EP09 - ROI Rant

Eric Anthony:

Hey guys, Eric Anthony here, co-host of the All Things MSP podcast. If you are an MSP and you are looking for advice on anything business or operations related to your msp, give us a shout. Let us know. We want to bring you on the show, so make sure you reach out. That's one of the problems with most MSPs is they think they can do it themselves. Yeah. And they're not wrong, but it's gonna take them longer and end up being more expensive because they won't be working on the things that they should be working on that they're better at. And that's why they should outsource stuff like that.

Justin Esgar:

Well, so that comes down to the, the conversation of roi. So let's just pick this up.

What's up everybody? Welcome to the All Things MSP podcast. My name is Justin Esgar. I am with the OG host Eric Anthony. This is an uncut, un formatted episode where we just started talking and was like, Hey, maybe we'll turn this into another episode. We're talking about roi, right? We're talking about return on investment of your time. And this all kicked off because we were having a conversation about a vendor and whether or not I should be paying for this vendor when I could actually do all the work myself, but I just do not have the time, nor do I have as high of a skill level as the vendor, right? Like I can do, hmm, 50, 60% of what the vendor can do by myself if I had the time. All of that kind of is a mix. So the question we're ha we're talking about, and this is why we started recording this episode, is should you as the MSP owner who should be spending time on your business, be doing these things or outsourcing to vendors?

And we're talking about marketing, we're talking about call calling, we're talking about accounting, we're talking about whatever you want to, whatever the topics may be. Cuz you are an MSP owner. You are good at being an MSP owner and fixing things. You might not be good at marketing or picking up the phone or doing call calls or lead generation or even accounting or financeer, hr, whatever. So that's, that's how this got started. We're gonna keep this uncut and untethered. I don't know what it was tethered to, so I don't know how it could be untethered, but

Eric Anthony:

<Laugh>. Yeah, I'm like exactly what is it? Tethered to <laugh>.

But you know, there, there are reasons why people hire MSPs, right? Right. And it's not because they can't do it. I mean, in some cases it is, but I mean, most people, I, let's use this as a simple example, but it's a, it's a very common example, right? Setting up buying, provisioning your Office 365 account right, is not hard. Otherwise they would not be able to sell it to residential customers and residential customers be able to sign up for it and it all by themselves, right? However, there's, there's a value to you, the business owner especially where your time is more valuable to the business than what you're paying that Ms. P to manage your, your Microsoft 365,

Justin Esgar:

Right? Why spend if your, if your hourly rate is not, and I don't mean, I'm talking about, we're talking about our clients here, like my, my Gravity line clients, their hourly rate is $400 an hour. Why spend two to three hours figuring out Microsoft's office and lose 1200 bucks when they can be billing out 1200 bucks and pay me $200 an hour? Right? Right. So we as MSP loaners have to think the same way our clients think. If they're gonna outsource to us, we should be outsourcing to other vendors as well. But the question comes down to is, is it worth it? And, and you know, sometimes it is and sometimes it's not. Like, look, here's a great example. I cannot code my way out of a paper bag, okay? I took Java in college. We had to make a, a thing where a dude gets on an elevator, the elevator goes up, the guy gets off the elevator, right?

My guy showed up over here, the elevator was over there, the el guy was over here. The el I, I basically invented the won ator, handed it in, the guy gave me an f I convinced him that the won ator is better than an elevator and he gave me a d just so I would shut up, right? So this act cannot code. So whenever we wanted to do anything, when we built apps back when I had au Trive or the stuff that we're building now, like FreshBooks time tracker, I'm outsourcing that. I'm outsourcing that part because I cannot do it. And that's okay. And I'm figuring out the value. The app that we built, FreshBooks Time Tracker, which connects our Zendesk to Fresh Books, saved my company 40 to 50 hours a month of like going back and logging different websites and tracking time and doing that.

And yes, there may have been other ways of doing it, switching out of Zendesk and getting into a PSA or using Harvest or whatever. But these were the tools we were using. And so for the $5,000, I paid somebody to make the app. I have regained that ROI in spades. And this is a side note to it. I sell the app on the Zendesk marketplace, so I make some money back on it also, right? But cuz I can't code otherwise I would've done it myself. And I know plenty of MSP owners who can code the amount of stuff that's on GitHub that's done by my friends and colleagues is outrageous. But what's not on GitHub is their marketing plans, their 30 day marketing canvases, their, their balance sheets or how they're gonna do their taxes or like the best peo o software, HR software or like what should we do for benefits for our clients? Like none of that's out there because they don't know what to do. And so this is the stuff where you should be outsourcing this stuff.

Eric Anthony:

Yeah. And it's strictly a business decision. Like you can take this down to numbers and say, yes, I should outsource it or no I shouldn't. And where it gets complicated is a, in the business owner's hourly rate, you gotta know what that is, okay? What the hourly rate of contribution to the business is. And then you also have to look at how much is that spare time or are you really that busy that you are literally taking time away that is much more valuable to the business. Cuz one of the, one of the great things about being a small startup MSP right? Is you got nothing but time or yeah, maybe you're a young kid and you're just, you've got the hustle mentality and you've got the time and you aren't tied down by six kids. You know, you can, you have the time between 10 o'clock at night and two o'clock in the morning to do the extra work to do your own marketing. But if you don't, you have to outsource it.

Justin Esgar:

Yeah. But then the com so then the question comes down to is who to outsource two, right? There are a lot of people out there who will sell you up the river by saying, I do marketing for MSPs or I'll get you leads for your msp, right? The amount of, the amount of B2B driven lead control blah blah, blah that I get on LinkedIn a day is enough to fill my house, right? And I always respond with them back with, you ever worked with an Apple consultant before? And they go, no, but it'll be fine. I'm like, it's not, it's not. And they always stop at that point. But like, so there's plenty of people who are out there who are good and there are plenty of people who are out there, they're bad. The question is how do you know which one to choose?

And I've done a lot of it. I've used a lot of their service, I've used a lot of different services that are out there. I've used the cold calling, I've done the webinar, I've done people, you and I know that we're not gonna talk about publicly. Like I've used different services, I've done the LinkedIn messaging, I've done the Facebook thing, I've done the email thing, like whatever. And to be honest, none of it really worked. And it could be because something we've talked about on previous episodes, I was shooting too broad, right? I didn't have my avatar as we like to talk about my, my my honed in pin drop sized person that I'm trying to hit. So maybe it was that, I don't know, maybe it was, I was bamboozled by the idea of getting a hundred leads a week, right? Oh, I totally do. Can you, can you close a deal if I get you a hundred leads a week? Yeah, of course I can close a deal if you got a hundred I just totally truck of I can,

Eric Anthony:

Can you,

Justin Esgar:

But can you get me a hundred? Oh, I can, but can you get me the hundred leads, right? Yeah. and so it's, it's really easy for us because all of us wanna be successful. So it's really easy for someone to, to pull the, the bull over our eyes because they're promising us gold and jets and whatever. So the question really comes down to how do we know, how do we, and I'm gonna ask you because you're on the vendor side, right? How do we as MSPs know how to trust the vendor, whether it's the marketing vendor or the accounting vendor or the file share vendor, whatever, how do we as the MSP know to trust the vendor?

Eric Anthony:

So my default would be to not trust the vendor, but I mean, yes, I am on the vendor side. So I I I, I reali there's, there's a real answer to this. By making a process out of it, quite honestly, like you should have a process, you should have a checklist. Although I happen to know, because in fact, it's funny cuz I, I was just on a call with some CompTIA, you know, on a comp TIA committee call where one of the things that we came up with from C C F is it, can we create a checklist for people to use when they're vetting a vendor? Because this is a serious concern these days, and it's not just from a security standpoint, right? Right. It's from a are they gonna automatically renew me into a three year contract

Justin Esgar:

<Laugh>, you know

Eric Anthony:

Check, check mark, are they? But it's true. I mean, it happens. Yeah. And it's not just the one everybody's thinking of right now. <Laugh> other people out there are doing it too. You know, do they have good support? Do they, you know, have all the things in place that they need to have from a security standpoint how do they treat their, their partners? Do they treat them as partners or, or do they take lead, you know, do they have deal registration and then take those deal registrations and reach out to the end user directly? I mean, we've both seen it happen in this industry, and so there's a lot you know, good or bad, right? There is a lot of distrust of vendors in this space. And, and I think it's twofold. I I think it's because there was a lot of bad history because these bigger companies, bigger vendors, thought that they could take advantage of these smaller MSPs.

And it's not necessarily malicious because I know some of these vendors and they were doing it simply because they thought that the MS P wasn't doing a good enough job at actually reaching out and following up on the opportunities on the deal registrations that they were submitting to the vendor, right? And, and that kind of brings me back by the way to something you said and I kind of made a, you know, a, a, a snide comment about can you take those a hundred leads and actually convert from them? And, and yes, you've been doing this long enough. I know you can, but there's a lot of MSPs out there. In fact, I, I think, who was it? I don't know. I was talking to one of the, the marketing people in the space and they were saying that, yeah, we can get you leads all day long, but if you don't actually know how to sell to those leads, it's not gonna do you any good. Now, that to me was a great reply to somebody because, you know, if some, if an MS P asked, well, can you get me a thousand leads? Can you handle a thousand leads? Do you have the sales organization to handle a thousand leads? Because I doubt that you do unless you're a big MS P and if you're already a big M S P, you probably don't need somebody else generating leads for you,

Justin Esgar:

Right? It's, it's, it's putting the car before the horse. It's your eyes are bigger than your stomach. It's, it's some hyperbole here. Like the, the fact is, is there is a general distrust of a lot of vendors, right? And there's nothing that the MSPs are gonna do to fix that, right? That's, that's hashtag vendors clean your act up. But on the other side, on the other side, there are things that MSPs should be doing. For example, being, I'm just use this, the, the 4,005,000 people that are in the all things MSP Facebook group. That's where you go and you say, Hey, I'm thinking about hiring x, y, Z marketing firm. Or I'm thinking about hire, I'm thinking about using ABC HR software. Has anyone used it? What is the good and the bad? Because you'll get honest answers. Now, what I don't like is when people in the group, and this is not just art group, this is every group gives some like snidey BS answer.

Like, oh, they all suck. Don't do that. Like, whatever. Like that's not helpful for the person. Like we as MSPs should be trying to help one another as much as possible. The reason everyone's in the all things MSP group on Facebook, facebook.com/group/all things msp is because you're there, because we have a common interest, our common interests that we want our MSPs to grow. I see what's out. You're telling me about the light thing and it's happening again cuz I'm moving. We want our MSP to grow. We want to provide that community. And so when somebody asks, Hey, have you ever worked with this vendor? You as the MSP as a member should say, if you have, yes, I have. Here's the pros and cons. And if you haven't, don't get involved because that's gonna help us and help help us as MSPs. And you as the, as the as n MSP builds up a rapport of good vendors that we can use and the good vendors will probably continue to stay as good vendors right now that that may not be a hundred percent true, right?

There's been plenty of times people have taken a left turn. New management, they get acquired. But we're not talking about big massive, you know r m M softwares I'm talking about. Like who, who's got a good marketing person who's, who's got a good sales company, who's got a good insurance? Like for acn, for Apple Consultants network? We have, we're required to have insurance. It's part of the program. The amount of conversations in the Mac admins Slack in the e c channel about insurance is phenomenal because everyone's like, who do you use for insurance? How do you do this? How do you do that? Whatever. It's all been helpful and beneficial, right? And we're talking about an insurance company. Insurance companies are innately horrible. So we have to, we have to empower each other to help one another. And we have to make sure that we're working with vendors that help us and not hurt us and, and put pressure on them to help us.

And especially on those smaller vendors, like we've had some great guests on and we've talked a lot about marketing and, and, and business coaches and we've had a couple others on where those are the vendors we should be talking to more often, right? And if your gut is telling you that something doesn't sound right on someone's pitch, bye Felicia. Like don't talk to them. We were talking about this a couple minutes ago pre, pre recording. I get constant pitches on LinkedIn for B2B marketing and the best one I get is whenever I get the one where the subject line goes, go Rams. For those who don't know, I went to the University of Rhode Island like family years ago and the Rams is the sports teams, right? So it is the mascot. I did not like going to the University of Rhode Island.

I did not care for the sports teams at the University of Rhode Island. There's that one incident with Lamar Odom. Talk about that later. But don't start, don't try to pitch me with Go Rams. You're immediately not gonna get my business, right? Bad vendor. And I will go on a limb and say whatever that vendor's company's name is. If someone says, Hey, have you heard from these guys? I'm gonna go bad vendor. Cuz they didn't read, they didn't learn about me. They just saw that I went to U R I on LinkedIn and was like, let me run with this. That's not gonna work. So there's a lot of stuff we can do to help one another. There's it. We have to fight the good fight. But I think that going back here to let's, let's circle this one back. Do pick good vendors to work with. Figure out the value of their time or your time. Sorry. Figure out the value of your time and supplement with those vendors. Use people like we've had on the PaaS, Paul Green, Paul Green, Tim Fitzpatrick. People like that, right? Get a business coach like Melanie Curtis before, people like that, people that we know and trust because they're going to help you. They're not going to hurt you. They're not gonna put you in a 10 year contract.

You can't do marketing. I'm sorry, I'm gonna hit you in the head with it cuz if you could, you wouldn't be an Ms P. Find the people who can do it. You probably can't. I don't know. Maybe you can, but maybe you, you can't fix your toilet when it's leaking, right? Are you gonna, are you gonna go? No, I got it. I can fix it. Just submit a ticket. No, you're gonna call a plumber, man. So it's the same thing. I kind of went on a little bit of a random, sorry.

Eric Anthony:

No, I mean it's okay. But it goes back to what I said earlier, right? Where I think a lot of MSPs, because we have the technician mindset, right? We actually do think we can do all that stuff ourselves. And honestly, if I had a broken toilet, I would fix it myself.

Justin Esgar:

I've, I've fixed my own toilets also. But to a point, there's a point to which I will try to fix a toilet and then go, I need a plumber. But I have tried to fix my own toilet <laugh> because we have to fix it. My, we have them fix it mentality, right? Exactly. That part of, right?

Eric Anthony:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, I've never found a toilet I couldn't fix, but that's just

Justin Esgar:

A you gotta try. You, you come over and I'll let you try out the, the Kohler Japanese style washy washy toilet that we have. Try to fix that one.

Eric Anthony:

And New York plumbing. No thanks

Justin Esgar:

<Laugh>. You know that the water in New Jersey flushes the other direction for no other reason than we just, we made it to me. We made it. So all right, we're off topic. So, but yeah. But my point here is the r o i of using a vendor is there sometimes you M s p owner, listener, good, good friend of ours, need to do that calculation to determine that it's there. You need to do a gut check to realize you can't do it all. And then you need to make the decision to put those two things together and then go and hire a good vendor to do a good job for whatever it is you need them to do. Yep. That's

Eric Anthony:

All right. So I

Justin Esgar:

Couldn't say it better myself.

Eric Anthony:

We want to call this the rant episode.

Justin Esgar:

<Laugh>, I, if we could get that, like, this is what really grinds my gears. Now let's go with the rant episode. I like that <laugh>. Well I guess that's where, we'll, we'll rant wrap it up. Eric, anything else you wanna rant on real quick?

Eric Anthony:

I have a million things that we could rant on, but it'll take us another half an hour, which we don't have today. So I'll leave it there.

Justin Esgar:

We, you know what maybe we'll cut this part out. We'll, we'll do a, a separate playlist of like rant episodes where like every 20 episodes or so, we'll just do a, we'll go on a rant and then yeah, that'll be like a fun little, it's a fun little Easter egg for you people who are listening. Don't forget to like and subscribe us. We need the Ego boost. Follow us on all of your favorite podcast apps. Apple Podcast, Spotify, audible, Google. I'm sure there's like six others that I don't know. Leave fi star reviews. Leave one star reviews. Just leave it review. We don't care. Subscribe on YouTube. Youtube.Com at Eric Anthony. I think we think it is. Something like that. Links below. Something like that. Links below. Find us all.

Eric Anthony:

Search for all things, all things msp. You'll find

Justin Esgar:

It. Yeah. Search all things MSP anywhere. Find us at facebook.com/group/all things MSP and we'll catch you next time. Bye.