How MSPs Can Stand Out and Win | EP98

[00:00:07] No. It's a hoodie. Oh. It looked like a fuzzy robe. Because you were like really close to the camera. Heads up, my garage guy might be coming and I don't know if he's gonna like text me or call me or whatever but it's gonna definitely probably interrupt the show. That's usually the way that happens. Oh, let's put everything so it stops the dinging and beeping, the beeping and dinging and digging and beep. Oh, it's the blinking and beeping and beeping and blinking.

[00:00:37] Should we just turn everything off? Yeah, turn it all off. But they're coming in from land. All right, turn it all back on. Do you know what I'm talking about? Do you want to move this? I have no idea what you're talking about. It's Airplane 2. Oh, the classics. William Shatner is the commander of Moonbase and he gets mad that he doesn't understand all the blinking lights and everything like that. And he just goes, all the blinking and beeping and then in the second he was like, do you want to just turn it off? And he's like, yeah, turn it off.

[00:01:07] And so he turns everything off. And then like they get the radio strikers trying to fly the spaceship. And he's like, Moonbase, are you there? And he's like, all right, turn it all back on. You all right? Yeah. Cool. Been an air near near near. Operating an MSP can be challenging, but Gozinta makes it easier.

[00:01:34] With expert consulting services, they guide MSPs through every step of their journey from startup to exit. And their software is crafted to solve problems without creating new headaches. Visit ATMSP.link forward slash Gozinta to learn more and see how they can help your MSP thrive. Add DMARC management and monitoring to your MSP services with Easy DMARC.

[00:02:01] Protect your clients from phishing, spoofing, and impersonation while boosting their trust in your solutions. Easy DMARC makes email security simple, effective, and hassle-free. Visit ATMSP.link forward slash Easy DMARC to learn more and start offering DMARC as a service today. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the All Things MSP Podcast. I'm your host, Justin Escar. With me always is my good friend, podcast producer extraordinaire, and that's definitely not a robe, Mr. Eric Anthony.

[00:02:31] It's a hoodie. And you say always like it's a bad thing. No, it's a good thing. Nobody wants to hear me on my own. Welcome to one of those episodes where nothing is planned. We're going to go with it and see what happens. The reason we like doing this is we like a little realism in our days. I feel like everyone needs a little bit more of this. I do have something I want to talk about today, though. And I know you don't want to talk about it, but I'm going to talk about it anyway, because that's what I do on this show. Well, I didn't say I didn't want to talk about it.

[00:03:01] I wanted to make sure that we cover kind of all sides of it because there's been some talk about... I'm not even going to say directly this topic, but something that is certainly adjacent. Sure. So I wanted to talk a little bit today about how you as an MSP can get more business by making yourself, I'm assuming the business owner is listening to this, like a mini celebrity.

[00:03:28] And Eric is worried that I'm going to go too much into the influencer range, but I wasn't... I didn't really mean it in that regards. And like, I understand there's a lot to be said about quote unquote influencers. I mean, we all saw what happened during the tick tock ban, which wasn't really a ban because I do feel like it's important that as MSPs, we know what's actually happening from a technological standpoint, because I'm sure our clients are asking us about it. Right.

[00:03:56] And so I'm sure that you probably have clients that are like, I'm not going on tick tock. They're giving my data to China, whatever. But at the same time, my take on it, and I love tick tock, right, is from what I've read and what I've seen, there has been no proof that any of our data is going outside of the systems because most of those servers are owned by Oracle in the United States.

[00:04:22] Right. Whereas Facebook and Instagram have been in Senate committee hearings and straight up have been called out for like leaking data and like manipulating data and things like this. So like before your clients come and ask you things, just make sure that you hear both sides of every story before you guys make decisions. That's where I want to talk about that. Eric will probably cut this part out anyway.

[00:04:46] No, no, no, no, because I absolutely believe that this should not have been directed solely at tick tock. I think there's a larger data security issue here that goes across all platforms. Yeah, no, 100%. And I think like we I think we've proved it that our government isn't really up to date with technology.

[00:05:14] I mean, you listen to some of the questions. I think Barack Obama did this once where he was like, these guys don't know what an iPod is like, why are you fighting for them or something like that? He said that like publicly. But I remember watching one of the one of the committee hearings with Cho Chu, the CEO of tick tock. And the guy was like, if I put earphones in my head, can tick tock tell what's going on in my brain? And I was like, what? What is this questioning?

[00:05:42] Does does the tick does the tick tock access the home Wi Fi? And and Cho Chu was like, I'm not really sure what you're asking. But like if you mean like to get on the Internet to like use our service. Yes. He's like, no, no, no. But I'm asking, like, does it access other things on our home because it's on the Wi Fi? And he's like, no. He's like, are you sure? And he's like, yeah, I'm sure. And he's like, I don't believe you. And I'm like, do like what are you just saying things for sake of saying things?

[00:06:08] This is this is my problem with people who don't understand technology not being led by those who do understand technology. And I feel like as an MSP, it's our job to lead the non technological people with the right information. And so regarding the ban from last week or whenever this airs, the week of January, whatever it was, the 19th. Right.

[00:06:35] The amount of stuff I saw come out where people were like, Facebook's buying it and now it's on Facebook servers and other servers like none of that is true. So like, just make sure you understand the story before you let clients question what your stuff is.

[00:06:50] I do really appreciate how many creators, TikTok creators were so gung ho to leave TikTok to go sign up for that app called the Little Red Book or the Little Red App, which was basically the Little Red Book.

[00:07:06] I don't know the proper pronunciation in Chinese. I don't want to. And if you read the terms and conditions when signing up, it literally says like you're it literally says like China will understand your data and you respect and you know the rules of the Chinese Republic or whatever it is like. It says that and Americans were like, we don't care if the government is going to shut down TikTok for something they think it's doing and it's not. We're just going to go give it to them deliberately, which I thought was amazing.

[00:07:36] If you ever needed to prove that, you know, all of these social media platforms are addicting as drugs. There's your proof right there. That people would jump ship there that I haven't stopped talking about it for the last seven minutes. That people would jump ship without even looking. Oh, I think they knew. Actually, I saw one TikToker who is like if if the government should step up.

[00:08:02] I will print out my computer history and bring it to the Chinese consulate every morning for the next six months. I thought it was amazing. I mean, the ban really wasn't a ban.

[00:08:17] TikToker opted to shut down early and then it came back less than 24 hours later because they believe that President Trump would invoke that 90 day extension on the sale thing or whatever it is. Right. Right. I don't know whether or not Trump has done that yet at this point, but it came back quickly and now everybody's like there was a lot of swan songs that night, which was pretty pathetic considering that it came back less than 24 hours later.

[00:08:47] But the amount of disinformation I saw about, you know, now it's on Facebook. Now it's on Meta's servers and all these things. I'm like, none of that is true. So like if your clients ask you questions about it and I guarantee they're asking questions about security in general, like these are things you as an MSP should be schooled in and make sure you know the truth around what's happening with these things. And stay up to date on the news the right way. Yeah. By watching it on TikTok.

[00:09:18] And don't and don't get your information from Facebook unless it's a private Facebook group called all things MSP. That's true. I'm going to start putting disinformation to all things MSP Facebook group just to see what happens. All right. So back backing away from that, all that and backing away from influencers, because that's not really what I want to go with. I want to talk about growing your business by becoming like a mini celebrity. Now, this really works, in my opinion.

[00:09:47] In places that are not major metropolitan areas like New York City, LA, San Francisco, this may not work for you. But I think in the smaller arenas where MSPs are not as much a dime a dozen as they are in those bigger metropolitans, this can work really, really well. And what I'm coming to this is the idea of being like a really, really big fish in a really, really small pond.

[00:10:11] Because the one thing we've all learned when it comes to any sort of MSP marketing, whether it's stuff that we've talked about or stuff that we've heard from our MSP friends and things like that, is that nobody wants to buy unless they're ready to buy. Nobody needs that thing. It's not like how, it's not like you get an idea of something like, there's this new, I have this new lamp on my desk. I saw it on a YouTube video. I went to Amazon and I bought it. I don't need this lamp. It's stupid. It just glows. It makes a lot of lights. It actually been really throwing me off.

[00:10:38] But in the case of the services that MSPs offer, nobody needs us until they need us. Either they are stuck, they've gotten too big and they need help, or they're not happy with their current MSP. So the ideal, because what happens a lot when I talk to a lot of MSPs, they're always just like, I need to get more clients. I need to get more clients. And I'm like, well, what are you doing to get these clients? And you know, maybe they're sending shock and awe boxes. Maybe they're just posting once every three weeks on LinkedIn.

[00:11:07] Maybe they're not doing anything, which is most of them. Right? What, what really works is, in my opinion, is making the owner usually this ideal of a mini celebrity. And I'm putting that in quotes for those who are not watching at YouTube.com slash at all things MSP. Right?

[00:11:31] Because if that person is the mini celebrity, they're going to be in front of your potential customers all the time. And when that customer finally puts two and two together and realizes, I need help, they don't have to question it. Right? And just like a regular celebrity, like if I were going to go make a movie and I needed an action star. Right? Eric, you have $10 million to make a hot action movie.

[00:12:00] Pick a male action hero. Go. Wahlberg. There you go. Matt Damon. Like, it's, it's like that. It should be like that, in my opinion, for people who need IT help. If you're in a small enough area, and this is why I keep saying the metropolitan thing is kind of, if you're in a small, if you're in Topeka, Kansas, and someone needs help, and they're like, I need PC help, I need Mac help.

[00:12:26] They should immediately be able to go, oh, Jim, Susan, Jerry, whatever. Because they've seen you so often. And I think this is something that people need to really lean in on. And there's ways to do this. But that's kind of what I was, what I wanted to bring up today. Yeah. And, okay. I've got a story for this. For anybody who doesn't know, and just, I don't even know if you and I have gone into this very much in the past.

[00:12:54] For a hot minute, I was in the pool table industry. Okay? Yeah. And pool tables are one of those things, exactly as you described. Nobody's looking for one until they build the room to put it in. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just one of those things. Or buy a house with this extra big room that they don't know what to do with.

[00:13:17] And so really the only thing that worked for us when we were selling pool tables was billboards. Because people drive by them every single day. It's that same consistency that you're talking about. Now, when we're talking about things changing, billboards are not a great effective piece of advertising anymore. Because so many people don't drive the same route to work every day. Mm-hmm.

[00:13:46] They're not dead. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that they are not as effective as they used to be. Now, if we translate that into something that MSPs can do, and the most logical place to do it is social media. Right? To create that consistency. You can do advertising. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. They're going to see you occasionally. They might start getting annoyed because people just get annoyed with advertising.

[00:14:16] However, if you're creating the kind of content that I think you are talking about, right? Becoming that subject matter expert in their area, then that's very, very different. Because they're going to see you as somebody who's helpful. And that's really at the end of the day, why they're going to hire you over somebody else. Because you're knowledgeable, and you're helpful, and you seem like a decent person. Right. Because they're going to...

[00:14:44] I feel like a lot of people don't realize just how easy it is to trust someone because you've seen work that they've done. Right? So let's go back to our celebrity thing. Right? Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon. Out the gate, the two of us knew these names right away. And we assume that they're easy to work with and they're trustworthy and they're not going to try to screw us over during production.

[00:15:12] Neither of us are in the production industry. So like we don't really know the truth behind it. Right? And so the same thing happens here. If you're becoming this like mini celeb and you're putting out content that a potential client needs and sees, they're going to look at you as a subject matter expert. And they're going to like innately trust you, which obviously you need to show goodwill on the other side. Like don't be an a-hole. You'll never keep your clients that way.

[00:15:42] But like they're, you're already building that trust without actually having to be like, trust me, I know what I'm doing. I've been in this business for 20 plus years. You don't need to do any of that. You can literally write articles about things that are happening in technology, things that are, I mean, I would really write articles that are targeted towards the people you want to get going back.

[00:16:04] We've talked about the ICP a thousand times, but like targeting those people, like if you're handling medical, for example, and I don't want to even be, I will, let's even niche that down even further. Not even like doctors. Let's say you only want to do dermatologists as an example. Okay.

[00:16:23] You, your content should be about what it is like for dermatology practices and things around security and HIPAA and EMRs. And even if it's just like, Hey, this EMR is the hot new thing. What, this is what we know about it.

[00:16:43] Like just to feed that information, being that, being that all knowing truth, when you do go to make that connection to a dermatologist, they're going to innately believe you. They're going to innately trust you and they're going to then say, okay, maybe this is the right partner I need to make my business, you know, move forward and things like that.

[00:17:07] But there's also the ideal going beyond social, you know, doing things in your neighborhood, being a member of the chamber of commerce, donating money to nonprofits that are local. Literally, I mean, I think one of the problems with the second half of all of this, which is like, you need to get out there and talk to people is that, I don't mean this offensively. Like a lot of IT people are introverted. They don't want to talk to people. So that's why we got into computers in the first place.

[00:17:35] But like, you have to kind of break through that a little bit of that because you need to have those, those networking things, whether you're going to like networking meetings and you're just talking to people or you're going out. Like it should always be about what can you offer people to like build up your rapport. And this way you become the go to either a power connector so you can connect with other people or the go to for the services that you offer. And then some.

[00:18:04] Yeah, there's there's a lot of different ways to do this, right? There's there's a lot of old school things you can do in addition to social media. Social media just amplifies the message. Now, sometimes that's good. Sometimes that's bad, right? You can actually spend a nominal amount of money and be able to go to all the Chamber of Commerce lunches that are in your town, you know, every year and which is usually once a month. Right.

[00:18:32] And it's that see and be seen kind of attitude to it. And beyond that, there's other kinds of very inexpensive advertising that you can do to get, you know, your logo and your brand out there. One of the ones that I think is is really good and is helpful to the community is like the banners on the fence on the field for the for the baseball games for the middle school or the high school or whatever.

[00:19:02] Those are usually not terribly expensive, but they're up there all year. Yeah. And it shows that you have an interest in the community that goes beyond just regular advertising. Yeah. And then, of course, you know, you take those banners, you take some selfies in front of it. Maybe you do something funny like you set up a table with some broken computers with like we can fix that or like whatever and you post those to social like there's ways to get yourself out there.

[00:19:31] Like I personally, let's talk about like I'm talking about myself for a second here. Whenever I don't. But like. I've made myself somewhat of a celebrity in the Apple community. By doing the conference and by offering help to other consultants, I mean, I started when I first started, I was a consultant consultant. I was helping all of them.

[00:19:55] I used to like when I used to fly to Florida once a month for my clients on their pre covid, I would have an hour to kill on the airport. I'd go on the Mac admin slack and go, I have an hour to kill. Who can I help? What can I do to help you? Like I just put myself out there to the community as much as possible.

[00:20:11] And now that people are drawn to me in some way, shape or form, and that's either going to help my conference or help me acquire someone or, you know, elevate my status with the people at Apple that I need to elevate with like these different things to make it. So that way, if I do offer something, I don't have to worry about buying their trust again because they already trust me and I've already built up like a like a brand around me.

[00:20:39] Now, I know a lot of you are listening to this going like, well, as the owner, I don't want to be the only person, you know, in the business and I want people to use the other people on my team. I mean, there's a difference here because there's the ideal that you're the only one at the company and then there's the ideal of you, the celebrity doing a bunch of stuff. Because like going back to our production thing, you think Matt Damon doesn't have like 45 assistants doing all of his stuff all the time?

[00:21:06] Like if you send him a script, it's got to go through like 12 people before it even gets to him. You, the owner, can still be the celebrity as part of the business without having to do all of the work, which is what I think a lot of people are afraid of also, right? They're thinking that like, if it's them, people are only going to want to use them. Like I have clients that still only text me and my answer to them is like, please email support-abertralcomputer.com. I'm not going to help you, but you're the face of the company. Yes, I get that.

[00:21:34] But that doesn't mean I'm also the one who's doing all the work. Like separate those ideals because they're not mutually exclusive. No, I don't think that's right. Exclusive, yeah. They're not exclusive.

[00:21:49] So first of all, what you mentioned is a real thing and something that most MSPs have to get over when they grow from just themselves or just themselves in one or two people to actually having a formal service department with tiered help desk and all of that. And it's hard to get yourself out of that first call that a client's going to make.

[00:22:17] Now, there are going to be certain clients who probably always expect that. Now, with that said, though, there's an MSP that I know very well, Keith Nelson over at Vistem, who literally, and I don't think this is a bad idea. I think this is a brilliant idea. He actually charges a very, very large sum of money per year for them to be able to call him personally. Oh, yeah.

[00:22:46] No, I'm 100% on bar with that. If you bother me, my rate is way higher than the rest of my team or added. Well, this is an addition to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. I like that a lot. I'm charging people $1,000 to talk to me. Yeah. But hey, how much money would you pay to talk to Mark Wahlberg, right? Like, it's kind of the same thing. It is. And their time is very valuable, right? And that's the point.

[00:23:16] Because as a business owner, your time is more valuable than just solving tier one help desk problems. Right. So, but that's probably a whole nother episode that we'll record next week, maybe. Except I think we have a guest next week. So, no, not next week.

[00:23:37] Anyway, what I wanted to say, because this is going back to the, you are the figurehead of the business, whether you like it or not. Okay. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. And so you need to participate in at least some of that activity. And I think Justin's not wrong when he says that you should be trying to create a little bit of celebrity status around yourself because people are drawn to that naturally.

[00:24:06] Now, I think it needs to be real. I think it needs to be transparent. But the other thing is, if you are old school and you don't like doing that stuff, if you have more than two employees, I can almost guarantee that at least one of them is younger than you and doesn't have a problem with creating this content. Have them help you. Right? You need to be in some of it. No question about it.

[00:24:35] But have somebody else like, you know, Mark Wahlberg or Matt Damon's assistants, have somebody help you with it. A, so it takes some of the time element away. But B, puts it in the hands of somebody who's excited about it. Right? I think there's still value in you being in it because you're the why of the business. You're why that business exists. And nobody can tell your business message better than you.

[00:25:03] Yeah, 100%. But there are people who are willing to help and passionate about doing content creation. Because I want to stay away from the word influencer. But I think content creation is what you need to get versed at or find people who will help you. I do. I'm thinking also like you as the MSP are probably going, well, everybody's already doing all this content creation. And there's not much to talk about. Who cares?

[00:25:32] You can't wear the same stuff. But you got to put your twist on it. Right? Because like your, that's what the magic is. It's not just like, I'm not just going to review headphones the same way Eric reviews headphones. I'm going to put my twist on it because I listen to different music than Eric does. Or I wear, I, you know, use the mediums as opposed to the smalls. Or I use transparent, whatever, noise canceling. And you don't like, you have to put your spin on it because that's what makes you unique as part of your unique value.

[00:26:00] And it doesn't matter that 20, 30, 50 people are all talking about, you know, the TikTok ban or an Okta outage or a Google thing or whatever. Like the fact is, is that if you put your spin on it, that's what's going to bring people. They're going to understand you and they're going to get your personality out of it. And when they're ready to buy, they're going to want to work with people who, that have personalities they like. And therefore, you would fall into that bill.

[00:26:26] Now, if you're going to come on there and just make content and be like, okay, everybody, this is what happened this week in technology. And I just want to tell you that like, no, your data is okay. And don't worry about it. Like no one's going to buy into that, right? You do need to have a little bit of personality. You don't have to be like explosive, expressive, in my opinion. But you can get your name out there. And like this is also a good opportunity if you do have the ability to do this, like get on podcasts.

[00:26:55] Get on, if you don't want to be on podcasts, go reach out to your favorite like, you know, news articles. And just like ask them to ghost write, write an article for them. Do things like that. Like I am now, like I get quoted for channel programs a lot now. Or like, you know, I've been on, we host this show and I've been on like so many other podcasts. Like you just get your name out there. Like set yourself up a Google alert for your name. And if your name isn't popping up often enough, that means you need to go do more stuff.

[00:27:24] Like that's kind of where I'm going. Like don't, you don't have to really do that. But like ideally, right? Because you should be trying to get your name out there. The more people who say, you know, John Smith from PCawesome.com, the better you are. Because one, you reshare that material. Two, you put that on your website to again prove to other people, the potential purchasers that you are, you know, a live person with real feelings and real opinions about things.

[00:27:55] And you can build yourself up that way. And it works in any market. Like if you're an MSP and you only do home users, you can bet your dollar donuts that you can like do things about, you know, the problems that you face on a day to day. You know, what does it really mean for a home user to have their information on the dark web? They don't know what the dark web is. They just hear about it on the news. It's super scary.

[00:28:23] But like make it a light and breezy, you know, video for them to understand. Send it to your existing customers. Let them send it out. But on the flip side, you know, your business customers, you have a lot of MSPs that only want to do things for, you know, compliance reasons or security. Like there's so much out there to write about and talk about. Just do stuff. You don't need a big studio. You don't need fancy lights and a camera and all things. You can do it from your phone. Yeah. But start putting stuff out there.

[00:28:53] Like I find this happens a lot. But a lot of people come to me and they say like, how do I get myself more noticed on LinkedIn is a big one. Whether you're looking for a job or you want to get your business. And then I go look at their LinkedIn profile. They've never posted ever. They've only just like liked or commented on other posts. I'm like, you're, I don't want to say it badly, but like you're a troll here. Like you're not actually engaging in anything here with anyone.

[00:29:23] Start putting out content. Start. And I'm not saying like, you don't have to go on there and be like, hey everybody, Mac OS updated today and I had a bowl of soup for lunch. No, that's not helpful. Right? I'll give a great example. There is someone in the ACN community. His name is Craig Cohen. If you're an Apple consultant, you know who I'm talking about. And on his website, HGSTechno, I think it's HGSONline.com.

[00:29:47] His staff writes thousands of white papers about how to do things in the Apple ecosystem. And everybody goes to Craig for help with things like that. And he's become a mini celebrity inside the Apple ecosystem for his brains and his tactics on doing things because he's putting that stuff out there. Right? He's not expecting anyone to read it. He just knows people will or someone's going to need it eventually. It's the same thing. You can go get customers.

[00:30:17] If you want to only do plumbers, I don't know why we always pick plumbers, but if you only want to do plumbers, there's so much you can do out there to talk about the technology they need. Talk about mobile technology. Talk about apps they might need. Talk about sharing content with their home office and billing and things like that. Put something out there. Make yourself the go-to person for those things. That's your celeb status. Yeah. This isn't hard. Absolutely.

[00:30:47] And it's consistency that's key. Number one, I want to drive home the point that you don't have to do fancy production value. Like, yeah, we have lights. I have the fancy lights, you know, making the background blue here, but that really doesn't matter. It's really because I'm a production nerd and I'm into all of that stuff.

[00:31:15] But let me put it this way. Probably the most followed people are not the people with the most production value. And maybe you don't have something valuable. Yeah. And maybe you don't have something valuable to say every day. Say it once a week. Just be consistent with it.

[00:31:44] And understand the more you do, the more you're going to get out of it. And also, it takes time. These are long tail activities. It might take you a month of doing this before you get one person, you know, to come back and say they're interested or to engage in a conversation. Yeah. I mean, even I know a consultant down in Louisiana. I forget exactly where.

[00:32:11] But he does video content with local businesses in the neighborhood. And he talks about their businesses and he posts it on his stuff. Like, they may or may not be his customer. He's just talking about the local business. And he's made a name for himself in the community as the person to share about the local bank or the farmer's market or, you know, the five and dime. Dating myself.

[00:32:39] Like the mom and pop shops or whatever it is that exists there. Right? It doesn't have to always be about tech. It could be about different things. It could be about how tech intercepts with things. Here's a cool new thing I found. Here's something that's new that's out there that you can probably read about, but I'm going to give you my opinion on it. Like, here's just, here's 10 quick tips to make your life better with technology. Like, these are all things you can do super easily and build your name up.

[00:33:08] The goal here, though, is you want to make sure that you are hitting people in your geographic neighborhood. So, make sure that you're, like, tagging the right towns or doing the right things on LinkedIn in that regards. And then sharing it to your existing customers and being like, hey, I wouldn't mind a reshare. Like, ask them for it. You can get this out there. And if you do things like this, or like we said earlier, we're talking about the Chamber of Commerce, right? Go to the Chamber. Ask the people who run the Chamber of Commerce. Be like, hey, I'd love to interview some people.

[00:33:37] Can I put it up on YouTube or whatever? They're all going to say yes because they all want to get their name out there as well. And then you can be like, hey, my question to you is, you know, who you are, what do you do, and what's your biggest technological challenge? And you're going to challenge me, and I'm going to see if I can solve it for you right now. Like that, and I just came up with that right now. Like I have not premeditated that concept. Like you could do that. There are so many different ways to do things to get your name out there that would totally work.

[00:34:07] Make yourself that little celebrity and get more traffic that way. Again, long term. This is a long play. Do it for three, four, five, six months. Build up a book of business. Build up, and I don't mean actual book of business. I mean like build up your library. Sorry, let me rephrase it. Build up your library of content that you put.

[00:34:33] If you go to the virtual consulting website and you go to About Us, like there's an entire section there of all the podcasts and videos that I've been on in the last couple of years. Right? I've just built up this library, and I've had enough content and things that I've built a sizzle reel, which explains who I am. And granted, that's for a different part of my business than my IT stuff. But like it took months, years to build all that up to get to where I am.

[00:35:02] But it pays off in the end. Here I am hosting an amazing podcast where we have thousands of listeners in a Facebook group that has thousands of members. Right? I host this conference. I have people who ask me questions. I do business coaching from people who have seen me and things. We talked about my celebrity status. Like, we got a Halo consulting customer who was like, are you Justin from All Things MSP? And I was like, yeah. He's like, that's so cool. Like, I just got to meet you. Like, those things, they help.

[00:35:32] Every little piece helps. And there's nothing stopping you from doing this except yourself. Do not – if you come back to me – oh, my God. If you come back to me and tell me you don't have time to do this, I'm going to punch you in the face. Well, and that's the biggest thing about this, right? Is this is probably the most effective way for you to do marketing without paying to do marketing. Right.

[00:35:56] I mean, that's the bottom line here is that everybody can do this because, look, you can film something and if you don't like it, you delete it and do it again. Like, these things – it's very easy to pick up your phone and get comfortable by doing this. But guess what? You got to pick up your phone and do it to get comfortable with it. And once you do, you'll pop these things out like crazy.

[00:36:24] And they'll become just second nature. You'll have a thought. Maybe, you know, you're in your car or you're just working on something and you'll pick up your phone and you'll make a two or three minute video and that's it. And you'll post it and somebody will see it and they'll go, oh, I've got that same problem. He knows how to solve that problem.

[00:36:48] Let me call them up or look them up on the internet and see if they can solve my problem the same way they solved somebody else's problem. I had to quickly mute my mic because my YouTube started playing because I wanted to share something. Like, there's a guy I know. His name is Kevin. He runs a YouTube channel called KevTechIT Support. It's at KevTechIT Support, right? He has 496 videos, which is not a lot, right?

[00:37:16] He's got 92,000 subscribers because he just made content about IT help desk and how to get started and worked his way through that. And he is now like a mini celebrity for people in these groups that I'm in with him that want to get into the business or need help going from level one to level two. And like his videos, he's got a lot on here now.

[00:37:43] Like, IT help desk skills for 2025, security plus password concepts, engaging in red team, blue team, like all of these things. And if you watch it, it's a camera in his bedroom with a computer. Like, no offense to Kevin. I love that dude. But his production value isn't that great. But that's okay. Doesn't need it. Doesn't need it. Because he's talking about things that people want to hear. He's made himself a name that way and done things. You don't have to be Mr. Beast.

[00:38:12] You don't have to be Mr. Who's the Boss. You don't have to be Linus Tech Tips. You can be you. You can talk about things that are going on in your business, things adjacent to your business, things adjacent to your customers' businesses, how you solve problems for customers, and you can build up this library of content. You post it on LinkedIn. You post it on YouTube. You don't even have to do a whole lot of work. You post it on YouTube and you repost it on LinkedIn.

[00:38:42] It's not even like you got to do things twice. And you build a name for yourself. Yourself. Not your company. You can be associated with a company. But the thing is the brand always has to be a person. If the brand is a company, it's going to be faceless. And you're not Nike. You're not even like if there's not even that many brands that are faceless anymore. Truth be told, like if I say Apple, you're going to say Tim Cook. If I say Tesla, you're going to say Elon.

[00:39:12] If I say, you know, I can't even think of any other brands other than my head. If I think Marvel, if I say Marvel, you're going to think Kevin Feige. Right? There's very few brands that are absolutely faceless at this point. So like don't do that. Be you as associated to that. Right? It's Tim Cook at Apple. It's Justin Escar at Virtua. It's Eric Anthony at All Things MSP. I think I'm older than you.

[00:39:41] I'm talking about brands now. I know. I know. Why? What were you thinking? Well, when you say Apple, I still think Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs. Sure. Sure. You know, when you say Marvel, I still think Stan Lee. But there's a solid point, right? Those people have transcended that celebrity status by doing those things that needed to be done. You can do this on the micro scale, which is how you become a mini celebrity and still hit

[00:40:10] all of those same marks. There's nothing stopping an MSP in... I already used Topeka, Kansas. Give me another small town that I don't know of. Park City, Utah. There's nothing stopping that MSP in Park City, Utah. From doing the same things Stan Lee, Steve Jobs did on a smaller scale. You grab your phone. You talk about what's going on.

[00:40:40] You do it consistently. You put it on your calendar. Make it part of one of the cards that Eric will send you if you pay for Patreon. And you can add this into your work store and get your name out there. That's going to help you grow your business. Because truth be told, you're going to hit a cap of your business by not doing anything. You want to get over that cap? I think it's like, if you don't do anything in your business, you can probably get away

[00:41:08] with a quarter million, maybe $300,000 top line revenue. But if you want to get to 500, 750, a million, 5 million, it's about how do people know who you are? On top of who do you know? And you know them because you've interviewed them. This way they now know who you are. You know what I'm saying? I do. Got anything else to add?

[00:41:35] I think I would probably wrap this up because we've said a lot of things. And I think they can take a lot of things away from this that they can start doing right now. But there's one thing that I probably want to say about this. Because imposter syndrome is real in this industry, right? And we've used the word celebrity a lot. And that typically brings in the connotation of I'm special. I'm something different. I'm something better than everybody else.

[00:42:05] Well, everybody is special, right? Your business has a unique selling proposition. You have a unique point of view. That is what makes your content different. You don't have to be an expert. In fact, a lot of times when you look at the consultants that are out there and the consultant

[00:42:28] coaches that are out there, a lot of times they'll tell you it's not your job to be the expert necessarily. It's your job to be the guide. And so it doesn't have to be your content that you just created this amazing content. No. It needs to be your take on this that makes it unique to you, which is going to speak uniquely

[00:42:56] to your ideal client profile. And that's what's important. Merging your uniqueness with your ideal client profile. And that's what's going to attract the eyeballs and ears and make them engage. A recipe for success. Also flour, two cups of brown sugar, one cup of white sugar, some chocolate chips, butter eggs. Also a recipe for success. Now I'm hungry. Yeah. I may have got my ratios wrong.

[00:43:24] Look, we want to see you get this out there. So if you have content that you're putting out there, share it in the Facebook group. You need help posting it on LinkedIn, reach out to Eric and I. We are here for you, the community, for this purpose. We want to see it. We want to see what you're doing. If you're doing something different than everyone else, let us know. Let's bring you on the show and we can talk about it. I want to see action from people in 2025. I don't want to see people just going, I don't know how to get new clients.

[00:43:51] I want to see you listening and stepping up and doing things because that's how you're going to grow your business. If at the end of 2025, your year over year revenue is 0% increased from 2024, you might as well be losing money. You can do better. The national small business average is 3%. Your goal is 5%, 10%. And you can do that by picking up your phone and making a couple videos, posting them online,

[00:44:20] going to the chamber of commerce, putting in the time. You can do it. I believe in you. I know I'm talking into the ether here. I'm talking to everyone who's listening. But I truly do believe that everyone who's listening can do this. And if you can't do it, if you legit cannot do it, and you are paralyzed by fear to do this, reach out to me and Eric and we will help you. That is my promise. Yeah, because if anybody can do it, you know, look at us too. Yeah.

[00:44:48] From all of us here at the All Things MSP podcast, I don't know why I said all of us. There's only two of us. But check us out. Facebook.com slash group slash All Things MSP. See us all on YouTube. YouTube.com slash at All Things MSP. All your favorite podcasting tools. Like, subscribe. Leave a review. I want to see more reviews on our podcast. That's my goal for this year. So I'm going to start nagging people for reviews. Like, I'm literally going to start messaging people I know being like, did you leave a review yet? And they're going to go, yes. I go, leave another one.

[00:45:16] Eric, anything you want to say at the end here as your final words? No, I mean, I just appreciate, you know, everything that everybody does for the show. You know, I appreciate the kind words that, you know, we do get. And yeah, if you'd put those in actual written reviews, we would really appreciate it. So, but, you know, we have fun doing this. We do it for you. And yeah, Justin, I think that's enough of my rambling for today. No one wants to hear anything else from me. So that's it.

[00:45:46] 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 Eskar and myself, Eric Anthony, your humble producer and All Things MSP founder, thank you very much for spending your time with us.

[00:46:14] If you are not aware, All Things MSP started as a Facebook group and now supports over 6,000 members. We also have a LinkedIn page for those of you who don't do Facebook. And make sure to check out our YouTube channel for even more content. A special thank you to our elite sponsor, CoreView, helping you manage your Microsoft 365 tenants instead of them managing you. Thank you to our premier sponsors, EasyDMark, Helped, Gozinta, Movebot, and SuperOps.

[00:46:43] And thank you to the rest of our sponsors. Without sponsors, we could not do what we do for the MSP community. Please consider checking them out. The All Things MSP podcast is a BizPow LLC production. The views and opinions of the hosts and guests are their own and do not reflect the thoughts and opinions of any employer, vendor, sponsor, or random taxi driver in the Metro DC area. Be sure to join us next week for another exciting episode.