Getting Your Hands Dirty in Your MSP

Eric Anthony (00:07):

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Justin Esgar (00:56):

Do you know that there's a theory that in the movie Van, because in Deadpool, Wade Wilson is a contract killer, so clearly he wouldn't be using his real name. So we have to assume that Wade Wilson's name is not Wade Wilson. Right. And if you watch Van Wilder, and the reason this came to my mind was you said, I have to write this down. And I constantly tell people, write that down, and they go, I don't have a pen. I go, remember it then, which is a line from that movie. In that movie, he is impressing some girl about being a spy slash man of mystery slash murder for hire. So the truth of the matter is that Deadpool's real name is Van Wilder. What's up everybody? Welcome to All Things MSP podcast. My name is Justin Escar. With me always is my good friend and unlit background man. Mr. Eric Anthony. Eric,

Eric Anthony (01:58):

You're right, you're right. I forgot.

Justin Esgar (02:04):

I'm trying to, we'll

Eric Anthony (02:04):

Do better next time.

Justin Esgar (02:06):

We'll do better next time. I want someone to take our YouTube clips of just me saying We'll do better next time as our, that should be our Christmas episode. It is just me being like, we'll do better next time. We'll do better next time.

Eric Anthony (02:19):

Tagline montage.

Justin Esgar (02:22):

What a week it's been. Dude, how are you?

Eric Anthony (02:26):

I'm all, it's been a very busy week. I was at IT Nation Secure for the first half of this week. Just getting back, I now have somewhere along the lines of 25 plus interviews to edit, which, yeah, going to light a fire under me to hire a video editor, I guess.

Justin Esgar (02:46):

Ooh, we can talk about lighting a fire. I want to get to that in a little bit. But first, from the group.

Eric Anthony (02:50):

From the

Justin Esgar (03:00):

Group this week, Craig Willard writes, as a business owner or a staffer, what is it about your IT role that stresses you out the most? That is a great question, Craig, and there's been some solid answers. Eric Elder gave a do stress for Facebook for me, it's when everything hits all at once. Totally feel you on that one. Procrastination puts me there, and we can talk about that in a second. Matt Dwyer says, not me. Ask me about my day. You even jumped in and said something and then Mike Murphy said, I actually talked to a prospect this week about who had become possibly our new client. They asked two questions. Not kidding, are you guys dbags? And what do you guys do? And do you guys respond to actual requests? Which got me thinking, if we aren't responsive enough, we are those dbags definitely decided that then and there, we will grow slow and steady.

(03:46):

We won't be forced into growth at all costs that so many MSPs fall into and then can't service our clients. That's a solid answer, Mike got to be honest. As a business owner, what about my IT role stresses me out the most. Honestly, it's keeping everybody happy, right? At virtual, we manage 600, 700 endpoints, something like that. And those are actual people behind those endpoints. And to make sure that they're all happy all the time is very stressful. I know Craig's probably doing this question to, because I know Craig well enough, he's going to take this information and sell us on a book or something or

Eric Anthony (04:28):

Have a podcast

Justin Esgar (04:29):

Or I have a podcast. I was on his podcast once. It was great. But yeah, it's the continuous, trying to keep people happy thing. We've had clients leave, actually, I was just talking to my friend Tim about this. He has a client who's leaving him and he wants to make sure that everybody's happy when they leave. We had a client leave and the reason they left up until that moment, until this exact moment in time, I thought they were happy with us. And then one day she just left us a nasty review within our ticketing system about feeling pressure that we're forcing 'em to buy new computers, even though they were nine years old and all this other stuff. And I was like, it hurt. It actually hurt because I don't want to piss people off. I want to take care of their stuff, get them up and running. I understand computers break. I still don't understand how any of us have a job, but I think that's probably the most stressful thing to take care of that many people at once I, and to keep them all happy. It's like running, it's like having 45 weddings at the same time. You know what I mean?

Eric Anthony (05:33):

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think mine, like I said, was waiting for the next thing to fail, which is just not a way you should live your life. I'm going to say that right now, and I'm much happier on the vendor side of this fence, but different strokes for different folks. And that was the one that really got to me because I don't know, I'm just not, I don't like being interrupt driven, you know what I mean? I

Justin Esgar (06:06):

Honestly think that if you don't like stress, you shouldn't be an it at all. Oh, because there's very true, there's no, there's no MSP owner who I know who's just like, ah, you know what? This is awesome. Not a single one. Even my friend Lucas, who did three months in France, he does EOS big on EOS, was able to do certain things, whatever, but just still, there's no way to make it happen.

Eric Anthony (06:31):

Yeah, well, so I will say though, there are some people doing it right. I got a chance to talk to Joe Ray. He's an MSP out of Tennessee or Kentucky, one of those two very close. So geographically, not

Justin Esgar (06:46):

Far, someone from New York, those are the same states. Sorry,

Eric Anthony (06:52):

Kentucky has better bourbon.

(06:55):

Anyway, we had a discussion. In fact, his interview, I did an interview with him while I was there, and that'll come out over the next couple of weeks, provided I find a video editor. But he was talking about, this is one of the first conferences that he's been able to go to and know that things are handled back at the office, even though he's out and his senior engineer is out and they're a small MSP, they're like four or five, six people, something like that. And he was even telling me, yeah, some stuff came up while I was gone. They called me about it, but they're taking care of it. It's no big deal. I mean, I've never seen an MSP at a conference that calm.

Justin Esgar (07:38):

Yeah, I felt that way. Funnily, when I took that vacation a couple of weeks ago, I was still checking in because I'm a micromanaging pain in the ass. But the team handled it, and we didn't lose any clients that week, so that's good. But still, I'm on a boat in the middle of the ocean, millions of dollars with a crappy internet, and I'm still worried about it. I'm trying to figure out, did we take care of that thing for that person? It stresses you out some and it really shouldn't. So Craig, thank you for making me stressed about trying to answer this Facebook question. That's from the group. Thanks, Craig. No, I'm just kidding. Thank you, Craig. And thanks to everybody who did comment on it. Eric Elder, not you, Matt Dwyer and Mike Murphy. Good answers across the board. And if you want to see more questions or want to post your questions to the group, facebook.com/groups/all things MSP, and maybe you'll be from the group.

Eric Anthony (08:41):

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Justin Esgar (09:36):

Let's get into it. Man, this week has been weird because I feel like I have told more people to be in the dirt this week than ever. And I don't mean just within Vira, I mean my colleagues, my friends, other MSPs. You

Eric Anthony (09:55):

Mean kind of like I did to you this morning,

Justin Esgar (09:58):

Kind of like you did to me this morning? Yeah, making me call you, you mean?

Eric Anthony (10:06):

Well, just when I was like, I'm done. I quit.

Justin Esgar (10:11):

Oh yeah. Alright. I've gotten this sense from a lot of people that

(10:24):

Too many MSP owners. I don't want to get dirty anymore. And I don't mean physically, I don't mean physically. I don't mean crawling around on floors or taking out hard drives and blowing them with air condensers we did in the eighties. I mean, they don't want to put in the work because they think that they've either automated it or they have a virtual assistant or they're relying on chat GBT, or they're using one of the services that are out there for marketing needs, or they're doing this or they're doing that, whatever. And somebody I know, and I'm not going to mention who called me and I was having a conversation and they were stressed out. They hadn't had a new client walk in the door in quite some time and they were afraid that because they lost a client that they're going to end up having to fire a staff member.

(11:18):

And I was like, you got to get your hands dirty again. And they happened to be a member of one of the marketing companies and they still haven't closed a deal in months. And I was like, dude, I was like, there was a time before you were a member of this thing. There was a time before you had staff, there was a time before you knew everything. You knew what'd you do then you get your first customer is against the wall and someone stuck a piece of dynamite between your butt cheeks and lit the fuse. I'm not joking with this. Literally it was nine 30 in the morning when I was talking to this dude, and that's the analogy I came up with. And I was like, you got to get to work, get your hands dirty. And I feel like there's so many of us who don't want to do it.

(12:05):

So we talked about the audits that virtual was doing the other day. We were talking about tech debt and the amount of work I am putting in, lemme give you an example. We are making sure that all of the, I keep looking over my screen. I have it because I have four pages open for this stuff. We're making sure that all of our client data is in there. And I don't mean just their name, I mean their name, their phone number, the dog's name, their internet provider, their internet hardware, their backup solution, they're all this stuff, but we're putting it all into Halo, going all in on Halo. We broke away from IT glue, which hilariously my new Kase rep was like, Hey, I saw your IT glue expired, you want to renew that? And I was like, no. They were like, yeah, just make sure

Eric Anthony (12:52):

They delete your data.

Justin Esgar (12:55):

Well, if they don't delete the account, I can keep going back to refer to it for other things that I've missed. But I have been going in, I'm hard pressed going in and being like, okay, we're going to take this section. I'm going to do this and I'm going to take this section. I'm going to do this. I am getting my hands dirty. And that's what I mean by getting there. Vaynerchuk talks a lot about this, the clouds and the dirt. That's kind of where I stole the dirty thing from the clouds and the dirt. And I don't know how much dirt vaynerchuk's eaten at this point, but he says he does. I don't know if it's true or not.

Eric Anthony (13:28):

Well, I mean in some ways he is right. You can't do it everywhere. But in some ways, especially with his vlogging and stuff like that, he's absolutely still in the dirt.

Justin Esgar (13:44):

And I think a lot of us need to be in that, right? And yes, the goal is to not be, but unless you're a 20, 30 person office and you have SOPs and people and staff and all these things in place to get stuff done, you're not going to be able to do that. If you're a four or five person office, you got to do it. You could take a week off, go on vacation, but I'm shocked at the amount of people who are like, man, I just don't want to do it. Get in it, man.

Eric Anthony (14:30):

Yeah, I mean so many MSPs are bootstrapped, right? Number one, and by the way, this doesn't just apply to MSPs. This is small business owners across the board, and there are basically two types. There are the ones that build it from scratch, get their hands dirty, and then continue to get their hands dirty. They can't help themselves. But then there's also the ones that, it's almost like buying a franchise. They buy a franchise and they hire all the people to do all the work. And what's interesting is I've seen franchisees in this industry, MSPs, there are a couple of organizations out there that franchise the MSP business model. And that's exactly their mentality. They're just a business owner. They're not there to do really any of the work. They just own a business.

Justin Esgar (15:32):

But that's different, right? It

Eric Anthony (15:34):

Is, but it's out

Justin Esgar (15:35):

There and it's out there. But that's a different mentality. I remember when I was working for someone a long time ago, and there was a guy there and I said to him, I was like, what's your end game here? What do you want to do? And he's like, I want to sit on a beach and I want to collect checks. And that got my head. And I was like, oh, I wouldn't mind having a beach house and collecting checks. And lo and behold, I look him up on LinkedIn and he's still working, not, he has to keep getting dirty. It's not that it's unachievable, it's that it's really, really hard. And again, unless you have a 30 person office or you have a bigger team or you're one of these mega MSPs, it's a different story when you're a four person Ms. P, the other thing is the buck stops with you, man.

(16:32):

And I dunno, I am having a hard time, one, I'm having a hard time with words, but I'm also having a hard time putting together, people are all about abundance mindset lately, which I'm all about, right? There's plenty out there. But at the same time, people are really into that scarcity mindset of I don't know what to do next. I don't know how to get another client. I don't know how to do this thing. I don't know how to make myself more profitable. And then there are including us a thousand podcasts and gurus out there that are all slinging advice. It makes it hard for people to know the right steps. And the fact of the matter is, it's a gut feeling. It sucks for that to be an answer. I don't know where we're going with this show.

Eric Anthony (17:35):

No, I actually like where you're going with this because knowledge is important and trying to get advice from other people does have its merits. However, the part a lot of us miss is it just takes doing work. And a lot of times, even if you don't know what to do, if you just keep doing what you're doing, you're going to have better results than not doing anything because you're just thinking about what to do.

Justin Esgar (18:05):

This goes back, this goes back to from the group earlier, right? Because I wanted to bring this one up is, was it Eric who said it? Someone said that they were stressed and they didn't want to get work done right? Oh yeah. Here, Eric Elder said, I guess everyone is too stressed to Facebook today. For me, it's when everything hits at once, sometimes procrastination puts me there and that's on me. And you know what, dude, that's a hundred percent. And it happens to everybody. There are days where I used to do this, this happened to me a lot up until maybe two years ago where too much would hit me at once and I would just shut down. Couldn't There's a reason there's a couch there. I just did. Exactly. And even in my old office, in my old house couch was there, by the way, I love that couch. That couch is from Pier one. They don't have business anymore, and the couch is eight feet long and I'm five foot eight. So it fits me perfectly.

(19:10):

I would be so paralyzed with how much stuff I'd have to do. I would be like, no, I can't do any of it. Which is when you think about it from a logistics standpoint or you take, you step out of your own body for a second and think about this, it doesn't make any sense. Why do that? Why would you shut down? You have all this work to do. Why is your answer? Go take a nap. And it was about, I dunno, two years ago or so, and I don't know what did it for me that I've now powered through that. I now get a whole bunch of stuff like that and I power through it. And the reason I know I can do that is because again, I'm okay getting my hands dirty. And there's a different, I know I said earlier, I micromanage. There's a difference between micromanaging and getting your hands dirty and what I'm talking about, I'm not harping on my team to do these things. I'm doing them not because I don't think my team can do them. They absolutely can. But I also know that my team are working on 45 other things. I don't need to throw another thing on their plate when I can actually get it done as well. So I,

(20:21):

There's that disparity around being a CEO and you should have all these things and put these people to do these jobs or whatever. It's sure. But if my tier one team is stacked with tickets, the last thing I need to do is go, Hey guys, can you go through all 200 clients in our halo and make sure that they have their Apple business number in there? No, I'll do that because I can do it. And yeah, I'll do that while I'm on a phone call or do whatever while we're recording podcast and get it done, because I don't mind doing it. But it's something that has to get done. So there's a weird balance here between respecting my staff's time, while respecting the fact that my staff can do this while respecting my own time and going, I'm still just going to do it because I need it done and I don't want to bother anyone else. You know what I mean? It's weird.

Eric Anthony (21:13):

It is. And by the way, if anybody's listening to this and they're like, well, how do I figure that shit out? There's a book called Buy Back Your Time that really talks very well and gives you some concrete steps. You're the

Justin Esgar (21:26):

Fourth person to talk about that book to me in three days. By the way,

Eric Anthony (21:30):

It's a great book. It really is. In fact, I literally, because I need to follow the advice myself, video editor, I literally have the work, the printed out workbook accompaniment thing, PDF sitting over here on my desk so that I can work through it so that I can get some of this stuff off of my plate.

Justin Esgar (21:54):

Yeah. Reason one of them is hire virtual assistant and then do the, I think in the book they call it the camcorder method, which is film yourself doing a task, have them write the steps of that and then have them do the steps afterwards. Yeah. That's like an old trick. They just relabeled it. But yeah, that's a hundred percent true. There are methodologies. I mean, I've, getting stuff done and getting my ish together has always been a problem for me. The amount of to-do apps I go through in a year is unbelievable. We've talked about this all, this is just a recap episode if you've made it this far. This is a recap episode where when Justin and Eric have no idea that no,

Eric Anthony (22:36):

Really, but I do. I have a confession to make that I haven't told you about yet.

Justin Esgar (22:42):

Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.

Eric Anthony (22:45):

I've switched back to paper

Justin Esgar (22:48):

Instead of doing digital or instead of doing your note cards.

Eric Anthony (22:53):

Well, so I still do the note cards on the weekend or I did the note cards while I was at IT nation. I needed something smaller that I could carry with me, but I've switched back from a digital planner to

Justin Esgar (23:08):

A paper one, just a

Eric Anthony (23:09):

Regular bullet journal

Justin Esgar (23:16):

Minus from a company that doesn't exist anymore or I think the company exists. I think our friend doesn't work there anymore, is really what this is. I kind of want to go back to, we should just give up computers. We all go back.

Eric Anthony (23:37):

So you also mentioned something that from Eric Elder's comment on the post earlier about procrastination. And this is one that hits hard for me because I very much fall victim to procrastination and the anxiety that it causes. And so one of the reasons why I know that in order to improve my quality of life as well as my productivity is I have to write a to-do list every day. I have to go through that to-do list and keep on track with it. And by the way, it's part of the tool set that keeps me on track because when I feel like going and taking a nap, I go, no, let's go back to the to-do list and do the next thing. And because I just, that procrastination leads the anxiety and it all just

Justin Esgar (24:26):

Sucks. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's another reason why I'm big on getting your hands dirty because going through my client list and putting in their Apple business numbers is not by any stretch of means fun. It's a pain in the ass, but it's work. And I love to work and I feel like every one number I'm putting in there, I'm taking another step and I'm continuous. So it's part of that also, it's almost like good for my brain to be getting dirty.

Eric Anthony (25:05):

Well, it's one of those tasks that you can do without a lot of thought, but you still get the feeling of accomplishment when it's done so you know that you're working. You know that what you're doing is work that's going to pay off later. Even if it's low value work, it is going to pay off later. And in the absence of the motivation or the brain power at the moment to get something else done, it's moving you forward.

Justin Esgar (25:40):

Yeah, that's the thing. It's moving the needle as a true New Yorker. And I've talked to Melanie Curtis, our business coach many times about this. As a New Yorker, I want to pin the needle in the red. I want my foot on the gas, I want to rev it to 9,000 RPM all the time, constantly running, which obviously is a completely unhealthy method, but I want our work to be moving that fast as well. And it's not fair for me to ask my team who, a lot of them aren't New Yorkers. A lot of them don't think the same way I do. They're not entrepreneurs, which is fine. That's fine. But I can't have them doing that because that's not the way they're wired.

(26:31):

So I have to be able to say, okay, even if I can't pin it to the red by putting in doing these menial pieces to continue moving forward, I'm still, at least the needle's still moving. It's not stagnant. The car's not off. And so what you're saying about it taking a little stuff, that's a hundred percent true, right? You got to chip away at the big boulders and doing this stuff, like putting in these numbers, which it's not that it's hard, it's menial work. We said this earlier, it doesn't take a lot of brainpower. It's literally logging in and out of a site at Apple a hundred times until they stop texting me my two-factor codes. But it's something to keep moving forward. And I think a lot of people during the pandemic couldn't move forward. And I think now that it's over, I'm putting that in quotes, running who's not watching. People are trying to figure out how to get that momentum again. And the way to get that momentum is put your hands in the dirt and start digging.

Eric Anthony (27:44):

Yep.

Justin Esgar (27:45):

Yeah.

Eric Anthony (27:46):

Well, thank you for attending Justin and I's therapy session today.

Justin Esgar (27:51):

How much does your therapist cost? It's free. I listen to it on a podcast.

Eric Anthony (27:55):

Yeah. If you can't afford a therapist, just start a podcast.

Justin Esgar (28:04):

The reason I'm laughing so hard is because it's true. I

Eric Anthony (28:07):

Know.

Justin Esgar (28:09):

Yeah. There's a lot to be said about this. And what I would love for anyone who has made it this far, one, God bless you, and two post post on the Facebook group and let us know what's something that you are working on this week to move the needle, even as little as it is, right? I don't care if your answer is, I am updating everyone's Malwarebytes versions or whatever it is, all the way to, we're up heaving our entire PSA and moving whatever it is. I want to know what you guys are working on because I'm interested to see just how many of you are really pushing it right? Because like I said, even a little bit, you're still pushing through it. I see how many of you're pushing it. So post it Facebook, facebook.com/groups/all things MSPs, where we're at, you can post it right there. Maybe you'll end up, we'll review it as part of the for the group, but I think that's, I'm tired.

Eric Anthony (29:08):

It's Friday, it's late,

Justin Esgar (29:11):

And it looks weirdly gray outside all of a sudden. Earlier it was so sunny. And then as soon as I got on the phone call with you, it's gray outside.

Eric Anthony (29:19):

That's what I do. I bring the gray,

Justin Esgar (29:21):

No side note I want, tell one last thing before we head off. I went to go order contact lenses yesterday at 1-800-CONTACTS, and the guy was doing a price check for me, and while he was price checking, he goes, do you want to hear a dad joke? I was like, sure. So he tells me this horrible joke and then I give him one, and then he just me because it's in the live chat and he just texts back, ha ha, ha. That one's going in my Rolodex.

Eric Anthony (29:47):

So he has a Rolodex of dad

Justin Esgar (29:49):

Jokes, Rolodex of dad jokes. If you want to hear what the dad joke is, stay tuned for the next episode of All Things MSP podcast. Follow us to facebook.com/group/all things msp. Watch how this all went down at youtube.com/at all things MSP and grab us on all of your favorite podcasting tools. Leave us a review somewhere. We want to see it, we want to hear it. Let us know what you think of us. Again, shout out to all of our from the group people today. That was Eric and then Matthew and Mike Murphy and Craig Willard. Thanks so much and we'll see you next time on All Things MSP. Bye.

Eric Anthony (30:25):

Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow us on Facebook, but better yet, go ahead and join the Facebook group. You can also follow us on Instagram if that's your thing, and make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel at all things MSP to catch us in all of our video glory. And last, but certainly not least, if LinkedIn is your thing, you can follow us there as well. And a special thank you to our premier sponsors Super Ops Move Bot goes into Easy DM a C and comtech. And we also want to thank our vendor sponsors. The All Things MSP podcast is a biz POW LLC production.