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[00:00:38] So we've been dog sitting this dog, welcome back by the way.
[00:00:42] We've been dogs eating this dog.
[00:00:43] We took it on one of Michelle's coworkers had to go back to Japan for work purposes
[00:00:48] and she was away for, she's been away for three weeks.
[00:00:52] In the middle of that we took our vacation right so we were watching this dog and this
[00:00:55] dog is not trained and we did not know this when Michelle agreed to watch this dog, which
[00:01:00] is been a major bit of contingent.
[00:01:02] This dog has peed and pooped on everything and I do not like this dog and I am friendly
[00:01:07] to animals but I do not like this dog.
[00:01:09] And basically I spent a week and then we took a vacation and back this week training
[00:01:13] this dog to go outside and go to the bathroom outside.
[00:01:17] Yesterday Michelle was out, she had a work dinner.
[00:01:19] I was with this mutt the entire time and totally fine all day.
[00:01:25] And then like right before I went to bed, I like went up and I went into the bathroom
[00:01:29] and I had to keep him with me because I knew if I didn't if I let him go the second I
[00:01:32] walk into the bathroom you just peas in the bathroom.
[00:01:34] I'm like dude, you couldn't have waited two minutes for me to take you outside.
[00:01:38] I don't, if you're gonna ask someone to watch your pet for them, let them know
[00:01:45] that your pet is not trained and that you are a loser.
[00:01:51] He howls which doesn't make any sense because he's not, he doesn't have any howl in him.
[00:01:56] He's like a floof, he's like a doodle mix.
[00:02:00] They don't howl but yeah, he howls.
[00:02:04] Luckily Sunday is the last day.
[00:02:06] What did Bob Barker say?
[00:02:07] Be kind to your animals, spate or neuter your pets but also tell your friends that
[00:02:10] if you're gonna watch their animal whether or not you haven't trained your animal.
[00:02:14] Ben and Aaron and Aaron and Aaron.
[00:02:22] By the way, I like how the fact that you keep keeping in my Ben and Aaron and Aaron
[00:02:25] in the beginning of our clip stuff.
[00:02:27] Of course.
[00:02:28] It's your new thing.
[00:02:30] I think it's good.
[00:02:33] We haven't done the whole LD bit in a while.
[00:02:35] I know.
[00:02:36] Someone told me that we should stop because we're not gonna sponsor.
[00:02:40] We just keep talking about them because they're basically doing this stuff for them for free.
[00:02:43] That's true.
[00:02:44] We're doing it for free but you know what?
[00:02:45] It's still funny so who cares?
[00:02:47] It's funny.
[00:02:48] Hey, look at that.
[00:02:49] Hit us up.
[00:02:50] Facebook.com.
[00:02:51] All things MSP.
[00:02:56] You would think after I did that promo video at Exchange we'd be a shoe in but
[00:03:01] you know and maybe I'll insert that video here.
[00:03:04] You've seen the video right?
[00:03:05] I've shown it to you.
[00:03:09] For everybody else's viewing pleasure I'll go ahead and...
[00:03:11] Wait, if you're gonna do that you always pause us on some weird face.
[00:03:14] So here just pause it ready now.
[00:03:39] What's up everybody?
[00:03:48] Welcome to the All Things MSP podcast.
[00:03:49] My name is Justin Askar with me always is my good friend and podcast producer.
[00:03:53] Right there Mr. Eric Anthony who has been upping his podcast producing practices by
[00:04:01] pausing.
[00:04:02] That was good right?
[00:04:05] I got it pretty good.
[00:04:08] What's up buddy?
[00:04:09] How are you?
[00:04:10] I'm doing well.
[00:04:11] You know, busy week.
[00:04:13] Lots of podcast producing possibilities in the perspective places.
[00:04:19] That was good.
[00:04:21] If you like alliteration keep listening.
[00:04:25] It's our first week.
[00:04:26] We've been on vacation but we did Q of some episodes and Eric got those out so
[00:04:30] we hope everybody enjoyed it.
[00:04:31] But look we're back and we're recording today.
[00:04:33] We're back live in person.
[00:04:34] Hi, look we're real people.
[00:04:36] I want to talk about real quick before we get into like our further group segment which
[00:04:40] is a new segment we're coming out with.
[00:04:42] I want to talk about this hack thing.
[00:04:44] Not really hack this thing I showed you the other day and I was like did you see this?
[00:04:48] Yep.
[00:04:49] Because this is blowing my mind.
[00:04:51] Okay, so I don't have an article in front of me and I probably should let me just
[00:04:54] find our conversations here.
[00:04:58] This is from CNN.
[00:05:00] Finance worker pays out 25 million after a video call with deep fake Chinese with
[00:05:05] a chief financial officer.
[00:05:06] So this was a employee at a company was on a zoom with what he thought was the other
[00:05:13] employees including the CFO of the company but all of the other employees on the call
[00:05:17] were deep fake videos being rendered in real time if I if I'm understanding this correctly
[00:05:25] and this one employee paid out 25 million dollars from this company to the as CNN calls them
[00:05:36] fraudsters.
[00:05:39] That is insane.
[00:05:43] This is how bad it's getting and think about it this way.
[00:05:47] I mean you still have to get the meeting on somebody's calendar, right?
[00:05:53] But it's just a new way of fishing, right?
[00:05:56] They send an invite from a similar domain same tactics that they use for fishing.
[00:06:04] But now it's a calendar invite so it's not an email.
[00:06:08] You may not scrutinize it the same way that you do an email, right?
[00:06:13] Yeah.
[00:06:14] Who's who's going to suspect getting fished by a calendar invite, right?
[00:06:19] Unless unless real quick, everyone who's listening knows your Dell rep has tried this.
[00:06:28] I haven't had to deal with my Dell rep in quite some time.
[00:06:31] Dell Dell I don't know.
[00:06:32] I've gotten this before people send calendar in.
[00:06:34] But yeah, you don't you're right.
[00:06:36] People don't scrutinize those calendar invites and if and if you have things like auto
[00:06:39] except turned on just going to show up on your calendar and there you are in a zoom
[00:06:43] call with with fake fake CFO in the multi-person video conference.
[00:06:49] It turns out everyone that this person saw was fake said senior superintendent Baron
[00:06:56] Chun-Sung Ching told the city broadcaster RT this all took place in Hong Kong.
[00:07:02] Chance and the worker grown suspicious after he received a message that it was
[00:07:05] purported from the company's UK based chief financial officer.
[00:07:10] Initially, the worker suspected it was a fishing email as it talked out of the
[00:07:13] need for a secret transaction to be carried out.
[00:07:16] However, the worker put aside his early doubts after the video call because the
[00:07:20] other people in attendance looked and sounded just like as his colleagues.
[00:07:25] He recognized so this this person.
[00:07:29] Had a gut telling him what to do and in a very much high fidelity way,
[00:07:33] his gut had shit for brains.
[00:07:36] Well, I mean, it's just it's a scaling up of what the threat actors are doing
[00:07:42] in order to get at our pocketbooks.
[00:07:45] It's it's crazy.
[00:07:46] If you have a crazy story like this, please tell us.
[00:07:48] Hit us up at Facebook dot com slash groups slash all things on the street.
[00:07:52] All right to jump in today's episode.
[00:07:53] Speaking of Facebook group, Eric and I decided we're going to do a new
[00:07:57] little bit because we're going to try this out.
[00:07:58] And if it works or works, it doesn't.
[00:07:59] It's we're going to keep doing it anyway called from the group.
[00:08:09] And I think it's funny.
[00:08:11] I want to do the team's phone one because it has the most reach.
[00:08:13] And I think it's funny how this one has so much reach over everyone else.
[00:08:18] Top contributor, Nathan Rose writes, we need a replacement for team's phone.
[00:08:22] We're done trying to limp the solution along internally to our company.
[00:08:26] The system is flaky.
[00:08:27] Doesn't always answer calls having a few customers on it.
[00:08:29] All we get is complaints about dropped calls, call routing issues.
[00:08:32] One way audio the list goes on.
[00:08:34] This is not a solution that is working for us or customers.
[00:08:37] It seems to be causing pain on all fronts, looking for alternative
[00:08:39] solution to move as MS can't seem to figure out the telephony space.
[00:08:44] I have a lot of thoughts on this one, to be honest.
[00:08:51] Number one.
[00:08:51] OK, so I have a client who uses MS team.
[00:08:54] They had Vonage and they are full Microsoft shop.
[00:08:58] So they were the new CFO there was like, let's go use Microsoft teams.
[00:09:01] And they went into Microsoft's teams and the inter we're co-managed IT.
[00:09:04] So the internal IT guys moved them from Vonage to they got
[00:09:08] the license and the sales.
[00:09:10] They don't want support.
[00:09:11] They said we can handle it.
[00:09:12] Sure, they got the light that the CIP trunk comes from the local
[00:09:16] Internet provider like CenturyLink or Broadcom or something whatever.
[00:09:19] And they moved all the licenses over to MS teams.
[00:09:21] Right? Cool. Everything was fine.
[00:09:24] And then one day, half of the phone stopped working
[00:09:26] because the licenses for those users just magically disappeared.
[00:09:30] And when they opened a support ticket with Microsoft and got, you know,
[00:09:34] some third party Microsoft support vendor in wherever
[00:09:39] the answer was, we don't know what happened.
[00:09:41] Just reapply the license and everything will be fine, which, yes,
[00:09:44] fixed it. But the fact is, is like, why did those licenses just disappear?
[00:09:48] Right? There's a problem there.
[00:09:50] So I'm not a big fan of a company who can't control their licenses like that.
[00:09:55] That's my take on it.
[00:09:57] The other thing though about this, though, what really is getting to me
[00:10:01] and I'm wondering, Nathan, if your clients are in the same
[00:10:05] geographical area as you and if you're all using the same
[00:10:08] internet provider, because when you have problems like
[00:10:13] dropped calls and audio issues, that's not usually in my experience.
[00:10:19] And I could be wrong, but it's not usually the provider.
[00:10:21] That's usually the quality of the line of which your VoIP service is on.
[00:10:26] So I'm afraid that if you switch providers,
[00:10:29] you're going to experience the same problem.
[00:10:32] Well, and yeah, I agree with you.
[00:10:35] It is typically an infrastructure problem rather than a provider problem.
[00:10:41] Now, there's a couple of things in this that I want to unpack.
[00:10:46] Microsoft is not a telephony provider.
[00:10:49] OK, so depending on them for your entire telephony
[00:10:55] strategy, it's probably not a good idea.
[00:10:59] For Microsoft 365, yes, because they've been doing that for years
[00:11:03] for telephony, not so much.
[00:11:05] Now, I will plug on all things MSP sponsor here,
[00:11:09] Comtech, because they do exactly this.
[00:11:13] Like they pick up the telephony piece where teams leaves off.
[00:11:17] They still use teams, right?
[00:11:19] So you're still using that environment,
[00:11:22] which if you are living in that environment, having one environment instead of two,
[00:11:26] it's always a better thing.
[00:11:28] Yeah.
[00:11:28] But they have the telephony experience to make sure that
[00:11:32] that side of it is configured properly, working properly and all of that.
[00:11:37] They're providing the they're providing the SIP, the SIP trunk, right?
[00:11:40] Is that you're saying contact us?
[00:11:43] Contact them.
[00:11:44] I'm not sure.
[00:11:45] Probably, probably.
[00:11:47] Because that's what I'm thinking.
[00:11:48] What's wrong with this?
[00:11:49] You're providing all kinds of other parts of it as well.
[00:11:53] Yeah, because that's what I'm thinking here is like, you're right,
[00:11:55] Microsoft is not a telephony company.
[00:11:57] And so the question really stems here is who's providing
[00:12:03] the voice service, the SIP trunk for this, because teams is just the interface
[00:12:09] to use to go over a VoIP service.
[00:12:14] So you still need, like my client who has it, who has CenturyLink.
[00:12:18] CenturyLink in that case is the is the SIP provider.
[00:12:20] Is it?
[00:12:21] Don't use CenturyLink.
[00:12:21] They're horrible.
[00:12:22] But like they're the SIP trunk.
[00:12:24] They're the voice.
[00:12:24] They're the telephony in this case, whereas Teams is the front end.
[00:12:28] So going back to this, you know, I get out of Teams.
[00:12:34] I hate Teams, whatever.
[00:12:34] Fine.
[00:12:35] But the I don't know if necessarily leaving the Microsoft Teams environment
[00:12:39] is the problem here.
[00:12:41] I think the problem is you really need to take a look at your infrastructure,
[00:12:44] your connection with your telephony provider, your SIP trunk provider.
[00:12:48] Possibly there's a different one.
[00:12:49] Possibly internet problems.
[00:12:51] I always tell people when you're talking about telephony,
[00:12:54] and I know what you have to perform, because everybody loves to just manage
[00:12:57] based on speed.
[00:12:58] Right?
[00:12:58] Everyone's like, Oh, well, I have 100 make down 100 bang up.
[00:13:01] It should be fine.
[00:13:02] No, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:13:04] If you're doing anything with the voice and you want to make sure
[00:13:06] that the client is going to be OK, you need to use a jitter test,
[00:13:10] not a ping test, a jitter test.
[00:13:12] And you could just like I'll just Google on right now, jitter test
[00:13:16] internet.
[00:13:17] And the first one that comes up is
[00:13:20] cloud flare speed test.
[00:13:21] And there's also a ping jitter test from Fusion Connect and Ring Central.
[00:13:26] Do those because your ping time might be fine, your speed might be fine.
[00:13:30] But if there's jitter on the line, which is the hiccups along the line,
[00:13:34] your telephony is going to suck.
[00:13:37] Yeah. So you want to test these things before you go and sell a VoIP
[00:13:40] solution to a client.
[00:13:44] Nathan, thanks for the contribution.
[00:13:46] So yeah, Nathan, thank you so much for, you know, involving the group.
[00:13:50] There were 21 comments, so hopefully you got your answer.
[00:13:53] And if anybody needs help with using MSP teams and telephony,
[00:13:59] please reach out to our sponsor.
[00:14:02] You can reach out to Comtech at atmsp.link forward slash Comtech.
[00:14:09] Elevate your IT managed service provider business with SuperOps,
[00:14:13] the all in one platform that integrates RMM and PSA
[00:14:17] powered by AI driven insights and automation.
[00:14:20] SuperOps helps you stay ahead, streamline operations and boost efficiency.
[00:14:25] Are you ready for operational excellence?
[00:14:27] Find out more at atmsp.link forward slash SuperOps.
[00:14:34] So we had a couple of developments this week, which were really good.
[00:14:38] We made the list of guards top YouTube channels for MSPs.
[00:14:44] That was exciting because it was not a very long list.
[00:14:47] I think eight, eleven, something like that.
[00:14:53] It wasn't 10, which we didn't care because we were number two
[00:14:56] and we stopped looking beyond that.
[00:14:58] So it doesn't matter how many are on there.
[00:15:01] Yes, but in the spirit of this being a lot of friends on there.
[00:15:06] So congratulations to everyone who made that list.
[00:15:07] Yes, exactly. And check all of them out.
[00:15:09] And then Jay McBain from Canalus released his top
[00:15:14] one hundred and twenty one channel podcasts for, you know, this year.
[00:15:19] And we made that list as well.
[00:15:22] Now, I think Jay did a very good thing here.
[00:15:24] He did it not by numbers, so they're not listed
[00:15:28] in any specific order except for alphabetical,
[00:15:31] which because we're all things MSP were like in the top five.
[00:15:34] So can't complain about that either.
[00:15:37] Thank you very much, Jay.
[00:15:38] I really was waiting for you to be like the top one hundred twenty one.
[00:15:40] And we made one twenty two because that would fit our M.O.
[00:15:44] a little bit better, you know.
[00:15:47] Well, if you're interested in checking out our YouTube channel,
[00:15:49] go to youtube.com slash at all things MSP.
[00:15:52] Follow us on all your podcasting tools.
[00:15:53] You're listening to us right now, so we're assuming you're subscribed.
[00:15:56] Don't forget to like and leave a review.
[00:15:59] OK, today's topic.
[00:16:01] We're going to talk today a little bit about scaling your MSP.
[00:16:05] What does that mean really to scale an MSP?
[00:16:07] Because we've talked about business growth in the past
[00:16:09] and we've talked about how if you're not growing, you're dying, things like that.
[00:16:14] The question is like, do you want when we talk about scaling,
[00:16:18] they talk about like, do you want to scale and what does scaling mean to you?
[00:16:20] Right. For me personally, scaling has always been
[00:16:24] I want to be the only ACN in the entire United States, which is like a
[00:16:28] we call that an L-hag, a large, hairy, audacious goal.
[00:16:32] And it's like, you got to have goals, Justin.
[00:16:34] You have to have goals.
[00:16:35] It's never going to happen.
[00:16:37] Fine. But, you know, with the pandemic and everything else,
[00:16:41] we've made pretty far and we've scaled our company through a couple of different
[00:16:44] models and we'll get into it.
[00:16:45] But I want you to take like a I want you to listen
[00:16:49] and take like a two second break here and say, like,
[00:16:52] what does it mean to me to scale?
[00:16:54] Do is it a matter of getting more employees?
[00:16:58] Do I want more locations?
[00:17:00] Do I just want more money?
[00:17:02] What does that mean for me in terms of scaling?
[00:17:05] Because not everybody wants to scale.
[00:17:08] And that's OK.
[00:17:09] A lot of people are comfortable in the sandbox or in stay there.
[00:17:12] But even with that, they still want a little bit more.
[00:17:15] They want more clients or they want more money.
[00:17:17] And that technically is scaling.
[00:17:18] They just don't think about it in the same light
[00:17:20] because a lot of people think scaling just means I need to add
[00:17:22] 100 more employees to my payroll, which is not true.
[00:17:26] And I think there's there's a very important distinction there
[00:17:30] between scaling in terms of revenue growth,
[00:17:33] which is going to bring all of those things, more employees,
[00:17:36] more clients, you know, all of those things
[00:17:39] are going to have to be involved to grow revenue significantly.
[00:17:44] Right? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:17:45] But I think profit you can grow profit very well
[00:17:50] on an existing client base. Oh, absolutely.
[00:17:53] You don't have to improve your net income
[00:17:57] by adding more clients.
[00:17:59] You can do it through adding more revenue to your existing clients.
[00:18:03] Obviously, there is going to be some type of cap there.
[00:18:06] But you can also more importantly grow revenue
[00:18:10] through efficiencies, which we will probably talk about
[00:18:13] in the next episode.
[00:18:14] And you can do it by increasing your profit margins
[00:18:19] by raising your prices as well.
[00:18:20] I think those are the two main ways for a managed service
[00:18:24] provider to increase that percentage of revenue
[00:18:28] to scale that way if you're running a business
[00:18:32] and you like the size of it in general,
[00:18:34] but you need to take home more out of it.
[00:18:37] Yeah. I think the idea of adding more products
[00:18:40] you're offering is always the first step
[00:18:44] even before the I want more clients thing because
[00:18:47] somewhere along the line, you'll and I know this
[00:18:51] from personal experience, that somewhere along the line
[00:18:52] you'll start adding clients and then clients will want more stuff
[00:18:54] and then you'll backtrack those products to the other clients.
[00:18:57] You could do it the other way, and it's going to be a lot easier for you.
[00:18:59] So if you're small enough and you want more money,
[00:19:04] more profit, starting about other things you can offer.
[00:19:07] So great examples would be add-ons to things.
[00:19:10] You're probably already selling reselling Office 365
[00:19:13] and Google Workspace.
[00:19:15] Think about selling spam and anti-fishing protection,
[00:19:17] whether that's, you know, an anti-spam fishing tool
[00:19:21] or you're doing fishing training or dark web monitoring
[00:19:24] or any of those things.
[00:19:26] Think about what it looks like for an encryption tool
[00:19:30] or do a project about, you know,
[00:19:32] running through their Microsoft security score.
[00:19:35] Those kinds of things, these are all add-ons that you can do now
[00:19:39] with your current client base without having to add more infrastructure
[00:19:45] and therefore you're adding more profit.
[00:19:47] So that's a great way to start.
[00:19:48] Look through what I would suggest is
[00:19:51] you need a spreadsheet, some sort of document.
[00:19:53] I'm sure you have this because you're keeping track of it.
[00:19:55] You're doing a good thing as an MSP
[00:19:56] and keeping track of everything your clients have.
[00:19:58] But go through and kind of like
[00:20:01] figure out an area of which that none of your clients
[00:20:05] are being taken care of in a certain way.
[00:20:08] And whether that is, you know, for example,
[00:20:11] maybe you don't do networks, OK?
[00:20:13] But you want to get into the networking game.
[00:20:15] You want to be able to manage networks
[00:20:16] or you know ubiquity really, really well,
[00:20:18] but you're not charging your clients with.
[00:20:20] Think about, hey, you know, 2024,
[00:20:23] people are getting back out there.
[00:20:24] Maybe offices are reopening.
[00:20:26] This might be a good time to refresh your hardware.
[00:20:29] Let's talk about refreshing with ubiquity.
[00:20:30] Oh, there's a 15 or 20 or 30, $50 monthly fee
[00:20:34] for us to take care of it for you.
[00:20:36] And that is backing up their ubiquity console and updating it.
[00:20:39] You know, something like that.
[00:20:40] Or if you want to get into more stuff
[00:20:45] without having to do more work,
[00:20:47] think about looking at like being a Sandler and partner
[00:20:50] or a Tullaris partner and looking for opportunities
[00:20:54] there for you to pick up.
[00:20:54] Actually, I was just talking to a client,
[00:20:56] a potential new client yesterday and they're a PC shop.
[00:20:59] Right? And we don't do PCs in any way, shape or form.
[00:21:01] I'm not taking on PC clients anymore at all.
[00:21:05] If you have Max with one PC because the bookkeeper
[00:21:08] sure but not an all PC shop.
[00:21:09] Right.
[00:21:10] And but the person who's at this client
[00:21:12] is an old client of ours from like from years past.
[00:21:15] They just got a new job.
[00:21:17] And I said, well, you know, listen,
[00:21:18] we don't do PCs anymore.
[00:21:19] And we're like, yeah, but we have Office 365
[00:21:21] and our data is in the cloud and we have VoIP
[00:21:24] and most people work from home.
[00:21:26] We only have the PCs in the office for the engineers
[00:21:29] and they need to remote in.
[00:21:30] I said, OK, cool.
[00:21:32] In my head, I immediately said,
[00:21:34] I can handle your Office 365.
[00:21:35] I can handle your email.
[00:21:36] I can handle email backup.
[00:21:37] I can handle email spam.
[00:21:39] I can handle your cloud solutions.
[00:21:40] I can handle this.
[00:21:42] And then for the computers,
[00:21:43] I don't want to handle those computers.
[00:21:44] So what am I going to do?
[00:21:45] I know because I'm a Tullaris partner
[00:21:47] that we can get what do they call it?
[00:21:51] Virtualized desktops, not virtualized desktop.
[00:21:53] Desktop as a service.
[00:21:54] Sorry, desktop as a service through many companies.
[00:21:58] One of them happens to be Sprint and
[00:22:02] they can instead of VPNing into their office
[00:22:04] to connect to their computer,
[00:22:05] we can just give them a computer in the cloud
[00:22:07] and they can just use whatever computer they want,
[00:22:08] including a Mac that we can take care of
[00:22:11] using Microsoft remote desktop.
[00:22:13] Right. But like all of those things,
[00:22:15] that's going to, I can scale that really easy.
[00:22:17] That's one and it's adding new services to a client
[00:22:20] without having to add a whole bunch more stuff.
[00:22:23] Yeah, absolutely.
[00:22:25] So and look for those things that are bigger add-ons
[00:22:29] if you need to add bigger profit.
[00:22:32] Voice over IP.
[00:22:33] If you're not doing voice over IP yet,
[00:22:34] that's one to do.
[00:22:36] I think AI, you've heard me talk about
[00:22:38] on the live stream a lot,
[00:22:40] the opportunities around building services around AI,
[00:22:44] primarily because your clients are going to use it.
[00:22:47] Whether you like it or not,
[00:22:49] you're going to have to support it
[00:22:50] and you better make more money on it
[00:22:52] by not only just supporting it,
[00:22:55] but actually promoting it
[00:22:57] and helping it add to their productivity.
[00:23:00] Yeah.
[00:23:02] So there's a lot you can do internally.
[00:23:03] So let's say you squeezed all the blood
[00:23:06] from those stones
[00:23:08] and you're selling them all these products.
[00:23:10] I mean, not that I'm going to promote
[00:23:13] ASUS Conference again,
[00:23:14] but ASUS Conference 2016, our second year,
[00:23:18] Will O'Neill, who's a good friend of mine,
[00:23:19] runs a Mid-Atlantic Computer Solutions down in Virginia,
[00:23:24] did an entire presentation
[00:23:25] about things you can sell to clients.
[00:23:27] You can sell them domain names.
[00:23:28] You can sell them DNS.
[00:23:29] You can sell them SSL certificates.
[00:23:31] You can sell them VoIP.
[00:23:32] You can sell them this.
[00:23:33] Like this entire list,
[00:23:34] and we were doing that in 2015,
[00:23:35] people are still not doing it now, do that.
[00:23:37] Okay, cool.
[00:23:37] Next, let's talk about scaling your business
[00:23:41] and what are we going to do about getting you more work?
[00:23:45] In my mind, there's two ways to do this.
[00:23:47] There's marketing and getting more clients that way
[00:23:52] and then there's buying businesses,
[00:23:53] which is a very hard thing.
[00:23:55] And we've talked to Adam Borst from VISTA Partners
[00:23:57] about mergers and acquisitions a couple of weeks ago.
[00:24:00] There's a lot to unpack about buying a business
[00:24:02] and I can go in,
[00:24:03] so we can do a day of like,
[00:24:05] you want to grill me on the questions
[00:24:07] for me acquiring businesses, we can do that.
[00:24:09] But yes, you can acquire business
[00:24:10] and that is a great way to scale.
[00:24:12] That's how I brought my business up to be multi-state
[00:24:16] and all of these things
[00:24:17] and I added additional services
[00:24:18] like being an Apple Authorized Service Bride or something.
[00:24:21] But it takes a lot of risk
[00:24:23] and a lot of money to do that.
[00:24:25] You may not be there yet.
[00:24:26] So listen to me.
[00:24:27] What I want to talk about is adding more clients
[00:24:29] and how to scale that way just from marketing.
[00:24:32] And we've talked about marketing a lot
[00:24:34] but there's a reason we talk about it a lot, right?
[00:24:36] Because it's forever changing
[00:24:39] and you got to stay up with it.
[00:24:41] I think it's really funny because I was,
[00:24:43] as a member of the Apple Consultants Network,
[00:24:44] we get invited through these webcasts
[00:24:46] by what I call it the ACN corporate
[00:24:48] which is the people who work at Apple
[00:24:49] who run the program.
[00:24:51] And they did one,
[00:24:52] I want to say last month or two months ago
[00:24:53] about Apple was like,
[00:24:55] here's how you do SEO for your website.
[00:24:57] And I watched the entire thing
[00:24:59] and I was like, this is so generic
[00:25:01] to the point where like I was like,
[00:25:02] and I really asked,
[00:25:03] I said like, is there anyone not already doing all of this?
[00:25:06] And there were so many people who said yes
[00:25:07] and I was like, that scares me.
[00:25:11] Because like if your website hasn't been updated,
[00:25:14] I think that this morning while I was getting ready,
[00:25:16] I actually want to go through,
[00:25:18] after we record here today,
[00:25:19] I'm going to go through all my websites
[00:25:21] and make sure that my copyright
[00:25:22] on the bottom of my footer says 2024
[00:25:25] because it's even like those little things.
[00:25:27] I had a client who's WordPress updated
[00:25:29] and I was like, your copyright says 2022
[00:25:30] and they're like, yeah, we don't care.
[00:25:33] But SEO for your website is all about building up
[00:25:38] who you are and where you are
[00:25:40] because you want people to be able to find you.
[00:25:44] I've done something which I think is kind of unique
[00:25:47] and I'm going to share with you guys,
[00:25:48] you can take this one,
[00:25:49] is our website is a CMS
[00:25:53] and I actually created landing pages
[00:25:56] with the zip codes I think people are going to search for
[00:25:59] when they're in a Google search.
[00:26:01] So I've actually created pages
[00:26:02] that are called Mac help 1001
[00:26:06] which is the central zip code for New York City.
[00:26:09] And the page says like,
[00:26:10] you've landed on this great page,
[00:26:12] we're here to help,
[00:26:13] this is the button to click to get in contact with us,
[00:26:15] let's get started.
[00:26:16] And I've made that same page
[00:26:18] from multiple zip codes in multiple states
[00:26:21] because you never know what people are going to search for
[00:26:23] and it's worked.
[00:26:24] I watched those numbers tick properly
[00:26:27] in relation to like our normal Google searches
[00:26:30] because we are actually writing the words
[00:26:33] that people are searching for.
[00:26:35] Too many of us as MSPs think that our clients
[00:26:38] are going to search for us in the way we think we are.
[00:26:43] No one's searching MSP,
[00:26:45] no one's searching managed service provider
[00:26:47] in New York City.
[00:26:48] They don't know what it is,
[00:26:49] it's an industry term.
[00:26:50] But if you write,
[00:26:51] I need help with my Mac in New York City,
[00:26:54] you will probably,
[00:26:55] I'm gonna do that real quick,
[00:26:56] but I don't show up,
[00:26:58] but like they ask the idea.
[00:27:00] You better show up.
[00:27:02] I need help with my Mac in New York City.
[00:27:08] And while you're doing that,
[00:27:09] you talked about M&A being one way to grow
[00:27:14] and really what we're talking about here
[00:27:15] is we're talking about growing customer base.
[00:27:18] Because obviously the larger your customer base,
[00:27:21] whether you grow it through sales and marketing
[00:27:23] or whether you grow it through M&A,
[00:27:25] you are growing that revenue,
[00:27:29] growing that revenue,
[00:27:30] but also remember that growing revenue
[00:27:34] doesn't necessarily translate to profits.
[00:27:36] So you need to be very careful
[00:27:38] and make sure that your profits
[00:27:41] are going to cover the acquisition
[00:27:43] or the sales and marketing,
[00:27:45] which is what I wanted to talk about
[00:27:46] just a little bit here
[00:27:48] is you have to have money to do this.
[00:27:52] Whether you're gonna buy somebody else
[00:27:54] or whether you're gonna really do a push
[00:27:55] on sales and marketing,
[00:27:57] you have to have it budgeted into the profit
[00:28:01] of your existing clients
[00:28:04] in order to pay for the sales and marketing
[00:28:06] or acquisitions of the new customers.
[00:28:10] So just keep that in mind
[00:28:13] that it does take money to make money,
[00:28:15] the old adage,
[00:28:16] and you need to be planning into your profit margin
[00:28:21] the fuel, the energy, the money
[00:28:23] to be able to do those things.
[00:28:25] That's a Mike McCallow it's move,
[00:28:26] profit first, right?
[00:28:28] It's the same I mean,
[00:28:30] and what's funny is that profit first
[00:28:31] isn't even like a new concept.
[00:28:33] Oh it's back on that bookshelf.
[00:28:34] Yeah, I don't remember mine is in the door.
[00:28:37] It's not even a new concept.
[00:28:38] It's like our parents, parents used to do that
[00:28:41] when they would get their paychecks in cash
[00:28:42] and they would put one in an envelope
[00:28:44] and one in an envelope and one in an envelope.
[00:28:45] That's all it really is, right?
[00:28:47] If you're thinking about doing something like this,
[00:28:49] take 1% of your monthly income,
[00:28:53] monthly revenue
[00:28:54] and put it in a bank account called profit.
[00:28:59] And then from there,
[00:29:01] that's gonna be the money you spend on sales marketing
[00:29:03] or acquisitions or things like that.
[00:29:06] This way it's not coming out
[00:29:07] and you build it up over time, right?
[00:29:09] Like 1% doesn't seem like a whole lot
[00:29:11] but when you, if you can pull in $100,000 a month
[00:29:15] which isn't terribly hard to do depending on your scale,
[00:29:19] you know, you're able to,
[00:29:21] or let's say let's make it even easier.
[00:29:22] Let's say $50,000 a month, right?
[00:29:24] 1% of that is what?
[00:29:26] 500 bucks.
[00:29:27] So you put 500 bucks away,
[00:29:29] the end of the year you got six grand
[00:29:31] that you could spend on marketing for the following year
[00:29:34] to make that 50,000 now 100,000
[00:29:36] and you build it up that way.
[00:29:37] I know I'm being really like aloof about it
[00:29:41] in like these big grandiose numbers
[00:29:43] but like it works at any scale.
[00:29:46] Right.
[00:29:48] So, I don't know if you're trying to delay.
[00:29:51] I pulled a U because if anyone's watching this
[00:29:53] on YouTube, Eric muted it and coughed
[00:29:55] and then somehow or other pass it to me through StreamYard
[00:29:57] and then I had a mute and cough because that's what is.
[00:30:00] Okay, so I don't show up on page one
[00:30:01] with I need help with my Mac in New York City
[00:30:03] only because I'll tell you why.
[00:30:05] All of the bigger names get in the way.
[00:30:07] So Apple, Yelp all get in the way
[00:30:12] but there's a couple of my friends in here like,
[00:30:16] where is he?
[00:30:17] Mike's Tech Shop who's been around since like the 80s.
[00:30:21] Mike Volchek who runs like one of the few
[00:30:24] in New York City repair shops.
[00:30:28] Now the tech server's gone, he's taking all of them
[00:30:30] but a lot of this is like Yelp and Reddit
[00:30:33] and things like that.
[00:30:34] So I'm gonna have to work on this
[00:30:36] and try to build this up because I wanna get better
[00:30:39] maybe because my SEO is built for a different terminology
[00:30:43] but this is what I'm talking about.
[00:30:44] This is how you learn, right?
[00:30:45] And I'm gonna spend some time now
[00:30:46] figuring out these results
[00:30:48] and building pages to fix this
[00:30:52] so I can actually show up properly
[00:30:53] when people search for this.
[00:30:54] That's another good point that I wanna bring up
[00:30:58] is the fact that a lot of people
[00:31:01] because a lot of MSPs are smaller, right?
[00:31:05] You have more time than money
[00:31:07] but you gotta spend the time too.
[00:31:10] So make sure that if you are trying to grow
[00:31:13] and you don't have a lot of money
[00:31:15] that you are putting in the time
[00:31:17] because time translates to money.
[00:31:20] I don't wanna go into that whole thing
[00:31:21] but it does make a difference.
[00:31:24] The amount of time, the amount of attention
[00:31:27] you give to something will make a difference
[00:31:29] in the long run.
[00:31:30] Yeah and you have to just,
[00:31:32] I mean the problem with all of this
[00:31:34] is that it's not a set it and forget it kind of process.
[00:31:38] It is an ongoing thing always
[00:31:40] which is why so many of us always like,
[00:31:42] oh I need a marketing person,
[00:31:43] I need a sales person.
[00:31:45] In the very beginning you can't afford a sales person
[00:31:49] or marketing person to be honest
[00:31:50] and so therefore that has to become time.
[00:31:53] So you have a different,
[00:31:54] like spend the time to make the money,
[00:31:57] you get the money to pay someone to do it
[00:31:59] so that way you have the time now to do something else.
[00:32:02] That's the truth behind scaling, right?
[00:32:05] I always talk about like when a lot of MSP owners
[00:32:08] come to me and they go,
[00:32:13] when do I,
[00:32:14] you got it?
[00:32:15] All right we'll just call this out.
[00:32:16] No, so I have the book, it's queued up
[00:32:19] for to be one of my next books
[00:32:21] that I actually dive deeper into
[00:32:23] called Buy Back Your Time
[00:32:24] and it talks exactly about that
[00:32:26] and there is that exact scenario
[00:32:29] that you talked about.
[00:32:30] You use your time to get money
[00:32:33] and then you use your money to get back your time
[00:32:36] and there's a cycle to that
[00:32:38] and there's a process to that
[00:32:40] and it's in the book called Buy Back Your Time.
[00:32:43] What I was gonna say was like
[00:32:44] I have a lot of,
[00:32:45] when I do a lot of one-on-one consulting
[00:32:46] I have a lot of MSPs who come to me
[00:32:47] and they say,
[00:32:48] hey how do I know when I need a second person
[00:32:52] and I say how busy are you?
[00:32:54] And they're like, oh I'm so busy
[00:32:56] and I'm like okay,
[00:32:58] how much work are you getting
[00:33:00] give this second person?
[00:33:00] He's like well if I'm at 100%,
[00:33:03] I'm probably around 120% of my time.
[00:33:04] I'll give them the 20%
[00:33:06] and no, no, no, no, no, no, no that's wrong.
[00:33:08] You need to give them 80% of your time
[00:33:13] right, this way you're down to 40.
[00:33:15] They're running in that stuff
[00:33:16] and you've now gotten back,
[00:33:18] let's say if you wanna get to 100%,
[00:33:19] 60% of your time back
[00:33:21] to be able to do those other things
[00:33:23] and it's the same thing with the money trick.
[00:33:25] You give somebody your stuff,
[00:33:28] you now have more time,
[00:33:29] spend that time doing something else
[00:33:31] and then unload it onto someone else.
[00:33:34] That's the true business way of scaling, right?
[00:33:38] Because what's the one thing I hear every MSP say,
[00:33:41] oh man, we wear so many hats.
[00:33:43] Yeah dude because you,
[00:33:46] if you're a solopreneur,
[00:33:50] right, if you're a solopreneur,
[00:33:52] you have to be able to like handle all these things.
[00:33:55] You're handling tickets,
[00:33:56] you're handling billing,
[00:33:57] you're handling all of your personal finance,
[00:34:00] you're handling marketing,
[00:34:01] you're handling sales,
[00:34:02] you're handling support,
[00:34:03] you're handling vendor relationships,
[00:34:04] all these things.
[00:34:05] Well and let's be fair Justin,
[00:34:08] we're all control freaks.
[00:34:10] Yeah, no 100%.
[00:34:14] This is why I have a problem,
[00:34:15] I get called out for micromanaging
[00:34:17] and I'm like, I don't micromanage,
[00:34:18] I'm in IT.
[00:34:22] But yeah, you should pick an avenue,
[00:34:25] work on it
[00:34:27] and then unload it to someone else
[00:34:28] and then pick the next avenue.
[00:34:31] And if that's, you wanna rev fast
[00:34:32] and you wanna get a lot of clients' grants,
[00:34:34] work on sales,
[00:34:35] sell, help your clients
[00:34:38] and then every second you're not helping your clients
[00:34:40] be making sales calls,
[00:34:41] sending emails,
[00:34:43] work on your email list,
[00:34:44] work on your website,
[00:34:45] do all those things
[00:34:46] that the people who send you
[00:34:47] the big red envelopes talk about.
[00:34:49] Like do all that stuff.
[00:34:50] When you get to the point
[00:34:51] where you've exhausted your sales abilities,
[00:34:53] hire a sales person
[00:34:55] and now start working on internal marketing,
[00:34:58] getting your website up to date,
[00:34:59] getting all these other things.
[00:35:00] Cool, you did that great,
[00:35:01] hand that off to a marketer.
[00:35:03] Now you have a lot of clients
[00:35:04] who are coming in also
[00:35:04] because you've just done all these sales.
[00:35:06] Get a second technician.
[00:35:09] Third technician, whoever.
[00:35:10] Then build it and then with them together,
[00:35:14] workshop your internal processes
[00:35:16] because most likely what worked for you
[00:35:18] as a ticketing system
[00:35:19] doesn't work for all three of you.
[00:35:21] Yeah, I mean personally
[00:35:23] I have always used the process of doing it myself,
[00:35:30] sometimes even recording myself doing something
[00:35:34] before I hand it off to somebody else
[00:35:36] because a couple of different things.
[00:35:38] We're in a service business, right?
[00:35:40] So the way we do things matters
[00:35:43] and that is quite often
[00:35:45] a unique selling proposition
[00:35:48] of the service that we're selling to a client.
[00:35:50] IT is not just a commodity.
[00:35:53] Don't swallow that blue pill, okay?
[00:35:58] Make sure that the way you're doing it
[00:36:01] and the way that has made you successful
[00:36:04] is the way that's being duplicated
[00:36:06] when you hand that off to somebody else
[00:36:09] because especially if it's a customer facing person,
[00:36:12] the way you did it is why your clients came to you
[00:36:15] and why they stay with you
[00:36:16] and you wanna make sure
[00:36:17] that they're doing it the same way.
[00:36:19] Yeah, you wanna keep them happy.
[00:36:20] If you're big on white glove,
[00:36:23] you need to explain in detail to yourself.
[00:36:25] And this is true whether it's staff
[00:36:27] or even like a virtual assistant.
[00:36:29] We've talked about this before also
[00:36:30] and everyone who's talked about virtual assistants
[00:36:32] says the same thing, right?
[00:36:34] Give the virtual assistant a job,
[00:36:36] record yourself doing it, give it to them
[00:36:37] and then have them record themselves doing it
[00:36:40] and writing its documents in that way
[00:36:41] the next virtual assistant can handle it.
[00:36:43] But like that's just,
[00:36:45] that is that reiterative process
[00:36:48] that everyone has to go through
[00:36:49] and that's true for all of your things
[00:36:50] whether it's sales, marketing,
[00:36:52] getting new clients or whoever.
[00:36:53] So there's a lot of different avenues here
[00:36:56] in terms of how to scale.
[00:36:59] It comes down to what you feel most comfortable with
[00:37:02] right now, what your long,
[00:37:05] your short and long-term goals are
[00:37:08] and how you're going to accomplish that
[00:37:09] is gonna be determined by what those goals
[00:37:12] are going to be.
[00:37:13] I always tell people, I always suggest to people
[00:37:17] open up Word, get rid of Clippy
[00:37:21] and make a table that's four columns wide.
[00:37:25] Six months, one year, three years, five years
[00:37:28] and then put underneath that your goals for that time
[00:37:31] and that'll help you visualize
[00:37:33] which way you need to go and what you need to do next.
[00:37:35] Even the six months, you're like,
[00:37:36] I wanna ramp up selling spam protection
[00:37:41] because I know it'll make me a profit of 100% margin
[00:37:46] on this number.
[00:37:49] Focus on what that looks like
[00:37:50] and do nothing but that.
[00:37:52] I mean, obviously keep helping your clients
[00:37:53] but do all your other times should be nothing but that.
[00:37:56] Whether that's selling, sending emails,
[00:37:58] setting up webinars, learning as much
[00:38:00] as you can about the product,
[00:38:02] building out new landing pages on your website,
[00:38:05] running them through chat GBT to fix all your spelling errors,
[00:38:08] run that through another website
[00:38:09] to fix all the chat GBT errors.
[00:38:11] Like whatever, build all that out.
[00:38:15] Get to the point where you're like, I've hit this goal.
[00:38:18] What's the next one?
[00:38:21] That's how you build.
[00:38:22] It's consistency and to be honest, it's just hard work.
[00:38:27] Put in the time.
[00:38:28] For sure.
[00:38:30] And to me, I kinda use the map analogy.
[00:38:34] First thing is you gotta know where you're at.
[00:38:36] So you gotta know what your profitability is,
[00:38:41] where, what kind of clients you have,
[00:38:44] which clients are more profitable
[00:38:46] so you know which ones to go after,
[00:38:48] which ones are gonna adopt new technologies faster,
[00:38:50] those kinds of things.
[00:38:52] Then you have to know your goals
[00:38:53] just like Justin laid out.
[00:38:55] But then you gotta figure out,
[00:38:56] okay, what are the action steps
[00:38:59] that are gonna get me to those goals?
[00:39:01] And how much work, how many phone calls,
[00:39:05] how many letters do I need to send,
[00:39:07] how many emails do I need to send,
[00:39:09] whatever the numbers are,
[00:39:10] the activity of those actions
[00:39:14] that's gonna get you to those goals,
[00:39:15] you have to set those up as,
[00:39:17] okay, I need to do this much this week,
[00:39:19] this much next week
[00:39:20] in order to be able to build that map
[00:39:24] to get from A to B.
[00:39:27] Ooh, it's your treasure map.
[00:39:30] You pirate.
[00:39:34] I like when I get to do,
[00:39:35] I like when I get to make pirate puns on the podcast.
[00:39:40] Well look, I think we've covered a lot of this.
[00:39:43] It's tough work, it's hard work,
[00:39:45] it's not easy, I'm not gonna lie.
[00:39:47] But if you're interested in learning more
[00:39:48] about how to scale your business,
[00:39:50] please hit up Eric and I on the Facebook group,
[00:39:52] facebook.com.
[00:39:53] Facebook.com.
[00:39:55] Facebook.com.
[00:39:55] Group slash all things MSP.
[00:39:57] Yep, follow us on YouTube and check out the pirate,
[00:40:00] it's on that side, the pirate poster
[00:40:02] at youtube.com slash at all things MSP.
[00:40:05] I still don't understand how teleprompter
[00:40:06] is crisscross my lines.
[00:40:09] Like, subscribe, review, we wanna hear from you
[00:40:12] and you know, hit us up, maybe next time
[00:40:13] you'll be a guest on All Things MSP.
[00:40:16] Bye.
[00:42:25] Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe
[00:42:27] to us on your favorite podcast platform.
[00:42:30] You can also follow us on Facebook,
[00:42:32] but better yet, go ahead and join the Facebook group.
[00:42:35] You can also follow us on Instagram if that's your thing
[00:42:39] and make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel
[00:42:42] at All Things MSP to catch us in all of our video glory.
[00:42:46] And last but certainly not least,
[00:42:48] if LinkedIn is your thing,
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[00:42:52] And a special thank you to our premier sponsors,
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[00:43:02] And we also wanna thank our vendor sponsors.
[00:43:11] The All Things MSP podcast is a BizPow LLC production.