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Justin Esgar:
Dude, you know what my problem is today. Seriously. This is a, this is a true, honest to God, true story. I'm having a problem today with Gravity, <laugh> <laugh>, not, not the company I own. Call Gravity, literal gravity. Everything I have picked up today has fallen out of my fingers. I have fallen down three times. I am attempting to like, fix something and things are falling on me. Like, I don't know if Neptune is in orbit or some [inaudible] So we don't normally even have like a way of starting. We'll just kind of start, cuz I'll just go welcome everybody to all things M s P podcast. I'm your host Justin Esgar with OG host Eric Anthony. Today is a great day, Eric, what's up my friend?
Eric Anthony:
The Rain right now in North Carolina. So, you know, it's, it's been crazy all day. There's standing water everywhere. There's been flood warnings. It's a great
Justin Esgar:
Rain, by the way. Is a record. Rain comes down. So I asked what is up?
Eric Anthony:
Well because it starts up there and comes down.
Justin Esgar:
See, Paul Green's gonna get mad at us for having another podcast about weather. That's true. <Laugh>, it's the all things cloudy chance. Chance of meatballs, podcasts with me, your host, Justin Escar and OG host Eric Anthony. What's up everybody? We have a special guest today, ed Luka or Lucas, depending on, you know, what part of the country you're from is joining us. C e o of two 15 an Apple consultant based in Utah. Ed, what's going on ma'am? How are you?
Ed Lukacs:
I am outstanding. How you doing Justin and Eric?
Justin Esgar:
Well, Eric's flooding and I'm stuck in a closet. So, you know, it's, it's Friday. We're recording this on Friday. It's, it's one of those days and this can be one of those episodes where we think we have a plan and then it just goes completely off the rails.
Ed Lukacs:
Perfect. Well then I'm your right candidate to be on today. Cause you know, we've just gone through a little bit of snow and you know, I'm digging my way out, so I'm glad to be hosting it out with you guys.
Justin Esgar:
<Laugh>, I bought a snowblower, I bought one of those like, man blows the big girl heavy one. Yeah. and the wheels fell off because apparently the screws that were holding it in just, it, it was vibrating so badly that the, the, the screws snapped. But that's for our All Things snowblower podcast. Coming to you soon, to a podcast tool near you. Well, ed, thanks for joining us. Why don't you tell everybody a little bit about two 15, you know, you're a little bit about your background and then we'll kind of get into why you joined and what kind of questions do you have for us today?
Ed Lukacs:
Yeah, absolutely. So two 15 Tech. If you're familiar with Salt Lake, there is a beltway called two 15. And at the time, all of us lived off of the two 15. And it's a, a good landmark for everybody to represent Salt Lake City, or in other words, small Lake City as most people know us as. So so after, after that myself, I used to be an Apple certified trainer working at the university, and the only one in the state, so I'd gone in, was teaching server. You remember that thing back in the day? Yep. Yes. Still available, right? And also doing systems, right? So acs SP remember that test, and now they've changed that whole curriculum. So yeah. Since then, kind of joined two 15 Tech. This was back in 2016, and here I am leading it up. So we're in 2023, pushed through the pandemic and rocking hard. We've been actually doing pretty well in being probably the largest ACN in Salt Lake.
Justin Esgar:
Nice. That's awesome, man. Yeah. Congratulations. I, I, I'm always happy and very congratulate LA towards any, any of us who have made it through the pandemic and come out on the other side. You know, we say worse for where, but if you, if, if you can grow during the pandemic, which I always thought I said this before, the pandemic was really the, the quintessential game changer for IT people. Because I always say like, we told our clients we could do everything remotely. They just didn't believe us. And then when we were forced to, we're like, see how much easier it is? Like, look how cool this is. And they're like, oh my God. Well, thanks for joining us. You know, we've talked about this before. Our goal of this show is to help MSPs, MSP owners like yourself.
Ed Lukacs:
Mm-Hmm.
Justin Esgar:
<Affirmative>, what do you got? Tell, ask us some questions. And then, and then Eric and I in our combined 30 years experience, which that's an inside joke, we'll we'll try to do what we can do to help you.
Ed Lukacs:
Yeah, definitely. I love it. You know, becoming the CN and really moving on the Apple platform, we, we, we hit our stumbling bro blocks, right? We kind of started off wanting to be all, all inclusive environment, aka running that Microsoft and Apple shop. And we quickly were able to overcome that by recognizing that the tool sets were just overwhelming, right? And the knowledge base on, especially as you're growing your, your, your msp. So that was a good learn for us. But now we're entering that space where we've, we've passed a little bit of that, that early entry startup phase, and we're starting to hit that growth spurt, and now we're hitting into that sales and marketing component. And so where I'm at today is trying to find out what is the best way for an acn, particularly an Apple consultant network member, right? Or that Apple space to really define what marketing is, right? You can clearly see what Apple does and you wanna deliver that same experience, but here we're talking about, you know, somebody who's supporting that. And that's what I'm trying to determine today is how do I start to go and go to market and really have that marketing plan well developed.
And so that's my question to you guys.
Justin Esgar:
<Laugh>, Eric and I, you answered this. No, I'm fine. I'll go first. Well, I mean, one, that's a great question, right? And I think we can, let's, let's broaden this out a little bit because I think this is true for all MSPs, that that sales and marketing, because all of us have bumped into the same problem in my opinion, which is we can tell the world all about us, but until our clients need us, they don't care. Right? Until someone, until someone goes, my computer's broken. Who can I call? Like, it doesn't matter. But there's ways, and I've learned a lot from Paul Green and, and, and Mark Copeman and a couple other guys there are ways to mitigate this. So that way when they say to themselves, oh my God, my computer's broken. Who do I call? They should know who to call even if they've never interacted with you.
And I think that's kind of part of a lot what a lot of MSPs should be doing, right? Which is mm-hmm. <Affirmative> getting the exposure. So number one, you're here on the show. Not that a lot of clients are gonna listen to it, but that's exposure, right? But getting yourself in front of them, connecting with them on LinkedIn. I mean, you need, if you go back and listen to the episode, we talked to Paul Green about, we cover a lot of this stuff, which is like, put yourself out there, start putting content on LinkedIn. Figure out who your ideal client is also, right? Just cuz you do Max doesn't mean that's nha. There's, there's gonna be some marketers who say that's n enough and there's gonna be some that say that it's not. And on the PC side, you PC PCBs need to have a differentiator, right?
You need to, to make yourself different from the the next one. Cuz there's a, there're a dime a dozen at this point, right? So you need to drill down to who your ideal client is and you need to target the hell of them. This is a great story. I love this story about, it's not about MSPs, but there was a, a, someone's gonna fact check me on this one, but whatever. There was a guy who was a kid and he really wanted a, I think it was like an internship with some big company. And so what he did was he put targeted ads on LinkedIn and what he, he targeted, not the guy, he targeted all of the guy's connections. And the ad was a video of him, of himself going like, Hey, do you know Bob? Tell Bob Justin's looking for him cuz he wants to work for him.
And all of Bob's friends saw this ad. Bob calls the guy and goes, take the ad down. You have the job done. Like <laugh>, it, it works, right? Like the concept here is that, that you can do that kind of thing if you target properly. And you know who, and I'm gonna use a marketing buzzword here. Your avatar is you can go after them and be top of mind sending them articles in on LinkedIn, getting them on your newsletter whether that's email or your LinkedIn newsletter. But like, and that's if you're targeting businesses, if you're targeting people, if you're doing more b2c, go to where those people are, if they're older, go to Facebook. If they're younger TikTok or Insta or whatever that, I mean, that's my initial take, but Eric, you jump in.
Eric Anthony:
So I mean, this is one of the reasons why I built my framework, right, is because just like we talked about with Paul Green, you, you need to break this down into processes. And to me, marketing has two sets or two areas that you need to focus on. There's awareness. It's, it's being out there and having people know who you are by bumping into you virtually by via billboard, which we talked about as well last time. However you're gonna be out there, Justin was right. Whether you call it avatar, ideal client profile, ideal customer profile, whatever it is, identify your audience because if you don't identify your audience, you a can't target them where they're at. And frequently, like if it's business, like Justin said, that's LinkedIn, but what LinkedIn groups are they hanging out in? If it's Facebook, what Facebook groups are they hanging out in?
These are the places where your content needs to be distributed in order to reach them in front of them all the time. And then the second part of it is making the content that's going to appeal to them. Now you mentioned, you know, you want something that kind of meshes with what Apple does and that's great because Apple does some amazing, amazing, some of the best in my opinion video content out there. And so if you can kind of mimic that video content in small bits, cuz obviously the production value of an Apple video is absolutely huge <laugh>, but I, I'm here to tell you, you can find probably people on fiber who do YouTube that can mimic that style and not be very expensive. And so if you can create that stuff, go ahead. It looks like you have a question, ed.
Ed Lukacs:
No, no. I I'm, I'm, I'm I'm absorbing everything you're saying cuz. Okay. You know, I, I like the idea of of YouTube, it, it, it, it goes to a, a, a demographic, right? Everybody thinks, you know, owners are older and stodgy and really apple owners, sometimes they're a little bit more hip and, and, and riding within, you gotta be able to expose yourself to
Eric Anthony:
Both. Yeah. Yeah. And YouTube is great because it allows you a
Justin Esgar:
Understatement statement. <Laugh>
Ed Lukacs:
<Laugh>,
Eric Anthony:
Well, because it allows you a repository forever, evergreen content. And actually, that actually is a really good segue into the second part of marketing, and that's part where I call it the discovery piece. It's where they have, they're aware of you, but they don't know exactly what you do, but they wanna find out more. And, and you have to have this step filled as well. And typically these are things like YouTube, your website, things that as if they're aware of you or they search for you, they're gonna find the content that better describes in detail what you do and how you do it for your ideal customer. And again, you're, you're gearing it towards these people who fit that ideal customer profile. And if you do those two things and you create a process to create regular content and drive people to the discovery piece, your website, your YouTube channel, et cetera, that's really where, you know, like Tom Lawrence has created a huge following on YouTube with his YouTube channel and, you know, for end customers, he's, he gets most of his customers and he's an msb. He gets most of his customers out of that YouTube channel, and it's working phenomenally for him.
Justin Esgar:
I'm, I'm still laughing in my head about the idea of Ed having like very little budget for marketing, but a massive video editing budget for doing Apple related <laugh>, like Apple level video editing. Like, like our sales and marketing budget is like a thousand dollars, but we have a million bucks to spend on a video editor, <laugh>. Well,
Eric Anthony:
I, so one thing about that, Justin,
Justin Esgar:
Is that I know I'm getting schooled, <laugh>.
Eric Anthony:
No, no. It's, it's something that if you are a business owner, an entrepreneur, and you have time to do it, it is something you can learn. And even if it's, because here's the thing, you don't have to make it the production quality of Apple. You just have to mimic the style. And honestly, if you try and mimic the style and it's done badly, it's actually gonna be funnier. And so that's going to, you know, it's going to fit in their minds now that,
Justin Esgar:
But you have to play into that, right? You have to play into that part, right? Yes. There's, there's parts where, like you have, there's, I think that's a fine line, but I'll come back to that when I talk about video editing in a sec. Yeah.
Eric Anthony:
Okay.
Ed Lukacs:
I I I will say part of what I, because you're leaning into something that's been ringing in my head, right? How did attorneys start to advertise on TV and now are even doing it on YouTube where they became comical, right? It's almost like a, a western theme or something along those lines. And, and, you know, and that's how they learn to draw people to get their services. Why should, it's not any different.
Justin Esgar:
It's not, it's not only that they're, they're, there's a reason why you are not calling that particular lawyer, right? But there's someone else who is because they know who their ideal client is. And that's where we kind of, where we started off. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there's a really good book John Lee Duma who has a popular podcast called entrepreneurs on Fire, I think now it's just called EOFire, has a book called The Common Path to Uncommon Success. We'll put a link in the show notes, Amazon affiliate Money <laugh> but there's a great there's a great part about how he, when he was building out the concept of EOFire, which by the way, side note, I was on like episode 112 he talked about the ideal customer, right? And, and the idea, the, the avatar, the this profile. And he went into, when I say like, cuz you and I both Apple consultants, right? So we can play this game real fast and, and try to figure out avatar and we'll do that in a second. But like, he went into super, super, super deep, deep detail about who the person who should be listening to the podcast is, right? So if I said to you right now, like, ed, who's your ideal client? You are gonna say
Ed Lukacs:
Software developers, creatives law firms, and
Justin Esgar:
So you're already too broad istic, right? Right. But you're already too broad for a lot of people when we're talking about an ideal customer. So at this point, we wanna hone that in because one thing you also didn't mention is their software developers and creatives that are using Max, which then hones you a little bit, right? Then you can go even further. Your ideal customer is the c e o of those software development firms and graphic design firms and people who use Mac. So now we've limited it from just some random software development Oh, who own businesses of five to 10 people, right? As we knock down each leg of this, we're getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller because that, I'm gonna sound like Don Leprie here, that really targeted classified ad, which by the way, I don't know how anybody made money.
It will, that's who you're gonna hit up on LinkedIn. You are gonna find a c e o of a software development firm who's using Safari or, or Chrome for Mac to log into LinkedIn who has a business, cuz LinkedIn knows that information. Who ha of five people. There's not that many of them when you really think about it. So when we started with mm-hmm. <Affirmative> software developers, and now we're talking about a C E O of a 10 person firm using a Mac of a software development company in Salt Lake City, let's go even more niche. You see how that it's getting really, really fine and that allows you to put as much money as possible into hitting those 20 people as opposed to, you know, overspending the, what's the expression? It's like you want to dig an inch wide and a mile deep, not a mile wide and an inch deep,
Eric Anthony:
Right? Right. Yep. Makes sense. And, and it makes, it's important when you're developing the content too, because when you narrow it down to that ideal profile or that avatar, you actually now speak directly to that person, not the generic company, but directly to that person who's gonna be the one making the decision or making the purchase and speak directly to the problems, the situations that they might be having that are going to trigger them in their brain to call you
Justin Esgar:
Exactly like that kid who wanted the internship, right? If you know the ce, let's say there's somebody you're courting, let's say you're trying to court Eric, we'll just use him as an example, right? Eric runs a software development firm. He's basically
Ed Lukacs:
A man Eric.
Justin Esgar:
He's, he's got exactly who you wanna do, right? If you use the, the tools within the LinkedIn advertising, and this is true on Facebook advertising as well, right? You can really niche down on those as well. You can make content that says, Hey Eric, I know you're a software developer. I know you use Max, I take care of other people who are just like you. Let me help you. And you do that enough, much like the billboard thing where you see the same billboard for miles on the road, you're gonna stop at that rest stop, you're gonna stop at that store, you're gonna go buy boots at that place, you're gonna, and someone's gonna end up calling two 15 because they're gonna, it's gonna be in their face all the time and you are not gonna blow your budget cuz you're targeting so very specifically. And that content is specific for Eric also, right? The idea of being like, Hey Eric, does this sound like you? Are you a software development owner? And does it suck when you have to fix your printer and like fonts or garbage? But like, we'll help you, like that's gonna resonate with him. You know what I mean?
Ed Lukacs:
Yep, yep. You guys have mentioned it a couple times, I mean, and so I've always had my hangups on this one, but you mentioned billboards a a lot today and I'm kind of curious, is billboards, do you find that an effective means to, to well, for awareness?
Eric Anthony:
Not really. I mean they can, they can be, but you have to look at it a couple of things. You know, you don't have as much commuting going on these days. The reason why I bring up billboards a lot is because in my previous experience they worked for me as an msp. I actually had a couple of small billboards in town, but I was consulting, one of my largest clients when I was consulting was a pool table manufacturer. And their best advertising was on billboards because we lived in Orlando I four, it's a parking lot during commute times. And pool tables are one of those things where they don't need it until specific things in their life are happening. Well, they never really need it, let's put it, you know, the way it is. But yeah, for sure <laugh>, but they only think about buying one when they're buying a house or building an addition or a game room or something like that.
And so you have to be in front of them constantly a for it to trigger when something like that is happening in their life, oh, pool table that'll go great in the game room, but you have to be there when they have the need. And that's the, the equivalent today is being in social media and providing that helpful content on a daily basis. I mean, Gary V would have you do it multiple times a day, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> to have it there to be helpful so that when they have the need, they they're seeing your ad, they go and you are, you're the one that's top of mind. It's all about being top of mind when the need or the situation comes up in their life.
Ed Lukacs:
Perfect. That's what I feel where our differentiator is, is that that being on top of mind because here in Salt Lake we have a lot of MSPs and those MSPs are primarily PC based, but our differentiator is that we're the ones that are the Apple gurus. And that's really, if you're an Apple user, right, as an organization, two 15 should be at the top of your mind. And if they're not, that's what I'm trying to get them to resonate and I don't know how to really effectively deliver that.
Justin Esgar:
Yeah. I have to remember also, it's a little bit of psychology, right? Because like, think about this. The last time you went to go buy a car, you were thinking about whatever type of car, all of a sudden you saw that car everywhere on the road, right? Yeah. Normally you don't see that car, right? Because in your head, in your, in your subconscious, you know that car exists, but your brain pushes it out cuz it's not important. And so when you're creating content to be top of mind, you're doing the same thing. The idea is that you're gonna keep creating this content, you're gonna keep creating little nuggets that this person subconsciously is going to remember. That way when the time comes, it's all gonna come to the front and they're gonna go, oh yeah, I do know who to call. And that's how you went out over, over your competition within the, within the organ, you know, within the PC versus macel world. Well that was awesome,
Ed Lukacs:
<Laugh>. Hey, that was great content. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Justin Esgar:
I'm gonna shamelessly plug you should, you should check out our conference, the ACEs conference. Eric has been a part of it before. We talk a lot about marketing and management and stuff like that. You should check out ACEs conference. There's a lot of, it's more generic talk obviously. And while I do say it's for, you know, specifically for Apple consultants, the, you could translate it to PCMs P for anyone who wants to join. But there's the, the rules of marketing, you know, like Eric said, it's, it's very process driven. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's very, I I tend to jump right into tactical and start doing things just because I'm a New Yorker and it's just what I do. But if I took a half a second to breathe and look, you can write out this entire plan. Start with figuring out who your avatar is, figure out where they are online, figure out the kind of content that they're interested in or that you think they'll be interested in. Produce. Said content, edit said content display said content. Chich
Eric Anthony:
<Laugh>. Yeah. And some people talk about, you know, well it's so time consuming because I have to, if I have to post once a day, twice a day, three times a day, whatever it is, there are plenty of applications out there that you can use where you can sit down for an hour, schedule out all of the social media for the week and then it just happens by itself, which is great. And that's what I recommend. Yes. And some of those tools are as inexpensive as like six or $8 per social media channel per month. And, and it's not, you know, a terrible expense when you're talking about how expensive marketing can be. Yeah. Now Ed, I forgot to ask this in the beginning because I was actually looking you up on LinkedIn and something fun happened. Something fun happened, <laugh> because instead of Ed I put in Ted, I don't know how. And what happened was somebody that used to work for the NSA came up who was actually from my hometown. So I didn't even, I I didn't know like is there a relation there or cuz it's not a common last name.
Ed Lukacs:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unless you pulled up Connecticut <laugh>.
Eric Anthony:
Nope, nope. That's
Justin Esgar:
Didn't actually one person. They're just moving really, really fast. It looks
Ed Lukacs:
Yeah. Really fast.
Eric Anthony:
Yeah.
Ed Lukacs:
I'm Speedy Gonzalez
Justin Esgar:
<Laugh>. There you go.
Eric Anthony:
Or you worked for the NSA and now you can't talk about it.
Ed Lukacs:
Well if you did, see, you probably saw I was the military guy and what I did in the military. So maybe <laugh>, I don't
Justin Esgar:
Know. Also if he did work for the nsa, if he did work for the NSA and can't talk about it, changing his name from Ted to Ed would be like the worst cover ever.
Eric Anthony:
Absolutely.
Ed Lukacs:
Or the best. You just don't know it.
Justin Esgar:
Alright, we can't beat that. That's where it's gonna end. We're gonna end it right there. Absolutely the best. Ed, thank you for joining us on the All Things MSP podcast. Eric, where can people find find out about us
Eric Anthony:
All things MSP or sorry facebook.com/groups/all things MSP or search for the all things company page on LinkedIn. We post all of this stuff all over the place there. Check out the live streams on Wednesday nights. And other than that, just join us for the next one.
Justin Esgar:
That's it folks. Bye.