SMB Community Podcast: Business Advice for Small MSP Owners

After much work and planning, we are ready to go LIVE.

Here is Episode 1 of the Killing IT Podcast. I think it's a good introduction to who we are and what we're up to.

Amazingly enough, Ryan is traveling in the Bay Area today. Karl's in Montreal today. And Dave's somewhere in Europe. In other words, NONE of us are in our home offices making it happen. Welcome to the 21st Century.

Part of what we love is the focus on tomorrow and emerging technology. And by tomorrow, we really mean tomorrow - not five, ten, or fifteen years down the road.

A few of our topics:

• Dave's Rant on the Trusted Advisor
• AI - Artificial Intelligence: Good or Evil?

If you have feedback, find the form at KillingIT.smallbizthoughts.com.

We welcome your reactions, questions, and comments - Enjoy!

I interviewed Mas Malik from Virtiant.com for this SMB Community Podcast.

Mas is the VP of Sales and Marketing.

Virtiant provides "Disaster Recovery as a Service" – without the onsite BDR hardware. It is VMWare-centric and able to recreate your environment in the cloud, so "failover" to the cloud can happen without users needing to repoint IP addresses or make other changes.

As they describe themselves, Virtiant is "An all-in-one software-defined platform built on a scalable architecture that resides on commodity hardware. Virtiant is the only on-premise solution available today that can replicate a company's virtual environment and enable normal IT operations to run while the primary production environment suffers an outage and is being brought back online."

Find out more at: www.virtiant.com

Watch the interview:

Listen to the Interview (mp3)

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You read that right. This is not the Premier Episode. It's the primer. It's not even Episode One.

It's Episode .9 - not quite ready for prime time.

Basically, we need to have something here so iTunes and everybody else will start listing the show. We already have a few shows prepared for the big launch May 7th.

Please subscribe now - Don't miss even ONE "real" episode.

:-)

I talked to Zack Rosenberg about his custom video program – Catapult.

As Zack points out, by 2021 more than 82% of internet traffic will be against video, a number that will accelerate once everyone has 5G internet speeds.

Video is pricey and difficult to do, especially when SMB's spend around 2 hours a week on marketing.

Basically, Catapult creates interesting and entertaining videos that you can place on your YouTube channel, social media, etc. The goal is to engage your potential audience and then place your marketing in front of them. Despite what you might expect, the videos are not about you – not about technology.

They are on sports, hobbies, and other topics. The basic idea is that your prospects are interested in lots of things – and that technology is probably not on the list.

Find out more at: www.firecatapult.com

Watch the interview:

Listen to the Interview (mp3)

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I was happy to interview Harry on the official announcement of his new book – How to Be An MSP. It is now officially released. In this interview, Harry also announces another new adventure: A serious focus on the cannabis industry as the largest new vertical opportunity for the next ten years.

Harry is also launching a new site, effective immediately:

http://420msp.com/

I have read the new book and am honored to have written the Foreword. The new book is a great introduction to exactly what it promises: How to Be An MSP.

Many of you know that Harry has previously written books on how to be a successful Small Business Consultant. Well, this is literally a new book on that topic – designed for the 2020's!

In addition to the core focus on building a profitable IT consulting practice, the book takes a deep dive into the hottest new vertical market in North America: The cannabis and CBD market. This is a huge industry that requires an amazing amount of technology

Learn about the book here: https://420msp.com/buy-the-book/C

Visit the new 420 MSP site here: https://420msp.com

Watch the interview:

Listen to the Interview (mp3)

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This interview with Ken Dwight covers a lot of territory.

Ken train IT Pros on cutting-edge virus fighting and virus remediation. He show folks how to dig into the guts of machines to do much more than "remove" viruses.

Rather than "Nuking and Paving," Ken teaches how to dig in and remove all the remnants of viruses – even those left over after AV software has removed the virus.

As Ken points out, a lot of modern viruses are very complicated. Many techs approach this by wiping and reloading the PC. Instead, Ken recommends that you clean out the registry and find the files and folders that are left all over the machine.

Here are a few additional sources he offers:

Virus Remediation Training workshops – https://www.thevirusdoc.com/virus-remediation-training

Recorded mini-course on encrypting ransomware – https://www.thevirusdoc.com/ransomware

Recorded mini-course on cleaning up after a tech-support scammer – https://www.thevirusdoc.com/scammer

Note: Ken offers a 15% discount on the tuition for any of his training. Just enter Coupon Code of KarlP15 at checkout.

Find out more about Ken Dwight, "The Virus Doctor," at https://www.thevirusdoc.com.

Watch the interview:

Listen to the Interview (mp3)

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Had a great interview with Lori Tisinai from the IT Owners Compass conference – www.ITOCompass.com.

ITO Compass is April 27-28 in downtown Chicago, with a reception the night before. Plan to join me there!

I am proud to be the keynote speaker for this conference. And there will be many other speakers as well. Please see the web site for details.

In this interview, Lori walks through some of the agenda, followed by a great discussion of speakers, content, vendors, and more.

Sneak peek: I'm putting on a 2-hour workshop on the last day.

We also talked about women attendees. Lori had a large percentage of women at the conference last year, which is highly unusual in our space. So I am encouraging women to attend by providing scholarships.

Special Promo: First-time female attendees will receive a $100 scholarship toward their enrollment. Contact Lori for details.

Check it all out at www.itocompass.com!

Watch the interview:

Listen to the Interview (mp3)

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I caught up with one of my favorite coaches, James Kernan, a few days ago.

He was eager to talk about the Ten Best Practices for a Successful Sales Organization.

James runs the Millionaire Mastermind Group – Meeting in Orlando March 28-29. For more information, visit KernanConsulting.com.

You can also catch up with James at the SMB TechFest show in Anaheim April 18th.

Here's a quick summary. But please watch the interview to get all the details:

Ten Best Practices for a Successful Sales Organization

• Have a Sales Plan / Sales Strategy
• Set goals and KPIs
• Have USP
• Create a compensation plan that's not too complicated
• Have a way to help the sales team with leads
• Constantly educate the sales team
• Have good communication
• Get the right tools and CRM
• Invest in support staff for the sales team
• Document your sales processes!

Watch the interview:

Listen to the Interview (mp3)

[Sorry for my microphone problems. Something changed my settings and I didn't notice until the recording was done.]

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I interviewed Alex Hoff from Auvik from my hotel room in Chicago. Topic: Managed Network Services: Your Next Critical Opportunity.

Best comment is that entrepreneurs always go where the white space is. Love that. Whenever you create an offering, you need to go where very few people (or no one) are hanging around.

Auvik allows you to monitor complex client networks – with a specific focus on more complicated networks. That means more than just V-LANS: They excel at monitoring networks that stretch across cities, clouds, and various services. As Alex says, we can't stay focused just the equipment inside a client's office. The chokepoint might be somewhere else. And with multiple cloud offerings that you don't control, it's important to know that everything's working as advertized.

Links:

• www.Auvik.com

• email: [email protected]

• The Frankly MSP Resource Centre: auvik.com/franklyMSP
• Blogs for MSPs: auvik.com/franklymsp/blog/
• Auvik on Twitter: @AuvikNetworks
• Auvik on LinkedIn: ca.linkedin.com/company/auvik-networks-inc-
• Auvik on Facebook: www.facebook.com/AuvikNetworksInc

Alex offered a great network assessment starter kit you can get my emailing to [email protected]. Instructions bounce back. I did this and received a zip file with a great set of resources. Free.

Watch the interview:

Listen to the Interview (mp3)

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I interviewed Amy yesterday on three topics. Two (Third Tier and the SBT Community meeting) were quick. We spent most of our time on the topic of mergers, acquisitions, and "Sell My MSP."

Best comment is a quote from Will Smith. What do I have to do today to keep this going? Where do I have BE to keep this going?

Unlike the massive MSP merger/acquisition stories you see on Channele2e and other places, we talk about the smaller buyers and sellers. After all, the vast majority of "small" businesses are in the $1-, $2-, or $3-million range.

Amy says there are lots of national buyers looking for smaller MSPs to put their brand on. And, she adds, pretty much every market of any size has buyers who are looking for companies to acquire.

Even more interesting, Amy says that small MSPs don't experience the wild fluctuations that you read about in the news. Most of them sell for a number close to their annual sales – and that stays consistent without regard to what the rest of the market is doing.

Plus – we covered a lot more territory. All in all, it was a great interview. Amy is always full of good info.

Sites mentioned:

• Third Tier – www.ThirdTier.net
• Sell My MSP – www.SellMyMSP.com
• Small Biz Thoughts Community Meeting – www.smbroadshow.com

Watch the interview:

Listen to the Interview (mp3)

About the SMB Community Podcast: Weekly business advice for small MSP owners from Amy Babinchak and James Kernan of the Small Biz Thoughts community — MSP sales, MSP pricing and agreements, hiring and leading an MSP team, MSP operations, selling your MSP, and AI for small MSPs. Produced by MSP Radio. More for MSP owners at smallbizthoughts.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.