to get in front of other human beings at least three, four, maybe even five days a week. Start meeting people, start building relationships.

Because unlike all of the digital stuff, which is free and easy to do but takes a long time to build a relationship, in networking you have to put time and effort in, yet the relationship is built significantly faster. Don’t assume you’re going to get clients from the first time you meet someone, but you may meet the same person two or three times over a number of weeks or months. And that leads maybe onto them referring you to someone they know who’s looking for a new MSP or it might set up a conversation that you have with them.

Networking really is a great place to go farming for business, but most MSPs don’t bother with it. And I do understand that. Personally, I don’t like networking myself, in fact, I actively avoid it. But in a situation of urgency, what I would do is hit a turn of networking events consistently over 90 days. And if you do this, it will propel your relationship with prospects forward and quickly enhance your reputation and profile.

And then the final step is to convert relationships. And I’m afraid you need to do another activity here that may be uncomfortable to you, but that is to pick up the phone for at least 60 to 90 minutes every day and make outbound phone calls. Phone anyone and everyone. Everyone on those old business cards or those old contacts you found phone, everyone you meet at networking events, whether you believe they’ve got any business for you or not. You use the phone to reach out to people and build relationships by talking about their favourite subjects themselves and their business.

The last thing you do is talk about your MSP and what you do. These calls are a relationship building exercise. Most MSPs have massive follow up failure and would never do this. So they miss out on the low hanging fruit, the easy winners that are just sitting there, but you don’t find out about them for the sake of not making a phone call. This kind of marketing, it really is a numbers game and the phone just speeds things up for you massively.

My final thoughts on this, a lot of the stuff I’ve just, there really doesn’t sound like fun, does it? And yet it works because when you throw yourself into 90 days of activity like this and you see it through day in, day out, even on the days, you really can’t be bothered to do it, something amazing happens. You build up Big Mo, also known as big momentum. And momentum can count for so much within marketing. You should always be aiming to get a ton of momentum going in your marketing. Once the wheel’s spinning, don’t let it slow down. In fact, keep speeding up and up and up and up. So I know this is a fictitious 90 days, and you probably don’t have that kind of urgency in your MSP, but is there something here that’s made you think, yeah, I could do that.

You ready for a bit of daydreaming? Think about how you feel about your MSP’s current clients. Maybe you’ve got one or two clients that are much bigger than the rest of them or have been with you for much longer than the rest. Does that sound like your business?

It’s very common, and it’s also very common to hope that the awesome retention of these key clients just continues. In fact, I hope that all your clients will enjoy the same retention. But of course, hope is a terrible strategy.

Here are three unbelievably important questions that you should ask yourself about your clients. And these three questions are so important that you need to take them very seriously. So turn off your phone, unless you’re watching this video or listening to this podcast on your phone, mute your PSA’s notifications, in fact, better still switch off your WIFI and snap your SIM card in half. Maybe even go and borrow an energetic dog just to take it for a super long solo walk where you can’t be disturbed. And then when you’ve done all of this, ask yourself these three questions.

Thinking about your existing clients: What do they need? What do they want? And how can you best satisfy these needs and wants?

Let me repeat those: What do they need? What do they want? And how can you best satisfy these needs and wants?

If you can answer the first two of these questions, you’ll know what’s happening in your client’s heads (their needs), and what’s happening in their hearts (their wants). And then you can answer the third question: How can you best satisfy them?

When you give your clients what they need and want, they will truly see you as a partner. And the word partner is overused within the channel. Big vendors think that the second you sign a contract with them, you become a partner, but that is not the case at all, is it? Partnership needs to be earned, and that’s by satisfying your client’s needs and wants. Do this for your clients and they’ll never, ever, ever want to go to any other MSP, because they will feel that you know them better than any other technology expert could. That is a genuine partnership, and it’s the root to the world’s most insanely great retention.

Featured guest: Marvin Bee is an IT Business Owner and Podcaster. He provides managed IT services, network support, and cyber security solutions throughout South Florida.

Marvin launched the “Uncle Marv’s IT Business Podcast”  eight years ago. It’s a show for MSPs and IT Professionals providing business network support and managed services. The podcast aims to provide actionable advice and tips that help IT businesses survive and grow in the competitive tech industry.

Do you suffer from analysis paralysis? For many MSPs looking to make more money and grow your business, there’s just too much advice and knowledge out there. Information overload. Not only is there so much, but a lot of it is conflicting advice. So you wouldn’t be blamed for not knowing where to begin.

Well, the paralysis ends here. My special guest today can distill eight years worth of learning in just a few minutes. What are his credentials? He owns an MSP and he has his own long running podcast, eight years in fact. So I’ve asked him to give us the very best things he’s learned from his podcast to you right now.

Hello everyone, Uncle Marv here, and I am the host of the IT Business Podcast and I have a boutique MSP in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

And this is kind of weird for me where I’m asking the questions and you are giving the answers because you and I have done this two or three times before, but it’s been on your podcast, the one that you just mentioned. So thank you very much for taking the time to come onto my show. In fact, because of your podcast, Uncle Marv, it feels weird calling you Uncle Marv, I’m just going to have to call you Marv, I’m sorry I can’t do it. Because of your podcast, we want to learn what you’ve done to improve your MSP and your greatest lessons from all the years that you’ve been doing that podcast. Because it is a great podcast, you’ve been doing it so consistently. I don’t watch every single episode, I don’t think anyone watches every single episode of every podcast, but you have some really cool people on. You do some really interesting subjects, and your passion for the things you’re talking about always comes over, which is just amazing. So let’s delve a little bit more into your story before we talk about the lessons you’ve learned. So how long did you say you’d been running your own MSP for?

So I started my business in 1997, and I transitioned into MSP around 2014, 2015.

Okay. And were you in break/fix before?

I was doing whatever came up. Break/fix, reselling, whatever.

Cool. And what was the trigger that made you go down the managed services route?

So it was odd because I kind of was already doing a little bit of it. My law firm clients were paying me retainers, which is almost the same as the recurring revenue that MSPs were getting. But what really stuck for me is I was looking for a way to support one client that had five offices, and I wanted to be able to have access to all the machines from all the branch offices. They were all across the state. And I had been doing it with patchwork products up until 2014, 2015 when I ran into some other people that said, oh no, you need an RMM tool, you need this. And that’s how I made the transition.

It’s cool, isn’t it? I guess this is 11 years on, it’s kind of weird hearing you talk about there being a time when perhaps you didn’t know that RMMs were the tool or that you needed a PSA. And I know you’re not the only person in that situation. Just 10 years ago, it does seem kind of weird now in that’s the basic tool, isn’t it? Having those tools in place, you’re not really in business, but even as shorter time ago as a decade ago, that was not necessarily the case. Obviously you’ve been in business since ‘97, what was that? Like XP? Was that the OS at the time?

God, I remember installing Windows 3.1. Let’s see, I was still at the store and we had just started with 95, 98. That was it.

Amazing, amazing. My very first PC that I owned was Windows Millennium edition. Do you remember that?

I do. We tortured that thing.

Yeah, I remember. That’s probably why I’m a Mac person now. That was my first proper intro to PCs and it was horrendous, I didn’t like that. But anyway, so you obviously have this podcast now, which you do on a regular basis. So tell us what got you started with the podcast and a little bit more what it’s about and who it’s for.

So it was around that time that I started running into other people and learning about this MSP community. At the time, I was actually paired up with other computer repair shops, other IT business owners that weren’t necessarily MSPs, but we were supporting businesses. And there was a bunch of podcasts that were out there. I had just kind of found out about them, and they were talking about the same daily struggles that I was having. And I said, you know what? I can listen to these people because talking about the same thing. And so I met them and started to be a guest on their podcast. And a slot opened up for a business focused podcast for techs that wanted to support business. And it had been on a hiatus, but people were looking to bring that back. And so I offered to help with that and I would do all the work and let the talent guy, the person that everybody really wanted to listen to, I would let him just show up and I would do all the work for him. So that’s how I got into the podcasting.

That’s brilliant. And what has been your favourite moments over the last few years?

Wow. Favourite moments. So I can say this, because of the podcast, I’ve been able to do a lot of things that I had not originally planned. They weren’t really part of the MSP space, but being able to attend conferences as a podcaster, a lot of conferences I wouldn’t probably pay to go to between the ticket price, air fare or hotel, but I’ve been able to go as a podcaster. So that’s been one thing. I would say the other thing is because of the podcast, that community that I was originally a part of, we’re all still friends, we all still hang out. We have another conference that we have done. It started out as the Unconvention, it is now called Techcon. And it’s basically all those people that we started with in terms of sharing information over the original podcast.

I love that. Absolutely love that. It’s funny you’re talking about going to exhibitions. So I went to ScaleCon in Las Vegas for the first time last year, and it’s the first time I’ve been to the US professionally. So I’ve been to the US dozens of times. But my debut appearance and the first 30 minutes walking into this big hotel in Vegas, I felt like a celebrity. There were all these people coming up to me saying, oh, you are Paul Green. That’s amazing. Can I get a selfie? It’s so cool to meet you. And I texted my girlfriend later that day saying it’s like being a celebrity. And obviously she didn’t believe me, but this is the power of a podcast. And I think we’re not really talking to them about MSP starting their own podcast, but for anyone listening to this or watching this on YouTube that’s thinking, I’d like to do a podcast, just do it right. It’s not difficult. If Marv can do it, if I can do it, anybody can do it.

I think it can be a very powerful tool for an MSP to reach an audience. It’s easier if you have a niche or a vertical. So if you are an MSP that supports CPAs, let’s say in Florida, we’ll go with your state, right? It’s the easiest thing in the world to do a technology podcast for Florida’s CPAs. I mean, that sounds like the smallest podcast in the world, but actually that’s the most focused podcast in the world. And I think the secret of any podcast is knowing who you want to reach and why they would be interested in listening to you, and then sort of going for it like that. And the side benefit is you get recognised when you go into convention centres, which is kind of cool. I’m sure you’ve had exactly the same experience, Marv.

So let’s talk about what lessons you’ve learned from your own podcasts that have helped you in your MSP. Because obviously, as you just told us in your story, you didn’t start a podcast to help your MSP, but it’s inevitable because of the cool people that you’re interviewing and the ideas that are coming up, it’s inevitable that you’ve come away from podcast recordings and thought, oh, that’s a really good idea. I’ve got to implement that. So tell us some of the best ideas you’ve heard in the last couple of years.

I don’t know if I can pick just a few best. I mean, obviously we learn about other people’s way of running their business and we take little bits and pieces from each one of them. Probably some of the big things, of course, are going to be the way that we price our services. Everybody kind of talks about their philosophy and how their clients respond.

We all think our clients are different, our MSP is different, but yet we’re all really doing the same basic thing.

But it’s how we can identify what works when it comes to pricing for this client, for that client. That’s probably one of the big things. Of course, the way that we do projects, the way that we do the support of a specific service, cyber security, Voiceover IP, those are all things that through the podcast and being able to interview other people, hearing what they do, which then may lead to a conversation off camera. Where we come back a week later and say, Okay, remember that thing you mentioned on the show? Tell me more about that.

And people do it to me. People will write me or call me and say, Hey, I heard you talk about this. Can you tell me more? So it’s really more this, again, we go back to community, the community of collaboration, being able to share thoughts and ideas to help each other out. And it’s not always about the business either. I mean, I’ve had people come up to me and I may have said something about health, and that has spawned a whole other discussion on health. And it, again, part of it’s because people have seen me over the years, that consistency of being there, and some people now, it sounds weird, but people that know me but I don’t know them, they think we’re friends. And so there are times where people will come up and be like, finally able to put a face to the name or a face to the voice, because a lot of people hear me in the car, they hear me walking around, and then we can actually talk and communicate and share some stuff.

See, this is exactly it. This is what I was talking about. You are famous and you are the friends of the people who are listening to you or watching you because as you say, you are there with them in the daily parts of their life. They’re taking the dog for a walk, the commute, and you’re giving them ideas, or I appreciate many of them don’t come from you, they come from the people you’re talking to and the information you get on, but you get the benefit of that. I think that’s just a wonderful thing.

You also said a word which I want to pick up on, which is consistency. And I think looking at this as a general marketing lesson, you’ve been doing this, the podcast for, what did you say, 2017, I think you said eight years. So you’ve been doing that consistently for eight years, turning up, doing the hard work. I know for a fact there will be days where it’s podcast o’clock and you think, I’m too busy, I can’t be bothered, I don’t quite feel right today, I just want to go and have my dinner, I’m done. I just don’t want to do this today. But you do it right, you turn up and you’re consistent, and you do the podcast. And I know that because I have those days as well as does every other human being. We all have it with anything consistent. But one of the key things with any marketing is to do, whatever you’re doing to do it consistently. I see people launching podcasts, doing a season, whatever a season is, it might be 10 episodes, and then they stop and they say, oh, we’ll come back next year. But you never get to build up momentum. And I’m sure your podcast had very low listening, viewing figures early on, and then it builds up over time. It’s exactly the same as happened to mine, my first week no one watched it, there was no one there. In fact, it was audio only, no one was listening. But now we have a pretty reasonable audience, and a lot of that is the consistency of turning up. And I think there’s some massive marketing lessons in that, which is just wonderful.

Well, let me tell you this, I treat the podcast the same way I do the business. And in the podcast, you have to know who your audience is, ask them what they want and give it to them. It’s the same thing we have to do for our clients when it comes to the MSP. You’ve got to know who your clients are or know what you are able to do for your clients because they don’t care what you’re doing for all those other people that you support. They want to know, What is it you’re doing for me? How are you helping my business? And it’s the same thing, but that thing about consistency in being there, sometimes clients aren’t going to buy from you on the first or the second or the third time they see you or whatever, but down the road they may be like, Oh, you know what, I’ve got this problem, I know this person that can help, let me reach out. That’s all it is.

Yeah. And I completely agree, and actually, if they have a conversation with you today and then next year and the year after and the year after, and each time it’s a consistent experience for them – you’re professional, you’re courteous, and you’re not pushy, you’re not salesy, you are absolutely right, at the point they’re ready to buy, they’re dramatically much more likely to buy from you, because that consistency pays off for you in the long term. So I love that, wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me on my show. Next thing, you and I have to go on someone else’s show together, we have to package ourselves up as a duo. Or we get you to ScaleCon 25, which I know is in the planning stages, and you can be the celebrity this year. In fact, maybe we could roll out a red carpet, we could maybe have you abseiling in or dropped off by a helicopter.

We’re going to have a theme song, obviously walk in there.

Love it. You could just be high fiving the audience as you go in. That’d be wonderful. Let’s finish off, just tell us a little bit more about your podcast, who it’s for, obviously it’s for MSPs, but who specifically it’s for, why they would want to listen and where do we listen to it?

Yeah, so Uncle Marv’s IT Business podcast, and it’s a show for IT professionals and managed service providers, essentially anybody that supports business, whether you’re the business owner or the tech. And what we do is we talk about products, we talk about stories, we talk about tips. All those things we can do to run our business better, smarter and faster. I do interviews with other MSP owners, I do interviews with vendors in the space. That’s one of the things we need to know. We need to know who are the vendors that can help us with the products to support our clients. And as to where you can find it, the easiest place for me to tell you to go is my website, ITbusinesspodcast.com, and you’ll find all the links to all of the podcatchers out there, whether it’s iHeart or Apple, YouTube, you’ll find where you can go and subscribe to the show and follow, and it’ll be both audio and video. So that’s where you start.

Stewart has an MSP based in Washington, and he wants to get something physically into the hands of his prospects and clients. His question is: What should go on my business card?

I’m actually a huge fan of business cards along with all things physical, because thanks to the way our brains are wired, physical things have 10 times more impact on a person than digital things do. If you meet someone in real life, you need to give them a business card, right? Yeah, even these days it’s still a basic business tool.

But what do you actually need on there? Well, you only really need your basic details: your name, your email address, your website address. Any more text than that is just clutter. And let’s be honest, we know they can get all of the details like your Instagram and your Snapchat (that was a joke), they can get all of that from your website. However, there’s one thing missing from most business cards I see. YOUR PHOTO. To me, this is the most critical element of any business card.

Why? Because when people meet you for the first time, they are less likely to remember your name. And it’s almost guaranteed that they won’t remember the name of your MSP, but they will remember your lovely face and how you made them feel. And people might say, oh, I’m no good with faces. But trust me, if you say that, you are contradicting a hundred thousand years of evolution because we are the descendants of the cave dwellers who learned to recognise the faces of hostile enemies and avoid them. We know they avoided them because survival of the fittest, we’re their ultimate offspring.

So we are more likely to remember faces than the made up labels that we attach to ourselves, which is our name and our company name. We’re also much more driven by our limbic system. I was talking about that earlier as well, wasn’t I? It controls our emotional responses more than our rational thinking brain does. Put it like this, have you ever spotted someone that you dislike walking into a room and you kind of immediately felt this sense of dread? That’s your limbic system reminding you the way that face makes you feel. And yes, it’s perfectly normal. You’re not a bad person. In fact, most other people probably feel the same way.

Now the good news is that you are a great person, and when people see your face entering a room, it makes them feel happy. So put your picture on the back of your business card. People will remember you. They’ll remember how you made them feel, and they’re dramatically more likely to refer you or to actually go on and do business with you.

Welcome to Episode 292 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

You may just have to tear up that job ad, and let me tell you why. We all know a service desk manager is a critical role. It’s their job to make sure the clients are delighted while freeing you up to grow the business. But whoever said that a service desk manager has to be a tech. What if there’s a different kind of person who’s much more suited to this kind of role?

I really do talk to a lot of MSPs. In fact, it’s one of the most wonderful things about the work I do. I get to talk to lots of different people about lots of different things. And because of my work in my MSP Marketing Edge where we are working with 700 MSPs, I talk to people in all sorts of different circumstances. So we have startups, two businesses that have been going for 30 years. We’ve got one person bands, two businesses with 200 employees. We’ve got all of these and everything in between.

But there’s one thing that I notice again and again and again, and that’s that the most successful MSPs, and let’s define successful as, the owner can do what they want to do with their life. They’ve got enough cash and they’ve got enough time, that’s success is to have that.

The MSPs who are most successful are those where the owner is surrounded by a very good team who take on the burden of the work for them.

Because it’s just too difficult to do everything yourself for more than a couple of years. What’s acceptable for our first few years in business gets tiring and boring as time goes on. And I’m sorry if that’s disappointing news for you because you never wanted to have staff, but it is the difference between just working for yourself and having a business that can survive and thrive without you.

And of course, one of the most key hires in there is a service desk manager or change that job title to whatever is appropriate for you. But basically someone whose entire role is to keep the clients happy and make sure that the work happens as it’s supposed to. Now, different MSPs have different ways of doing this, but they all come down to the same things. You’ve got some technical resource and you’ve got customers who want things to be done, and the service desk manager sits in the middle of that making the magic happen. If you own the business and you are currently doing that as well as the marketing and the sales and looking after the team and account management and finance and admin, that’s so tiring. What a liberating role to have a service desk manager whose entire working existence is focused on the clients and managing resources.

For some people, that’s their dream job. But let me challenge you on exactly who should be doing that job. You see, I’ve always believed and in fact operated this way, that it’s better to hire people who have a great mindset and then train them with the skills that they need to do a specific job. Back when I was working in radio in the early noughties, I had two radio presenters working for me who were either end of this scale. So Kev was naturally talented, but he had a terrible mindset and he was lazy, whereas Tom was less naturally talented, but worked very, very hard to make up for it. Now, guess which of those two was a pleasure to work with and went on to have a very successful career. And guess which one was such a pain in the backside that I took immense pleasure in firing him one day. He’s still in radio, but only just hanging on compared to the other guy.

So if you go with that, mindset first then upskill them, let me ask you a question. Should you necessarily hire a technician to be your service desk manager or should you hire a normal person and then just teach them a few technical skills that they need? Because what are the other skills that the service desk manager needs, right? Well, they need to be great communicators. They need to have the ability to plan and manage resources. They’ve got to be flexible and able to respond to problems quickly. And of course they have to be good with people and to help a team to work efficiently. That means building trust, it means keeping a team motivated, and I’m sure there are other requirements that I haven’t yet thought about.

Here’s the thing. There are people out there who have the mindset to thrive under those exact circumstances. Maybe right now they’re in other sectors, they’re not necessarily even working in technology. But really what technology skills does a service manager need? Does the service manager actually need to know how to configure a server? Do they really need to know how to talk to the third line technician who’s going to do it? Or can a normal person who has spent a career somewhere else keeping clients happy and managing resources, could they do the same for your MSP? What do you think about this? Is hiring a normal person instead of a tech to be your service desk manager, is that an interesting idea to you, or do you think I’ve completely lost the plot?

There’s a certain type of MSP where everything’s easier.

It’s easier to make more money, find new clients, and do the marketing that’s going to find you those clients and get all of that money into your business.

In fact, you may have heard that it’s the MSP’s targeting verticals that are enjoying this easy life, but how exactly do they do it?

Let’s find out how your MSP can break into a new vertical and why it’s going to make everything so much easier.

There are many benefits of marketing to a vertical. You can do it alongside your general business if you want to.

And once you’ve picked a vertical, there are a number of actions that you should take to get your marketing properly set up. Here are the first nine that I recommend in the order that you should do them.

Number one, build a website just for that vertical. The easy thing is just to put a page on your existing site, but don’t do that. If you’re going to do this and go for a vertical, really go for it properly. And that means a second website. Put together a proper four to five page website because the goal is to appear to be a true specialist to your target prospects. And a proper website is a basic MSP marketing fundamental. Also, the process of you going through creating that new website, it kind of imprints inside you at your very core that this is a big direction you’re going in and you’re going to take the whole marketing journey so much more seriously.

Number two, set up a vertical specific LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram, depending which platform most decision makers in that vertical use. So for example, in hospitality and retail you would use Instagram, for B2B you would use LinkedIn, but again, have a separate one to your regular one. You can have your general LinkedIn, that’s just for your general business. And then you can have a vertical specific LinkedIn that’s just for your vertical business. And it means that in your vertical business, you are only connecting to people who are in that vertical. It allows your marketing to be targeted on LinkedIn very, very easily.

Number three, start posting regular content so you have a presence. Make sure to edit your content slightly to put the name of the vertical into the headline or the paragraph, like the intro paragraph. Sometimes making content seem relevant to a vertical is as simple as just mentioning that vertical. So you might say, Here’s how technology can improve productivity for accountants (CPAs). But also look at how they refer to themselves and their businesses. So to take CPAs as an example, they don’t have a business, they have a “practice”.

Number four, start networking within that vertical and meeting as many decision makers as you can. Look for relevant vertical business shows or other events that you can attend because nothing but nothing beats pressing the flesh when you’re just getting started in a new vertical, or in fact, in any new market. You’ll have a marketing revelation at every event, I promise you.

Number five, build your email list. It’s so easy to get started with a vertical, you can just buy targeted data or scrape targeted data or just go onto Google, type in the vertical you want to reach and the geographic area where they are and there’s everyone that you want to possibly reach.

Number six, get your marketing machine working, generating prospects that you can speak to and then call them. Once you’ve got someone into your audiences and you are growing a relationship with them, you always want to pick up the phone and just call them and speak to them. Phone calls will get you where you want to go faster, I promise you. And I know you don’t like picking up the phone, you don’t like making outbound calls, but these don’t have to be sales calls, they can be relationship building calls, they can just be research calls. Tell me about your business. How’s everything going? What’s holding you back right now? You could almost say to them, Hey, we’ve just started working with vertical businesses. I’m just doing some market research, do you mind if I ask you a few questions? They won’t hold that against you if a year or two down the line they’re genuinely seriously looking at using you as their MSP.

Number seven, once you have your first vertical client, and actually the easy way to pick a vertical is to take a client that you’re already working with. Let’s say you’re already working with a dentist and go and look for more dentists, but that’s by-the-by. Once you have one vertical client, work hard to delight them then turn them into a case study or a testimonial as quickly as you can, because this gives others the faith to buy from you. When someone’s working with a vertical specialist, they expect to see reviews, testimonials, and case studies from other people in their vertical.

Number eight, look for other forums where your vertical decision makers hang out. Do they have Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups or chat forums? Can you become a member of these groups? And it’s best to do this properly and above board rather than trying to sneak in. Don’t sell, never sell in these things, add value by answering relevant questions and make sure that there is a link to your website in your profile.

And then number nine, get to know the movers and shakers in the vertical associations. Ultimately, you and the associations and any kind of groups, you’re all serving the same people in that vertical. So be persistent getting to know them, but do play a long game. You’ve got to build trust with them before you can attend their events and get involved in their organisation. The key question to ask is what do they want or need and how can you help them to get it? It’s almost a universal law that, if you help someone else they will help you.

Featured guest: Emma Rainville is the owner of Shockwave Solutions and co-founder of multiple operationally focused brands. She turns chaos into clarity for fast-growing entrepreneurs, especially in direct response and e-commerce. 

Emma has scaled brands to 8- and 9-figures, engineered operations that run lean and fast, and built teams that actually execute. 

Emma is also the author of SCOPE: An Operational Framework for Proven Reality Execution, a blueprint used by founders and COOs to finally get control of their businesses and teams.

When not behind the curtain tightening systems, Emma is on stage showing founders how to scale with precision and peace of mind. They call her the Wizard of Ops for a reason.

So you have big things you want to do with your MSP, and that’s great until you start to implement. Because as any business owner knows few plans work out exactly how you thought they would on day one, and no more so than in operations especially in fast-growing MSPs.

My special guest today is an expert at helping ambitious business owners like you leverage AI to make operations so much more efficient.

Hi, I’m Emma Rainville, and I have been dubbed the Wizard of Ops. I help visionary entrepreneurs end operational chaos and create operational excellence in their business through streamlined operations.

Amazing. And you definitely win the best podcast title of the year, the Wizard of Ops. Who was it who gave you that title?

Perry Belcher. So of course the godfather of marketing gave me the title, so obviously I win.

Yeah, absolutely, you’ve won like times thousand, and the vast majority of MSPs listening to this or watching this on YouTube may not have heard of Perry Belcher, but for a marketing fanboy like me, it’s like, oh, wow. I mean, Perry Belcher is just one of the big names of marketing, of small business marketing. He’s been around for about 20 years and I’ve given him a few thousand over the years for various courses and things. Everyone wins because Perry stuff is really good.

So explain to us what being the Wizard of Ops mean, and you said obviously you help entrepreneurs with their operations. What do you actually do? What’s your day-to-day life like?

Sure, so my company is called Shockwave Solutions, and we’re a fractional COO services company. And what makes us unique is that we come with an execution team. So you don’t just get a COO that’s going to give you a bunch of great ideas and then you have no way to plug them in. We come with a team that’s actually going to plug them in and get you results. And so what we do is we come in and we specifically work with visionary entrepreneurs. Visionary entrepreneurs are a different animal all of their own. They need to be managed and nurtured while plugging in their vision because they have big, big, big dreams and goals, and they just need streamlined operations to get them to where they’re trying to go.

So when you talk about working with visionary leaders, are we talking about the kind of person that is moving at such speed towards this amazing future that they leave this trail of chaos behind them?

Absolutely. That’s exactly what happens. And then as soon as they’re done relaying that vision, they’ve already thought of the next thing they’re going to do. And before anyone can plug anything in, they run back into the room and throw wrenches at the entire team who’s trying to build the first thing. So they’re generally frustrated with the fact that their whole team can’t keep up with them.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I think even if you would consider yourself not to be a visionary entrepreneur, I think every business owner on the planet can hear what you’ve just said there and think, yeah, whether I’ve done it deliberately or not, I’ve done some level of that to my team. I know I have, and I know a lot of the MSPs that I work with have. And I think partly that comes from the fact that as the business owner, we decide we want to do something and then we sit for days or weeks or months thinking about it, planning it, talking about it, fleshing it out in our brain, and then one random Wednesday afternoon, we’ll call everyone together onto a Zoom or a Teams call and we’ll say to them, Hey, guess what, we’re going to do this amazing thing, which is A, B, C, and that’s going to cause X, Y, Z to happen and blah, blah, blah. It’s brilliant. Let’s go. And what has taken weeks to ferment in our brain and become fully firmed in our brain, we’ve just dumped on our team with 10 seconds notice, and then we wonder, why don’t they get that? Why isn’t everyone running around?

Also, it hasn’t been fully formed, you have the big picture and not the details. So you believe that you’ve relayed this beautiful map of excellence to exactly where you want to go with simple, streamlined plugin. And what you’ve really created was a whole bunch of questions that you have no tolerance to sit and answer.

I love that. My team are going to be listening to this podcast nodding their heads going, Yeah, we understand that completely. So it’s almost like you guys then are the support for the survivors group that’s left behind.

It’s a great way of putting it, I call it integrator. But we basically take the vision and we strategically plan it, and then we integrate it into the business at the appropriate time.

How do you do that? And I’m not asking you to give away the secret sauce or your business but how does anybody plan that kind of implementation around that speed and that urgency of changing things and getting things done?

Sure, so it’s two methods. The first one is having a foundational framework, and that’s called WAVE: Written vision, Absolute focus, Values driven future and Execution plan. So where are we actually trying to go in 1, 3, 5, and 10 years? I need to understand very intricately what you want the business to look like. It doesn’t have to be specifics, but what does the business look like, what are we trying to build? The number two thing is what am I absolutely focused on? When you come up with a hundred great ideas, what am I focused on? What is the business’s purpose? What is the problem that we solve? Values driven future, what are our values in the business? What’s important to us? And then execution plan is how do we execute and continue to move forward? So what that means is what is our meeting cadence? What is our communication channels? How do we set goals and how do we change things? When is it okay, and when is it not okay? When you have a plan ahead of time that allows you to set boundaries and rules around it, it makes everything a lot easier.

When everybody on the team knows where we’re trying to go and what we’re trying to do, they’re able to fill in a lot of the blanks themselves.

And then the second thing is an operational framework. So we have the foundational framework, then we have the operational framework, and that’s the one that’s going to direct our business on the day to day. So that’s called SCOPE, and that’s what my book is called. So S is setting your vision. S is actually WAVE, so setting your vision. C is creating processes, making sure we have all of our processes documented, understood, profitable and efficient. O is operational excellence, always functioning in a way that is operationally excellent. That means from the sales process to delivery process to the day-to day of our business, things are running in a way that makes our customer base or our client base happy. P is people development, can’t grow your business without growing your people. That’s a mistake so many people make. And then the E again is execution. How are we going to execute all of this? So when a big great idea comes into play, that fits our absolute focus, at what point do we insert that in the business so we don’t burn everything else down that we’ve planned? And when you have those boundaries, those guidelines, those rules and that roadmap, you’ll go from a great idea to a great business, to great revenue, to really great profits.

I love that, and the business owners, the visionaries that you’re working with, because obviously you’ve got a framework there, and sometimes visionaries don’t like having to comply to a framework and having to fit within a framework. So even though everything you’ve said there makes perfect sense, do the people you work with, do they feel like that’s holding them back, that it’s reducing their speed? Or do they actually see that actually we’ve got the power here of something that takes all these amazing ideas and focuses them down into the one thing that’s going to make the big difference this week?

So the first month, they love the idea of it all. The second month, they’re angry and frustrated. The third month they start to see some serious traction with projects that they’ve not been able to get off the ground for a long time. By the sixth month, they see that their new ideas are being implemented, but their old idea not dying because of it. And the freedom of not having to make every decision or figure out every detail by month six feels so good. I have never had anyone that I’ve worked with under these frameworks ever say to me after six months, I hate this or I don’t like this. Actually, I’ll get a phone call like, Hey, I’ve got an idea. Can you do an absolute focus check? Meaning does it fit in our business?

I love that. Emma, let’s just focus our final question or so on the survivors club, the implementers. So we have all sorts of people listen to this podcast and watch this on YouTube, and the vast majority are MSP owners. But I know we have some managers, I know we have some marketing managers, marketing implementers, all sorts of people. If for someone who’s working with someone like that who is creating chaos, what’s a good first step in telling them to get help without actually using those two words?

I think that there is, particularly with aggressive people, which is usually a visionary entrepreneur, they’re very aggressive, particularly when it comes with their vision and how simple everything is. I think that the best thing to do is sit down with them and say, and these words work really well for me every time, I want to slow down for a minute just so that I can go fast. I have some clarity that I need. I think that I can accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish, but I have some holes and some pieces here. And when you’re not high enough up, that’s the best way to do it so that they slow down enough to answer your questions, and after you’re capable of doing what they need you to do after that conversation, they’ll trust that conversation. And it’ll happen just because instead of you asking for it, I think that’s the best way to go about it.

Yeah, I love that. Emma, thank you very much. Tell us a little bit about your book, where we can get hold of it. Tell us about your business and tell us how we can get hold of you.

Sure, my business is Shockwave Solutions, we’re a fractional COO services. We help visionary entrepreneurs create operational excellence in their business. You can find us at www.shockwavesolutionsllc.com. My book is called Scope, you can get it on Amazon, Scope by Emma Rainville, or you can go to readscope.co and grab it there. Thank you so much for having me, it’s been a lot of fun.

Dan owns an MSP in California, and his question is no doubt inspired by any number of recent events in the news and one all MSPs fear: If you are compromised in a supply chain attack, what marketing actions should you take?

I know this is one of any MSP’s worst nightmares. One of your key vendors is breached and because you use their tool, hundreds of endpoints under your care are compromised. Well, the golden rule for this situation is constant communication with total transparency. You have to step up your communication with clients and tell them what’s happened, how it’s happened if you know, how it affects them and what’s happening now.

In a situation like this, communication and transparency count for everything, and they will protect your long-term reputation at the expense of some short-term pain for you. There are some things you can consider in advance. How will you communicate properly with all clients? Is it worth you perhaps even preparing a status update page that you can roll out? Can you record audio updates on your phone system before they’re connected to someone who’s calling in for example? What extra resource can you bring into the business to focus on talking to clients? Is there someone who can come in to just sit on the phone and just answer people? I know they’re saying the same thing again and again and again, but if people are worried, you need to have someone that they can talk to. And if that’s stopping you from taking technical action, you need extra resource for that.

And then what will you say to clients if there’s little information coming out from your compromised vendor? How will you respond if the attack is big enough to hit the national news and your clients ask whether you are affected? And how will you respond if the details of your supply chain attack somehow become featured in the local media or maybe even on social media? Also, and this is a critical one, what would happen if this happened while you’re away – you’re on vacation, you’re on holiday, or you are unreachable in some way. If you’re going to make a plan, it’s got to be a plan that your service desk manager or someone else in the business can implement whether you are there or not.

Welcome to Episode 291 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

Are these clients for real? They want to switch to buying 365 directly to save a couple of bucks a month. This is a scenario most MSPs face at some point, but should you fight it, try and educate them or let them just do what they want? What if I told you this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing and could actually become a massive sales opportunity for your MSP.

As someone who doesn’t personally have to deal with 365 and all the licenses and NCE and all of that, it does look to me like Microsoft has made it as hard as possible for you. That whole NCE thing is a massive pain, right? And especially if you have a client where you’ve made an annual commitment and then of course they hit you a few months in that they want to buy directly, and that just creates a headache for everybody.

It’s not like 365 is a high margin item for you, but from the client’s point of view, 365 is right there at the core of their experience.

Outlook and Teams and Word and Excel, these are all applications that most businesses use multiple times every single workday. So they want them to work, they want them to be productivity tools, not pains in the backside tools, and I think that’s a basic and perfectly understandable requirement of any business owner or manager today. Don’t you agree? So if someone wants to move the licenses away from you, buy direct and save themselves a couple of dollars per user per month, what should you do?

I’ve asked a few MSPs this question over the last couple of weeks and some of them have said that you should just roll over and you should just take it. So invoice them for any out-of-pocket expenses caused by NCE. Make sure they know how that’s going to affect the direct support that you give them and then let them go off and buy it from elsewhere.

Others have said that you should fight really hard to keep everything under your jurisdiction. Isn’t that the point of a managed service provider that you are looking after all of their technology? And that starts with the very basic help desk functions and goes right up to their technology strategy. Now if you don’t have some level of control over everything in between those two items. help desk and strategy, then surely you’re making your life harder than it needs to be and that must have an impact on the service that you can deliver to them and the service that they’ll enjoy.

So maybe the message you want to send them is telling them all the downsides, all the bad things that could happen, like the fact they’ll have to deal directly with Microsoft if there’s an issue. They’ll have to pick which license is best for them as well. Of course they’ll have to set up their new users, they’ll have to manage their users, deal with all of that headache. And of course it complicates your basic support or it could have an impact on some of the other work that you’re doing for them.

The challenge for you if a client asks this and you want to fight it, is to make them realise how much extra work they’re going to have to do for saving $2 per user per month. So to recap, some MSPs would roll over and say, here you go, other MSPs would fight it to keep it. To me there’s a third option and that’s to use this as an early warning of some potential future change in your relationship with your client. Because let’s be honest, this is just not a sensible decision that would be made by a sensible decision maker. Is it? It’s taking on a lot of extra work to save a tiny amount of money. And that rings an alarm bell for me.

Is your client desperately trying to cut costs? Does your client really not understand what you do for that $2 per user per month? Is your client actually thinking of switching to another MSP or doing something completely different and this is kind of your first notification of a very long process where at the end of it they’re going to leave and go to someone else. My suggestion is that if this happens to you, you don’t use this as an opportunity to go in and say stay or go. Instead, you use it as an opportunity to start a discussion to have an in-depth conversation about their business, where it’s going, what the goals are, what their issues might be, what are they facing at this very moment.

Very rarely are you as the MSP, the cause of some problems in their business, but you can become the victim of other problems that their business has. We’d always want to have a business discussion with someone before they made a major decision about doing something different, wouldn’t we? And this might just be the early warning that you would always want to receive. It’s actually quite cool to get it even if it does cause you a little bit of distress and of course some work. And do you know what, it might even lead to an upsell opportunity. Sometimes people cutting costs is a sign that they’re actually looking to spend more but in a different direction. So there might be some other services that you can sell them or you might be able to come up with a more comprehensive deal that helps them achieve the things that they want to achieve.

Now I would love to know what you think about this and did you know I have a Facebook group that’s all about discussing marketing and business growth and it’s a vendor free zone, only MSPs, no vendors. To join, go onto Facebook, type in MSP marketing in the search bar and then go to groups and you just look for the MSP marketing group. You’ve just got to prove that you’re an MSP by answering a few simple questions and I look forward to discussing this with you in that Facebook group.

Have you ever heard me on my podcast and thought, that seems easy, I should do that? Lots of MSPs have asked me for advice on setting up a podcast, and yes, having a podcast can be an insanely powerful marketing tool. But should you do one? Let me help you answer that question, and if you do get started, let me tell you about these specific things you need to consider before you get started.

So Paul, should I do a podcast for my MSP? Well, my easy flippant answer to this is probably not, no. Because unless you have a real passion for podcasts and you’ve always itched to do your own, you’ll quickly find that a regular podcast is a total pain. However, the benefits are huge. I found that my podcast has been a key tool to reach people that I’d never have reached any other way.

It’s helped me set myself up as an authority figure. It’s helped me to open doors to influential people by interviewing them and it’s helped me to build a brand new audience. Would you and I be talking right now, either you listening on the podcast or watching me on YouTube, if I wasn’t doing this?

If you do fancy doing a podcast, these are the main 10 areas to consider.

The first is your target audience. Who are you going to do the podcast for? Now this is easy if you operate in a specific vertical, but much harder if you just operate geographically. You have to really ask yourself why would someone choose to listen to your podcast? What’s in it for them?

The second thing that kind of leads on from that is the podcast title. You need a unique title that will catch their attention. It also needs to be something that’s not already being done. And remember, ordinary people, the business owners and managers that you want to reach, they’re not as interested in technology as you are. So having a podcast about technology is probably not going to be interesting to the people you most want to reach, but they are interested in growing their business, increased productivity and just having a smoother, better run business.

Number three is regularity. So weekly gets people into the habit of listening. We’ve been doing it weekly since around about November 2019, but I’ll be honest with you it’s a treadmill, it really is. I work several weeks ahead, so I never miss an episode and that requires a lot of discipline. For example, right now I’m recording this on a Tuesday morning. It’s so sunny and beautiful outside I want to be out in my shorts working in the garden, but instead I’m in my studio and I’m recording the podcast because I need to do it now because my whole team is waiting for me to record that podcast so they can go and do the editing and the promotions and all the stuff they need to do. Discipline is a big thing with a podcast and if you’re going to do it weekly, you’ve got to work ahead and make sure it appears weekly.

Number four is format. So lots of podcasts are just an interview with a guest and that is a kind of an easy way to do a podcast. The downside is if your guest is a bit boring or the listener doesn’t like the guest or their subject, they’ll just skip the whole podcast and that damages the principle of trying to get them to listen to you every single week. So the other way to do it is to have several segments to the show. That’s what we do in our podcast. If you listen, you’ll hear me, I do a talky bit and then I’ll do a tease or something and then I’ll do another talky bit and another tease, and then we have the guest on and then we sort of finish with a listener question and that’s a pretty good format that’s worked well for us for a number of years.

Number five to think about is specific content. So what exactly are you going to talk about? It’s worth having a content calendar to plan this and mine stretches months into the future. So as I’m recording this, we are here on the 29th of April. You know that this is obviously going out in June and we have a plan right up to September, October right now. The quickest way to lose motivation for your podcast is to be scratching around for content ideas. You’ve got to think ahead and make that systematic knowing what you’re going to be recording months in advance.

Which brings us onto number six, recording. You need a quality USB microphone. I use a Shure MV7. It’s quite difficult to say, although don’t get too caught up on the technology. For years, I used a really old Samsung Meteor microphone, it must’ve been like 10, 15 years old, and that was fine enough until we upgraded, did the whole studio out and decided to upgrade the equipment, and that was years into the podcast. Just as you can have the very best golf clubs and be a terrible golfer, you can have the very best microphone and produce awful content if you’ve got nothing to say. Make sure you do record somewhere quiet, you’ll get great audio quality recording in a small cupboard. And I do mean that, a friend of mine does voiceovers for national radio and he does it in his under stairs cupboard with a blanket just to kind of deaden the sound. Now today I do mine in a large open space at home. If you’re watching this on YouTube, you’ll see my studio space and it doesn’t sound too bad because we’ve put acoustic tiles on the ceiling and on some of the walls as well. But if I had to start again and I didn’t have this space, I’d just go in a small cupboard and I’d just use my microphone and just reduce the space because you reduce the amount of boom that you can have if there’s not so much space.

Number seven then is production or jingles, you know when the guy that says on the podcast of Here’s Paul Green’s marketing podcast, something like that, you just get someone on Fiverr or Upwork to make this for you. There’s so many people out there that will do voiceovers. You can source your own or you can just get someone who’s got a good voice you love to do it for you, and then get someone else on Fiverr or Upwork to produce that, to turn that into a little jingle that you can play out. Just don’t let anyone who does this for you try to charge you any kind of ongoing licensing fee because that is nonsense. Pay once and own the work.

Number eight is editing. As with videos, really it’s the editing that makes or breaks a podcast. We have two people that work on our production. We have James, who’s our producer, and Simon who’s also our producer and our editor. And Simon sits and edits this just down to a level of perfection. He takes out all of my ums and uhs, he’ll get rid of my mistakes, he tightens it all up. He does a fantastic job. And when we first started, it was just me and James and we just did a quick edit and got it out there. Now we spend a lot of time, we repurposed a lot of our podcast into YouTube, into other platforms. We cut it into shorts, we cut it into clips for LinkedIn. But all of that is stuff you do down the line. And we use Premiere Pro now because it’s a fantastic tool where you’ve got a flow and you are repurposing content. But again, if I was starting again tomorrow, even if it was just me editing my podcast, I would start with something called Audacity that’s an open source audio editor. It’s a really great piece of software. However, as quickly as I could, I would outsource the editing if I was starting again. So he takes my editor Simon, around about two to three hours a week. He takes my recordings, my ramblings, and he turns them into a well polished product. But please do not underestimate how important the editing is. The talking bits that I do, which takes me around about an hour a week, plus my interview. That’s nothing compared to the time that Simon puts in making it perfect. So if you listen to the podcast or watch the videos and you think this is good, this is professional content, it’s Simon that’s doing all the heavy lifting on this. Thanks Simon.

Then we go onto number nine, which is hosting. So we use something called Castos, which automatically publishes the podcast to all of the major platforms, it’s why we’re on every single major podcast platform. And as a bonus, we can control and publish the podcast through our WordPress website, which is really easy. But that was a choice we made six years ago. And there are lots of hosts around, there are other hosts that are perhaps a bit more up to date. There are some, and I can’t remember its name off the top of my head, but there’s one which can dynamically insert adverts. So it can take all of your old podcast episodes and insert new adverts into your old podcast episodes. So it really is worth you checking out all of the major players and you definitely want to get your podcast transcribed as that becomes valuable content for your website. We don’t use Castos’s own automated transcription, we prefer Rev.com’s human checked transcription, so they do it on AI and then a human checks it. And the reason we do that is because we take that transcript and we use that to build our entire podcast page. So if you go onto mspmarketingedge.com and you have a look at the podcast and you’ll see for about the last 15, 20 weeks or so, which is when we last changed it, we have insanely good pages where the whole transcript is on the page. We pull out key quotes, we have links to things, we have other resources that appear in the page. And that takes Laura who’s on my podcast team, it takes her a couple of hours a week to do, but it’s worth it because we do see some good traffic coming into that.

And then finally number 10, it’s the final item and it’s promotion. Now, this is the biggest question to answer. How will you promote your podcast to the audience that you want to reach? So here’s what we do or a little bit of what we do for ours. I’ve already mentioned a few things, we do like repurposing the content onto different platforms, but I send out a big email to my database every Tuesday. I post it in my Facebook group, that’s my MSP marketing Facebook group that’s only for MSPs. We post it on LinkedIn, actually goes across the week in two or three different ways. And for special episodes, we do sometimes run paid ads as well. One other thing that we do is we ask the guests to promote it to their audiences. So we’ll only do that if they’re guests from within the channel, because that’s a sensible thing to do. But we do also invite on strategic guests. So people that I know are very well connected and will bring a lot of listeners onto the podcast. In fact, the pro tip on that one is go and find all the other podcasts that are big that you want to be on and invite the host of those onto your podcast. So they come onto your podcast, you do an interview with them, and inevitably during that interview, they will say to you, would you like to come on and be a guest on my podcast? So you actually promote your podcast by appearing on other people’s podcasts, and as long as you’re all reaching the same audience, that’s a really great idea.

Featured guest: Jean Paul De Silva has spoken to thousands of business owners and realised they all have two things in common: They’re tired of ineffective marketing, and they’re sick of excuses.

As Chief Instigator at Create Want, Jean Paul works to remove bottlenecks to customer awareness and demand by removing excess and eliminating excuses. Create Want practices the art of removing excess fluff and needless expenses and replacing those with the exact strategic factors that must be there.

Many MSPs hate marketing and they hate agencies even more. But why? Is it because they’ve had their fingers burned, they’ve spent a ton of cash on an agency and felt they never got value for money? Or is it because agencies persist in making marketing seem mysterious when it’s really not? My special guest today is going to tell you exactly why MSPs hate marketing. And if you are hiring a marketing agency, he’s going to tell you the specific questions you should ask to separate the good guys from the bad guys.

Hello, my name is JP De Silva and I am the founder and owner of Create Want.

A marketing agency. And thank you so much for joining me on this podcast, JP, because we are going to talk today, two marketers having a discussion about why people hate marketers, which sounds like a bizarre conversation for us to have, but there is a solid reason for us talking about that. Because we believe that actually it unfortunately makes MSPs hold themselves back because of their dislike of marketing and marketers in general. So we’re going to explore that today and try and make it more comfortable for you as an MSP if you are thinking of hiring a marketing agency or bringing a marketing person on board. We want to sort of help you by knowing what are the right questions to ask, what are the things you should consider and why you shouldn’t hate marketing people. That’s our goal for this anyway.

So tell us a little bit about you. I know those people watching this on YouTube will see that you look like you’re about 18, but you’re telling me that you’ve been in marketing for 25 years already. Tell us about your background.

Yeah, I’m past 40. So yeah, I have been in the industry probably for about 25 years, and it all started when my dad was a computer programmer before internet was a thing. And I was always with computers and marketing related stuff, and I started helping people trying to get their name out. And I found out that a lot of business owners didn’t understand the principles of marketing and how it works and what to expect, and it created a false expectation. So over the years, I started to lean more towards how can I get this person to understand how these work so they can make a more responsible decision when it comes to, oh, I’m going to invest money here or I’m going to do this. And it became a very fun thing just because I’ve heard probably about every question, every complaint people have in the industry, which has helped me to develop things that is going to help them overcome that.

That makes sense. And certainly back in the day, and even today still to a certain extent, people who don’t know much about marketing or technology assume that if you can do computer stuff, you’re good at marketing. We see this with the MSPs. MSPs are sometimes asked by their clients, can you build us a website? To which of course we know that managing someone’s technology and building a website are two completely different skills, but the end users, the end business owners don’t do that. I remember 20, when was this back in 2005, so yeah, 20 years ago, my last proper job before I started my first business, I worked for a newspaper publishing company here in the UK. So 2005, fairly early days on the internet, but I worked in the internet division. And at one point just before I left because things were going stupid, they decided that they should give the responsibility for the internet publishing division to the IT department. And their thinking was, these are our news websites, so the computer people should run them. And of course, it was just a case of no, they’re websites, it’s just the conduit to get the news out to people. I made this argument in a meeting, that would be giving the printing press over to the IT people. They wouldn’t know what to do with it and they wouldn’t know what to do with the websites.

So you must have seen then over the years, things completely change in terms of the rise of digital marketing and all the offline stuff, even though some of it is still valid, it’s just not popular these days and most people don’t do it. What are the big changes have you seen over the last 25 years?

The main thing I feel is it is so much easier to put content out. It is so much easier to put junk out that makes it harder for something like Google or any search engine to try to sift through all of the stuff available to be able to come out with a proper answer. And I tell a lot of people that anything from Facebook, Instagram, paid ads, SEO, I look at it like a highway. There is a highway and there are billboards. And those billboards are your SEO strategies, your Google ads. And the truth is that we’re running out of highway. There is so many people posting, doing this and that it requires a clever creative outside the box intent to come up with, okay, this is how I’m going to target my perfect audience, because it is not like before where you just needed to put your name in the yellow pages and make the best offer and wait for the phone to ring. Now there is a lot more territory to cover, which doesn’t make it necessarily harder, you just have to put a little bit more, oh, okay, I’m going to try this with intent, and it usually works.

Yeah, I agree with you, there’s a lot more junk out there. And of course, the last two years with the rise of AI, we’ve seen a lot more what people are calling AI slop, which is just nonsense that’s out there and I think there’s no long-term future in that AI slop, but where we stand today in 2025, that is surprisingly dominant on a lot of platforms.

Let’s talk about MSPs. So JP you know MSPs, I know you work with a number of MSPs, although you’re not an MSP marketing specialist, you work with lots of businesses and MSPs are amongst your client roster. So you know that they’re primarily technicians first, that they’re driven by helping people, solving problems, great customer service, all of those things MSPs love. And the vast majority hate marketing. And I know that that’s not just managed service providers. You see that from all sorts of business owners. So why do people who are not marketers hate marketing?

The fastest way to answer that is because they don’t understand it. That is the fastest answer. Now, the next layer to that is the fact that they have been screwed over in the past by somebody. Now granted, I believe there is people out there who are not necessarily the most honest, but really everybody’s trying to do their best. And the problem is that if the business owner doesn’t understand what’s going to happen when they implement certain strategies or what to expect or don’t understand the foundation of it, they’re going to listen to what that professional marketing agency/freelancer is saying, and they might be implementing something that is not going to work for them. And it’s not because the marketing agency is intentionally doing that. It’s not because the business owner is intentionally doing that. They just don’t understand how it works. So I give this example, sometimes I say, listen, because I know how to run ads or because I’m an expert on video production, that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for you.

And I think that’s where the disconnection usually happens. Hey, I need more clients. And they say, oh, well you need to run ads because that’s what the agency knows how to do. Now it might work but it may not be the strategy for them.

I truly believe that the main reason people end up hating marketing is because they don’t understand it.

They say, Hey, I want to do X, Y, and Z, and I need this many leads. And the agency is like, oh, okay, well let’s do blah and then they don’t get the result and then the client is like, oh no, I want to replace my agency. We’ve been gifted to having clients for over 15 years, and it is often we get people like, yeah, we’re not happy with our agency. And believe it or not I always, and this might be sound odd, but I always vouch for the agency and not for the client, simply because I know there is something they did not understand in the process. And if they were to have that information, it would be a lot smoother.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So you are actually trying to help educate them about the things that perhaps their previous agency didn’t educate them. It’s interesting what you say about the agency falling back on their own capabilities. It’s like if you go to a guy who’s holding a big hammer and you say to him, I’ve got a problem. I need a hole in the wall. He’s going to say, I know how to get a hole in the wall, I’m going to hammer it. If you go up to a different guy who’s got a drill, right, and you say, I need a hole in the wall, then he’s going to drill it. And both of those people believe that their way is the best way. And I think that’s a really good way of for you of describing how marketing agencies come at it. If they’re good at making outbound calls, they see that as the answer. If they’re good at SEO (search engine optimization) they see that as the answer, which is really interesting.

So let’s bring this back to being an MSP owner. So if you are an MSP owner you know you need to do marketing to win new clients, you know you need new clients to increase your profit, you know you need to increase your profit to have a better life, right? That’s an established thing, but you’re stuck on what is the best marketing solution for me? Put yourself in that person’s shoes. And what do you think are some of the right questions to ask or sort of avenues to explore before you pick? Well, I guess there’s two things. There’s what kind of marketing do you do? So do you go down the DIY route, (do it yourself), or do you go down the done for you, or do you find something in between? And then how do you actually pick that right person?

That’s a very interesting question, and there is a few ways we can answer it, but I feel like the one thing people should keep in mind, regardless of the option is, it has to be simple. I’ve worked with some of the biggest brands and some of the smallest businesses, and the simpler the better. Do not make it complicated. It is not complicated. If it has a billion steps and all this different stuff, it is probably not, right? Not to get carried away, but if any business owner were to look at how they started their business, it was them being passionate about what they were doing, giving that information to another person who was also in need of that, that’s the simplicity of it. All we’re trying to do is to recreate that same process, but to thousands of people. That’s it. At any given time, any coffee shop, any MSP, any lawyer started by, okay, it’s just me, I’m a small business, I need to start to drum up some money. How do I do this? And they we’re just doing that.

So if a business owner is in the position of how do I approach this need, number one, have a strategy. Whoever you’re going to work with needs to put together a strategy, something simple that says, Hey, this is your perfect audience, your perfect type of client. This is what they need and this is what we can say to them so they understand we can offer that. What is going to be the medium we are going to use to deliver that message. And they should be able to walk you through sort of like, this is what’s going to happen and it’s going to lead to this and it’s going to lead to this, and this is what you’re going to have at the end. So not sure if I fully answer your question, but that is what I would recommend to an MSP owner or a business owner who’s like, how do I pick my next marketing agency because I’m frustrated with the current one? Well make sure that they have a plan and that they are able to explain to you what’s being done and why.

Yeah, I think that’s great advice. And of course as an MSP owner, you’re dealing with very technical and very difficult, complicated things in your work. And so it’s easy to assume that your marketing should also be difficult and technical and multi-step. And I completely agree, the simpler you can make it, the easier you can make it, well, the more likely it is to happen for a start. Simpler, easier marketing that happens is always better than complex smart marketing that doesn’t happen because there’s just too many steps in it. So that’s really good advice.

Final question for you, JP, is if you could have every MSP owner that you speak to know one thing, apart from the stuff that you’ve just said, what would that one thing be? Or if there’s no one thing, what would be the one question you would want them to ask of you?

So one is they need to track everything. They need a system or something that allows them to see the progress of what’s being done. So if they’re writing content for SEO, they need to see is the traffic increasing? If they’re doing social media, do we get more exposure through social media? Are we doing email campaigns? Are people just track, look at it just like a diet and people track their weight and their measurements and stuff. Just measure things out to make sure that what you are doing it is working or is not working so you can make adjustments. Please, please have a strategy. A strategy is your GPS. It is going to take you from point A to point B. Can you make it without a strategy? Yes. But if you have a strategy is going to be the easiest way to figure out if you’re doing the right thing or if it’s going to work out.

And it takes time and money. A lot of people have the misconception that is going to be, I’m not saying it has to be expensive, but I feel people need to understand it is going to take work. It is going to cost certain amount of money. I know people always try to get, how can I get the cheapest option or whatever, which is fine, they should, but they need to understand that they’re going to get the result they’re paying for to some extent. So they need to be conscious of that and think with that a little bit.

Yeah, I agree. And selling a managed services contract, perhaps one of the longest, most complex sales B2B sales that there is, apart from the multimillion pound sales that are being made to enterprise companies and governments, those are probably longer and more complex. But in terms of small business transactions, absolutely it takes time, time, time. The flip side of that, of course is you keep the client for 10 years, which is unheard of in other B2B sales. JP, thank you for your time today. Briefly tell us what does your business do, how do you help MSPs and how can we get in touch with you?

Sure. The name of my company is Create Want. And that’s what we do, we create want for people’s products and services. We believe that marketing has gone the wrong way by pushing people into buy now or you will lose an arm or get it this and all that. And we figure out that everything you’ve bought, you bought it because you want it. So I was like, well, why are we trying to push things into people? Why we don’t just create want, why we don’t just make it so people want it. And there is many different ways, videos, SEO, emails, etc. So we try to figure out, okay, what is going to work for this particular person? And a lot of our clients are actually agencies, marketing agencies, marketing directors, business owners, and we find a lot of joy doing that because it’s not just meh marketing it’s, Hey, how can we actually create want for your services?

And what’s the best way for us to get in touch with you?

[email protected], that’s the easiest way. That’s my direct email and I love answering questions. I could spend my entire day just helping people answer question. It is the thing that I’m most passionate about. I don’t charge anything for it. I just want to help people accomplish their goals.

Gideon runs an MSP in Texas and he really wants to make an impact with his prospects by sending them physical stuff in the mail. So his question is: What should I put in an impact box?

An impact box, also known sometimes as a “shock and awe box”, is a box of stuff that you send to a prospect in order to make an impact. And the idea is to really punch through and show them that you mean business. Now you don’t have to spend a fortune on your box. The contents could include something as simple as a handwritten short intro note. And yes, it should be handwritten so it stands out and has value. And you just need to say something like, Hi Dave, I know that picking a new IT support company is a big decision. We’d love to partner with you. Here’s a copy of my IT services buyer’s guide and some case studies plus some snacks to enjoy while you are reading them. If you’ve got any questions about joining us, please give me a call on this number.

You’d also put in there your proposal or maybe your confirmation of a meeting or a follow-up meeting depending where in the sales process you send them this impact box. I mentioned earlier that thing called an IT services buyer’s guide. Well, this is a guide that tells them how to switch from one MSP to another. We actually give one of these to our MSP Marketing Edge members and we update it every year. It’s a very, very powerful tool because the only people who would read something like that are those people who are almost ready to switch from one MSP to another. So it’s a great way for you to stamp your authority as the person who wrote the book on how to pick a new MSP. Can you see the power of that? That definitely goes in your impact box.

You’d also add in a selection of case studies, and I know that that would be a second piece of printed material. You’ve got your IT services buyer’s guide, and then your case studies. But each of these things play a different part. In fact, one idea to move away from just being printed stuff is to actually put video case studies onto a USB. But then you’ve got the thing of your prospects plugging a USB from a stranger into their laptop. And we all know that they would do that, but you don’t necessarily want to encourage them to do that.

Next thing that goes in your impact box is some edible stuff. So chocolates, biscuits, sweets, candy, whatever. I mean, what you can do is if you could find out the favourite chocolate bar of the person you’re sending it to, that would be so powerful. Imagine if their favourite chocolate bar was a Snickers and you put five Snickers bars in that impact box. I mean, that just shows a level of care and attention to detail that’s so high.

And it’s actually quite easy to find out. You just ring up their business, speak to the receptionist and say, Hey, I’m sending a box of stuff to this person. Just out of interest, what’s their favourite candy bar? What’s their favourite chocolate bar? And then you just go out and you get a few of those. If you didn’t want to do candy chocolates or sweets, you could just do perhaps a few cans of Coke or Pepsi or tea bags or sachets of coffee, something like that.

And then finally, you should do a piece of merch – merchandise. I’m down with the kids. I can say merch. It could be a mouse mat. Do people still use mouse mats? I see MSPs using them but I’m not convinced that normal people do, but it could be a mouse mat, a pen or a mug or something like that. It doesn’t really matter just find some merch that you like and get some made for your impact box.

Then make sure the box looks really nice inside and outside. So inside you can use sheets of gently crumpled tissue paper to achieve that. And then the outside, you could get your box printed in your MSP’s brand colours. Well, the simpler thing is just to buy some boxes off Amazon or wherever and then get some stickers printed with your logo and perhaps saying what it is. The perfect way is to get it printed to your brand, but sometimes the perfect way just slows everything down. Whereas you could get an impact box put together in the next two days if you just did it, and then you refined it down the line.

Welcome to Episode 290 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

Here’s something you know already, it’s just too darn hard to get new managed service clients. One of the biggest hurdles is that you are asking them to go from nothing straight to a monthly recurring revenue contract at the click of a finger. Surely convincing them it’s safe to start spending their money with you is easy. You just put a strong case forward and then dazzle them with the service that they’re going to be getting, yeah? If only it was that easy. So if the client finds signing a contract with you a bit scary, how do we fix that? Is there a way to make them feel happy committing to you and spending money with you? Absolutely there is, and let me tell you what it is.

What we’re really talking about here is building trust.

Trust is a massive currency within marketing and sales. The more trust you have, the more likely people are to sign a contract and throw themselves into your care.

But the opposite of that is also the case. If you don’t have enough trust built with your leads and with your prospects, then asking them to go from no buying relationship with you straight into a managed services contract is a big ask. I know it can be done and it is done every single day, but surely we should be trying to make our lives easier. If you look at this from the point of view of the person buying, and by the way that’s always a great way to look at any of your marketing and your sales, always, always, always look at it from the other person’s point of view. So when they start looking for a new MSP or maybe even their first MSP, we call them suspects. They have their arms folded, they are suspicious of everyone they find and they are not overly impressed with anyone at all. And even if they’ve been given a warm referral from a friend or they find an MSP online that has tons of social proof, so it looks like a safe choice, they are still suspicious asking someone to trust you with their technology. And as we said, it’s a big ask.

Now, they might not know what they don’t know about technology, but they do know that if you get it wrong their business is dead in the water. And this is one of the reasons why it takes so much time to build a relationship and warm up an arms folded suspect, turn them into a lead turn that lead into a prospect, that prospect into an opportunity. It takes time, it takes effort, and it’s exhausting because the risk is so big from their point of view. So let’s see if we can de-risk that for them.

One of the ways that you could do that is with a risk reversal guarantee. I’ve seen only a small number, actually a tiny number of MSPs do a guarantee and the ones that do it the best, they have massive guarantees. They guarantee absolute complete delight, complete satisfaction. And if the client doesn’t experience that, they can walk away, in fact they will help them migrate over to another MSP. I’ve seen one MSP even do a money back within the guarantee, if you’re not happy in the first six months, we’ll let you move somewhere else and you’ll get your money back. Now, if you’re really confident about your delivery and your ability to create and maintain relationships with clients, then that’s a smart route to go. However, for a lot of MSPs, a guarantee like that and especially a money back guarantee is a very scary thing to do.

If that’s you, maybe a better way is instead to give them an easy first purchase. What is this? It’s something that they can buy from you that’s a one-off. It allows them to essentially sample your business. They can see what your customer service is like, what your delivery is like, what the quality of your work is like before they even have to think about actually signing a contract with you. And this process affects them a little bit at a cognitive level, but it affects them massively at an emotional level.

If you can persuade someone who doesn’t know you to give you just a little bit of money to do a one-off thing for them, then they are dramatically, and I do mean 10 times more likely to enter a long-term managed services contract with you. Do you like the sound of that? Yeah, me too. So the final issue that we’ve got to fix then is what do you sell them? What is this easy first purchase that you could get them to invest in? Well, there are lots of different things that you could try. So you could start with something that’s perhaps not directly related to the technology services that you supply.

One idea for this is perhaps a lunch and learn what if you could get someone to give you 20 or 30 pounds or dollars and come and sit in a room with you for a couple of hours, eat a sandwich, sit there listening to you talking about, cyber security, productivity, something like that, the content of the lunch and learn doesn’t really matter so much, but that’s a very easy first purchase. And don’t forget, you are asking them not just for their money in this instance, you are also asking them for their time as well. And the prospect who gives you both time and money is actually a very, very high quality prospect compared to someone who perhaps just gives you a bit of money or just gives you bits of time, but not both of them.

So you could then take that lunch and learn idea further and turn it into perhaps a seminar, maybe a webinar, although I do think in-person stuff is really better for this. You could even do onsite training. I do know of an MSP that does remote training for companies on how to stop their staff clicking a bad link in the email. So it’s only like a 20 or 30 minute session. They do charge for it, it’s done on Zoom typically over lunchtime. The real power of doing that training is as part of that process, as part of the delivery, the MSP has a review booked with the decision maker at the end of the training so he can go back and report to the decision maker on who struggled with the training, who may need further training. Here’s a kind of general assessment of what I think the business’s likelihood is that you may accidentally click a link. They can talk about other issues, other protections, and all of this training and the feedback. These are just tools to get this MSP I know onto a quality call where with a decision maker where they’re talking about that person’s business. And as you can imagine, a lot of sales meetings come out of that process. So the prospect has been paying for training that ultimately gets them to trust the MSP and then they’re very happy to go on, or many of them are happy to go on and have a sales meeting.

And let’s take that onto one other idea and that’s to do some level of technology strategy consulting. So if doing seminars or training doesn’t excite you, then obviously don’t do it. You must always do things like this that get you excited, otherwise you just won’t do them or you will do them in a very lackluster way. So what about giving someone a 90 minute technology review and perhaps even pulling together a technology strategy for them. That could be a 60 or 90 minute meeting sitting with them talking about their business, their goals, everything that they want to achieve, everything that’s important to them. And then you go away and you build a technology strategy for them. And I appreciate that that’s going to be quite a light document because you’ve just had one meeting, you don’t know them very well.

But here’s the thing, if you position it and price it accordingly, for most businesses that have no technology strategy whatsoever, and isn’t that the vast majority of businesses, something that’s been built with 90 minutes of your time talking to them and then you going away and doing a bit of thinking and a bit of writing and actually committing a strategy to document. For most businesses, that’s going to be way better than having no strategy document whatsoever. And remember the big picture here, the point of the strategy document is to open bigger conversations about their business, where they’re going, what support they’re going to need on the way.

Please don’t overthink this. Don’t overthink what you can and can’t do for just a couple of hundred dollars or pounds. In fact, I suppose you’ve got to think about the bigger purpose here, which is to get them buying something from you. Something, anything, but then being delighted by the delivery. And a side note on this, if you can find businesses that will pay you a thousand pounds of dollars or more for that kind of strategy consultation that we were just talking about, as you can imagine, they will make much better managed services clients in the long run.

So what’s it like doing double the work? It’s hard work landing managed service clients and then there’s the constant hard work of making sure those clients are happy. You may be happy to bend over backwards to offer a great customer service. You’ve got a vested interest in it. But what about your staff? What if they don’t all share your passion for bending over backwards? What if that’s having a long-term impact on retention that you won’t feel until it’s too late? Good news, there is a fix.

A few months back I was standing staring at huge amounts of delicious food in a brand new cafe that I’d never been in before. It was actually inside a meeting venue in central London and I’d been meeting some really cool people there. And we were delighted to discover that the in-house cafe was serving real food, not just the usual crusty old sandwiches. And the food was subsidised and it was really cheap, like a hot meal for £5 (about six and a half dollars), something like that. That’s a bargain, right? So the only problem was the complete lack of flexibility demonstrated by the staff.

They would only sell the set meals on the menu. And here’s how my ordering experience went, and I’m going to tell you line by line, I did write it down after it happened. I started by saying, Hey, can I have a jacket potato with just cheese please? And the server said, That comes with cheese and beans. And I said, Well, I don’t want the beans, so can I just have cheese please? And the server said, You don’t want beans? And I said, No, I don’t want beans. And the server said, But it comes with beans. And I said, Well, I don’t like beans, I just want to have cheese, please. And then I kind of paused the beat and I looked down and I spotted that there was broccoli. And I said, oh actually, can I swap my beans for broccoli? Don’t judge me on having a baked potato with cheese and broccoli, I just like that. But anyway, the server said, No, I’m really sorry, but it’s only cheese and beans. And I actually stared at her at this point and I was genuinely astonished. And I said, So I can’t have broccoli? She said, No. And I said, Well, can I pay extra for the broccoli? It looks really good and now I just want some broccoli. And this is genuinely what happened, she said, No, you can only have cheese and beans. And I said, Really? And she actually said these words, she said, It’s our policy. You get some side salad, but broccoli isn’t side salad. And I said, Well, what if I don’t have beans and I don’t have the side salad, but I have some broccoli instead? And she kind of thought for a second and then she said, No, no, we can’t do that. And I said, Really? But you’ll make more money on the meal, so let me pay extra. I’d like to have broccoli. And the server said, and I know this is how bad this conversation was going, she said, Look, if you want broccoli, you’ll need to order a meal that comes with vegetables, jacket, potatoes come with cheese, they come with beans, they come with a side salad. They do not come with vegetables. And at this point I was aware that there was a long queue behind me, everyone was starting to grumble, I was that guy. So I said, Alright, I’ll just have the potato and cheese then please. And I looked really sad and I had a glum face and also made a mental note to buy broccoli on the way home, it didn’t taste as good at home because it never does.

Now, I promise you, I haven’t exaggerated that story at all. My gut feel is that the server showed this complete lack of flexibility because of the culture of that cafe. Maybe their whole day is geared around efficiently serving the hundreds of people who have meetings at that venue. So somewhere along the line, rather than do what’s best for the customer, they’ve developed a policy of never deviating off the menu. Because that makes sense, doesn’t it, for an efficient process. But surely the staff should be given initiative to do something simple that customers would like swap one dish for another.

In my business, the MSP Marketing Edge, we do have a culture of you should do whatever makes marketing easy for our members. And this drives everything that we do. And it means that my team very rarely need to check in with me. So if a member asks them to do something that’s a little bit off piste, it’s not what we would normally do, if we can help and if it makes marketing easy for that person, then my team just do it. They use their initiative so we don’t have to have conversations about should we do this? It’s our culture, it’s our mission, and we keep it alive by feeding it every day and talking every day about what can we do to make marketing easy for our members.

A culture doesn’t come from putting up a sign on office walls. It doesn’t come from telling your staff how to behave. It doesn’t come from standard operating procedures. It doesn’t come from what’s obvious to you as the owner. Because as a side note, what’s obvious to us as business owners is very, very rarely obvious to our team. If we don’t tell them exactly what we want and why we want it, they are constantly trying to guess what we want and then give it to us. And this is a huge source of stress both to you and to your staff.

A culture needs to be nurtured every day, in every conversation you have internally, every meeting, every project – you have to openly talk about your mission.

You have to remind yourself that everything you do is aimed at the thing you’re trying to do. This is what we do when we’re talking about making marketing easy for MSPs. Because we know internally here, the more that we do that, the more MSPs will join us, and therefore the more successful we will all be together, which is great and it’s no different within your MSP.

So that leads me to an interesting question for you. Do your technicians have the power to use their initiative? And more importantly, do they know that they have that power? Flexibility and initiative needs to be a culture within an MSP, not a policy or a sign that’s on a wall. And I know there’s a fine line between what the clients think you should be doing for them and what you are actually doing for them. And expectation setting is a huge thing for you, but I promise you a culture of do whatever makes technology easy for clients would be a very powerful retention weapon within your MSP. Do you agree?

Featured guest: Alan McLaren, Co-Founder of STRATA Originals, co-leads a personal branding agency specialising in working with CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, and legal professionals. With a strategic, intentional, and authentic approach, Alan has coached or trained over 600 CEOs in the past two years.

Throughout his career, Alan has recognised the pivotal role personal branding plays in leadership success—helping leaders define their identity, articulate their unique value proposition, and enhance their professional reputation.

How many of your clients actually know the name of your MSP? Or do they just refer to you as the tech guys or IT support? It’s virtually impossible to build a brand for your business name because that takes years and years and tons of cash. But there is a brand that’s very easy to build and can be incredibly profitable when you get it right. My special guest today is an expert at building this brand. He’s going to tell you what you should do, why you should do it, and how to get started.

Hi, my name is Alan McLaren. I’m a personal branding expert and I live just outside Toronto in Canada.

And from the UK to you over in Toronto, welcome onto the podcast, Alan. It’s great to have you here. And we are going to delve today into what personal branding is, and it’s really interesting I think you and I have very similar opinions about how powerful personal branding can be for MSPs and how actually it can help them to beat their competitors and win more sales just by building your personal brand.

I know there’s going to be a lot of questions from the MSPs listening to this and watching this on YouTube about wait, what’s the difference between a personal brand and the company brand? And we’re going to come onto that just down the line, but let’s first of all just delve into you and sort of set you up with some credibility and some context. So tell us briefly about your career. How do you come to be a personal branding expert?

Well it’s interesting, everything as you all know is an accident, right? Nothing actually happens intentionally with respect to your careers. I started my career at Canon in sales. So I started down the sales side of the house, became an executive after about 10 years, and then as a president of a company, and then got into IT security. So I know a little bit about that and technology. I ended up coming to personal branding after 20 years of a career in corporate. I actually started my own marketing agency. And then during that 18 last years, the last four of it, we moved into personal branding because we saw an opportunity to actually change the world, through one CEO at a time by helping people tell stories. And so I came to it through a lot of hard knocks, but a lot of experience on both the tech side and the sales side.

Oh, I love that. And what a mission statement, changing the world one CEO at the time. So how do you end up moving from something like IT security into something like marketing because they’re two completely different worlds?

Well, it’s my business partner’s fault, she was a PR person all her life. We met at a NASDAQ listed company that I was running, and then after I sold off some of the parts of the business, she came to me and says, What are we going to do now? I said, What do you mean “we”? She says, Oh, well, you’re a sales and marketing guy and I’m a PR person. Why don’t we start an agency? I said, We have no ideas, we have no money, why would we do that? So we decided to start a marketing agency. That was it. It was no more complicated than that. At the end of the day, sales and marketing with every company, that’s what’s important, right?

As an MSP owner, you know that without sales you have nothing. You could be the smartest technologist in the world, but you still need to sell.

So I understood that well, and she understood how to market. We came together, and then the pivot to personal branding really became the technology caught up to marketing. And if you didn’t have the right target audience, it would squash you. AI would squash you, and that people can learn all about marketing on Facebook and on YouTube. And so we decided to go to a place where is, which is the world of personal branding, and we’ll talk about how important that is for MSPs going forward.

Well let’s do that right now, because it’s interesting you mentioned AI and I have a feeling everything you’re about to say is going to be music to my ears. I believe AI is getting better day by day, and I believe that the better and better AI gets, the more you need to push towards your own authentic personality within the marketing. Because if your competitors are just using AI produced stuff, whether it’s good stuff or whether it’s AI sloth, it’s still AI generated. And the point is that anybody can do that, but not anybody can be you. Is that really the basis of what you mean and what you define by personal branding?

You should do the commercials for me, you’d be perfect, I love it. So what we look at is really the human to human approach, so exactly aligned with what you’re thinking about. Think about what differentiates you from another MSP. I’ve got this, I’ve got that, I’ve got four of them, I’ve got 500 technologies… it’s the same story, but YOU are the difference, the trust that you build as an owner, as a leader is the difference. So what we say is how do you build trusted authority with the people that matter?

Because think about how you started your business, the first clients were all relationships. So what we’re talking about is how do you build your personal brand to build more relationships, to drive more referrals to your business? That happens when you’re out there. Your company marketing is difficult because how do you differentiate between two? I’m bigger, I’m faster, I’m stronger. It doesn’t matter, it always comes back to the humans you’re going to deal with will differentiate you, the accounts payable people that you deal with, the technicians you deal with, the SOC you have, all those things are important, but your ability to express that is really the secret sauce.

Yeah, I completely agree. So from a practical point of view, let’s say you’re an MSP owner and you are the primary sales person within the business, which is let’s say 80% of MSPs. And maybe that person has heard me say over the years on this podcast Be the face of the business, but maybe not acted on it because they don’t want to. Maybe there’s a fear of putting themselves on the website or they want to keep the branding professional or whatever that means. What are the practical steps to actually starting to build up your personal brand and how do you make sure that your personal brand isn’t overshadowing what you’re trying to do with the business?

Well, it’s interesting you say overshadowing, it’s complimentary, isn’t it? When you think about your personal brand and the business, you are the company, unless you’re a $400 million MSP, but most of the people we’re talking to are not. So what you do, the first thing you do is look at and say, okay, you’re all technologists, do you understand LinkedIn and how to use that as a tool? We’ll talk about content in a second, but do you know how to build relationships and nurture relationships on LinkedIn? Your clients, by the way, are all there. They’re there inside your customers. So the first thing I would do if I was an MSP, I’d say, Who are my customers and am I connected with them on LinkedIn? Then I’d connect with them and I would follow them, and I would nurture them. Then I’d go see who they’re connected to. They’re all potential clients, but I would never sell a thing. I would just say, Hey, I understand you’re connected to Paul. So am I. What a great guy. Yeah, he is a great guy. Happy to be connected to you. And you say nothing else because here’s the secret sauce, in your title it says MSP, IT security, IT services. Pick something. That’s how people will recognise you, you don’t have to ever pitch them. I’ll give you a quick story… I saw a guy on WhatsApp doing a great job on a marketing app, and I went, boy, he’s interesting. And I went and connected with him, Hey, I just saw you on WhatsApp. I just wanted to connect with you. I thought you were a fascinating guy. He says, I see you’re a personal branding expert. I need some help with my personal brand. I didn’t pitch a thing. So that’s what I’m talking, build relationships and build trust. There’s another step of course that you can take, which we’ll talk about in terms of content development, but if you just start with relationship building and relationship nurturing, your prospecting is only going to be online and you’ll never have to pitch once because it’ll all come from those natural relationships.

Yeah, I love that. And we’ll come onto the content in a second in terms of bravery, of putting something on LinkedIn, and I see MSPs overthink this all the time, and I understand why it’s easy for someone like you, easy for someone like me, because we’re communicators, we’re marketing people, that’s what we do. But if you’re on the other side of the coin and you’re actually a technical genius, but not great at communications, what do I actually write in that headline? What kind of photo do I put on LinkedIn and what would your advice be on that?

Well, the first thing, we overthink everything. So think about this, I’ll make it easy for you. Let’s assume as an MSP, you have a thousand connections on LinkedIn, 500 connections on LinkedIn. They know you, right? They’ve connected with you, talk to them. They don’t care about the perfect headline or the perfect picture, they just want to know where you are, what you’re doing with your life, because they’re the first concentric circle that supports you. Those thousand connect you to 500,000 other people. So when you overproduce personal branding, it looks like marketing and marketing’s not trusted because you’re selling me something.

If we talk about content for example, and you are in IT security, what are you going to say? You’re not going to say, well, I have the best software etc. That doesn’t matter, no one cares about that. You’re helping people strategically – what they need to think about, how they need to approach it, how they need to do their training internally – you’re giving away all your secrets to people. They do that every day with customers, every single day. So do that, be like you’re in front of a customer who’s asked you a question about that, about your IT services, but not in a salesy way. If you were a consultant, you’d say, this is how I would approach it, go pick the best MSP that delivers the best culture to you, but let me help you do that. They’re already doing it, just don’t overthink it. And if you’re afraid, guess what? It’s normal to be afraid. There’s nothing wrong with being afraid.

Everyone else is afraid too. But the difference is if you can power through the fear and just change it. I love that.

Just quickly for a moment, Paul, they’ve already built a business. They’ve already had the alligators at their ankles already. You’re telling me a video is scaring you a little bit. It’s time to practice it, so let’s be practical until you get good at it, and then you’ll fly on the other side.

Yeah, I love that. And also, do you know what if you make mistakes it’s never permanent, is it? And I remember, I think it was last year, the British Prime Minister who’d only been in power for a few months, he was talking about some hostages being released, and in a live TV conference, he actually said, And they released the sausages, the hostages. And obviously the entire world picked up on that. And this is like a world leader on a world platform, but it was forgotten within weeks, and it hasn’t affected his credibility or anything like that. So if a world leader can make a stupid mistake like saying sausages instead of hostages (maybe he was thinking about his dinner that night) and get away with it, then you can certainly get away with making a video that isn’t quite as good.

Let’s take one final question about LinkedIn, then, I just want to look briefly outside of LinkedIn and other things you could do with your personal branding. So you’ve mentioned content a few times. What would your advice be to MSPs on using content on LinkedIn to increase your personal brand and to make you more authoritative and more authentic and more desirable as an MSP obviously.

I mean, the easiest question ever is what are the questions that you get from your clients? Not about the technical stuff you do, but about the strategic stuff you do. Because the MSP result is the work you do, and that’s fantastic, and people expect that you’re going to deliver on all the ways you deliver. But before they decide even to get to use an MSP, why wouldn’t they do it internally versus externally? What are the objections you get from your prospects? What are the conversations that are happening on Google right now? Go find those out and just talk about those things. That’s what you talk about every single day. It’s just your competitors aren’t because they’re all afraid.

So you’re going to get out there and you’re going to start talking about why it’s important to outsource your IT security. You’re going to say, Well, it’s really simple, you could hire people internally, but now you’ve got to manage them, HR, all the things that you go through. They got sick, they’re away today, and the virus happened to all of our networks, now we’re screwed. Well, you’ve got us. You don’t have to worry about that. Headache free. But you’re not pitching, you’re just pitching the idea of outsourcing versus insourcing, because each of them have advantages. Think of the voice of your customer and deliver that way. And if you’re afraid to do videos, take your phone and practice until you’re comfortable doing videos. We believe in video, 100% of our content is videos 100%, except, sorry, we do newsletters and other stuff, but of the personal branding content, because it’s the most authentic, and that’s what people want.

Yeah, no, I completely agree. We do a lot of videos, give a lot of videos to our MSP Marketing Edge members because you cannot beat those videos. They’re really, really powerful. Even though the LinkedIn algorithm isn’t quite as much in love with video today as it was 12 months ago, it will go full circle because what will happen is there’ll be less video on LinkedIn and some vice president somewhere at LinkedIn says, Oh no, video consumption is down, but TikTok’s getting bigger again, we’ve got to ramp it up. And all of these things that are always cyclical.

Okay, let’s move away from LinkedIn for our final subject, which is personal branding outside of LinkedIn. So other stuff on the web, but also offline. Give us some practical things that you can do. I’ll throw one out that I use in my life, which was never an intention, it just kind of became this way, which is, this podcast goes on all audio platforms, but also on YouTube. So anyone who’s watching on YouTube will see I’m wearing a blue shirt and guess what? I always wear a blue shirt. In fact, you might think it’s the same one. There’s nine years of video content, but it’s not actually the same one. I have a procession of blue shirts, but it’s now got to a point now where if I’m not wearing a light blue shirt and I’ve met people in real life when I worn to checkered shirt and they’ll say to me, Paul, you’re wearing the wrong shirt. So you see, that’s become almost a piece of my personal branding is having a light blue shirt. Now that was an accident, it was just something I fell into. But is that the kind of thing that we mean by personal branding, that kind of consistency of your appearance, of the way you present yourself? Or is that just a small component of a bigger thing?

At the end of the day, personal branding is about your authentic self. How you come across in everything you do, what hats do you wear? What roles do you play? Part of it can be a shirt if you like it. Look at politicians, they tend to have a uniform. Because you’re spending time with people, especially online, and I think you mentioned YouTube as an example, it is the most important platform surprisingly, because it’s there forever and your showcase of everything you do is there. So when you pull people over and they become a subscriber, now you own them in a positive way. And LinkedIn, even though because it’s more transitory, only 2 or 3% of the people actually see your content every day.

To continue the offline conversation outside of LinkedIn and YouTube, what you’re talking about can be important, but it doesn’t really matter that much. You’ve done it for nine years, that’s why it matters. Most people have not done it and won’t do it for nine years. I don’t care about my uniform. I’ll wear this, I’ll wear sweatshirts, I’ll wear whatever, it doesn’t matter to me. To me, it’s about my voice, the authenticity of what I’m trying to do, which is give away as much as I know with holding nothing back to everybody who wants to listen to me, that’s my brand. I will do it from my heart, not from my head. And people like that will be part of my tribe and people who don’t like that will go somewhere else.

And in marketing, repelling is not a bad thing. Because you know that you’re dealing with your target audience that matter to you. And what MSPs tend to do, in my experience, because I’ve had MSPs as part of the IT security business I have, is they’re so hung up on the technical side, they forget the end of the day, you’re solving a problem for humans. You are solving technology problems, but there’s someone in charge of that technology that is always up at night. And you can help them by saying, I know Paul’s got it. I know these guys, but Paul’s got me, he’s got my back. Wow. How do you do that at scale? You do that online, and of course all the events you go to, you show up with that same attitude. Physical events, webinars, podcasts, you show up the same way all the time, and then people go, that Paul guy, he’s like, and then the attributes start getting described. That’s what you want to be because the word I use is in an event, physical or virtual, your personal brand shows up before you do and it stays after you leave. So are they saying the right things about you? Are you delivering value at every turn? If the answer is yes, check the box and your business will start to thrive because more people will want to work with you.

What a way to end the interview. Thank you, Alan, really appreciate your time coming on, being authentic, giving us all of this amazing knowledge. Just briefly tell us what do you do? What does your business actually do to help MSPs and what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

So best way to reach for me is on LinkedIn, Alan McLaren, or at strataoriginals.com, and go check out the stuff we do. We essentially work with founders, builders, entrepreneurs to help them build their personal brand, both online and off so that they can do exactly what we’ve talked about today to differentiate their business and to humanise their business and to drive more business. And we do that through what we call a brand DNA, which is a strategy session. And then we either become their coach or we do it for them, depending on their model and their budget and the rest, we make their lives easier just like they do to their clients, we do for them. 

This week’s question comes from Christian whose MSP is in Illinois, and he asks: Why is my marketing and sales so slow?

That’s a very common question, and the short answer is because you work in a sector with a very, very, very slow sales cycle. In fact, it’s one of the slowest that I’ve ever seen. You’re working against three big things. The first is a lack of understanding. The people you’re trying to reach, they don’t get technology, so it’s easier for them not to think about something because that’s what we do when we don’t get something.

The other thing you’re working against is fear. They don’t really know how their technology’s been set up, no matter how many times they’ve been told or whatever documentation you’ve given them. And that means that they’re scared of changing something and breaking it.

And the third thing you’re working against is inertia loyalty. It seems easier for them at an emotional level to stay with an existing supplier even if they don’t like them. And that’s because of the lack of understanding and the fear.

So these three factors and loads more, they all contribute to a total lack of urgency on the part of your leads and prospects. However, there are two pieces of good news. The first is that people buy when they’re ready to buy. And that means that right now there is a hot prospect in your area who would love to talk to you. The challenge is knowing who that person is and knowing the right time to talk to them. This is why you need to be constantly increasing the amount of marketing activity that you do and speaking to more and more and more people, play the numbers game.

The other piece of good news is the insane lifetime value that you benefit from. Because you win loads of lovely monthly recurring revenue from clients, and they stay with you for years and years and years, and that really doesn’t happen much elsewhere either. So these are the good things. The answer to getting more clients, as I said, is just to do more marketing activity – do more stuff, speak to more people.

Welcome to Episode 289 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

The joys of being an MSP owner… complete control. Yeah you want to be always onboarding new clients and improving your tech stack and providing the best customer service. But if one week you don’t want to do those things, no one can stop you from not doing those things, because you’re the owner of the business. You’re the boss, right?

Well, if right now you’re not accountable to anyone, there is a huge benefit of being accountable to someone. But who is this person you should answer to? Stick around, you’re not going to believe who I’m going to suggest.

There are many reasons why someone starts their own business and I say that as someone who’s been in business for 20 years himself. People who don’t start their own business think that we do it so that we can earn more money and not have a boss. But I think those of us who’ve been doing it for more than a couple of years, which means we are going to keep doing it for a couple of decades, we know that we started our own business primarily to have control.

And by that I mean control over what work we do, who we do it for and how it’s done. Most of us, I believe, start our own business because we have a deep desire to do something amazing and we want to control freak it all along the way. Sometimes when we work for someone else, we’ve had bad bosses. I know that I have, I’m looking at you, Terry, but also we’ve had good bosses. I’ve had some of those as well, fact loads of those. But escaping the boss is not always the reason why we start our own business.

As I say, making more money and building an asset, something that you own, that’s the side benefit I believe of running your own business. I truly believe control is the primary driving factor for doing it and keep doing it. But nevermind all of these upsides of starting your own business and not having a boss, let’s look at the downsides as well. And I don’t really mean the fact that you for many years, worked longer hours than you ever have for probably a lower salary, that does eventually go, but it’s mostly a pain in the first few years, I don’t mean that stuff. I do mean the downsides of not having a boss. Because, and this might be hard to swallow, but there really are downsides to not having a boss.

The biggest downside to not having a boss is that you are accountable to no one.

Think back to when you last had a job. Someone, somewhere was in charge of you, right? You were accountable to someone in some way and forgetting all the negative impacts of that, there were positive impacts of that as well. And the primary positive impact was that if you didn’t do your work, someone would notice and there would be a problem. But as the business owner, this is not the case, right? Let’s take a marketing project that you’ve been promising yourself, you’re going to do for ages, but there’s no one chasing you to get it done. If you choose not to do that, or if you choose not to investigate that new PSA that you’ve been thinking of switching to, no one’s ever going to raise that in a meeting. Or if they do, you’re the boss, it doesn’t really matter that you haven’t done that. It’s your business, it’s your decisions, you have the control. And sure, I really do think that’s a great thing, but I do believe it’s a bad thing as well. It’s both of these things.

I’ve been getting more heavily involved over the last few months in the development projects that we have in our business. Because we have a development team who work on our portal and our product and our website and our marketing, and they do a fantastic job. But I wanted to insert myself kind of more closely into the process so I could guide it more, try to streamline it a bit, get things happening more quickly. And I realised that as part of that team, I needed to take on board some of the tasks that come out of any project. And as a result of that, because I’m a team player, I now have tasks that I must get completed to specific deadlines. And if I don’t, there are actually people that I have to answer to – my own team.

So you might think I’m crazy for doing this, but do you know what? It’s reawakened something within me that I’m really enjoying, and that’s a desire to do a great job for the person I’m accountable to. For years really, I’ve only been accountable to myself, kind of my clients, kind of my family, but now I’m accountable to my team as well. They’re people I have to face on Zoom calls every single day. And it has changed the way that I work. I’ve always been a very deadline driven person, but with the control of owning the business, I’ve been able to play loose with deadlines and just on a whim on a Friday afternoon, extend a deadline rather than put myself through the pain of doing the work. But now I can’t. And especially if the work I’m doing is a dependency for someone else, and by that I mean they can’t do their work until I’ve completed mine.

If someone is revising a page on our website and I’ve got to write that page first, you can see how if I don’t hit the deadline on that, neither can they. Can you see why being accountable to someone somewhere is a great way to make sure you get things done. It forces you to plan ahead, be more disciplined and be a better team player. And these are all great traits for the person who runs the business – YOU. It makes you a better business owner and definitely makes you a better boss.

So here’s a question for you. Within your MSP, who should you be accountable to? Do you have a service desk manager or operations manager that you can be accountable to? Perhaps you have a business partner and you can keep each other on the straight and narrow. What about your spouse, your other half? Could you be accountable to them for getting things done? Especially when the price of not getting those things done has an impact back on the family? I’d be really interested to know who you could be accountable to within your business.

Would you risk being arrested just to win new clients for your MSP? Sometimes when you have no money to market your business it can feel like you’re never going to achieve anything. I was in exactly this situation once and the craziest thing happened as a result of it. I did nearly get arrested. Let me tell you how.

This is a lesson in lateral thinking and how powerful it is to have zero marketing budget.

So jump in the DeLorean with me, it’s 2002 and I’m running a music radio station in the city of Peterborough here in the UK. And in the years before I joined the station had taken a real battering from its competitors. So my brief was to build up the audience again, and just to test me, the large media group that owned the station gave me this budget – ZERO DOLLARS. Now I can see that that was a blessing because it taught me the power of bootstrapping, where we had to do our marketing using only the existing resources we had in the station. And I learned so many valuable business lessons from that.

The way you market a radio station is different from the way you market an MSP. You need an easy direct marketing strategy such as my three step lead generation system – build audiences, grow relationships, and convert relationships – you can learn more about that @mspmarketingedge.com. But for radio marketing 20 plus years ago, it was all about just getting the name and the address out there. The name of the station, the type of the music it played, and the FM frequency. Yes, I’m that old, I worked on an FM radio station. In fact, I started my career on a medium wave on an AM radio station, please someone get me a walking stick.

Anyway, back in the day we did car stickers, we had a couple of promotional vehicles, but I couldn’t afford billboards or any kind of paid advertising, and yet I wanted to dominate the city. And then one day someone on my team came up with the most brilliant idea ever. We were discussing how dirty the pavements (AKA the sidewalks) were in our city and how they needed a good jet wash, like a pressure wash. And one of my colleagues joked, maybe we should clean them. And then another colleague said, what if we did clean them? But we used a template so it left behind our logo in the street.

That was such a good idea at the time, and today this actually has a name, it’s called Clean Advertising. It’s very clever, isn’t it? And the internet agrees it’s legal, at least here in the UK, because all you’re doing is cleaning the pavement, cleaning the sidewalk, you just happening to leave some of the dirt behind. But when we actually did this all over the city in 2002, the local council had a different idea. In fact, they went berserk. Perhaps it was because we’d shown everyone how dirty the streets were. I got a series of daily angry phone calls. In fact, one council officer even threatened to send the police to arrest me for vandalism, which is just hilarious. And I didn’t take those threats seriously.

Unlike the time the Diplomatic Protection police in London were actually going to arrest me because of a radio publicity stunt that we did at an embassy. But that’s a story of total stupidity best saved for another day. Anyway, to complete the story loop. Yes, the audience grew and actually that stunt kickstarted the best two years of my radio career, including winning a Sony award, which is like the UK radio equivalent of an Oscar.

So how can this story help your MSP? Well, as I said at the start, this is a lesson in lateral thinking and actually how powerful it is to have zero marketing budget. You don’t need money to market your MSP, you just need a desire to get new clients, some ideas, and a little time to implement.

Featured guest: Dawn Sizer is a CEO and technologist with security, training, and policy specialisations.  She holds an MBA in IT, as well as standard certifications while still making technical information relatable for any audience. She sits on Partner Advisory Councils of the top Distributors, Security, and Cyber Insurance companies in the space, as well as The Channel Company for Xchange events.

Dawn has been married for 29 years to her husband and partner in everything. They have two young men, a fuzzy eared dog named Pilot, and a crazy pittie named Odin.

Nothing’s more inspirational than hearing how other MSPs have beaten the odds and turned their business into a success and I’ve got another great example for you right now. This MSP is sharing the warts and all story of how she grew her business, including how it really took off when she put in place a proper marketing system.

Hi, I’m Dawn Sizer, CEO of 3rd Element.

And thank you so much for joining me on this show, Dawn. You and I actually started a conversation like seven or eight months ago. We were both at ScaleCon ‘24 in Las Vegas and we were going up in Kevin Clunes sort of after conference party thing where there’s this big wheel that goes round like an observation wheel in Las Vegas. And we were having a really good conversation and then got split off into separate groups to go into separate pods. And it’s taken us seven months to jump back on and continue that conversation. I can’t even remember what we were talking about.

Yeah, it was all over the place. And I think what we probably should have realised at the time, they gave us these cool little coloured bracelets and we probably should have said, Hey, our bracelets are different colours, we should probably fix this.

And steal someone else’s bracelet. We know to do that, I know Kevin Clone listens to this podcast so Kevin, when you do your after conference stuff at ScaleCon ‘25, which I’m definitely going to when that’s announced anyway, then yeah we’ll have to do that this year.

So thank you for joining me on the podcast, Dawn. Tell us a little bit about you. We’re going to be talking about getting marketing done and how as an MSP, the hardest thing in the world sometimes is just getting started with your marketing, keeping that marketing going, and turning a series of difficult activities into a system so that you do it regularly. And I know that’s something that you’ve got pretty good at. So just tell us a little bit about you. What’s your MSP business owning story and sort of bring us from where you started up to where you are today.

So this is a 20 year tale, believe it or not, we started this business 20 years ago. I literally worked at another service provider previously to this, I was a service manager there and quit my job one day and started the company the next. So it was one of those things where I couldn’t take it anymore, was pretty sure that we can do it better, and here we are 20 years later. So that’s the history of it in a nutshell.

I love that. So 20 years ago, we’re talking 2005, I guess, did you start out doing break/fix or did you jump straight into the recurring revenue?

We jumped straight into the recurring revenue, which was not necessarily a thing at that time. More context around that, my husband and I both worked for the same service provider before that. We started this business together. So we literally had two household incomes at nothing for a year and a half. So we had no other choice then for this to work.

I mean you must’ve been one of the first MSPs I guess in terms of actually getting people onto recurring revenue contracts and taking that bigger view, which obviously everyone has today. That must’ve been so scary with both of you quitting your job. I quit my job probably about the same time actually, 2005 and started my first business and I earned very little for the first few months, but my wife at the time was still bringing in her income, so it wasn’t quite as scary for me. And we didn’t have kids or anything at that point. But yeah, for both of you, that must’ve been touch and go I guess at some points.

Yeah, I mean apparently we thought it would just be a fantastic idea to have a mortgage payment and kids and everything else. Who does that?

Yeah, exactly. So 20 years on, what kind of business do you have now? How many technicians do you have and whereabouts are you based by the way?

We’re in central Pennsylvania, right next to Amish country, the epitome of technology. But as far as we are, I believe 18 people, most of us are technical at this point. I think we only have three or four people that are not technical.

Okay. So the vast majority of the business is obviously there to deliver clients, but I know that you spend a great deal of your time bringing on board new clients or trying to find new business. So let’s talk about marketing. Now this is a recurring theme, this podcast has been going well over five years and a recurring theme is that MSPs find marketing hard. What was the point where you realised if you want to grow the business, you’ve got to get good at marketing?

Probably about three or four years ago. And it’s not like I didn’t know marketing was important before that. I think we have all lit money on fire on marketing over the last couple of years in some way, shape or form. You throw money at one thing and that doesn’t work and you throw money at another thing and that doesn’t work, and I think we’ve all had that scenario. Then I ended up talking with some folks that just do marketing for a living and really listening to what they were telling me. 

It’s very difficult to take the language that we use every day and put it into a different lens for a client to understand it.

So we hired a group to do that for us. We had our messaging that was very clear, very concise, very effective. So I think that was step one, getting that message very clear and effective.

And what difference did you see from being able to communicate to the ordinary business owners and managers that you wanted to influence? What was the difference you saw from being able to say to them, this is what we do and this is what’s in it for you, these are the benefits?

Literally, that’s what it was. So you could take all the, I don’t want to say word vomit, that we throw at people of this is what we do. And then they were able to come back and say, oh, now I understand exactly what it is that you do, and I understand how it applies to me. So I think that was a huge leap forward.

And how did that make going on and then doing other marketing or actually sort of implementing marketing easier?

So the framework that we had gotten back gave us all of the language that we needed to use on repeat over and over and over again. So I was able to take that and incorporate the language into everything from landing pages to handouts that we’re giving folks, to web pages, to social media marketing, anything around language that you’re going to use. I was able to take it, copy it, adjust it, run it through Copilot, do whatever you need to do and have it be repeatable.

Got it. And at the risk of putting words in your mouth, and please do disagree with me if this is not the case, but was it a case that once you got that messaging really clear and you’d simplified it down and knew exactly what to say and how to say, you just then kept repeating that and tried not to deviate off that? Because I think the risk is sometimes that when you’ve got something like that, you’ve got a clear message, you run it out for six months and you almost get bored of it yourself, don’t you? Because you’ve seen it 1000, 2000, 3000 times, but you forget that the people you are reaching have seen it once, maybe twice

100%, you’ll get sick of it, there’s no doubt about it. What I have found, there are some products out there that you can actually input your brand voice into. So that messaging that you have very clear and what it looks like and the words that you’re using on repeat, you can enter that into their AI function and it will repeat some of that language for you as well. So you’re not stuck writing it on your own. So you’re going to get, okay, here’s my brand voice. I need you to create a thing that looks like this, but use my brand voice and it’ll just go back through it. And then all you have to do is humanise it after that.

Yeah. I love that. So let’s talk about other practical marketing. So you’ve now got a very clear message, you know what it is you want to communicate. What did you find were some of the most effective ways to reach decision makers and what were some of the least effective ways?

Spray and pray is the least effective. I think we’ve all done that. Pay per click is something that I haven’t had success with. Some of the marketing agencies that we’ve used that have been not MSP friendly have not been as on target as well. So sometimes I thought, well, maybe if we thought outside the box, that would work better and it didn’t. Sometimes it was like, okay, well let’s go back in the box and that necessarily didn’t work either. So there’s definitely a method to the madness, and I think we have finally found the method to the madness, and it is repeatable process, not who you use, not what you use. But it’s repeatable process over and over again. You have to touch people so many different times in order for it to be effective.

Yeah, this is just music to my ears because you are absolutely right, and I’ve been preaching for years, set up a marketing system, set up small marketing actions or tasks, ideally things you can get other people to do for you. And then just make sure those things happen every day or every week or every month, however often they get repeated. And then just do that for 10 years. And you’re absolutely right, you can Google this, how many touch points does it take to turn someone from a prospect to a client. And you’ll see answers from seven up to 50, and I think the answer is like 500. It’s because actually the way that people buy these days, and especially how they buy managed services, something ordinary business owners don’t understand is it will take a number of emails that they read of yours, maybe a number of podcast episodes if you put those out, a number of videos that you watch, a number of phone calls, a number of messages on LinkedIn or emails or a number of, I mean, there’s so many other ways of touch pointing someone. What are some of the things that you are using now? So if we jump back to today and you were to pick out the top three tactics that work best for you as part of your system. Let me change that question. What are the three that you would not want me to take away from you? That’s probably the right question to ask.

Email sequencing is a big one. I do like that. I do like to be able to track and see who’s clicking on what and what that looks like. So I am still a numbers person at the end of the day, and I don’t know if that’s good or not good. I don’t know that there’s a real method to that madness, if you will. But the KPI piece to it, I want to be able to see of the, in this case, it was 2,600 emails that I sent out, how many people clicked on them, how many people opened them? What does that look like? And then when they did a thing, when I’ve sent them another email based on off of an action that they did, what was my open rate? Well, it turned out my open rate was like 98.7% or something crazy. So it was really good. So I’m getting really good traction in places, so taking away my KPIs would make me cry.

So email sequencing one, what else could I take away and make you cry?

Landing pages are another one. I think it’s really good if you have an asset, a giveaway or something along those lines to set up a landing page for somebody to go get that particular piece of content, whether, again, whether it’s an ebook or a white paper, whatever it is. But not only are you grabbing their information on that, and even if it’s just their first name and an email address so that you can send them something later, but it’s a touch point. That particular person has gone to that page, you know they’ve interacted with it, they thought it was important enough to go get it. So you know that you have somebody that’s interested at that point and you can nurture them along for a little while. So that would be another one. And then the last one I think is any type of CRM. If you don’t have a CRM to be able to do any of these things, and whether it’s put email out, do social media, get any type of reporting, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

And I’m going to have to ask you which CRM you use. I don’t particularly, I was going to say don’t care, of course I care about your answer, but I’m not that interested in the answer. But I know that every MSP listening to this would want me to ask that question. So you obviously have a successful marketing machine you’ve set up, which CRM are you using?

So we were using HubSpot for a while, and I think that works really, really well. We needed some additional capability and we switched over to Insightly at the beginning of the year. So I don’t know that there’s a good answer, right? I think everybody does things a little bit differently and there may be pieces or parts to certain CRMs that make more sense to one MSP over another.

Yeah. I always say to MSPs, pick a CRM something you like, stick with that. And then maybe a few years down the line, review it and check it. We were with Keap pretty much since I started the business in 2016. And we are currently migrating to HubSpot. And HubSpot’s like a thousand times better than Keap. But there are still some things I miss from Keap. I miss their ways of working, the way they structure data. HubSpot is obviously a whole different beast. I do miss the bill. The Keap Bill is perhaps a fifth of what the HubSpot bill is, but I can do a lot more with it. So there we go. But anyway, you’re absolutely right, whichever CRM you choose, just pick one, stick with it, review it a few years down the line, almost like treat your marketing stack like your tech stack. Don’t be constantly fiddling with it, but just pick something and stick with it.

Okay, Dawn, final question for you. You have built up a true marketing machine. I know it’s working wonders for your business. You’re bringing in new clients, you’re nurturing prospects all the time. And I know that you’ve obviously done that the hard way over a number of years, you got very clear on your brand voice, you got very clear on the messaging, but you’ve then done the hard work and you’ve put in place all of these things like the ones you were just talking about. What would you say to an MSP who’s listening to this, who desires great marketing but hasn’t really got started with it yet? What’s the motivation that they need just to get started?

There is no motivation to get started, you just have to do it. I think to be fair, as a business owner I think all of us are eat the frog people, right? There’s always a task that nobody ever wants to do, and you just have to force yourself to go do it. Marketing was one of those things for me. If anybody’s ever seen me speak, especially if they’re watching me speak about automation, I actually talk about how marketing is one of the pieces that I’ve automated in some respects because I dislike it so much. And it’s not because I truly dislike it, it’s that I find it fiddly. I find all of the nuances to it difficult because I’m a technical person. So I think it’s just more a matter of just get started, do one thing at a time, and then add something else to it and something else and something else. And eventually you create a little machine out of it. Automate as much as you can, and when in doubt, outsource what you can.

Thank you, Dawn, for your time today. And I know you have a community which is for MSPs, which helps them with their business. Do you want to tell us just a little bit about that community and how we can either join it or get in touch with you?

Absolutely. So for those of you that aren’t aware of the Tech Degenerates, by all means go take a look. We’re on the web, you’ll find us on LinkedIn, as well as Facebook and all the other normal social media things. You may have seen us at IT Nation over in the UK or in the United States, but either way, it’s a great community of other MSP owners, and we’d love to see you there. And that website to visit is thetechdegenerates.com

Luke in Connecticut where his MSP is based, has this question: Should I use WhatsApp in my marketing?

There are only a few MSPs doing this at the moment, that I’m aware of anyway, and if you’re using it please let me know. But I think using WhatsApp as a marketing channel has huge potential in the near future. And why, well, I don’t know about you, but about 80 to 90% of my own personal messaging is now done through WhatsApp. Here in the UK it’s very, very big. Although I do appreciate that’s not the case everywhere.

Here’s the thing though, it’s always sensible to try to reach people on the platforms they’re already using and very little commercial B2B messaging is currently done through WhatsApp. I know that is starting to change, and especially since a few years ago, Facebook rewrote all of the base code of all of its apps – Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, WhatsApp – and that was so they could more easily pass information around all of the different platforms. And there is of course a WhatsApp business app, which has an API. So the tools are there to use. It’s just a case then of how are you going to use them. Let me give you three ideas of how you could use WhatsApp within your MSP.

So number one, you could use it as a call to action on your website, literally, “WhatsApp us”. And there are apps that allow easy messaging via multiple platforms. Maybe WhatsApp is a bit of a consumer call to action, but you know what, if you’re in a country like the UK where people just use WhatsApp, then for them pressing a button or picking up their phone and WhatsApping a number is an easy thing for them to do. And if it’s easy, it removes friction and more people will talk to you.

Number two, you can share content with people. And of course you’d need their mobile number and they might be a bit resistant to giving that to you. So you can of course, spam them via their favourite and currently spam free messaging platform. And I do mean sending them messages on WhatsApp. I’m starting to get a little bit of spam now, maybe you are as well, but actually if you send high value content that’s relevant to people, that’s not as spammy.

And then number three for ticket updates to end users, people you are helping right now. And I know you’d probably rather just stick to email updates or ticket updates on your PSA platform or something they’ve logged into or whatever. But remember something I said earlier, it’s always sensible to try to reach people on the platforms they’re already using. So if WhatsApp is a big part of their life and you send them updates on your ticket via WhatsApp, that actually provides a better level of customer service, there’s so much less friction in that.

Now I’m going to be keeping a close eye on the B2B applications of this, and I will update you as more and more MSPs generate more use cases.

Welcome to Episode 288 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

Have no doubt, LinkedIn is the hottest place for MSPs to go prospecting right now. It’s been that way for a few years and I can’t see that changing.

Why? Because every possible prospect you could ever do business with is already there on LinkedIn. And you have access to the tools to connect with them, get your content in front of them, and ultimately build a relationship before they’re ready to switch MSPs.

The only snag with LinkedIn is that the algorithm changes and what worked a few years ago isn’t quite as powerful today.

Let me tell you three wins for MSPs on LinkedIn right now.

My team and I produce a lot of content intended for use on LinkedIn, and that’s for our MSP Marketing Edge members. Now of course, it can be used across lots of different social networks, but as I just said, LinkedIn is it. It’s the easiest and most accessible platform to access decision makers, the ordinary business owners and managers that you want to reach. And a couple of times a year, we do a bit of a deep dive on what’s going on in the algorithm at the moment. Because as you know on LinkedIn, the performance of your content is very much dependent on what the algorithm is trying to reward at that time. And you can see this change over the years if you use the platform regularly, In fact, any platform. I’ve noticed in the last few months that engagement in my Facebook groups has completely fallen off a cliff. And that’s nothing I’ve done and it’s nothing to do with the members of those groups, it’s just something that someone, somewhere, some vice president at Facebook has tweaked the algorithm and if I wait a few weeks, that engagement will come back. This has happened five or six times over the last 10 years or so. But anyway, back to LinkedIn and these are some of the wins that we’ve noticed from our research which are making a difference right now. I’ve got three of them for you.

Win number one is to upload a PDF carousel. PDFs are performing very well on LinkedIn. They actually look beautiful when you see them in your feed on LinkedIn and they’re kind of easy to use as well, you just upload a document. The trick is to have carousels with many pages, aim for around about 12 pages, but each page only has a tiny amount of information on it. I mean, I’m talking literally like one sentence, half a sentence on each page. The idea is that people tap through to see something that you’re trying to say and you just say it one sentence at a time. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap 12 pages or more on your PDF carousel.

Win number two is to write longer human comments. So that means when you are commenting on other people’s posts, you write something of substance, not just Hey, great post. In fact, if you write more than 10 words, that can have up to two times the impact of a comment with less than 10 words. But please don’t use AI for commenting. It’s kind of obvious when you’ve just written something with AI. The goal is to actually say something and use your authentic voice and your authentic personality.

And then finally win number three, and this is a weird one, you should like your own post. So you post something on LinkedIn and you like it. That does feel very weird, I’ve done it myself, feels very strange to do. But from all the research that we’ve done looking around and remember, we don’t know what LinkedIn’s algorithm is, all we’ve got is based on what people are seeing, and if you see lots of trends across the web, then the chances are that that’s the way the algorithm has worked. So we believe there is an algorithmic benefit right now of you liking your own post.

Same, same, same.

I look at lots of MSP’s websites and they all look the same.

But so what, is that a problem? Is there a link between an MSP’s samey looking website and the ability to find new clients and earn more money? And if there is a link, what can be done about it?

Let’s unpack the connection between sales and your website, find a simple solution to fix bad websites and how you can easily differentiate from the 40,000 other MSPs out there.

It’s hard to differentiate your MSP from your competitors, but one way that you can do this is by making sure there’s real personality in all of your marketing.

I got something by email a few weeks back that’s really made me smile. It’s from a UK gifting website, I think I bought something from them. And sure this is a consumer example rather than B2B, but it’s certainly different.

The subject line of the email I received said, You’ve got a message from the big boss. And then the content says Hello, I just wanted to say hi, and thank you for signing up to our newsletter. I’m Philip, I’m the boss of Firebox (that’s the name of the company) and you won’t hear loads from me because I’m super busy and important, (I thought that was nice), but I thought I’d let you know that we’ll now be sending you 48 emails a week (and then actually they’d cross that out and replaced it with) we’ll be sending you the occasional roundup of the coolest new stuff we’ve found plus exclusive offers only available to subscribers.

Okay, so that might not be to your personal liking, but it’s very consistent with the style of the Firebox website and their emails. It’s all packed with personality and we can assume it’s the personality of Philip, the boss. There are some MSP examples that I’ve come across over the years that get that personality across in exactly the same way. And the first one that jumps to mind is Christian Fleming of Northstar IT here in the UK. He’s been on the podcast in the past and his marketing is themed all around Star Trek.

His commitment to that theme is very impressive, and I know it gives him a massive advantage in a very busy marketplace because it’s really easy for business owners and managers to say, Hey, you’re the Star Trek IT guys. Does it put off some people? Well, yes, of course it will. But that’s a good thing because when you turn off some people, you automatically attract other people. You want people to have an opinion about your MSP that’s been formed through your marketing. And it’s better that they have an opinion, in fact a negative or a positive opinion about you, than no opinion at all.

Here in the UK we call this Marmite marketing. So Marmite is this delicious food spread and you either love it or hate it. It’s made from yeast extract. Well, Marmite has actually been using that “love it or hate it” as their marketing slogan since 1996. If your marketing is bland, you’re making it too hard for people to form an opinion about you. And seeing as decision makers pick a new MSP based on how they feel about them, if they can’t form an opinion on you, you’re making it too hard for them to pick you.

My final thoughts on this, if you’re going to put personality into your marketing, it must be an authentic personality, and that probably means your personality. This isn’t something that your website designer can invent for you. It’s not something your marketing agency can create. The personality in your marketing must be authentic and it must be consistent. And that’s really easy to do when it’s based on a real human, like you.

Featured guest: Matt Yesbeck is a seasoned technology professional with 28 years of experience in the Richmond, VA tech industry. Over nearly three decades, he has built a reputation for delivering strategic IT solutions, streamlining business operations, and empowering organisations through technology.

Driven by an entrepreneurial mindset, he and his son Gage founded MSPX (www.mspx.store) to provide innovative contract marketplace for managed service providers (MSPs). Recognising a growing need for dedicated Apple and Microsoft IT support for SMBs, he launched Yesteck IT Services (www.yesteck.io) in 2024. As co-founder, he leads business development, marketing, and sales, ensuring Yesteck delivers responsive, expert-level IT solutions that businesses can rely on.

Thanks to technology, everything in our lives is easier, but ironically, not so much for MSPs. Why can’t the process of finding new clients be as simple and hassle-free as ordering on Amazon or selling old clothes on Vinted? And to make matters worse, if you’ve got a client but they’re no longer a good fit, what do you do with them?

Well, would you believe it, there’s now an eBay for MSP clients, a hassle-free way to buy and sell unwanted managed service contracts. It’s a world first and you need to hear about this.

Hi, I am Matt Yesbeck. I’m the co-founder of MSPX, the internet’s first marketplace for the buying and selling of managed services contracts.

And I’ve been looking forward to this interview for weeks and weeks, Matt. You and I, we connected on LinkedIn, we were chatting about some stuff and you said to me, Hey, we’ve come up with this idea and I’d love to come and talk about it on your podcast. And we’re at a minimum viable product, but we’ve got this brand new version coming out in the summer. And I’ll be honest, I get a lot of pitches on LinkedIn, people that want to come on this podcast, but there was something about what you’ve created that made me think, do you know what, this is genuinely a brand new idea. I’ve never heard this before and I know that there’s going to be some MSPs out there that will listen to this or watch this on YouTube and think, Hang on a second, this is the answer to the problem that we’ve got.

So what we’re going to do in this interview, Matt, is we’re going to explore what you’ve come up with, how you came up with the idea, what you are working on that’s going to be released later on this year and obviously we’ll talk about the benefits to MSPs as well. I feel like we’re in the lab, we’re in the R and D lab for this one, which is brilliant. So you and I should be wearing white coats right now, we should have clipboards and stuff.

So before we talk about you and the story and how you did it, give us a 30 second overview of what you’ve built and what someone can do on it. And I appreciate that you’re in the midst of you rebuilding it and building version two, but what’s the 30 second pitch for it?

MSPX is the internet’s first marketplace for the buying and selling of managed services contracts.

It gives MSPs and technology brokers the ability to buy and sell managed services contracts or entire books of business. That’s a platform that we’ve tried to unify through an otherwise very fragmented process. So we’re trying to pull that together into a unified platform.

I love it. And what I particularly love is that like all good products or good ideas, it wasn’t just something you sat in a bar one day brainstorming ideas, it came out of a problem that you and your family came across. So tell us the story.

Well, doesn’t the saying go that necessity is the mother of all invention, and that truly is exactly how this idea was sparked in our head. So my business partner and son is also in technology. While I’ve been working in the technology industry for now 28 years, he came out of college in 2018. So he was several years into his local MSP when they had promoted him to a managed services director. And one of his first tasks was to essentially apply the pumpkin plan and prune contracts that are overworked and underperforming from a financial perspective.

He identified six or seven or so contracts that needed to be cut loose. He just could not find a way to do that cleanly where he didn’t want to leave the customer in the lurch, possibly cause bad word of mouth in the area, which we know for any MSP our word of mouth is our lifeblood so we don’t want to risk any bad feelings. And then of course, there’s no way to really monetise that contract before you let it go. I have met very few MSPs that have actually successfully put a process of their own in place that allows them to not only successfully transition or successfully offload their customer, but then to give them other options in the area.

So with that aside, we couldn’t find anything, there was no unifying internet marketplace that would allow him to be able to list these contracts for sale to be picked up by another MSP, either in our own backyard or nationally if it’s a contract that could be serviced remotely. And so he came to me and said, Hey dad, I’ve been thinking about this. What do you think? And I did my own research and I was 12 pages deep in the Google search results and saw nothing and I’m like, I think we have something here, so let’s go ahead and start developing it. So we spent six months developing it in the summer of 2023. We went live with it in January ‘24. And so what you’ll see now at www.MSPX.store is our minimally viable product and proof of concept.

I love it. And most people would have an idea like that, do some research and say, oh, this is a good idea, someone should do that. And there are very few people, and a lot of us think we’re entrepreneurial, but we’re really not because I probably have two, three good ideas a week, but I choose not to act on those ideas because I know that there’s a world of pain. I know that there’s a thousand hour investment that goes into it.

And not only that, Paul, but also if you’re anything like me in terms of ideas, I’ll come up with a couple of ideas myself and I’ll go to the web and do a search, or I’ll open my iPhone and go to the app store and lo and behold, it’s already there. So most of the ideas that I come up with are nothing new. So that’s what was so intriguing about this is that it actually really truly was something new.

And that’s what I most love about this. So let’s explore use cases for this. So when you and I were first discussing this on LinkedIn my first thought was, Who would actually do that? And then the very next day I had a conversation with an MSP who said, I’ve got this client, they’re an old break/fix client that we got onto a contract but it’s bottom dollar and they’re high hassle, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I thought there’s one use case of the client that you’re going to fire, have they got some kind of value? So I’m sure you’ve thought this through in great detail. So give us some ideas of the different use cases that you’d use MSPX for.

So let’s say you’re an MSP and now you’re three, four, five years into your business, as we all know because I have my own MSP that we just started back in June ‘24, initially you’ll take on two, three, four, five, seven seat contracts because you need to start bringing in that MRR for your business, you got to pay those expenses. Well, maybe three or four years down the road now maybe your minimum seat count is 15 or 20, but you’ve still got those initial four or five customers that are small seats and haven’t grown to hit that number yet and maybe aren’t projected to, maybe that’s just how their business is structured and they’re going to stay small.

So with that being the case, that’s a great example of where someone might go back and analyse their book of business four or five years down the road and say, These don’t make sense for us anymore. It doesn’t follow our new direction, our business model, our minimum standards. List it on the marketplace, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure to put it very layman’s term. And there are going to be solopreneurs all over the country that are one man sprint van kind of show, and they would love to take on those two and three and five seat customers. That makes sense for them. So that’s one use case.

Whole books of business, there’s several MSPs that are basically working a lifestyle business where it might be just them or them and one other person, and they’ve got 15 or so contracts. They’ve had them now for 15 or 20 years and they’re ready to exit the business. And then they realise that maybe their business isn’t actually worth as much as they thought it was. And I’ll tell you, I heard a staggering statistic the other day is that for every three businesses, MSPs that just shut their doors, there’s only one that actually gets acquired through an M and A process. So we have a three to one ratio of businesses just closing their doors versus actually getting that book of business bought. So now instead of just shutting the door and walking away, now you have the marketplace to go and either unload those contracts individually or sell that as an entire book of business.

And the same can be true for M and A brokers who might be brokering a sale and they’re representing a seller. They hired a buyer, the buyer says, we love the company, they’ve got a hundred contracts, but we only want 70 of them because these 30 are VoIP contracts, we don’t want to touch VoIP. We don’t want to be in that business. And so the seller would either have to lose that revenue or tell the broker to move on and find another potential buyer. Well, in this instance, brokers are really liking it because now they can list those unwanted contracts, they can divest them on the marketplace, let that deal go through, and then when those contracts sell, then that broker can cut a check to the seller and everyone walks away clean. So there are a lot of use cases for this and probably some I’m not even thinking of, but we’ll get there.

Yeah, I’m sure you will. I’m sure people will start to use it in ways that make you think, Oh, that’s a new thing, that’s a great idea. Let’s compare this to eBay, and I appreciate that eBay is a wholly different platform, but when I first got onto eBay in 2001, and I know that because that’s in my username on eBay, which I’m still using now in 2025, which is hilarious. And back in 2001, eBay was very basic, really. It was just a place where buyers and sellers met. And obviously fast forward 24 years, it’s 2025, eBay has a million competitors, a million other places you can sell stuff and buy stuff. And so eBay these days has a whole load of tools it talks you through. It just makes it easy, doesn’t it? Makes it, you want to sell something, it’s actually really easy because it does a lot of the work for you. So where is MSPX positioned? Is it simply a case of we’re just a marketplace where people can go, or are you advising people on pricing, are you advising them on contracts on how to make it legally binding on how not to get ripped off, all of that stuff?

Yes, excellent question. I will say our current minimally viable product does not have any of that, but version 2.0 that will be launched later this summer, actually it does have those things. We’ve taken those things into consideration. We want to instill buyer confidence, we want to instill seller confidence. We want to make the whole process as smooth as possible. So with that, we do have some AI that’s going to be driving some of these contract valuations and contract best matches versus the MSP profiles that have signed up but are in the marketplace. We’ll have access to all that data so we can leverage AI to be able to not only value the contract, but do a matchmaking process of sorts. Now, that’s not to say you can’t do your own matchmaking, you certainly can, but there will be suggestions in there for that to kind of walk you through that process. So yes, that is certainly coming in version 2.

I love it. And just finally, Matt, just give us a brief preview into other stuff that you’re working on in version two. I’m guessing you’ve taken a thousand ideas and now you’ve just got a roadmap them into what you can actually do.

We’re trying to bake them all into version 2 for sure. As I said, we’re going to have some AI driven valuation and matchmaking in terms of contracts versus the MSPs out there that would probably be best suited for that. We’re going to be bringing in a rating system. Now, it’s not going to be an open dialogue box where you can just type away, but it is going to be five very pointed questions with a five star rating, and we will send that to both the buyer and seller after the transaction. That way, although we will be doing vetting when an MSP signs up to enter the platform, we also want those MSPs to be able to start building their own reputation within the community itself. And so that’s why we really want MSPs to put their best foot forward in terms of selling and buying and being as respectful and transparent to one another as possible. So we’ll have that rating system coming.

There are a few other things that I don’t want to mention right now because I don’t know that they’re going to make it into the second revision. But in terms of what we’re looking at as far as access to the marketplace, right now it’s a subscription base solely where it’s $1,500 a year to hit the marketplace. With that, it puts really all the risk on the MSP because what if they sign up, pay that fee and get in and there aren’t any contracts or there aren’t any contracts that are likable for them. So that puts the risk on the MSP. We wanted to take that risk and shift it, so what we’re going to do is we’re going to have a very minimal subscription fee, and we’re going to be taking a percentage of the transaction. That way that puts all of the risk largely on us to make sure that the marketplace is full of available contracts. So essentially in version 2.0, we’re going to have a restructured fee access to the marketplace.

I love it. Matt, congratulations. What’s your son’s name, by the way?

My son’s name is Gage.

Well done Matt and Gage, you’ve had an idea, you’ve seen it through and now you’re actually iterating it, which is just brilliant. So I want to get you back on the podcast, let’s say the middle of next year, backend of 2026. Let’s hear about what you’re doing with version three, which I’m sure you can’t even contemplate thinking about today, but that’s just brilliant. So remind us again what it’s called, what’s the URL, and for any MSPs who’ve got questions, because there’s bound to be people who listen to this or watch this on YouTube and just want to know more, how can they get in touch with you?

Yeah, so the URL is www.mspx.store. Again, the name of the company is the Managed Services Public Exchange or MSPX for short. And what you’ll see now again, is the minimally viable product. We’re probably going to be closing that door here soon, the marketplace soon, and just putting up a blurb on the landing page to let you know to be expecting 2.0. We just don’t want any more MSPs to be logging into the original MVP because there’s a much better experience coming. If you need to get hold of me, if you have any questions in terms of buying and selling of contracts and you want to learn more about the marketplace, I can be reached at [email protected]

Steve from an MSP based in Massachusetts has a common question about social media. He asked: How often should I post on LinkedIn?

Posting regularly on social media is normal, desirable, and encouraged by the algorithms. Social media, including LinkedIn is so disposable that you need to be in front of people all the time.

A good rule of thumb is to post one thing every 24 hours. But what should you post every day? Well, when it comes to LinkedIn, the general rule of thumb for content is: your own highly personalised “real” content is better than… canned content (like you get from my MSP Marketing Edge service), is better than… nothing.

So if you can do your own content, do that. If you haven’t got that every day, then get a service in like the MSP Marketing Edge. And the alternative is to do nothing and not be as active on LinkedIn. But you want to try and post a piece of content every 24 hours.

Welcome to Episode 287 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

So you’re an MSP trying to find new clients and also increase revenue from your existing clients. Well tell me, have you heard about the hot new opportunity – Windows 10? Yeah, you heard that, right? But how could talking about an old, soon to be obsolete operating system be good for your MSP? Is this a credible way to win new clients or upsell your existing clients? Let’s find out about the Windows 10 end of life marketing opportunity.

Five months. That’s what we’ve got until Windows 10 reaches its end of life and it’s been with us a decade you know, it first launched in 2015. Will you be sad to see it go or are you already a big fan of Windows 11? Anyway, that’s kind of irrelevant to this conversation, and I know that loads of MSPs still miss XP. I’m kind of joking there, although do you?

But what we’re talking about here is using Windows 10 as a marketing opportunity, not only to win new clients but also to upsell your existing clients. You see anytime there’s a big enforced change in the marketplace, like a major operating system reaching its end of life, that creates an opportunity for you. And one of the key things in marketing is always putting yourself in the shoes of the person that you are trying to reach and influence.

For an ordinary business owner or manager, Windows 10 reaching its end of life is going to be a bit of a shock to them in October.

Not for you and me, they announced the 2025 end of life date four years ago can you believe. But what’s big in our world and surrounds us every day does not surround ordinary business owners and managers. And you and I both know that there will be many, many people running their businesses on Windows 10 with no idea that this is coming. And maybe their MSP or their break/fix outfit has told them, but they weren’t listening or they’ve ignored it and ignored it and ignored it, and then suddenly it’s October 2025 and it’s crept up on them.

So what’s the best way to tackle this for prospects and for existing clients? Well, let’s look at those separately. And the easiest way to start is with the prospects. Now, I’m guessing you as an MSP have a preferred route forward at this point, in terms of what to do after Windows 10. So many MSPs will want their clients to upgrade to Windows 11. I do know a few MSPs that are still trying to hang on to Windows 10, and let’s not get into a technical conversation about that because that’s not really what this podcast is for. But I guess for your existing clients who are still on Windows 10, their routes forward are either upgrading to Windows 11 or of course paying for the extended security updates.

I truly believe that as their MSP it’s down to you to educate them about their choice and the pros and cons of each one. Then give them a recommendation based on your relationship with them and what you think is going to be best for them. Now, this will be a great time to set up meetings with your existing clients to actually have that conversation. And there’s no point leaving it till September as suddenly everything becomes a rush and an emergency if they want to get off Windows 10 before it reaches end of life.

At this time of year with a roundabout five months to go, I would book yourself either Zooms or real life meetings with your existing clients to review how many devices they’ve got that are still running Windows 10. And obviously you’re going to know that in advance if you’re all over your asset management, but I would have that conversation with them now. And yes, that could generate some nice project work for you, but the bigger picture is that you are helping your client to stay ahead of the curve.

If they insist on staying with Windows 10 and paying for the extended security updates, as frustrating as that might be for you, that’s up to them. And I’m sure you have a very clear opinion about how that’s going to affect your relationship and the level of support that you’re able to offer to them in the next couple of years. But the key thing with any conversation like this that you are having with existing clients is about protecting the long-term relationship, and making sure that your client is happy and well protected so that they will still be with you in 10 years time. That’s the most important thing.

Let’s talk about using this change to win new clients. I believe it’s a similar opportunity in terms of educating people about the pros and cons. Although because you don’t have a working relationship yet with new clients, with people who are prospects today, you would go about it differently. So let me tell you what we’ve done in our MSP Marketing Edge service because that might give you some ideas.

We’ve put together a whole bunch of materials which we actually delivered to our members just a few days ago. And those materials are designed to help them catch the attention of leads and prospects and educate them about what’s happening and what the implications are of the end of life of Windows 10. So we put together a full educational guide. There’s a video, there’s a whole email sequence, there’s some social media content, there’s a postcard which can be sent out in the mail and a full direct mail and a multi-step follow-up sequence. That seems like a lot when you put it all together in one box like that, but my goal when putting this together with my team was to give our members the flexibility of lots and lots of different materials that they can choose from.

The important thing now is that they work their audiences that they’ve built up and get these materials in front of them, and that’s their audiences of leads and prospects as well as their existing clients. So they should be putting stuff about Windows 10 onto LinkedIn, sending out messages on LinkedIn, sending out emails, and especially shipping stuff in the mail to prospects whose addresses they have. And let’s be honest, it’s super easy to find any prospects address these days. Because if you remember the context that the average business owner or manager is not aware of this, it’s not on their radar, and therefore they’re not going to take action, this is a potentially massive opportunity for you.

This change is coming whether they like it or not. So really as the educator, as the expert, the local tech authority, you should jump on this and educate as many local business owners and managers as you can. And sure a ton of them are still going to leave their head in the sand and they’re not going to listen to you or any other MSP talking about this. But for some who suddenly notice that the technology that they run their entire business on is going to be obsolete from October, that will trigger some of them to want to do something about it. And they’re very likely to want to do that with the person that’s educated them, which should be you.

Tell me, are you in the 1% club. The 1% of MSPs who actually enjoy calling leads and prospects on the phone trying to find new business? Are you, no? Alright, well therefore I take it you’re in the 99% of MSPs that really struggle with this because for many it’s about the hell of getting past the gatekeeper. That person who seems to take enormous pleasure in stopping you getting through to the person you really want to speak to.

But yes, it is possible to fix this to get through, past the gatekeeper most of the time. And it’s all thanks to cybersecurity.

Let’s find out how one cybersecurity question can get you past the gatekeeper and start a much more productive conversation.

This is short and super simple. When you phone people and you’re trying to get past the gatekeeper to speak to the decision maker, do not say the classic old line, Who’s responsible for your IT? Don’t say that. They have heard that a hundred or a thousand times before. And when they’ve heard something many times before, it’s very easy for them to fob you off, say that person’s not in, lie and fib and ultimately end the call. So instead say this, Who’s responsible for your cybersecurity?

I can pretty much guarantee they won’t have heard that one before. And when they haven’t heard something, it’s going to make them pause and then start to think. And I reckon that you’ll stand a better chance of getting through to someone with that question. So here it is again. Write this one down, use this one whenever anybody in your MSP is calling any lead or prospect. Who’s responsible for your cybersecurity?

Do try that one out, won’t you? And let me know how you get on. Oh, and if you are in that 1% club and you already phone leads and you love doing that, will you also let me know? What do you say to get past the gatekeeper?

Featured guest: Taylor Tabusa has spent over a decade in the email space, focusing on email delivery and authentication. And while that’s the case his path to cybersecurity and MSPs was not a straight line. Originally a winemaker, he spent years in Napa and Australia before pivoting into tech. After helping build and sell a recruiting software company that relied on email, he saw firsthand how critical DMARC is for ensuring messages reach the inbox and how difficult it was to enforce.

Recognising that DMARC was still manual and complex, Taylor co-founded Palisade to simplify deployment and make email security effortless at scale. Today, Palisade helps companies streamline DMARC management, reduce overhead, and protect their clients’ domains.

What are your views on DMARC? It’s just something that has to be done, right? A little email deliverability item to check off the list for your clients, but my guest today believes it can be so much more. In fact, he believes that DMARC is not just a pain for you. It can actually generate new leads and new revenue.

Hi, this is Taylor Tabusa at Palisade, one of the co-founders. We’re focused on DMARC and outbound email security.

And the exciting thing is Taylor, and thank you by the way for joining me on the podcast, the exciting thing is we’re going to talk today about how you could use DMARC for lead generation. And I wouldn’t have thought there’s a single MSP in the world who’s had that thought of, Hmm, DMARC something we’ve got to do, I wonder if we can use it to generate leads, but I know you have some really interesting ideas on that, which we’ll come to in the next couple of minutes or so. First of all, just tell us a little bit about you. So you are now one of the founders of Palisade, and we are obviously going to talk about what your business does and how it helps MSPs with DMARC, but how have you got to this position of founding your own business?

Man, long, long story, but I’ll try to shrink it down for you. But I’ve been in emails for the past 12 years. Previously, me and one of the co-founders here who’s now the CEO, we had a recruiting software. So we would get internships for students primarily in the US and Canada and the UK, and we would send them to Singapore, Beijing, Manila, so different locations around the world. We had tons of emails going out. I think at the highest we would be sending out about two and a half million a month of email marketing emails. And then for outbound emails, which was my job to get internships for students, we’d be sending about 10 to 20,000. So smaller, but still a lot of emails going out and DMARC and DNS and email deliverability and health was a huge part of our life. We sold that company in 2022 and then started hopping back into emails. We saw Google and Yahoo’s updates and requirement changes, and that kind of gave us a little impetus to keep the ball rolling.

Sure. So I guess you were starting this current company from the knowledge of you’ve been there sending out millions of emails and just contributing to the world’s email traffic, but I guess your entire business would live or die or make money or not make money based on your ability to actually get the emails in front of the right people. So essentially you’ve learned it the hard way, which is really cool. So what was the driving factor in starting this? Was it a case of providing a tool set or was it a case of actually we’ve got some knowledge here, how can we monetise that knowledge and help people along the way?

Yeah, that’s a great question. We created our company almost as a mini MSP, but just for DMARC, so like a DMARC service provider. And we were doing DMARC for SMEs, SaaS, financial companies, law firms, things like that, and really started driving in that direction and then found that a lot of the softwares we were using didn’t have X, Y, Z or had X, Y, Z, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. And we either niched down for enterprise niched up from SMB and built our software to focus everything into a nice lean package so that we could really take care of our customers quickly, easily, and efficiently. So that’s how we got into building the software. And then we were introduced to the MSP market from a large MSP here, and just kind of had the introduction to the whole channel from there.

Okay. Well, we’ll talk a little bit later in the interview about what your software does and how it helps MSPs, but let’s talk about MSP’s attitudes towards DMARC. So you talk to a lot of MSPs, obviously you are having that very narrow conversation about email deliverability. Do MSPs see it as an opportunity to help their clients? Do they see it as a duty? Do they see it as a pain, something that they have to do? It’s not something necessarily they want to do?

Yes, to all three. So some MSPs seem to bundle it in automatically when they onboard a customer or a client. Some, it’s something they’ve just set bare minimum and haven’t increased security and deliverability from there with stronger DMARC policies. It depends on a lot of how the MSP works, but a large thing we have heard is, yeah, it’s a pain to do one-to-one. So that’s kind of why we exist.

Yeah, absolutely. And right at the beginning of this interview I talked about that you had some ideas on using DMARC as a lead generation tool. Now we know that ordinary business owners and managers aren’t sitting there thinking, Oh, if only someone could help with my DMARC, because they don’t really know what that is, but how do you use something like this, which is one of those background but important things. How do you actually use this to drive new business into your MSP?

Yeah, so that’s a great point. The end user SMB company maybe has heard of DMARC, but they don’t know. What really matters to them is are my emails getting delivered? And that’s something that DMARC helps fix and prove and increase. So that’s how end users view it. How an MSP can view it is super cool too because they can solve that problem. We’ve all had kind of an issue where it’s like, oh my goodness, you have to use a different email address, you have to pick up a phone and be like, Hey, can you check your quarantine, can you check your spam folder for this email. And an MSP can hop in, fix that problem, fix the deliverability problems, and that’s a great way to start the relationship and build and start working with end companies.

Yeah. So let’s say you were working with an MSP and let’s say they hung on every word that you said, and you could wave a magic wand and just create the ultimate package, you could price it for them, you could create an offering. What would you recommend that they put together? How would they position it to business owners? What would the business owner come in and want? And I think you’ve kind of half answered the question when you said that no one wants DMARC, but they want their emails to be delivered.

Yeah, that’s a great question too. It’s really easy to package. So we have, and there’s a bunch of scanners, it’s public information, DNS settings for SPF, DMARC, DKIM, everything attributing to this email deliverability stuff. So you can scan the domain, for us we have a domain scanner that you can send directly to your customers, and that’s a great way to open a conversation, Hey, we notice that there are deficiencies, there’s a lot of red lights, there’s a lot of risk associated with your domain when it’s regards to emails. We can come in, we can help fix that, we can improve your email deliverability and improve your security at the same time.

So would you do that for new clients or would you say to MSPs, do this for your existing clients as part of that journey?

Great question. It depends on how the MSP is monetising and what they’ve done so far. But that risk analysis to use it as a lead gen tool first would be new clients. You could pop a domain in, generate report, send it to your current list of your newsletters, the people you met at your Chamber of Commerce, people we’ve met at different networking gatherings to say, Hey, there’s issues, we can fix it.

When it comes to current clients, there’s another great way too. You can generate reports, send it to them. The order of operations maybe are the same, but how you communicate it might be a little different. We noticed large scale vulnerabilities, these are the repercussions, these are the potential downsides when it comes to delivering emails, when it comes to potential liability. And this is if you’re a break fix shop, work order to fix it. If it’s a subscription and you’re doing it kind of as monthly, can just factor that in as well.

Yeah, that makes sense. And final question for you, Taylor. What would you say to an MSP listening to this or perhaps watching it on YouTube? Who says, Oh, come on, email deliverability, that’s so 2018, no one’s going to be interested in that. They just want us focus on cybersecurity. Is this still a valid thing that you can do in 2025 and a valid marketing and sales tool?

100%. Last we checked at the end of last year, the top 40 million domains, 6.5 had DMARC locked down. So that’s 94% that don’t. So you can imagine there’s a lot of meat on the bone there. There’s a lot of companies that are in need of DMARC enforcement, DMARC monitoring and email deliverability help. The recent changes last year with Google and Yahoo are driving this forward. There’s a lot of regulatory and compliance, especially when it comes to government contracts where DMARC and spoofing protection is vital to just get the contract or keep your contracts. So for end companies, they need DMARC right now, no DMARC means no delivery. So there’s a lot of work to be done.

Yeah, that’s insane. So 94% of the top 40 million domains, they don’t have DMARC. So I think that just shows how big that opportunity is. I guess the challenge is educating them because obviously they don’t know that they don’t have DMARC, otherwise they would’ve gone and fixed it by. Now. Let’s talk about your business. So tell us, obviously we heard how you got started with the business and where you came from. So what do you do to help MSPs right now?

So we create our software specifically for MSPs. And what that software is is an AI powered DMARC automation platform. So single pane of glass, you can have your 5, 10, 20, 50 clients there and manage DMARC all in one location. So typically if you have access to their DNS or their domain host, you got to log in one-to-one, copy and paste, do a little adjustment. What we do is take all that, let’s say mental load off of the technicians and put that into our platform. So you don’t need to continuously log into multiple managers. You can just copy and push updates directly through our app to really reduce the time to DMARC implementation and improve those margins.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Nice simple offering as well. It’s very clear to understand how that works. So final question for you then, Taylor is just tell us where can MSPs go and have a look at that software and obviously how can they get in touch with you?

Sure, so Palisade.email is our domain. We love emails. We’ve been in it for years, so we thought we’d just snag that. You can reach me on LinkedIn as well, Taylor Tabusa, there’s only one of me. Reach out, say hey, happy to just have a conversation and chat about emails, cybersecurity, all the good stuff.

Kenny is from an MSP in Chicago, and he wants to do more with email that really grabs the attention of the recipient by sending them personal videos. So his question is: Which software should I use to send personalised videos to prospects?

So personalised videos are great for just cutting through and encouraging engagement with your communications. And there are several software packages available that make it really easy to record videos unbelievably quickly. They’ll also create an animated GIF for you to put in the email when you send that grabs people’s attention. And these platforms also let you track when they’ve opened them and actually how many times they’ve opened them and watched them.

Personally I use Vidyard, which is great. I’ve got other bespoke platforms such as BombBomb and Bonjoro, and I have noticed in the last couple of years that some of the big sort of video hosting platforms, so things like Vimeo and I think Loom as well, they are also adding in the same functionality. So with any software, it’s personal preference really. But let me give you three times when it would be great for you to send a personalised video.

The first is to prospects. So imagine you’re going to call someone in a couple of days to book a sales meeting. You could actually send them a personalised video just a few days before to tell them that you’re going to be calling and what you’re going to be calling about. This is actually really smart marketing to preempt a call like this, as it makes it much more likely they’re going to answer your call and engage with you.

Another example, and let’s pick up something that we talked about earlier in the podcast, you could actually send a personalised video to an existing client about let’s say their Windows 10 options. You could tell them that you’re going to be sending an email or you want to book a meeting with them, and there are two routes forward that you’d like to discuss staying on Windows 10 and paying for security updates or migrating over to Windows 11. So you are almost getting the idea in their head before you have the conversation with them. Really smart.

And then one final idea, and this is if you have a bigger team, and particularly if they are remote, why not get into the habit of sending personalised videos to members of your team? And of course you can do the screen share style videos when you’re giving them instructions about stuff. But also, wouldn’t it be cool about just sending them a video to say thank you for a job well done, and just making them feel special and the fact that you’ve taken a little bit of your time out of your day to record a video and send it to them. That can mean a lot to some people, especially when they are remote. And yes, I know there are times when a quick phone call to say well done is good, but there are also times when recording a video, something more permanent to say you are amazing, is a great idea.

And I always find that recording personalised videos in this way becomes a way of life. And maybe because I use it a lot with our MSP Marketing Edge members and our prospects, I do find myself recording little personalised videos to my team and getting videos back from my team all the time. In fact, if they ask me a question, I sometimes find it’s easier to reply with a personalised video. It’s a very, very effective way to communicate. And also, if you’re going to film a video, you have to think through in advance, what is it I’m going to communicate back so they get the edited answer rather than just the answer off the top of your head.

Welcome to Episode 286 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

I’ll admit this could be a contradiction. You need to market your MSP so you can find new clients, and no doubt you want to hear about specific tactics that are going to work for you. Now, normally my advice is to ignore shiny new things because most of the time they’re just unproven ideas and a complete waste of time. But this really is different. Have you heard about the tactic that could be huge for early adopters? Are you ready to find out about GEO, the evolution of SEO? Find out about the huge potential for MSPs, what the main advantage is and why you can’t afford to ignore this day one alert.

More and more MSPs are starting to wake up to the fact that ordinary people don’t just use Google for search anymore. There are no hard stats about how many searches are being done using ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms. There are certainly lots of predictions that traditional search traffic will be down by 25% by the end of next year, but even without hard figures, there are times where a generative AI search does produce more useful results than a traditional Google search.

Google is still great for looking up something quick, but generative AI is great for doing research into something complicated that you don’t really understand.

And if we look at managed services from the point of view of ordinary decision makers, well that’s something complicated that they don’t really understand. Do we think it’s possible that business owners and managers are already using generative AI to research which MSPs they should switch to in their marketplace?

If they’re not doing that already, then they’re certainly going to do it in the very near future. And this is where you have an opportunity to get into something right at the beginning. You see, just as the rise of search engines saw the birth of SEO, search engine optimisation, so the rise of generative AI has seen the birth of GEO, generative engine optimisation. It’s designed to help your website appear in the research results output by generative AI.

Now, I’ve been reading a ton about this in the last few weeks, and there are three simple things that you can do to your website today, which will help to give the generative AI platforms answers. And if you can give them answers about your MSP, they’re much more likely to recommend you to people asking them which MSP should they look at.

The first is to make your website crystal clear about what you do, how you help, and what makes you different. But crucially, this must be written in plain English. So here’s an example: We help businesses in your city save money and be more efficient with technology. That line or your version of it, well it needs to go on your website. And the good news is that in this instance, what’s good for generative AI is good for humans as well. The more easily they can understand what you do and who you do it for, the more likely they are to start a conversation with you.

The second simple thing you can do then is kind of similar to SEO, and that’s to get your MSP business mentioned across as many trustworthy websites as possible. In SEO, you are trying to get links back to your website In GEO, you just want references to your business and obviously getting a reference and a link in one package will be fantastic. The generative AI platforms are looking for evidence that yours is a business that should be spoken to. So if you are being talked about by other people, that gives them really high levels of confidence that you are trustworthy.

And then the final thing you can do is ask for detailed positive reviews everywhere you can, but especially on YouTube. AI tools are looking everywhere for reviews and again, it’s part of them cross-referencing to see which of the best MSPs to speak to. For a long time now, YouTube has been a place where people go to find wisdom and you can help demonstrate this wisdom by having your clients talking about you on camera, on YouTube. And of course once it’s on YouTube, then again it’s helping to persuade the humans. You can embed it into your website, you can turn it into written case studies, you can do all sorts of things with it.

So there are three simple things you can do to get started with your GEO. And if you go off and do your own research, you will discover lots more things out there you could do. But let me just caveat that up, this is very much day one, well, in fact it’s hour one of day one for GEO. So a lot of those clever little tricks that you’ll see reported across the internet that might not be good long-term strategies. The three things I’ve just spoken about there, they are three good solid basics to help generative AI platforms to understand what you do, who you do it for, and why you can be trusted. And that’s why I think you should implement these three things as quickly as you can.

Alright, there’s every chance I’m going to put my foot in it.

There you are happily and hungrily trying to run and grow your MSP and there’s nothing more annoying than someone suddenly reminding you where you are in the calendar and the fact that time’s passing faster than Superman late for work.

So yeah, it’s nearly the middle of the year already and yes, it was Christmas just yesterday, but don’t get stressed. Are you ready for something that’s going to speed up your MSP’s growth?

Let’s talk MSP marketing in the month of May.

3 priorities to help you wrestle back control of your time, change your way of thinking, and grow faster for the rest of this year.

Number one, stop selling to people and start building a relationship with them instead. Everyone hates being sold to and yet we love to buy. Most buying decisions are made by the heart and not the brain. And yes, that especially means B2B decisions such as which IT support company to use. The worst way you can sell your business is to be kind of like a photocopier salesperson, and you know what I mean by that, right? No one trusts photocopier salespeople, even if they exist these days, but it’s why our hearts sink when we meet them. Instead, you should aim to become a trusted advisor.

Most people who buy managed services don’t know what they don’t know. And as they realise this and become conscious incompetents, they seek out people to educate them, guide them, and help them. If your business can provide that education, guidance and help, you stand an exceptionally good chance of picking up their business at the point that they are ready to buy.

The way to do this is through a well thought through educational lead generation system. You find out who’s in the market for buying IT support or consultancy. You get them to tell you who they are and give you their permission to market to them. And then you teach them how to buy from you. You are there in front of them at exactly the moment that they are ready to buy. And for some people this is days after they meet you, for others the most, this is years and of course there’s everything in between.

Number two, start using 80/20 thinking about prospects and clients. Clients are not made equally. You’ve probably noticed that most of your hassle and stress comes from a very small number of your clients, and it’s the same with profit, right? You get the most profit from the smallest number of clients. This is Pareto’s principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. And the rule declares that input and output are not equal. So if that’s the case, why treat all of your clients the same way? Have you got a nightmare client who your staff hate? Just fire them. It’s the best staff retention action that you can take, and I’m serious. Toxic clients kill staff and they kill profits and it’s highly cathartic to ask them to find a new supplier. Plus, trust me on this, a new client will soon turn up to replace them. In fact, I’m sure you’ve got a great client who generates loads of profit. Well, don’t ignore them just because all of your time is taken up with the worst client. Go and super serve your best client instead. Give them some love, watch them buy more and watch their profitability go up.

And then finally number three, and it’s kind of along the same themes, which is to sell more to your existing clients. One of the best retention tools you have is to increase the amount of stuff that people buy from you. And your staff may consider that the less people have to buy, the happier they’ll be but that’s slightly twisted thinking. We buy things in two ways, stuff that we need with our brains, stuff that we want with our hearts. And the challenge is to get your clients focused less on what they need and more on what they want. People who buy more of what they want are typically happier, better retained clients. So it needs to become habitual within your business to tell people everything that you can do for them in a way that’s not overwhelming. Tell them everything that could be done. Let them decide what it is they want to buy.

Featured guest: Melissa Hockenberry, owner of First Things First Training and Consulting, is passionate about improving customer and revenue retention. Her 30-year professional journey includes adventures in Fortune 500 and non-profit, as well as over 18 years with Autotask/Datto. Melissa loves engaging with MSPs to help them improve their customer experience and position them for sustainable growth. 

Guilty secret time. A lot of MSPs will admit to holding onto long-term clients, but not by design. It just kind of happens that way. If this is you, do you not feel this guilty secret is also a dangerous one? In which case you need to hear it from my special guest today. New clients are great, but if the majority of your earning potential comes from keeping and upselling your current clients, you’ve got to check this out. How do you remove the risk of losing your clients? How do you make it an easy system? And how will your MSP benefit? Let’s find out.

Hi, I’m Melissa Hockenberry, founder of First Things First training and consulting,

And it’s amazing to have you here on the podcast, Melissa, thank you so much for joining me. We are going to talk about one of the most important aspects of marketing an MSP that actually kind of gets forgotten, and that’s retention. I think most MSPs have insane retention built into their business, but I don’t think many of them realise that some of that retention is down to something called “inertia loyalty”, where it just feels too hard for the customer to leave this MSP to go over to that MSP. So while most MSPs do enjoy that retention, they perhaps don’t understand why they’ve got that retention and maybe don’t even have a system or a strategy to focus and actually bake retention into the product. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Let’s first of all look back at your career and what you’ve done because you’ve been in the channel for a very long time haven’t you?

I have, I want to say I started at 10, but that’s not true. So I’ve been in the channel since 2004. I started with Autotask, and was with Autotask that became Datto that became Kaseya, for 18 and a half years and started out on my own business in February ‘23.

Amazing. And what was it that made you, I mean, that’s a very long time to survive what was I guess a small, quite focused team right at the beginning, up to being one of the biggest vendors in the channel. Well, let’s talk about that journey before we talk about what made you leave. So what was that like staying through those amazing transformation years?

It was phenomenal. As a student of business, my undergraduate was in marketing and business, and I got my MBA in my early stages of Autotask. It was phenomenal to have that experience. I started as the first dedicated product support rep at Autotask and got the first promotion, was the first person to go remote. It was just a lot of fun in that there were nine of us when I started. I think there was a group of five that were hired on the same day. And just to watch it grow and see that and be in almost a case study as it happened, was kind of cool. What made it feasible? Honestly, when I look back on it, I’m sure there are people like, Why would you stay in one company for 18 years? Well, I had 10 different jobs. I was constantly being promoted to the new thing or in charge of the new thing, but eight of those 10 times the job didn’t exist prior to me doing it.

So that made it the type of thing I loved doing, because you were basically just forging your own step forward. And I was given a lot of leeway to, go interpret this and do this how you think it should be done. And that made it very easy. And what I liked actually is most people can’t say they like mergers and acquisitions, but it was cool for me when we would acquire a company. One of them happened to be in Denmark and I had studied there for four months. So it was fun to know the culture of that company. It was also interesting when we were merged or acquired because I was lucky enough to be in a position where I was often dumped over enemy lines. I was often one of the first people to go work with the other group, and they were always amazing people.

And so even though I was there 18 and a half years, and man, that’s a long time. It never felt like that. It felt very new all along. And when Datto and Autotask merged, that was a really cool point because I think at that point I’d been there, I guess it was about 13 years or so and probably at the point where I was getting sort of like, I should try something different. And the cultures were very different so it really did feel like I started working for a new company and within six months I didn’t work with any of the peers I had worked with before. I was totally submerged in a Datto or a new employee group. So it was really fun. It was a lot of fun.

What an amazing story. And I can completely see how, yeah, it’s not really 18 years with the same business at all. You did eight different things, eight totally different things there. What was it that made you finally decide to leave a couple of years ago and go and do your own thing?

Some people would call it a midlife crisis. I was in my late forties and sort of turned to my daughter on my birthday and said, I’m not going to be doing this same thing and not for the same company a year from now. And honestly, I’m a very faith-based person. So in prayer, I really felt like it was time for me to jump out and start to use what I had learned in a much bigger arena, be able to have impact of everything I had learned over the years and get it to more people because you’ve sort of sequestered in a company. I will say I was never a person that was like, I want to be an entrepreneur. Never. I love a W2. I love a steady paycheck, I love all those things that come with it, but I felt very much like it was time to go do that. And I’ll say, I said one last prayer on Sunday, April 10th, and if you look back in the logs of Sunday, April 10th, 2022 on Monday, April 11th, Kaseya purchased Datto. And so people say that it was that kind of that final sign for me that, okay, it’s time to go. And the people I worked with at Kaseya were wonderful people as well, and I had a great team that I was pulled into there as well. But it was definitely time to go and it was perfect. Perfect timing for me.

It was you, you did this with your prayer, you made this happen. All this consolidation. Just out of interest, how old was your daughter at the point you decided to leave Kaseya?

That’s a great question, in that something I tend to leave out was that when my daughter was four Autotask had actually eliminated my position. I was doing proactive work. I was doing retention work in all sincerity, and they’re like, we really need to do this other reactive work. And so I stayed in, because I live in the remote area of Pennsylvania and it’s hard finding another job. But my daughter at the time, at four, when I wasn’t sure if I was going to stay or go, she said, Mom, you love your customers too much. You can’t go. Well, fast forward a decade later, and I have a 14-year-old who is coming into an expensive time in her life and I decide to cut our income in half. But I think I will see that she’ll remember budgets more, she also will remember that her mom who was over 50 when I did this, took on a brand new life adventure at 50. And I think, I hope that speaks more volumes than she actually had to pay for her white leather Converse that I said were too expensive.

But yeah, she’s been great, I will sometimes have trouble thinking through an idea and I’ll just go to her and she is a great sounding board, so I’m very thankful exactly how it happened. I think it was perfect timing.

Yeah, that’s amazing. It’s amazing story. And I have a 14-year-old as well. I appreciate your daughter’s a few years on now, but the greatest thing about having a teenager is when you’ve got a business problem, of course, teenagers are always right. So any question you just ask them and they give you the perfect answer, which is fantastic. So thank you teenagers.

And if you become a little too ego driven, they will cut you down in less than 15 words.

Oh yes, yes, absolutely. I drive her to school in the mornings and it’s like a 20 minute journey and she can go through all the range of emotions and I can be the best human being at the start of the 20 minutes and the worst at the end. Anyway. Let’s not talk about our children. Let’s talk about retention. So the thing I said right at the beginning, which is maybe a slightly provocative thing, is that MSPs have great retention and assume that it’s because they offer a great service, yet I believe not all, but many of them have great retention because their customers are staying through inertia loyalty. It feels easier to stay than to move to another MSP. In fact, that inertia loyalty is a double-edged sword. It keeps your clients with you for years and years, but it’s what makes it harder for you to win new clients and wrestle them away from other MSPs. So is this your experience as well that MSPs don’t really take retention seriously?

100%. And actually I have a video on that discussion right now because people think, I have never lost a customer. And I will say, That doesn’t mean you have a retention plan. You have to be intentional about this. And even if you’ve never lost a customer, but you don’t know why they stay, that’s a great indicator that you don’t have a retention plan because you don’t know why your customers are still with you, right? Oh, they just are. That’s wonderful. I hope you don’t take the same approach to your marriage, right? Oh, they just stay. It’s a great phrase. The loyalty and your 100% correct. And to me also, I don’t think MSPs, I love this group of humans, I could have gone out and worked with a lot of other people and really kept finding my way back to the space and was just a great group of people.

However, I think they don’t always have the customer viewpoint, they just have the technology. And they want to get done and they want to deploy it and do it quickly, and that doesn’t always give the greatest experience. And so they do have trouble, they bring a lot of people in the front door and then somebody told me the other day that a lot run out the back. That’s what you’ve got to understand. So I’ve always been hyper aware of the customer view. I like to call them goggles, a swim mom. So putting on the customer goggles, which are a little uncomfortable at first if you’ve ever swam, but it’s one of those things that you need it for clarity, and that’s what I’m hoping to help MSPs build before they make a change, understanding what impact that’s going to have, understanding why people do stay with them so that they don’t make a change that is detrimental to that loyalty.

So let’s talk about putting on those customer goggles, and I love that concept. If you are working with an MSP, well, let’s take the average MSP that listens to this podcast. So it’s typically business owner or manager. They’ve got, maybe 3, 4, 5 techs. They could be a one person band, they could have some techs, it could be bigger. But if we assume that they’re not doing anything proactively for retention, so it’s something they’ve intended to get round to in 2023 and ‘24 now in ‘25, and it’s now back on their radar again, where do you even start? What are some of the practical things that you should do? Should you look at what kind of customers you’ve got? Should you be doing analysis? Should you be talking to them? What’s the best way to get started?

I think the easiest is to get your house in order first. And there’s some things that people don’t think about. So first of all is job descriptions. It seems very strange for retention, but job descriptions will let you know who’s focusing on what. And I can’t tell you the number of MSPs probably sitting right down and going, oh yeah, I never finished that person’s job description. Now you’ve hired three people and they still don’t have a solid job description. But for the purpose of the fact that if you are a one to 3, 4, 5 person shop, you need that job description so that everywhere in that description, it talks about focusing on a positive experience for the customer so that when you have somebody who doesn’t do that, you have grounds now to say you’re not meeting the job description. So solid job descriptions are a part of retention because your people are going to help you retain.

They’re your first line of defence and retaining. If it’s just you, okay, where do I get started? You get started with a concerted effort to start listening to your clients. There’s a phrase that I love and everybody knows it will go in my obituary, What questions do you have? So you’re a one person show and you have just poured out everything to a client instead of, do you have any questions? What questions do you have? You are going to find clients who never asked a question are asking six questions after you say that, because you just open up the conversation and now you’re starting to learn more about them. So as a one person shop, I’d say, go deeper and understanding the clients that you do have, and when you have a chance, go to lunch and say to them, Hey, why are you still with us? What makes us work for you? Have you figured that out? Have you ever thought about that? Having that casual relationship conversation, but two phrases, What questions do you have? And, Tell me more. They’re very powerful phrase in learning and understanding. So if you’re a one person, I go there, if you’re more than one person, I’d start with your job descriptions and I’d start with your documentation of how you interact with your clients so you have consistency. So those are the tools towards retention. If you’re beyond that, then we talk about surveys, listening posts, those kind of things.

Okay, well, let’s come back on surveys and listening posts in a second. You just said something which as a fellow business owner struck fear straight into my heart, which was, Why are you still with us? Because, I’ve got 700 MSPs that I’m working with right now, and I would be terrified to ask them that because I think as a business owner, it’s not a business, it’s a personal thing, isn’t it? It’s a baby. It’s another child. I have two children really. I have my daughter Samm, and I have the MSP Marketing Edge. Those are my two children. And as much as I would be confident asking that question, there would be a deep fear. It’d be like asking a wife or a husband or a partner, why are you still with me? Maybe we’d be a bit more confident with that because it’s a one-on-one relationship. Do you find with the MSPs that you work with, that they are also terrified to ask that question? Whether it’s those words or whether it’s slightly different words? And if that is the case, how do you help them to have the confidence to directly ask and to find out why someone is sticking with them?

I think yes, there are some people where a lot of their clients are personal connections, which I think there’s a danger in that too, which if we have time we can get back to that, but they don’t have a problem with asking that. But for those that have a problem, I think the big thing is always being able to put the business in front of yourself. Yes, it is you, you and the business are one thing, but understanding that you can only improve if you’re asking for feedback or I love the Daniel Pink statement of ask for advice. Maybe it’s easier to start with, What could we have done better in this situation for you? Even if it looks like it went well, what could have gone better or what could we have done better or give a specific thing.

I can kind of weave surveys in here a little bit because some of the things that people do with surveys, which are wrong, is they’ll take a hundred clients and send them a survey, and what if you get 15 that hate you from that? How are you going to get back to them within a business day? You need to think about what if they don’t like me? So if you’re starting surveying, I think that’s a good way because at least that gives, if you’re not doing any of that, at least that’s kind of a third party way to get in there. But remember, most people who are really upset don’t always answer a survey, there are just survey people. So you need to get to your client, you need to get in person and have that conversation. And maybe it’s just going out and having lunch or bringing donuts to their office and just being around the water cooler and just saying to them like, Hey, how are things going for you? And because every MSP should be not looking just to talk about technology, but they should be looking to talk about strategy. And then those can be bigger questions and you start to build it’s build relationship. I have a statement that says, relationships build retention and retention builds revenue. So you start with just building relationships and then the questions that are sometimes difficult come a little bit easier after that.

Yeah, I love that. So my takeaways from that, you’re right, Daniel Pink’s question of, Can I ask for some advice?, which is essentially saying, can I have some feedback? But without using the F word, the feedback word. And I see surveys as a lazy way of doing it, and I know when you’ve got thousands of clients, if you’re a big company with thousands of clients, it’s the only way. But the reason I think it’s lazy is because exactly as you, Melissa, they’re are survey people. I’m not a survey person. Whenever I get a survey, if I can press a button like a customer thermometer feedback, happy face, I’ll do that. But not the, This will only take you 15 minutes, methodology – NPS standing for net promoter score. Go and Google it if you’re listening to this and you don’t know. But to me you are only ever going to get a subsection of people. I always think the greatest value comes from talking to people.

We did a massive project two years ago to completely revolutionise and update and change how we delivered what we do for our members. And I spent not inconsiderable amount of money paying a researcher to do a hundred zoom interviews. So she interviewed a hundred of our members, more or less a hundred over Zoom, and we’re talking like 20, 20, 25 minute conversations, we’re not talking quick conversations. But the value that we got from that was a thousand times what we paid. And even today, we can run a decision past the research. What did members say two years ago that would influence how we’re doing that now? Which was just such a valuable conversation.

Melissa, I could talk for hours and hours to you about this, and you are going to be one of these perennial guests that comes back onto the show. I can feel it in my bones. Let me ask you a final question. It was something you mentioned earlier, and then we’ll talk about what you do to help MSPs. So you said you threw a little side out about how clients become personal connections and there’s a danger in that. Can you explain that to us?

Yeah, so just like a marriage that’s 25 years old, which I have one of those, you have a complacency and a comfort. And I’ve heard more MSPs in the last year or so say to me, I lost a client and they were like a personal friend, these are people I knew well. I was just on a call with some customer success managers, a peer group that I moderate, and we were talking about, what do you do when you don’t have anything to talk about with a client? I’m like, well, you still go. You take them donuts. You ask bigger questions. Because very quickly, especially when so many of these customer success people are so overwhelmed with way too many clients, you forget that it’s been four months since we’ve been there, or it’s been three QBR since I’ve been there, so we’re talking nearly a year. So I think that when you get comfortable with someone, you think, oh, they’re never going to leave, but you’ve lost attention to them. So I think you always have to take that person and say, yep, we have a good relationship, all the more reason I should want to go and hang out with them and ask them what their strategy is.

I always say, if you do not know the business goals, not the technical goals, the business goals of your top 10% of your customers, or top 10, however you want to take that, but what is that 80% revenue mark? If you don’t know the business goals, you’re at risk of losing them because you are not entwined with what they’re doing. And don’t let the technology filter come onto those business goals, but go and have that business discussion. I can guarantee you, even if you don’t have anything to talk about, they had something come up that was major in their business in the last quarter, go ask them about it and see if you could have helped. If nothing else, you can be a listening ear, and that’s going to build reputation and relationship and renew your commitment to them, even if they’ve been a 15 year fan or a 20 year friend.

Yeah, I completely agree. And in fact, this is where MSPs are putting a foot into the VCIO territory, and I think the concept of VCIO has been shaped into something else within the MSP world. It’s not strictly as it should be, but if you do strategic reviews with people, if you build technology roadmaps and you are taking a three year view, where you are looking at their business through the filter of technology, but it’s not the technology you’re looking at, you’re looking at where they’re going, how they’re going to get there, and we all know that technology plays an integral part, but it’s not the be all and end all. It’s the enabler. And I think you’re right to look at it that way. So you never stop giving value, as it were. Melissa, thank you so much for your time. Let’s just briefly talk about what do you do. So obviously we all know now that you started your own business a couple of years ago. You’re working with a load of MSPs. Tell us what you do to help MSPs and what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

When I help them I start with something as simple as a customer retention inventory, which you can actually find on my website. My website is the first letter of each one of the words in my company, which I should have thought of differently, but it’s FTFTAC.com, tried to make it short, but those all sound like the exact same thing. So if you think First Things First Training And Consulting, you’ll get there, just take the first letter and smash them together. You can also follow me, find me on LinkedIn, that’s where I post all of my information.

I’m helping managed service providers really take a look at what are their current retention efforts and where can we get them to a bonafide retention programme. And I’m all about the baby steps of it. So even if you’re like, well, I don’t even know yet, there’s portions of what I’m doing that you can still find value with. I give a free webinar every month, take a look. You find it on LinkedIn that talks about inventorying your customer retention efforts. So take a look and see how you are doing, where are you, and then we move through the process from there. So it’s all about building a retention programme, an intentional retention programme, not just a, I’ve never lost a customer retention programme.

Colin runs his MSP in Maine, and he’s considering contingency plans. One of his business owning friends recently got ill and had to take an unexpected sabbatical from his business, so his question is: How can I prepare my business so it’ll not be affected if that happens to me?

Let’s make that less about scary illness, more about being prepared for anything. Imagine that tomorrow morning I decided to swap a career in marketing for a thrilling life of crime, and I kidnapped you. And don’t worry, I’m going to look after you. I’m going to cook for you every day, I can cook quite well, and I do have all the streaming platforms; you’re going to have a great time as my kidnap victim. But ultimately, I keep you locked up for the next three months.

So put another way, your staff and your clients won’t be able to reach you at all for the next three months with no notice. So the big question is this, what happens to your MSP? Does it thrive or does it just survive? Or after three months, would you tell me to keep the door padlocked and keep you here as there’s no business to return to? And anyway, you like my pasta bake?

This is a three month stress test, and it determines how well the business will do if you are unexpectedly removed from it for a long period of time. And all businesses can do okay just fine without the owner for a week or two. It’s when it becomes long-term. That’s when the inherent flaws show up. Who would naturally take charge? How likely are they to make decisions? How well supported would they be? Would they know to reach out to your professional advisors for support? Where would they go for senior tech advice and guidance? Could they deal with an angry client? Often it’s the little things that cause the biggest problems. Can someone access the bank account to pay staff and suppliers? Can someone access your email if yours is the master email for key vendor password resets? Do they know how to contact the landlord if there’s a problem with the office?

All businesses would struggle to a certain degree with the unexpected temporary removal of the owner. So one of your key jobs as the leader is to ensure that everything you do is clearly documented and appropriate emergency access measures are put in place, such as activating the emergency kit that’s found in many password managers.

Welcome to Episode 285 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

Growing an MSP can sometimes feel like a game of poker, can’t it? If each and everything you could do to grow your business was a different card in your pack, choosing which cards to play can be overwhelming. And doesn’t it seem like the hand you’re dealt, everything that’s on your to-do list, just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So how do you decide which cards to play with and which to leave? How do you make sure you can quickly identify the things your MSP can do to become a real winner?

The biggest problem with being an MSP is having a massive to-do list. Just shout back to me now as you are listening to this or watching it on YouTube. How many things do you have to do today or tomorrow? I’m guessing it’s like 20, 30, 40 things. Because that’s one of the curses of the MSP owner is there is a never ending list of things that you need to do just to look after your clients, never mind actually growing your business. And the net effect of that is that you can get to the end of another day and another, and another and another, and you’ve done the work that your business needs to do, but you haven’t grown the business at all. This is a common problem for MSPs and frankly, it’s a massive problem.

The goal is to make a little progress every single day, and it feels frustrating when you don’t, doesn’t it?

This is why I think sometimes you need to take an 80/20 approach to your list of things that you could do, and I’m sure you’ve heard of 80/20 before. It’s also known as the Pareto principle named after Vilfredo Pareto. He was an Italian economist in the 19th century, and he was busy harvesting peas in his garden when he made an interesting observation. He noticed that some pea pods had a lot more peas in them than others did. So he counted the number of peas in each pea pod. He clearly didn’t have a lot to do that day, but he found that 80% of the peas came from only 20% of the pea pods. And what was really interesting was he then later noticed the same pattern in how wealth was distributed in Italy in his home country. He found that 20% of the people in Italy owned 80% of the land, and these 20% were very wealthy. The remaining 80% of the population owned only 20% of the land.

Now, don’t get too caught up on the 80 and the 20, the actual numbers themselves, just take from this the big principle that input and output in anything rarely match. For example, if you were to look at all of your clients, I bet the vast majority of ticket noise comes from the minority of clients. Many MSPs find that most of their hassle comes from a small number of their clients.And side note, these are the clients that you should fire, but let’s have that conversation another time. In fact, you can apply that to your staff as well. 80% of your hassle will come from 20% of your staff, right? If you apply the 80/20 principle to your task list, you can assume that 20% of the work that you do as the business owner is giving you 80% of the results in growing your business. The trick is to spend 80% of your personal time on those 20% tasks. Now I have way too many things that I want to be doing at the same time, but I learned a long time ago to be utterly brutal in prioritising them. We have an MSP Marketing Edge company development roadmap, and from that, I pull out the 10 things that will make the biggest difference when completed. And I call this my 80/20 list.

So every day, just like you, I have to battle noise and complications to spend more of my time on those things, my 80/20 things and kind of ignore all the other things that are vying for my attention. And I’ll be honest, it’s not easy, it is a daily struggle every day, but it’s really worthwhile. My best evenings are where I’ve spent the day focusing on tasks that will grow my business and not just run my business. So how can you do this in your MSP? Well, I believe it starts with being very, very organised about what it is that you want to achieve. Do you have a long list of things that will help you to win your clients, retain them, and upsell them more services? Can you split that list down into a series of tasks, even if that means that there are dozens and dozens of tasks to be done? And can you then prioritise that list? So if let’s say tomorrow you had 60, maybe 90 minutes to work on growing your business, you would know exactly what you needed to do.

That I think is at the heart of making progress in growing your business. Once you are very clear on what you need to do, in what order, and you can find time every day to work on those tasks, you get the important things done. And does that mean that you have to dump some tasks and they never get done? Yes, a hundred percent it does. And is that scary? Yes, it is a hundred percent, but the reality is that you are never going to get all of those tasks done anyway. You only have 24 hours in the day the same as everyone else, and you need to spend at least six of those sleeping, ideally, seven, maybe eight.

But in terms of getting things done, it’s better you focus on getting done the things that move the business forward rather than the small things that don’t move the business forward. So let me ask you a big question. Something you should just pop in your brain, perhaps sleep on it, reflect on it in the days ahead. What is the noise and complication in your MSP that stops you from focusing on the tasks that make the biggest difference? We all know it’s important to service the clients, well, that’s absolutely critical, but it’s also really important that you grow your business at the same time. If your business isn’t growing, then it’s going the opposite way. And actually that’s a very dangerous place to be. What are the things that are stopping you from doing this and how can you remove them?

That I think is at the heart of making progress in growing your business. Once you are very clear on what you need to do, in what order, and you can find time every day to work on those tasks, you get the important things done. And does that mean that you have to dump some tasks and they never get done? Yes, 100% it does. And is that scary? Yes, it is 100%, but the reality is that you are never going to get all of those tasks done anyway. You only have 24 hours in the day the same as everyone else, and you need to spend at least six of those sleeping, ideally, seven, maybe eight.

But in terms of getting things done, it’s better you focus on getting done the things that move the business forward rather than the small things that don’t move the business forward. So let me ask you a big question. Something you should just pop in your brain, perhaps sleep on it, reflect on it in the days ahead. What is the noise and complication in your MSP that stops you from focusing on the tasks that make the biggest difference? We all know it’s important to service the clients, well, that’s absolutely critical, but it’s also really important that you grow your business at the same time. If your business isn’t growing, then it’s going the opposite way. And actually that’s a very dangerous place to be. What are the things that are stopping you from doing this and how can you remove them?

Up to three quarters of MSPs would rather lose a toe than have to speak in public. But did you know that speaking at a seminar or a webinar can be an incredibly powerful way to attract prospects, warm them up and persuade them that your business is the one they can trust? So using a cybersecurity webinar as an example, how can you be relaxed, confident, and even enjoy presenting? Oh, and keep all of your toes intact?

One of the MSPs I work closely with has made the smart decision to aggressively pursue a vertical, in their case, lawyers. They’ve changed their website and their social media to be more relevant to the owners of law practices in their city. They’ve built up a database, they’re sending emails, LinkedIn messages, and direct mail, and they have someone making follow up phone calls. All of this is great that all the correct things to get the right message in front of the right person at the right time, as people only buy when they are ready to buy.

Recently, I suggested they start to put on regular webinars about cybersecurity for lawyers, and that’s when we hit a wall. The owner, who would have to present these webinars, is pretty reluctant to do them. Why? Because of one word – fear. Or put another way – what if – as in, What if no one turns up? What if they’re bored by my content? What if they ask a question that I can’t answer? What if I make a mistake and every lawyer in my city laughs at me forever? etc.

Now the reality is here that none of these things will happen. And if they did happen, no one will remember, no one will really care, it’s just a webinar. But I do understand where my client’s mental block is coming from.

Fear is a horrible emotion and it can push otherwise highly competent people into inaction.

Reality check here. The reality is if you’ve been an MSP for three years or more, you know more about cybersecurity than any ordinary person, like a lawyer or a business owner, meaning there’s almost no question they could ask you that you couldn’t handle. And they will turn up and they will be engaged so long as the content seems relevant to them. And really the only way to get better at presenting is to do more presenting, do more webinars.

So I believe you should just do the cybersecurity webinar because, big picture, it’s an insanely cool and powerful way to show that you are THE local technology expert while engaging with hot prospects. My final thoughts on this, never forget that fear is an acronym standing for Fictional Events Appearing Real.

Featured guest: Joshua Stout is a distinguished digital marketing strategist with over seven years of experience, specialising in LinkedIn advertising. In his previous role, he played a pivotal part in building a LinkedIn-centred agency from the ground up, leading the Ads Service from its inception and transforming it into a multimillion-dollar operation. During this time, he oversaw the operations of the team while acting as lead strategist, managing over 1,000 ad accounts. Currently, as the Director of Advertising at Influent Social, Joshua continues to leverage his extensive expertise to drive impactful LinkedIn campaigns for a diverse range of clients.

His expertise has earned him the title of LinkedIn Certified Marketing Expert, a recognition held by fewer than 90 professionals worldwide. Additionally, Joshua has been honoured as a LinkedIn Top Voice and featured in Marquis Who’s Who, acknowledging his significant contributions to the field of digital marketing.

LinkedIn is an insane lead generation and prospecting tool for MSPs, and yet I know many people who really don’t know where to start with it. There’s a lot of noise out there and lots of things you can do, but which things should you do? I’ve hunted down one of only 90 certified LinkedIn experts in the world. In the next few minutes, he’s going to tell you how to use LinkedIn ads, how to achieve more with less work, and how to leverage advanced strategies to get better results.

Hi, I’m Josh Stout. I am one of less than 90 LinkedIn certified marketing experts in the world. I helped grow an agency from the ground up and I’ve overseen a thousand different ad accounts in my time on LinkedIn.

And thanks so much for joining us on the show, Josh, because we are going to talk about LinkedIn ads today and it’s possibly one of the hardest aspects of LinkedIn to get right. I’m going to be honest with you here, I’ve been doing full-time marketing, getting on for 20 years, I’ve never really cracked LinkedIn ads, I’ve worked with dozens of MSPs who’ve tried LinkedIn ads and we’ve never really cracked it. And my definition of cracked it is, we’ve got something that’s generated leads that has turned into prospects, that have turned into clients that have turned into revenue and profit. And I know it can be done, but I’ve always struggled with that and that’s why we’ve got you on the show to try and answer that question. Let’s just delve a little bit into your credibility and your background. So you said you were one of 90 LinkedIn certified marketing experts?

Yeah, so last year I was selected as part of the class. They flew me out to London, I went to their headquarters there where I received my official certification. We had to go through a series of workshops, but it’s also quite rigorous to get in. You have to submit an application, you have to record a video of yourself saying why you should be in, you need to find three references, and then you have to do an interview where they put you on the spot and you have to do a presentation.

Oh, that’s really cool. There only being 90 of you in the world. Do you all kind of have to agree not to fly on the same plane or something like that in the same way that there’s only about 10 people who know the recipe for Coca-Cola and they’re not allowed to go on the same plane. Is it a similar thing to that or maybe I’m just making it up.

It’s so diverse, people are coming in from all over the place, so no, it’s not really like that. That’s probably why they don’t get us all to go to the same events at the same time though, maybe they want to make sure that they keep us safe, right?

Yeah, maybe it is that. So before we go on to talk about LinkedIn ads, let’s just talk about LinkedIn in general. So I was looking at some stats the other day, and I forget the numbers, but essentially if you were to look at a chart from let’s say about 2015/2016, up until today, so over about eight or nine years, it was just solid growth for LinkedIn, solid growth in user numbers, in engagement, in the amount of content that’s been posted. It’s like LinkedIn is the one social network that has just really solidly grown and grown and grown. Facebook went much higher, but has drip dipped down. Instagram obviously has done a similar kind of thing. We don’t talk about X these days, but there’s all these other social platforms that have their ups and downs, and yet LinkedIn seems to have just been a very solid growth over a number of years. Is that what you see? You are obviously more on the inside of LinkedIn than the rest of us. Is that what you see from the inside as well?

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say the biggest pop of new members and engagement that happened on LinkedIn was during Covid. Because LinkedIn was gradually growing, except I think a lot of people saw it as a job site. You are looking for a job looking to get a higher promotion at another company, something like that. Everyone used LinkedIn. But when Covid hit and everybody had to go home and you couldn’t go to conferences and you couldn’t go to meetings and you couldn’t go door knocking anymore, people had to figure out a way to continue networking their business. And I feel that LinkedIn was just waiting for everybody. They’re like, come my children, we’ve been a business networking platform this whole time, we have these capabilities for you. And immediately LinkedIn started seeing, I mean, initially it was a huge growth, but then a steady 20% growth year over year to where they have over a billion active users now, hundreds of millions of decision makers. So it solidified itself as the professional platform to be on and really elevated itself over just being some type of job recruitment platform.

Yeah, I completely agree with that. And a lot of the MSPs that I speak to when we talk about LinkedIn, because a massive fan, I think it’s a great place for people with small amounts of marketing time to go do marketing. It’s like everyone you could ever do business with is there. A lot of the MSPs I say that to, they say, oh, well, if there’s so many people there, if there are so many other MSPs there, surely we are just part of the noise, or surely people are just going on to sell and no one’s going on to buy. What kind of stuff do you see in terms of how people are using LinkedIn? Are they just going to sell, or actually, are they using it just as a communication tool?

Yeah. Well, first of all, I want to say it is very active on LinkedIn for MSPs. During my time at my previous agency where I helped grow over a thousand head accounts that I saw on LinkedIn, the second largest vertical was MSPs. So obviously the audience is active on LinkedIn and MSPs can reach out to them, but it is very competitive. So in 90 to 95% of the accounts that I’ve audited, and that’s a realistic number, 90 to 95% of the accounts, there are just nuances in the settings and configurations that people don’t know that tend to lead to wasted budget or strategies that are going to be ineffective. Because it is a communication platform, but what makes it so powerful is the ability to specifically target decision makers on LinkedIn, having the most up-to-date professional data out of any other platform in the world, and then the mindset of the user. When people are on LinkedIn, they’re considering their business, they’re considering their roles, their jobs, professions, so being able to get your message in front of them is going to be most effective. And I’ve pretty consistently heard it from LinkedIn called the “middle of funnel hero” because people want to consume content on it. So it’s all about how you’re structuring your strategy, how you’re appealing to the people that you want to show your message to, and ultimately how you’re converting them.

Yeah, I mean, that fits perfectly with the three-step marketing strategy that we recommend. In fact, it’s part of our MSP marketing Edge service. So the first step is to build audiences, and LinkedIn is the first audience I always suggest you build. The second step is to grow relationships, which from what you’ve just said there, the middle of the funnel hero, and that’s done through content. You put content in front of people until the day they’re ready to have a conversation about switching, which is of course the third step. And that is to convert relationships, that’s what you have to come offline, you have to pick up the phone, you have to talk to people, and obviously go and meet with them.

Let’s look Josh specifically at LinkedIn ads because I know that is your particular specialty. So as we know MSPs, it’s a B2B advertising proposition. We’re trying to reach decision makers, other business owners, and a lot of us see ads on LinkedIn that we just scroll past really quickly. And certainly if you’re an MSP, MSPs see the same ads as I see, we see all the big vendors, all the big names, I mean they must be spending thousands of dollars a day on these adverts, and we all just kind of seem to skip over them. Is that the biggest problem with LinkedIn ads or is it, as you say, it’s not understanding the nuances of it and the little settings and things you can adjust?

Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of noise on the platform. Creative is one of the essential components of having a successful campaign on LinkedIn, because you need to know how to put designs in front of people that are going to stop them from scrolling and get them to read your message. That’s really important aspect of advertising on LinkedIn. But I wouldn’t say that that’s the most critical downfall of using the platform is the noise and all the competition. I would say typically it’s the structure. It’s the way that people are setting up their campaigns and they’re lacking that nurturing component. Or what I see all the time is people trying to activate leads on top of the funnel. They’re using lead gen forum using book a call, call to actions already, and they’re trying to target cold audiences to do that. That by far is the largest error on LinkedIn.

When you’re able to really figure out tests and optimise based on what you’re serving your audience, what’s driving the volume, continue reiterating those practices to figure out what’s resonating with them. And then like you said, build out that middle of funnel effort to nurture and educate and ultimately convert. I mean, MSPs have a long sales cycle, so if you’re not staying in front of the people that you know are relevant and the people that are going to make the decision on conversion, then you’re losing out and you’re spending a lot of money that’s not going to be effective for you. And that’s tended to be the biggest area of opportunity.

Okay, that makes sense. So bearing in mind the fact that, as you say, it’s a long sales cycle and we know it can take 6, 12, 18, 24 months from the point someone says hello to you to the point they actually sign a contract, what would you focus an MSP’s LinkedIn ads on? Would you focus it on trying to get people into their CRM? Would you focus them trying to sign up for their LinkedIn newsletter? Would it be something else? What would you go for?

It would be a mixture of those tactics. One thing that I’d probably say way more than I should, is use variation. And one of the biggest attributes of being able to advertise on LinkedIn is content. So absolutely, I would be running news that are focused, ads that are focused on newsletter. I would be using blogs, I would be using white papers, I would be using content. And more than anything, if you want to stay ahead of the curve right now and you really want to capitalise on the best assets that LinkedIn has, have people or experts at your company be posting about their expertise. Don’t do it for likes, don’t do it for engagement. Just post your expertise. Because we can include that in an ad campaign and we can run thought leader alongside your company. Every company is going to say that they’re the best at what they do. So a lot of people are going to hear that, and you need to say that, and you need to show the content that proves that. But if you can also elevate the voices of the company explaining why they’re experts at what they do, people trust people, and that builds brand equity. So using a combination of those in your funnel and in your strategy is going to yield much higher results, and you need to stay in front of these people long-term. So it’s not just using that content, not just using the newsletter, yes, use all those things, but it’s also realising that you need to stay in front of these people so you’re top of mind when they’re ready to convert. And that’s a big missed opportunity I typically see.

Yeah, so essentially you’re saying stamp your authority and keep stamping your authority until the day that they’re ready to have that conversation. And of course, on that day, if they’ve seen 15, 20, 30 things from you on LinkedIn, even if they’re not top of mind, they’re lurking there in the background. And if you then add that into they’ve opened some of your emails that maybe you’ve had some direct messages on LinkedIn, maybe you’ve even spoken to them on the phone or you’ve sent them a letter or a postcard in the mail, all of these things come together and with the LinkedIn ads and the LinkedIn content, and they all help you seem like you’re everywhere. So for the person who’s ready to buy or ready to think about buying or switching, there’s certainly the first conversation you want to have is the person who seems to be everywhere. I love that.

Final question for you, Josh, and that’s about kind of ad spend. So what we’ve just been talking about there is potentially running ads, constantly running ads to people that aren’t going to buy until 2026, 2027, 2028, and there’s a lot of cash going into that. What’s the right mindset do you believe for an MSP who’s looking at ads? Should they be looking at spending a little bit of money on a regular basis, or should they do a big splurge and a big campaign and then pull back and then repeat it? What do you think is the best strategy?

A general rule of thumb in marketing is you should spend about 7-15% of your annual revenue on your marketing efforts. It’s an investment, not an expense. And I don’t say that in a way to say like, take 10% of your annual revenue and dump that all on LinkedIn. From something that you just said, marketing works best in an ecosystem. It really builds your brand to make sure you have those elements of demand generation, demand capture, direct touches, all those things influence conversions. Now on LinkedIn specifically, you can run a pretty healthy budget, maybe somewhere around $5,000 to $10,000 a month on LinkedIn, and that’s going to help you drive a lot of volume and build a lot of frequency. Now, you don’t have to spend that much. I’ve managed campaigns all the way down to $500 a month. You can still put a fundamental structure in place to engage your top of funnel audience and build trust and credibility in your brand.

That long-term play on LinkedIn, you can segment your audience, people that maybe have not visited your website or company page in the last three months, so it’s been over three months now. You can use low cost ad types such as text ads or follower ads, dynamic ads to put really low cost touches to stay in the subconscious of your interested prospects. So yes, obviously the more budget you put behind it, the more volume you can drive, the more low hanging fruit you’re going to find, and the more frequency you can build. But you don’t have to have an enterprise budget to still run a campaign on LinkedIn and make it effective for you.

Which is music to everyone ears, I think. And obviously we’ve got to remember the lifetime value as well. So an MSP, it might take you a very long time to win a client, but you keep them for 5 to 10 to 15 years paying monthly recurring revenue. So to the average MSP, a new client is worth a $100,000, $200,000, maybe even a quarter of a million, would you spend $2,000 to $3,000 to win a quarter of a million pound client? I mean, everyone would say yes until the point they actually come to put in the LinkedIn adverts on, I guess. But there we go.

And again, rule of thumb, probably around 10%, right? You know that that’s what a client is worth, be investing that in finding them and bringing them in.

Yeah, no, I like that. And actually, if you do that consistently, I’ve always said this to MSPs, if you know can onboard a new client every month, wouldn’t you spend that money to onboard that client? And the answer is yes, but of course it takes time. You can’t just switch it on Monday and you get the new client on Wednesday. If it was that simple, then everyone would be doing it.

Josh, you’ve been amazing. Thank you so much for sharing an insight. So tell us what you do to help MSPs with their LinkedIn ads and how can we get in touch with you?

Yeah, absolutely. So again, I am extremely familiar in the MSP space. It was the second largest vertical at my previous agency. I’ve overseen hundreds of accounts on LinkedIn, so what I can really do is come in and fundamentally help you build a strategy that’s going to not just yield results, but try to exponentially grow them over time, by having the right structure in place. If people want to learn more about that and how I can help them, all you have to do, you can either DM me on LinkedIn, it’s linkedin.com/Joshua Stout, or you can go to influence.co, go to the advertising page and book a call. I’d be happy to talk.

Michael in Texas is making a concerted effort with marketing for his MSP.  He’s watched some previous podcasts on YouTube and found a video me getting upset by an MSP using a particular word in their marketing. He’s asked: Why shouldn’t I use the word “user”?

Oh, I got upset did I, well, sometimes I do like to wear my heart on my sleeve.

The thing is, I get frustrated when I see an MSP using the word “user” in their marketing, or even perhaps when they talk to clients or prospects, because user is a horrible word to ordinary people. A user is someone on drugs or someone who exploits other people.

The word “user” must be banned from your marketing, from your sales, from any conversation you have outside of your business. And instead, use these words – people and person. Companies don’t have users, they have people. It’s such a simple thing to change, and yet it’s going to make such a big difference.

Welcome to this EASTER SPECIAL – Episode 284 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green.

Featured guest: Steve Dempsey has been a Managed IT Services owner for over 25 years and only serves small businesses in several different markets in the UJS. In addition he owns a small SEO agency for MSP’s only to help them generate local organic leads for their business.

Hello and welcome to this special for Easter. I’m joined today by MSP owner Steve Dempsey, who’s going to tell us his business owning journey. And trust me, you have never heard a story like this before. There are many highlights, one of the best being how he went from losing thousands in his business every month to making thousands, with one key decision. Steve is a unique and generous character, and you are going to love everything he has to talk about.

Hey there, I’m Steve Dempsey. I’ve been in the IT business for 25 years and my main IT company is NeoTech Networks.

And it’s so cool to finally get you here onto the podcast, Steve. We’ve got our special episode for Easter 2025, and I feel like you and I have both been in lots of the same places at the same time, but we’ve never had a quality conversation. You’re obviously highly active in The Tech Tribe, as am I. We nearly met at Scale Con, which was the big marketing conference in Vegas in October last year. I actually talked to you from the stage and we did some cool stuff where you were in the audience and I was on the stage, but we never found each other afterwards, so it’s absolutely crazy. But I’m delighted to have you here on the show. And the reason I want to have you here, well there’s two things that I want to talk about. The first of them is you are one of the most unique MSPs that I have ever come across and you have a very unique lifestyle and I want to explore today what your life is like and what you’ve had to go through to get to that life.

And just as a bit of a tease for the many MSPs that will be listening to this on the podcast or indeed watching this on YouTube, Steve has an enviable lifestyle and it’s nothing to do with having lots of houses, a yacht, cars, anything like that. But Steve is living his best life and also has a great business. So that’s what we’re going to explore first of all. And then secondly, you have one of the most unique approaches to SEO, search engine optimisation, that I’ve ever come across. So I want to explore that because I know you had a huge amount of success for it, and indeed you are helping a small number of other MSPs to implement that in their business. But let’s start with the lifestyle stuff. So first of all, Steve, let’s hear your story. So you said in your intro you’ve been in the tech world for 25 years, which sounds like such a long time, doesn’t it? I’m 50. How old are you right now?

I’ll be almost 52.

Okay, so we’re more or less the same age then. Talking about 25 years, it sounds a lot and when you realise, hmm, that’s half of my life actually, that’s quite sobering in some respects. Tell us about your tech career then. So how did you get into tech in the first place? How did you start your first business? What’s your journey into this MSP space?

To sum it up quickly, full disclosure, I actually never went to college. I only have a high school diploma and I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit. My last full-time job was, this is probably embarrassing to admit it’s been that long, my last full-time job was probably 28 years ago. The company went out of business. I always had that just drive in me to do something on my own. And then when I was 27 years old when I was on my own, I started a quote on quote computer company. Let’s just say that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and absolutely no direction whatsoever. But on the second year I actually did start to get the clients and I actually went to people’s homes and repaired computers and all that good stuff.

Yeah, the real old fashioned way of doing it. And when did you make the leap over into managed services?

You’re going to love my brutal honesty, Paul, on everything because I am a New Yorker and I think you know me well enough from The Tribe, I don’t hold back and I don’t mince words. Truth be told, a number of years later, 15 years about, I admit I was getting burned out and I did have, and I fully admit this, I had an attitude problem. I had an attitude problem for years. I think just over the work and just dealing with everything, I really let my business slide and it was pretty bad. And then when I turned 40, it’s that whole midlife crisis thing, I got burned by another IT owner in New York City that I was subcontracting for, and then that’s when I had the final aha moment of I need to make a decision. I either need to get serious about my business, or get out. And I’m 40 years old, I’m like, you need to grow up or get out. And it was at that moment that I went full swing into my IT business virtually overnight reinvented my perspective, I got rid of my attitude problem, I saw everything as brand new and I hired my first employee probably about a year later.

Amazing. When you talk about that attitude problem, what was that? Was that you being arrogant or was that just being a bit of an arms folded New York IT guy, everyone else is an idiot, that my way is the only way? Or was it something different?

Nope, actually the attitude problem was actually I just didn’t want to be bothered. And I did get fired by a couple of clients, and looking back on it I’m very embarrassed by it. I’m sure people picked up on it. I just didn’t want to be bothered, to lift a finger. I think part of it came from just the repetitive work. I mean when you fix someone’s Outlook or printer or whatever for the 500th time, you’re just like, yeah, I just don’t want to be bothered anymore. And it showed, I admit it.

Yeah, I think that’s very brave of you to admit that because I’m not a psychologist, but this feels like a therapy session for you, to go back and even to look at an aged fault of something that you are 10, 12 years on from. None of us like to admit our faults and when our behaviour didn’t match up to our values. So thank you for doing that. I think at least one person listening to this will realise that, oh my goodness, that’s me. I’m trapped in that because I’m dealing with the same things and I’m trapped in something I actively dislike. In fact, we have a phrase for it, which is where MSP owners create a prison of their own design and lock themselves inside, and I think it manifests itself in different ways, and that was clearly how that manifested for you.

So you got to that point, you had that incident, you made the decision to do it properly or get out of it. Obviously you went in a specific direction. What then happened to the business and take us through the story of how you grew that business. I assume you got more staff, you got more clients. Is it your traditional growth story?

It is traditional growth. I did get more. I elevated each year. I got a small office in Manhattan, for the first time in my life I actually had an office and then things grew from there. A couple years later I needed to hire a second tech and get a bigger office. And like I said, I was just on full swing looking back on what held me back at that time. I’m sure other solo IT guys would appreciate this, even for me to hire my first employee, it probably took me, and I’m not kidding, a year to mentally get over the fact that I was paying somebody a full-time salary for work that I could do myself. And the reason why is because I was not a business owner, I was a tech. I was 90% tech and I was not a business owner. So for years, even five years, I was more of a tech than a business owner. And then I finally started to slip over to the other side and realise I needed to get other people to do things for me and do the work, so that I can move on to bigger and better things.

That mindset shift from being a tech who happens to be working within their own business, to being the business owner who is working on almost a different level, you’re working on growing this thing and that means having to get people in to do things that even though you can do them. Is that a mindset shift that you could have done earlier or do you think you had to go through that process to get to that point?

I think it probably depends on the person. You really need to think big. And I kind of do think big now, but I just wasn’t mature enough or did not have the business sense to think big. But I honestly can say 100% what changed all that was The Tech Tribe, which we knew was going to come up sooner rather than later. Once I joined The Tech Tribe brand new and I started to absorb all that knowledge and then be around not only other business owners, but also other business owners that had 5, 10, 20 staff. Jamie Warner for example comes to mind, who’s a friend of mine now, hearing like wow, he actually has people that work for him and he’s not dealing with his low level stuff. And once that started to rub off on me, it took years, but yeah, that definitely started my transition of thinking like a business owner and not a tech.

I love that. And Jamie Warner has been on this podcast a couple of times. He’s such good value because as you say, he’s built an enormous MSP and he’s built Invarosoft as a side project and it’s huge. And Jamie’s just one of the most inspirational people you can speak to, which is great.

He is an awesome guy. Jamie’s just a super nice guy too.

I don’t know him personally, I only know him professionally, but yeah I bet he is. So what, take us through then to the point at which something changed now, I don’t know what changed for you, I don’t know your story that in depth, but I know that the lifestyle you live today, which we are obviously coming on to talk about, is much different to the classic MSP owning lifestyle that most people live. So talk us through the growth then, whatever it was that caused this change to happen.

Yeah, I’ll put it on the table so everybody hears it, right. I was in a cramped Manhattan office, you can imagine how much rent I was paying and I had three other full-time people. I probably had seven or eight people’s worth of work. And we were all just juggling work from one to another and honestly just being a glorified help desk. And I was not doing anything proactively. I was barely working on sales because I was always answering tickets myself and all that good stuff.

In the past seven years, I purchased three other IT companies because my road for expansion was absorbing other IT companies. So the first one was a huge financial success and I bought it in Long Island, New York. The second one I bought in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and it was like a so-so success. And then I ended up buying a printer repair company in New York City, and I should’ve had my head examined for buying that, but I can’t take it back. It sounded like a good idea at the time. And that’s that.

When Covid hit, and I’ll just fully disclose this, I was a quarter million in debt from the acquisitions and my appetite far exceeded my business sense, and I should never have purchased a printer repair company because I already had debt from the second acquisition, and it was just too much for me to take on. I was just too ambitious. Covid hit, I lost my biggest client in New York City, which was like a 20 chain restaurant client, and that was also 30% of my business. So I was probably, thinking back now, I was probably in the red about $20,000 a month. So in other words, by the time covid hit, I was already losing $20,000 a month. The only thing I was doing was just not paying my credit card. I was paying probably almost $3,000 a month in credit card interest alone. And a couple of months after Manhattan shut down American Express actually shut off my credit card and they wouldn’t let me charge anything else. I was actually in serious financial trouble.

And then it was at that moment that I had made a decision just to turn everything upside down within one week. So within one week I closed both my Manhattan offices, I laid off all three of my salaried employees in Manhattan. And then I went full swing into virtual, which I still have many of them today, which was freelance Latin America in Venezuela. And then I hired full-time employees down there for a fraction of the cost. And I would say within one month I went from $20,000 negative to like $10,000 positive within a matter a matter of weeks.

That’s incredible. What a story. And there’s so many things to unpack from that. Let’s start with, we’re going to delve a little bit into all of that I think, and then we’ll talk about what you’ve done subsequently. I now understand how the lifestyle you live today is possible. So let’s talk about that that week. I’ve never personally been in a position where I was that deep into debt. So I’ve had bad years, I’ve had good years, I’ve been in business for 20 years myself and especially, I can imagine if you’re that much in debt and then this pandemic comes along and shuts down the city and takes your biggest clients away and then the credit card company say ring and say, cut your cards up, that’s as low as you can go, right? You must’ve been weeks away from personal bankruptcy, nevermind just losing the business. So, talk us through the mindset, and I appreciate we’re talking about something five years on, so a lot of those emotions that are now memories, but what was the thinking and the mindset? Did you become more clear? Did you go out and just try and drown your sorrows? What was your way of dealing with that and reaching that decision of I’ve got to do something so extreme? It could be the end of everything, but actually I’ve got no option.

I knew I was in trouble, and the credit cards obviously were the debt and the interest and everything was racking up. So I knew I was on a bad road. My position at the time was actually to work my way out of it. So my day started at 5:00am, I was working until whenever, seven, eight o’clock at night. I was working six or seven days a week trying to get out of this, doing the work of 10 other people and all that other good stuff.

So the end result is Covid and Manhattan shutting down and me losing my biggest client was actually the best thing that could’ve happened to me, to be honest with you, because if it did not happen, I did not have, for lack of a better word that I want to use, I did not have the guts to do what needed to be done, which was close the go full swing into a virtual staff. I just do not have the guts. If covid did not happen, if those events did not happen, what I would have done is I probably would have borrowed a ton more money from family, friends, whoever I can get it from, and pretty much pay that off and just move debt from one to another. But looking back on it, it was the best thing that happened to me because it forced my hand and it forced me to do all those things virtually overnight, which has led to my lifestyle here, here and now present day. I don’t think that would’ve happened if those events didn’t happen.

Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned freelance Latin America, it’s a company I’m familiar with, I did a webinar with them actually a few months ago. Really good people, very passionate about what they do. This is now going to end up as a free little advert for them, but then they’re the key thing to you doing what you did. If we actually, let’s not talk about them, let’s talk about the concept of what they do. So you have essentially outsourced your tech work to people not in the US. Is that correct? That’s essentially what you’ve done there.

Yeah, that is correct, but almost, I understand what you’re saying about outsource, but they work for me full time and my first couple employees from freelance are actually now with me going on year five.

Got it. So let’s take the word outsource then. So you’ve shifted the work from people who sit in an office, sweating in a city, and I say sweating because they’re sitting with no air conditioning inside an office building in Manhattan, to people who are elsewhere but they’re still doing it, a hundred percent of their working time is for you. But because of the economics of the world in different geographical locations, the cost of that person, they’re earning a good salary, but you’re obviously paying them a lot less than you would be paying someone to sit in an office in Manhattan, and your overall overheads are lower. What was your fear shifting that over? I’ve had that conversation with lots of MSPs about, there’s so much good talent available in lots of different places and everything can be done remotely, but there’s a lot of emotions and a lot of fear that holds people back. Now obviously you were in quite an extreme case position, but talk us through almost like what was the feeling you had of what’s the worst thing that could have happened at that point?

All the above. I mean, speaking of freelance Latin America, Randy who’s the owner, he’s a personal friend of mine, and I did meet him in person. He was actually sitting next to me at the Scale Con convention, just so you know. He was sitting next to me when you gave me that shout out on the stage, Randy leaned into me and he’s like, see, you’re an influencer. I can’t believe this. He was very impressed. But back on track, it was all fears. I couldn’t wrap my head around actually entrusting any kind of work, clients, bookkeeping, support anything to somebody overseas. It took me, and Randy will tell you this, from the first conversation of me hiring an admin, it took him three months of chasing me for me to finally say yes because of the trust and everything. And then once I did it, it was like a snowball effect and six months later I had six full-time people.

That’s just insane. And obviously it’s working for you because that’s obviously still what you’re doing now. So talk us through what your lifestyle is like now. And the only reason I know about your lifestyle is because you do post stuff in The Tech Tribe, and I follow you in terms of following what you write because I always find value in what you write. Give us an example of what you’ve been doing the last few weeks, and I think that will show us the lifestyle you’ve been able to achieve as a result of this change.

So yeah, so before I speak about that, I’m just going to say as part of that, this goes with the transition of being a business owner or going from a tech to a business owner. And then more importantly is that it comes with trust. You have to trust the people that you’re working with and let go. And that also to back that up, you need processes in place and you need people to make the right decisions, but they’re not going to make the right decisions if you don’t trust them.

Post covid, when I created my virtual team, I sketched out an entire business model with roles like service manager, procurement, sales, calibration, admin, and list goes on. I had created a business model for my virtual workforce, and I just started filling those roles. So if anybody was thinking about doing it, the biggest issue I see even to this day when Tech Tribers approach me privately, is they think they’re going to hire a full-time guy overseas and he’s going to be like five people in one. And they show me their job descriptions, and I’m like, yeah, well good luck with that. I see it time and time again. You want to hire somebody, you give him a dedicated role, dedicated responsibilities, that’s the way I did it. And then they know what they’re doing and it grew from there.

Now once that happened, my workload became less, even though I’m still a workaholic and I had people making decisions, and then now it’s to the point where most of the things that come to me are usually yes or no answers from my team. Just, yes, can we do this? Or something like that. It’s nowhere near my involvement even up to until two years ago.

So to answer your question this last month I actually, I went to Uruguay, so I went to Montevideo, Uruguay for two weeks as well as Buenos Aries for two weeks. I worked on my laptop for a couple hours in the morning and then went on my day to do whatever. And then just with my phone and Microsoft Teams, I was just keeping tabs on everything. And every once in a while, my service manager or my experience liaison would message me, or even my admin, Hey, can you give me a thumbs up this or approve this or approve that? And then just was a tourist for two weeks. And last year I lived in Columbia, South America for six months in different cities running my business. None of my clients knew I was there and ran my staff, but my company runs itself, I would say probably 90% at this point.

I absolutely love it. So essentially you’ve become a digital nomad where you can run your business from absolutely anywhere in the world. And the only thing I guess you have to worry about is time difference and have a got WIFI and have a got electricity. And I know you’ve are into mountains, aren’t you? Mountain climbing is your thing.

Oh, very much. Absolutely.

Yeah. So I mean, I love the sound of all of your lifestyle except the mountain climbing. Me, I’d just like to stay somewhere flat where they’ve got coffee shops, and sun, that’s something that a part of that lifestyle I’d most like to live. Final question on this and then we’re going to move on to the subject of SEO, which is the clients. So we’ve talked over a five year period or very quickly, you went from staff sitting in an office to virtual staff. Did the clients notice, did you tell the clients and what’s their experience today? And did you lose any clients as a result of this?

That’s a very good question. So when I went full swing into virtual, and I did not gracefully do it, I mean I literally just turned into it in a matter of a week, I hired techs and then threw them on the front lines without any training whatsoever. It was like, just here’s the ticket system and do it. I was just in over my head. I did have a handful of clients that the business owners that I knew, reach out to me or maybe mention like, Hey, Steve, I noticed a lot of these people you have working for, you have Spanish accents or accents of some kind. And they noticed it right away that when I got rid of my three full-time staff in Manhattan, and I just put them at ease. And while I didn’t say they were from another country or anything like that, I assured them, I said, you’re going to have to trust me. That was my position. I’ve been in this business for a very long time. I said, each one of them has been hired by me personally, vetted by me personally. They worked for me full time, and that was enough to put their minds at ease, and I did not lose a single client as a result of the shift at all.

Oh, amazing. I just love that. And I guess for any MSP listening to this or watching this, who’s thinking, could I do that, is that something we could transition to? Would your advice be to, if you did it again, if you were doing it today and you had the luxury of time and slowing everything down, would you be more communicative with the clients or would you just ease in and just see what happens?

I would just ease in, because when you announce something like that, it’s more like a drop. You know what I’m saying? You’re announcing, Hey, this is going to happen. And that’s why I didn’t do it, because in my opinion, you are kind of maybe forcing someone to make a decision like, well do I want to stay with them or do I not want to stay with them? If you say something like that versus, Hey, if the work’s done, what do you care? And your bill’s not going up, what do you care? And that was pretty much my position, and they were okay with that.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Okay, let’s change subjects. I just want to do a few minutes on the subject of SEO, search engine optimisation. So caveat with this, I’m not an SEO expert, I’ve never claimed to be.  I understand the basics of it, but it’s a very technical subject, and I’ll be honest, it bores the pants off me. And I think for the vast majority of MSPs, SEO or traditional SEO is not an option, but you have a very distinctive and unique approach to SEO, which seems a lot more grounded in the realities of being an MSP. So talk us through what your approach is, and again, how did you stumble across this approach?

So I was never a marketer. I hated marketing. And I think this maybe came with age and experience, and you know what, Paul, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know what the hell changed myself, but all of a sudden, almost three years ago, I started to fall in love with marketing, and I still, I don’t even know how that happened, to me.

Honest. Marketing is sexy. Everyone knows this.

I mean, I hated it. I didn’t want to touch it ever. I just wanted to do IT work. But just like all other small IT business owners like me, and even smaller, everything comes up. You want leads, you want to grow. And I tried it all and I spent a lot of money over the years with cold calling and I hired a consultant on Google ads. I was paying a lot of money to him, and I tried LinkedIn stuff and tried this and tried that. My biggest problem, which was me personally, is I would kind of jump on, like everyone does, you jump on something, you give it three or four months, you don’t put any work into it, you don’t pay attention, and you are expecting a return. It does not happen like that.

What kind of changed my mind is three years ago, I restarted my Google ad campaigns and I realised when I started to learn Google ads for myself, I realised just how bad they were when the consultant did them. I mean, I’m sorry to throw them someone under the bus, but they were bad because the consultant did not understand IT. And this is what I tell everybody else, right? To an outsider, VoIP, security, cybersecurity… for them, it’s just a buzzword and they know nothing besides that, and they’re just like, okay, let’s just spend money on that. Cybersecurity. You do cybersecurity, right? You do VoIP. Yes, I do. Let’s spend money on that. And to them, it’s just plain vanilla and you’re not going to go anywhere. So when I saw that, I realised just how bad it was. I realised also as the and outsider can never understand the IT industry. And then I started to, I got so disgusted with Google ads because it was not working, I decided to learn SEO myself, and I started to actually fall in love with it. I got passionate about it, the metrics and data. And then once again, my unique approach is because I’m an active IT business owner, I’m not guessing at somebody’s business model. I’m not guessing at the terminology, I’m not guessing at what you do. My answer is, okay, just tell me what industries you serve and everything, and we can have a very natural conversation of what kind of leads you’re looking to attract and local market pretty much only without somebody or without a business owner holding my hand explaining IT terminology to me. So nobody else can really do that or let’s just say most can’t. How about that?

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So what do you do? Because obviously SEO, there’s lots of things you can do, and I know you’ve got a mix of things you do onsite, which is on your website and things you do offsite, but you’ve taken a more Google business profile approach towards that. Is that correct?

No, that’s not correct. Listen, SEO makes my brain hurt sometimes too, Paul, because there is so much, you know what I’m saying? And everybody supposedly has the golden goose you know, go on YouTube, okay, a hundred people are going to make you a million dollars with SEO tomorrow. And even I’m exhausted of watching those videos, but I watch to learn, my approach actually is to take everything, which means Google Business Listing, obviously Google SEO or the SERP searches, your website, and then now what I’m doing is also social media and then putting it all together and crossing all the boxes. What I’ve really learned actually in the last six months myself, is that Google, YouTube, whatever, they’re not human. They’re just an algorithm and if you give it what it wants, if you just check the boxes and just give it the math that it wants and the quantities that it wants, you’re going to get results.

I mean, that in itself, there is a great strategy, is just give the platforms what they want. You could actually apply this across all the marketing. You could apply that to LinkedIn, you could apply it to any other social media network. You could apply it to anything. Give the algorithm what it wants, what it’s set up to reward, and of course you’re going to see better results for it. But that’s amazing. So has SEO become your number one source of new leads now? And are you, and just to put some context on that, are you generating leads in Manhattan or are you now looking at a much wider area?

You know what, Paul, I’ll be honest with you, I am so spread thin sometimes as a business owner, I don’t even work on my own SEO half the times. Okay, so yeah, I’m serious, right? I go at my website and I’m like, God, I’m like, I need to do a hundred things here. And I don’t pay attention to my own website. I’m having difficulty in Manhattan because I’m up against some serious IT companies with serious budgets, and that’s a fact. So I’m always refining my processes, Google business listing, Bing even. So full disclosure, I’ll give you two examples of what I have going on. I have a Triber in Asheville, North Carolina, who’s one of my first clients, and he was not getting any leads, his only business was referrals. And now he gets probably a local lead a week from the work that I do, both Google Business listing and Google searches. He just got a brewery that was looking for a new IT company last week. And I’m like, Hey, listen, I told him if that was me, I’m like, I would just go back to them and say, listen, you can pay me in beer and then we’ll call it a day. But I say, you do what you want to do.

On the flip side, I had a Triber, he stopped paying me and he was right to do so. I had a Triber in California and he was with me for six months. I did not get him a single lead because I’m always refining my processes, whatever. And I was very frustrated. So I’m actually working for him now for free, which I offered because I just feel like I have a moral obligation. And if the situation were reversed, I’m like, I get it. You just pay me a lot of money and you have nothing to show for it. I understand.  So I’m hoping the more I learn, I even brought in some outside help to engage with my team in-house that I’m working for him to get leads. So listen, it’s not a golden road. It could be very difficult. It could take months, six months, whatever, and hopefully it’ll pay off. For me, I’m not reliant on the SEO business to pay my rent. That’s why I don’t mind that when I fail, which I do like, okay, let me work for free for a few months and let me see what I can do.

Yeah, no, I love that. And that’s again, you’ve been brutally honest throughout this entire interview, and you’ll never hear someone who sells SEO saying it doesn’t work for some people because that goes against their model. But what Steve has said there is the truth. In fact, you could apply that to all marketing tactics. What works very well in North Carolina might not work well in California, and it’s about finding the right fix for each of those.

And let me just say this at Scale Con, I don’t remember the speaker’s name, but he did SEO or does SEO and he was on stage speaking, and then when he mentioned the website in New York, he goes, I got this website, and I’m like, you’re the one, because I knew the website and I was like, man, I’m like, this guy must’ve spent some serious money because I was reading and I’m looking through the back links and everything, and I’m like, he’s on number one position. I’m like, this guy must’ve spent some serious money, and there’s the guy responsible for it. I thought that was hilarious.

I love that. And I hope you did the decent thing, I hope you stole his laptop and deleted his website, because that’s the right thing to do? Steve, you’ve been just so open and just been a delight to have as a guest. I’d love to get you back on in the future. Let’s just finish off by obviously some MSPs listening to this, watching this may want to have a chat with you about SEO. We’ve already said, obviously it is almost like a fun side project for you, more than a highly commercial service. But what’s the best way to get hold of you? And obviously, Tech Tribe is a great place and anyone that’s in Tech Tribe knows you’re there, but for someone who’s not in Tech Tribe, because apparently there are some MSPs who haven’t yet joined Tech Tribe, what’s the best way to get hold of you?

So you can visit theSEOITguy.com, it’s very fitting. I only work with IT companies. I only work with IT companies on a local level. And just like my IT business where I only work with small business clients, it’s kind of the same thing on the IT side, I have no problem working with a sole practitioner, which I have. The guy in Asheville closed something like four new clients two months ago as a result of organic searches. So yes, it does work, but it takes a lot of work to get there, and as I learned from him and other Tribers that I’m helping getting more leads, I kind of put that all together. So that’s how you can get in touch with me. Just go there and fill out the form or email me. Amazing. I have, and I’ll just say one other thing. 

This is turning into a full-time business and a real business, and it’s a totally separate business from my IT business. I know you want to go, Paul, but given my age and experience, I have no problem working with other IT business being neutral. I’m not looking to get anything out of or steal any ideas or anything because to be honest with you, I am just so indifferent at this point of being in the business for 25 years. So yeah, I do have an in-house team that I trained, and we do a lot of work. It’s not a pet project, it is something real, that’s all.

Okay. My apologies. I made an assumption there.

No, no problem.

When you assume you make something of you and me, we all know that. So thank you, Steve. Thanks again for coming on the show. And listen, if on your travels, if you ever make your way over to the UK, please let me know so that we can go and have a beer together. The only downside of that is we don’t really have mountains in the UK. We’ve got small hills. That’s all we’ve got.

Ah, man. Okay. Well, I’ve climbed, there’s 58 Fourteeners, which is 14,000 ft mountains in Colorado, which is where I live now, I moved, and I have climbed 26 of them, and I’m way behind on my schedule. But this summer, I’m probably going to get to maybe 35, and I’m hoping to climb all 58, probably within the next few years. So side goal.

And a small English hill should be added onto that as a goal. Definitely.

Sure, man. Do you guys drink warm beer or is that just a rumour out there?

It’s just a rumour. Just a rumour.

Okay. Okay.