From Attendee to Organizer: MSP Conference Secrets Revealed | EP114

[00:00:06] Big news from the All Things MSP headquarters. A couple of shows that Eric and I will be at together, sometimes separately. In June, Eric and I will both be at PAX8Beyond doing some podcasting. Check us out there. July, Mac admins, Penn State University. I think it's the 16th through the 18th. I'll be speaking there. August, I will be attending with maybe some more details later on the ACN Tech Summit. That information comes out if you're a registered Apple consultant.

[00:00:34] End of October, I'll be at the ASMC event speaking in Philadelphia. And in the beginning of November, I'll be speaking at Channel Pro Live in California. Dates are early November. So I am going to be at, let's see, I'll be at PAX8 like Justin said. And then I will be at Channel Con in July.

[00:00:57] That's in Nashville this year, one of my favorite event cities. And then the rest of my schedule is not 100% determined yet. But I imagine we will also be at IT Nation since that's kind of a regular thing for us lately. We've been doing the podcast there from the last two years. So hopefully we get invited back again this year. So check us out at all these places. If you want more details, hit us up in the Facebook group, facebook.com slash group slash all things MSP.

[00:01:24] For my birthday, it was a while ago, but for my birthday somewhere along the line prior to my birthday, I said to my wife, all I want for my birthday is LEGOs. So I got a lot of LEGOs for my birthday. uh so i just started building she bought me the delorean for the lego set delorean which is an awesome set because it lets you build it's one set but you can build the delorean from back to the future one two or three um it's very obvious that you choose two because that's the one

[00:01:52] where the car flies and if you don't choose two you're wrong yeah well i um i have not gotten any new legos lately although uh for christmas i did get the disney uh video camera one yeah which i very much enjoyed putting together and a couple of other smaller sets that my daughter got me i also

[00:02:17] did recently i did all the f1 cars there's a really cool thing uh some company makes like a wall mount piece that looks like a starting grid for f1 you can mount the cars vertically um but they're out of stock but if anyone wants to tell me when it comes in stock hit me up you know where to find me online um so yeah so that's i started doing that last night instead of studying and i had a study because i had a test this morning i took a certification class which yes i pass i'm pretty

[00:02:44] good at apple has a new foundations of it tests that we have to take so like weirdly enough apple has two major tests we have the support and we have deployment and management both of which i've passed but my support test expires prior to this new apple program launching in september and so they were like if it's going to expire go take foundations of it so i said all right and so i wanted to take it before i went to aces because i wanted to tell everybody that i'd taken it but i just didn't have

[00:03:12] time and so i went to my the my two friends who are trainers and i was like do i need to study for this and they were like did you pass your other two tests and i was like yeah they were like you'll be fine i spent more time getting into pearson view this morning because i took it from simona's room i need because the weird thing is these tests online like you can't have any external noise right like i told michelle to leave the house i was like lock up the dog so i went to simona's room which would be the quietest room and there's really nothing there but her desk is like built

[00:03:39] into a bunch of bookshelves so they ask you to like take pictures of everything so i take pictures the proctor like comes on he's like hi um we can't let you take the test there are books next to you and i was like yes but if you see what these books are they're like frog and toad or friends or my little red book they were like can you just like cover them and i was like sure so i went and i went to my daughter's closet and i pulled like a knit blanket and i like hung it on the bookshelf with

[00:04:07] like a weight on top of it so all the books were covered and they were like good enough here please proceed with your test yeah it's a thing like you know i've had kids in college and um during covid and stuff like that that's the way things went because that's the way they had to do them and um yeah i mean it was so even for like coding and stuff like that they are that picky about it well it took me longer to get the test i finished the test in five minutes because

[00:04:36] thankfully to my trainers they were right i did know actually one of my trainers was like um if you don't pass this test after 15 minutes i have failed you i was like i think maybe i'll be okay i got a serious question about this because it's called foundations of it 37 out of 40. it's called foundations of it did include anything about security it had stuff but remember it's apple

[00:05:01] it right so there was a one thing it wasn't found it's not really foundations of it it's more of the foundations of the systems around how to use your mac or how to use things that are mac related so it briefly touched a little bit on mdm so like one question is like you know when you're up when you're trying to connect an mdm server to apple business manager what is the thing you need and

[00:05:26] it's like public certificate private certificate skep or whatever like those questions but the other one this is the one that threw me off and i i'm i don't know if i got it right or wrong i don't have my i don't have my full score sheet in front of me but i wonder if it'll show up at the network i got five out of five in network so i'm assuming i got this one right but it was like you set up a wi-fi network uh and to include both oh you set up a wi-fi ssid to include both five and six gigahertz

[00:05:54] but your corporate ipad only connects on 2.4 why and the options are like all ipads connect on 2.4 2.4 is the strongest signal you set up 802 11r for 2.4 you're using the 40 megahertz band range and i was like i looked at that question and i went shit i think i got it right because under network

[00:06:18] i got five out of five even though overall even overall i got three wrong i don't know where i got one wrong in diagnose diagnosis i knew that one and two wrong under accounts i don't know how to manage accounts on computers it's fine so i'm assuming i got this one right because i just said 2.4 is the strongest but like if you don't know what 802 11r is or how to deal with um the megahertz

[00:06:41] range right the 20 40 80 whatever like it is a daunting question to ask and apple apple tests are quite notorious for throwing things that don't make any sense one of the practice questions is you know how do you disable the camera how do you disable access to the camera from certain apps in privacy and security and what you have to realize is that one of the answers that's in the list is how

[00:07:05] you do it on ios but they say privacy and security that's mac os only so you have to like know to read the between the lines in their questioning to then figure out okay two of these don't make any sense these two probably make sense but this one is ios and this one's mac os and now you know which one's the right answer so that happens a lot also but yeah pass don't care i'm good move on with my life

[00:07:28] and here we are when was the last time you took a certification uh a long time ago you think you could do it like if i if we put you on the spot and we were like let's live stream you taking i don't know a plus certification would you be able to handle it uh i would say i'd probably still do okay with a plus yes okay i don't even know what's included in the a plus i've never bothered um but i mean newer

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[00:09:42] process that's atmsp.link forward slash compliance scorecard what's up everybody welcome to the all things msp podcast i am your host justin oscar and with me always is the bearded man himself mr eric anthony uh mary what what did that guy at the conference mary lou hair harry lou retton that was it you're harry lou retton thank you michael siggins thank you michael siggins from channel for that one um

[00:10:10] bringing another great episode today we're going to talk about conferences both as an attendee and a as a show organizer and i wanted to talk about this today because there's benefits to being an attendee and there's benefits that actually i know i joke around but like don't run a conference like if i ever wrote a book called how to run a conference it'd be one page don't but there is a lot of benefit about running a conference i kind of wanted to talk a little bit about it today um other than monetary um but this kind of came up because eric and i were both

[00:10:40] at channel pro networks this past week uh eric traveled a lot further than i did he actually took a flight and then a half hour car ride and then i drove 12 minutes and not only that not only that we're talking this is middle of may and currently newark is a hot hot mess but it's not see the people who realize that it's not are people who live like i had no problem going to aces and coming back from

[00:11:06] newark not an issue like did you have problems getting in and out i had small problems okay i think united is probably which is what i flew probably less susceptible than others um just because they have such a strong presence in newark it's a united hub right right um but there's a runway down like yes there's there's a whole runway down yeah and so that's obviously causing a problem you've got the

[00:11:33] air traffic controllers being moved to philadelphia um but you know so for me personally the the runway problem on the way in because you didn't get to pick the runway you chose you had to deal with crosswinds on the one runway that was still open that was the uh best controlled crash landing i've ever been when i was coming home from aces it was so late at night uh there's what's funny is and if you're

[00:12:02] not from jersey you don't know this but i'll explain like as you drive coming off that one runway they made a giant x out of light bulbs that is taller than the airplane is at the beginning of that runway so like there's it's like roped off but because planes are so tall obviously there's a giant x just like with individual bulbs i don't know what when they constructed that or how they got that made so

[00:12:26] fast um and it's running on a generator obviously because it's in the middle of a road but yeah it's a big there's a big like do not enter symbol for the planes not to go on that runway yeah it's so fine though i there were a couple of people who were on other uh airlines i won't name them um that got canceled they were trying to fly out on wednesday night and their flight got canceled and so they had

[00:12:51] to wait until thursday um even checking in so i checked into my flight uh early wednesday morning because my flight was early thursday morning and it wouldn't give me my boarding pass yeah like it's just a lot of little things i found actually getting in the airport uh was not bad the lines at the airport were not bad uh and really honestly i think the tsa people and the people working the uh

[00:13:19] concessions yeah vendors at the airport all had a really good attitude towards it everybody i ran into and you know employees at the newark airport yesterday were just super incredibly nice terminal a or terminal c c uh so c is the big one right c's got a massive terminal and if you're in because c has

[00:13:42] three pathways if you're in the second or third one there's like a combined little bizarre with like solid really really good food options but i like terminal a terminal is the new one um and getting into tsa in terminal a is so easy because it's just a scan your id thing um opens the door you get right online you go right through tsa and there's a great little taco place in terminal a just as a little secret i get my breakfast off right there all right so let's talk about conferences for a second so let's

[00:14:12] let's talk about why uh you may want to run a conference even if it's small and when i say a conference i mean it doesn't have to be a 300 person event you can run a 20-person conference and still be successful um because it depends on what you're going to get out of it right and i would also add to that we're not just talking about vendor conferences for msps here msps could hold a conference

[00:14:41] for their end users if they're large enough and it could also be a prospecting event yeah i will get into that too because we i'll tell you about what we tried it didn't work but i'll tell you what we tried um in a little bit so there's history around why i started the aces conference which was that i was going to these technical events these mac technical events um for quite some time so i started virtual

[00:15:07] in 2008 and the first aces is in 2015 so there's like a seven-year window there where i would go to these events and i would start to like meet people and say like how do you do ticketing or how do you do finance you know how are you handling your books or how are you billing or what's your what's your billing rate things like that and nobody had a good answer that was sufficient for for me and i was like and also no one had like the same answer right so like this guy does this thing in excel and

[00:15:36] this person uses pages and this guy outsourced it all to qbr.com and like whatever and so it got me thinking the fact that like there should be some sort of standardization across uh across apple based msps to even that playing field to focus on other things that are more important like client acquisition um or better ways to differentiate yourself because there's like the differentiation the

[00:16:04] differentiator between two companies shouldn't be that i use quickbooks and you use you know zero accounting like that's not a differentiator for the client right right but we're both using quickbooks we're already starting from the same plane and we can both grow in our own ways where we find actual differentiation and so i started it thinking to myself i'm gonna learn a lot from the wisest people in the room right there's that expression like if you're the smartest person in the room you're in the

[00:16:30] wrong room so i wanted to bring in smarter people and i also wanted to bring in people from outside it because as an entrepreneur you not always are the best ideas from other people in our industry right like we bring in our keynotes when we used to do keynote keynotes were people not in it to

[00:16:54] help spark just business thought right so that was kind of important for us to bring people in that way so that was my original goal i'll tell you this in 11 years i've never listened to a single presentation i have no idea how my business has gotten better um but what was interesting was this year was i did listen to a little bit of everyone and i realized that everyone's talking about the stuff that i've already been talking about for months which tells me that i'm on the right track and also

[00:17:23] everyone else is behind the ball a little bit so you could start a conference or meet up if you want to go smaller on it right for your area of it professionals just to talk shop i think that the number one thing people love at the conference is not even the content but it's the hall what we call the hallway track right like yeah the the the conversations that go on hey oh i heard you use xyz like

[00:17:52] how did you get past this stupid problem like imagine playing video games and going to your friends being like i'm stuck on level 12 and they're like haha you're such a loser you can get past level 12 here that you do it except in the msp world we don't call each other losers no you don't i do uh no i'm just kidding yeah don't but that's the point yeah like you can you can you're able to feed off of one another and you realize that you're not on this independent island all by yourself there's other

[00:18:20] people who have you know scaled the fence as it were to be able to do these things so i know of a couple small like mac admin groups that are getting together now like i think there's one like mac admins in music city and like who's your max like in indianapolis um like these groups that are getting together to talk shop and and make themselves better now you can obviously make money on these conferences you have there's there's a lot of planning involved so i wouldn't say like do this

[00:18:49] to make money because i can tell you in 11 years conferences don't make a lot of money unless you're a major conference and you're bringing in all of these vendors but there's opportunity there and i think the best thing that has come from doing aces is meeting the other apple consultants and then being able to work with them both to provide me boots on the ground in other locations provide me support when i need it

[00:19:15] when i need like if i have trouble with you know if i'm having an office 365 issue like i know who to call that goes even beyond my best text you know who's been in it longer who can like i know people who i can and then honestly i think the best thing that's come out of it is like we've met people that that we've acquired you know to grow our business through that as well and that wasn't an intended purpose like i didn't start the conference in 2015 to be like i'm gonna see who's out there and i'm gonna eat their

[00:19:44] lunch like that wasn't what the plan was right it just so happened to be a nice outcome so when we talk a lot about like how to find opportunities sometimes you got to make it yourself well and that's one of the things whether you're going to a conference holding a conference sponsoring a conference whatever it is

[00:20:05] the networking aspect of it is one of the absolute most valuable things that you're going to get out of it because as an msp you're going to find other people who have already solved the problems that you're having uh as an msp you're going to be able to mentor other msps which has its own value and satisfaction

[00:20:30] as a vendor you're going to be able to network with msps who have the problems that you solve and so you know you're going to get business out of that and then as the person who's holding it you get the benefits that you just talked about the other thing is if you're going in with like a specific niche people want to talk to you like me we were we were a channel pro not really an apple based group but as soon as people found out that i do max they were like can i have your card

[00:20:59] you know um actually for those who weren't there eric and i don't because you weren't in the other room i was on stage and i was like i'm gonna say something you guys are all gonna boo at me i'm an apple consultant everyone was like boo you suck get off the stage um but i i led with it it's fine yes but they said it in love yeah yeah 100 so there's there's

[00:21:23] things there when when you when you host it's like hosting a wedding though right like you make sure everybody's happy and you're like people like oh did you eat lunch no don't worry about me you eat lunch first i eat last kind of thing like you're always running around but like you can really cultivate these great relationships which has also actually led me on from the vendor side of things better ways to uh integrate with vendors that maybe even people who come to my conference are not getting

[00:21:50] because i now have like a different level of relationship with these people right sponsoring right um now i'm not saying i'm getting stuff for free where other people are getting paid but i am saying like i now have direct access to someone if i need something right right and again that's the networking aspect of it right right so but most conferences it can't be all networking all the time you need to have some sort of learning track they have to be able to gain something otherwise

[00:22:18] you're just creating a happy hour which don't forget that's also a great thing to do right um and you can build a community which is one of the things that we've done at aces is that we've built this like community inside the apple consultants community which is really weird like we're like a smaller group in this larger group and and that's what i get the most from people both attendees and vendors being like this is such a great community and you don't get this elsewhere not saying that

[00:22:44] the other conferences don't have communities but like i i tend to believe and i'd love you for you to correct me that like the level of community that apple consultants have and then vis-a-vis aces that's what i think that's what i think is because the events on the pc side or let's just call it the

[00:23:11] generic side are exactly that they're far too generic and you don't have a group of people who are highly passionate or maybe focused is a better word at a specific niche that you have when you're talking about apple consultants right now i think if you had msps who specialize in supporting lawyers

[00:23:36] or dentist office you might have a little bit tighter community because you have much more focus of course if you're supporting dentists i don't know how much passion you're going to have but that's a whole different story we could ask george belain he was at channel pro and he that's that's like his specialty they're they're unique and they're tough and a lot of times they're very cheap so it's it's a tough market but i know you hate them one of the things that is if you get good at them though like

[00:24:06] you'll if you get good at handling dentists you're gonna get the good dentists and the good dentists have the money to pay you and understand how much better and how much how much better run their businesses and how much more profitable it is when their i.t is working the right way all the time right that's a side note though but yes to your point earlier which is like you could you could actually

[00:24:34] 100 create this community of you know we're msps that only do lawyers we're msps that only do doctors and dentists we're msps that only do architecture firms for msps right so apple gives us that niche which is kind of a nice thing so um you may want to start hosting your own events that's for for for industry right the other side is that to host events like you said earlier about hosting events for

[00:25:03] your clients right i attempt so a long time ago and we've i've mentioned this story before on the pod where like somebody was somebody was talking about gary vaynerchuk and he's like i have this great product and it's going to help you with your golf swing or whatever it was and he's like i don't know how to get it out there it's too much golf there's too much golf ish out there and uh gary was like who plays golf more than anyone else lawyers make a website that lawyers will go to and have

[00:25:29] it all about lawyers who play golf and make it golf enthusiasts for lawyers and stuff like that and i was like that's a genius move we wanted to target non-profits because we're really good with them we have a pretty good amount of non-profits on our book of business we want to keep going with them so we put together and this is during the coveted year so we had a couple years of aces during covet that we kind of mimicked to do non-profit the non-profit it uh summit

[00:25:58] and it bombed massively now i think it bombed for a couple of reasons and the person who was running it at the time ashley did a great job had nothing to do with her i think it bombed because one obviously non-profits don't have any money similar to your dentist problem two we weren't really checking who was registering because we were giving it away basically for free which is a massive mistake as

[00:26:27] is the majority of the people who were coming to the event were people looking to help other non-profits so they were kind of like encroaching in our terms because we want to help the non-profit but they also want to help the non-profit but guess who wasn't there the non-profit profits yeah right so we missed the boat on that a little bit our content was solid we got good feedback on our content um but i think if i

[00:26:54] were to do it again i would do an in-person and i would have it be super localized and have it be like a one-day event kind of thing so if you're looking to do that you know there's an opportunity for you to do a quote-unquote conference a one-day event and be like cyber security for architects

[00:27:17] what all architects need to know about being you know secure the right way and you could bring in a sponsor or two a vendor that you're using bring in your whoever your you know 24 by 7 sock is that you can get um what do they call that mdf mark marketing distribution funds marketing something funds marketing development funds marketing a lot of vendors have marketing development funds for you to put on this event so it doesn't even cost you anything yeah right and then it could be a

[00:27:47] prospecting thing and you can easily just keep blasting this to every architect in your zone and there's architects everywhere don't think there's only architects in major cities architects everywhere and bring them in and maybe they'll learn something about cyber security and guess who ran it the smart people at the it company who they should be working for with yeah and and i think you know that's kind of the thing is there are two opportunities i see for msps to hold events

[00:28:16] one is to hold events for their existing clients now i have talked to some msps about this in the past and i think you know that's a great idea of what's going on in the past as an idea for you know just building more camaraderie with their clients right and they're like oh i can't have my clients talking to each other yeah i'm like that i'm like but why not what are you doing that you need to hide

[00:28:43] you know one client from another because if your processes are standardized oh i can answer that you know for me honestly what it is is we had two clients that on paper did the exact same thing like they both were advertising agencies that took care of a major bank and had very similar ownership layouts and they were direct competitors of one another so like i don't like i wouldn't want to

[00:29:10] put myself at risk so like i understand where they're coming from i'm not saying it's right or wrong right but i'm saying like i wouldn't want to put myself at risk of losing one of those customers even though we already did um because they found out we're doing work because then they're going to think that maybe we're duplicating processes or i charge client a for an idea and then i just re-rolled it at client b and charged them for the same idea and i don't have to do any of the work you know what i mean

[00:29:35] like i would want to avoid that kind of drama like i'm not a drama llama right um so there's situations that i can understand but for the most part you're right yeah and in those situations i think that just don't invite them they're unique yeah that's that's an option um but also all of that should be

[00:30:00] covered in your managed services agreement like because if the day comes when they do find out and somebody has a problem with it you need to have it in your managed services agreement that say anything that you develop on behalf of one client how do you handle that is it the um property of the client you know that intellectual property is it theirs or is it yours because if it's yours

[00:30:26] you're free to use it whatever you want anywhere you want to if you develop it specifically for them and your managed services agreement says that it's their ip then it's their ip and you can't i mean you really shouldn't be sort of you really shouldn't be developing new solutions at this point anyway you just put everything in the cloud well but some people do i mean there's still a lot of shops out there that do uh custom software development in addition to that um and and development of processes

[00:30:56] but i i'm one that i don't believe that processes shouldn't necessarily be um agreed yeah ip of the client that's the ip of the msp but yeah you could totally do events for your customers bring the like your existing customers because that we've talked about this that's a good relationship building right like that's getting named to face especially in today's day and age where we do everything remotely like it might be good to throw a little cock even if it's a cocktail party you know happy

[00:31:25] hour find a restaurant build they'll get 20 30 people in there the restaurant will hook you up they'll give you a free meal but everyone else has to pay um but like you can do something like that really easy really cheap and it's marketing um have a vendor there that's where you're covered like there's definitely ways to do that and value in that right okay right so we've talked about value of hosting your own event for other msps we've talked about the value of hosting an event for your cut

[00:31:54] for your customers now let's kind of talk about um the value of going to an event that you may not normally want to go to so i have been recently going and i've signed up for a lot more events this year going to events that i wouldn't normally go to because i don't care about another vendor who's

[00:32:14] going to help me secure my office 365 i don't need that stop pitching me um however going to those events similar to what i said earlier going to those events with a niche that's slightly different than everyone else you know allows you the ability to like be creative with it right like i was just

[00:32:40] i just thought of this idea and i would totally do this is uh go to the event with a t-shirt that says like ask me how we take care of your how we can help your msp take care of your clients max something like that because i know so many pc msps that do it incorrectly and they wouldn't know i'm a mac guy without asking right but like i would want something that stands out because actually we were

[00:33:05] at channel pro and i was really shocked to see how many people had max on the table like how many msp's were using max and i guarantee you they're not enrolled in mdm the right way um but like stand out that way even not as a vendor right we go to the vendor one in a second but like you can stand out and then also as that niche go talk to the vendors because those vendors know the msps who need help with

[00:33:34] things i've gone to vendors and said hey who who who's doing pc stuff who you know needs mac help should could you introduce me to right and that allows us this ability to be able to take on um like new co-managed it or whatever um so like there's opportunities there wildly so like go to these events

[00:34:02] you know and if they cost you a couple bucks they cost you a couple bucks it's marketing money marketing money goes down the drain anyway right so like it's not a it's not a red line item it's fine um but like go like that's why i'm super excited like i've never been to pax 8 beyond and i know we're going and we're doing a little bit of work there but like before i knew we were going to be podcasting there i'm bringing two of my team members with me like i don't know anyone who's going

[00:34:26] to pax 8 beyond other than new york and a lot a lot of people i'm sure there are but i i want to i would really be interested and i have a call coming up with my my reps how many people that are going are apple consultants right probably wait just based on the numbers 40 000 msps 350 of them are apple consultants in the united states just based on that divisional math right we're going to be one

[00:34:56] of few at pax 8 beyond which is a great opportunity for us to go and pitch our services to all these other people who we might normally not have direct access to or wouldn't have any idea who we are because they're not going to google us right right but here we are i'm going to sit at a table at lunch be like hey what do you do what do you do what do you do hey i do max you need help with your max i'm your guy this guy also does max he works for me he's going to go sit at that table and do the

[00:35:25] same conversation this guy who also works for me he's got i'm going to kick him out he's going to go sit at that table and do the same thing so like if you can bring your niche to an event like that that you don't normally go to there's wild expectations for what you can do i don't think that's the right word but you know what i'm saying well and and that comes to one of my biggest things about msp is going to shows because msp is going to shows it's probably one of the most

[00:35:50] expensive things they'll do not just in dollars but in time right and i did not realize how important it was going to shows until there was one in my backyard um you know for those of you who don't know my msp was in the orlando florida area and so the first time a show came there from a vendor that i

[00:36:15] was using it happened to be gfi max at the time you know it didn't cost me a lot of money to go and i could just you know if i needed to leave i could leave and go take care of a client but the value that i got out of not only the vendor sessions which were were very good but the networking with the other msps like i ended up networking with a security guy who helped me through a huge problem with a law firm

[00:36:44] uh a couple years down the road and it's just one of those things that yes it's expensive when it comes to time and money however if you go make sure that you have a plan you know you have i want to accomplish this this and this out of this conference i want to attend these breakout sessions because i need to

[00:37:05] learn about xyz i need to find a group of peers at this event who have had problems one two and three and solve them so that i can you know bend their ear about how they solve them and how i can solve my own problem and then lastly who do i want to meet at that conference so that i'm built not necessarily

[00:37:31] building my brand but just building my network of people who can help me later on when i get to the level that they're at now yeah these are great tips i mean there's there's no reason not to be running all this through like you never know who you're going to meet and yeah you might be a little behind on time because when you get back you're gonna have 30 000 emails to deal with um but we're good at filters and

[00:37:59] processing right so like invest that time invest that time in either going to conferences or even thinking about starting your own conference because there's value in both right um don't go to every conference that's number one and like don't be that yeah like i know people who are like i don't know how they run their msp and they just go to every show that exists under the sun and i'm like how do you get anything

[00:38:26] done right but like do you think about what those conferences there's a that you can google msp conferences 2025 you'll find 17 pages of links that have every show that ever existed j mcbane publishes it every year there you go so like find them and then pick them out there's going to be ones that are going to be appropriate for you there's not you don't know until you go so check those things out

[00:38:50] uh if you want however to uh talk to us about what your experience is at a conference eric and i will be podcasting from the pax eight beyond event happening in june so check that out find us we're very easily found uh eric's got a beard that basically touches his feet and i um well not yet not yet i will look i traditionally dress a little bit nicer and cooler when it comes to shows than i do on the

[00:39:14] podcast well i'm in my basement we will have a table booth some kind of setup and so we will be easy to find we will be with the rest of the podcasters uh i love finding out stuff like this when everyone who's listening also finds out stuff like this i guess we'll have a table or a booth at pax and beyond come check that out uh eric any final words before we say goodbye to the folks at home this week uh just if you're not going to conferences do consider it but start slow do it intentionally

[00:39:44] and just make sure it fits in with what your needs of your business are and if you're not sure which conferences to go to why don't you ask that question in the facebook group facebook.com group all things msp check out the eric's beard growth at youtube.com at all things msp follow us on all of your favorite podcasting tools uh like subscribe leave a review we say this every week you guys need to leave more reviews uh and that's it right so from all of us here that's eric i'm

[00:40:12] justin bye thank you for listening or watching the all things msp podcast if you liked this episode go ahead and give us a thumbs up hit that like button and consider subscribing to catch all our weekly episodes and from your host extraordinaire justin esgar and myself eric anthony your humble producer and all things msp founder thank you very much for spending your time with us if you are not aware

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[00:41:34] join us next week for another exciting episode