Why MSPs Must Build a Personal Brand Now | EP104

[00:00:09] What's up everybody welcome to the All Things MSP Podcast I'm your host Justin Esgar. With freeze-dried strawberries in my teeth that's what I was I was making sure there weren't any in the front they're all up in the back. Freeze-dried strawberries are great have you ever had freeze-dried strawberries? Yes my daughter pretty much loves freeze-dried everything. Freeze-dried strawberries are so good because I don't really like fresh strawberries I like freeze-dried strawberries. Oh let me crack a crack a drink.

[00:00:40] I like freeze-dried strawberries. I like letting them melt in your mouth because it kind of tastes like candy and they're super filling which is really good. Not a lot of calories. I'm on a big diet thing. Happy pie day. Yeah except I haven't had any pie and you know what I don't think anybody's brought any home yet today. Bastards. I don't I never liked pie day. Because then they try to turn it into a school thing. I was like don't ruin this for me.

[00:01:11] This is irrational. You know what maybe that's why I didn't get mail today. You didn't even get it. It's irrational. You got to be in the circle of the no. Uh huh. I got my pie are squared. I got I got no other jokes. I 3.1415 is as far as I know and I'm pretty sure that's wrong.

[00:01:42] I actually think you're right. Oh yeah. 3.14159. I am right. 2, 6, 5, 3, 5, 9. 2, 6, 5, 3, 5, 8, 9. Oh. Oh. Every game doesn't know his pie. But if you round up from 8, 9 it's 9. Yeah.

[00:02:12] But at the same token you could just round down and say pie is 3. Isn't it true that like in in pie. Right. If you convert it like every word that ever existed of an all time is like written in the number of pie. Something like that. Right. Because it never ends. Beyond my. I'm pretty sure it's pie. I look forward to your tweets and emails. I'm pretty sure it's pie that if you cause like pie goes on for forever.

[00:02:42] Right. And the idea is that every possible combination of a number can be found in there. And if you translate it to words, every possible combination of a word, including and I heard like there was like your entire life story can be written within the realm of pie. It's like super. We are. I mean, yes, but that also makes sense because it's infinitely long.

[00:03:11] So every combination is going to come up at some point. Somewhere here, it says Eric Anthony used to be the host of the all things MSP podcast and then still in the stupidly gave it to me. Actually, I bet you somewhere in here, it says what's up everybody. Welcome to all things MSP podcast. I'm your host Justin Escar with me always is my good friend podcast producer extraordinaire Mr. Eric Anthony. That's in there also. Yeah, but that comes after the intro title.

[00:03:42] Which is coming up now. But I'm bumping up. But I'm bumping up. Move bot makes cloud migrations effortless for MSPs, whether it's a small client or a large enterprise. Move bot provides fast, secure and seamless data migrations with no hidden fees and unmatched scalability. Move bot is the tool MSPs trust for their cloud projects.

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[00:04:38] What's up everybody for the third time today. Welcome to the all things MSP podcast. I'm your host Justin Escar with me always, as you already know, is pie man himself, Mr. Eric Anthony. What's up? I bet from the intro they were probably a little bit worried that we were just going to spend this episode reading out pie for as long as we could until we ended the show. No, I thought they were just going to have me keep repeating myself going. What's up everybody? Welcome to the all things MSP podcast. See how many times I can get that in the show. Stop it.

[00:05:08] Sorry. I got something I want to talk about today, which our good friend Paul kind of posted on his Facebook group, but I did a show this morning and it kind of kind of all comes together. I did a show for somebody. I don't know. Mm hmm. Paul said or asked his Facebook group. Tell me what if anything do you do to build your personal brand, not just your MSP brand?

[00:05:31] And I think this is a great question because I feel like a lot of people in our industry don't build their personal brand because there's so much value in a personal brand, especially if you think about wanting to sell your business or something like that. But like people always say to me, like, how did you get to where you are? And it's like because I built this this brand around me, not just Virtua, right? Like, yes, I had the Virtua pillow. I have a Virtua sign. I have Virtua sneakers. I have Virtua this. I have Virtua that. Sure.

[00:06:02] But more people know Justin Escar than they know Virtua. And I'm okay with that. And I think there's a lot to be said about building your personal brand. So I think there's a lot to unwrap here. I think this is a great topic for MSPs specifically because so MSPs are small and owner centric, right? However, I also want to make the point.

[00:06:28] We're not just talking about owners because owners, if you're listening, you actually can build your employees personal brands and it benefits the business. Oh, I got a great survey about that too. Great. So welcome to the show, folks. What's up everybody? Welcome. No, I'm just kidding. Okay. So, actually, I have a friend, Rob Calvert. He owns Second Son Consulting in California and LA.

[00:06:58] And he's got a guy who works for him. His name is Trevor, who's known as, I think he's Big Mac, Big Mac admin or something like that. But Trevor, even though he works for Rob, also works on a lot of open source projects for the Mac community and has made a name for himself there too.

[00:07:14] So going to your point real quick, and we'll get into like how to build your brand in a second, but like, it's really good for yourself as the owner and your staff to build these brands because one, you never know where you're going to be able to pull, you know, a potential client from who saw something you did. Right? If you have a staff member who writes a lot of documentation that's public and writes a lot of white papers, you know, you can get them in the door that way.

[00:07:42] Not, it's not always on you as the owner and your brand and your company brand to like bring people in the door. So like you could bolster a really good business this way. Trevor has gone and spoken at a lot of different events about the things that he's working on, you know, which are all on GitHub and they're totally free and a lot of stuff. But like, he's given a lot to the community and the community knows him.

[00:08:05] So like, yes, you could say like if Trevor ever left Rob, you know, he could build it. He's building himself up in such a way that he could like leave or ask for money. That's not what we're getting at. It's just a matter of building your persona because it'll help. Now you could do that if you're, you know, that kind of person. I see your wheels turning over there. But I'm just saying like there are avenues here that go both ways. Go yell at me now. No, I'm not going to yell at you.

[00:08:35] You just, you brought up the point that I wanted to make. And that is, this is very similar to the people who are concerned that if I train my employees and get them certified and do all of these things that they will then leave. Oh yeah. It's kind of the same thing with personal brands. Yes, you are doing a certain amount of investing in them. Although I think it's, there's a little bit to be said for they're mostly investing in themselves to your benefit.

[00:09:05] Yeah. But you know, you can't live life like that. Right? You need to make your employees as best as they can be regardless of your business because they're going to be amazing. Vaynerchuk used to say that stuff all the time. He's like, the best thing that would happen is that somebody I've made somebody so good that they've quit and gotten another job.

[00:09:30] Like that should be really the goal of like the owner is like to get your people so good that they can do better elsewhere. Right? Not that your business is doing poorly or whatever. You see where I'm just going with this, right? Like going to your point. Yeah. Like you train someone and you invest a lot of time and money into them. And like, yeah, it hurts when they leave. But the truth of the matter is that like you've, you've done what a good, a good owner should do. You haven't pulled people. You've pushed people up. Right? Right.

[00:10:00] So yes. Okay. So let's talk about how to build a brand and how to build a personal brand specifically and how to like connect it all together. So I can tell you my story real quick. Most of you know, but just to recap real quick. You know, I started virtual in 2008 and in 2011, when the iPad came out, I got, I created an app called sign my pad.

[00:10:26] And the reason I created that was I originally was doing like paperwork tickets. And remember this is 2010, 2011. This is pre, you know, PSA is in whatever. And I lived in New York city. I had a small apartment and I had these paperwork tickets. And, and, and I ended up like, my apartment was filled with paper. And I was like, there's gotta be a way to like do these digitally. Right? So I was using the iPad and I was playing with, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's brand new technology that people are seeing, seeing here.

[00:10:55] And I'm playing with some like painting program. And I kept like drawing my name and heart over the eye, like over and over again. And it's true. And I realized that if I can sign my name in this like painting program, my clients should be able to sign their name on a PDF of a work ticket. And so that led me to build sign my pad, which then I got, you know, popularized and I did the marketing and I did all the work that's needed.

[00:11:23] And I got the interns and we got our name out there and people started talking about us and like these things. That led me though, to go and be okay with applying to speak at events, to talk about my story, which then led me to meeting other people, which then led me to other events, which led me to meeting other people, which led me to other events, which led me to other people, which then led me to actually starting my own event. Right?

[00:11:53] So yes, you might not be able to follow that path. But my point here is that like to build a brand, one, you got to put the work in. And two, you have to have, in my opinion, a story to tell in some way, shape or form. And that story that you want to tell could be related to the job that you do. It could be related to the tech work you do. It could be related to how you're building out the coolest new tech stack or what you're doing in your PSA or whatever.

[00:12:20] But like the number one thing I tell people is like, if they want to start building a personal brand is they have to put themselves out there and apply to speak at events. There's so many events in our industry. There's way more events in our industry than there should be, but there's no reason not to apply. There's like three events I want to apply to for this year alone that I just can't because it overlaps with another event I'm already speaking at. Right. Right.

[00:12:48] And so, in fact, actually one of them is Macaduck, which is macad.uk. And it's the week after ACES, but I've already promised channel pros that I'm speaking at their event in New Jersey. So like I can't even go to this one and I've been wanting to apply. Like it's just ridiculous. But you have to get out there. Now, I know what a lot of you are thinking. I can't, you're thinking, I'm fearful of being on stage. I don't know what to talk about. You know, I don't know what to say.

[00:13:20] My answer to that is, one, you don't, if you have a story to share, if you have an experience, your experience is yours. So you have something to share. So really, the only thing that's stopping you is fear of getting on stage. And the only way to like get over that is to like get over it. Like go, it's, it's, it's, I know it's like a dumb thing to say, but like you have to get out there and try it.

[00:13:47] But what actually really worked for me, despite me being a loud person my entire life, the one thing that actually allows me to like do a show like this, two, well, there's two things actually. One was I did an amateur standup class. I sucked at it. I sucked so bad. And like, I'm a funny person in like context, but I'm horrible on stage.

[00:14:09] And the other thing is, I hired a PR company at some point in my life, but I went through media training, which you don't need to do with a PR company, you can do media training. There are things out there to help you get over, Toastmasters is a great thing also, if you wanted to try that, to like get that, to get that comfortability with being on stage. And then you just tell your story.

[00:14:36] So far be it for me to call you old, especially since I just had my birthday. Um, 56 trips around the sun, by the way, in case anybody's, uh, curious. I wasn't going to throw you under the bus. You, you, you opted to do that. Yeah, no, no, it's fine. Um, and public speaking, by the way, I think it's great that you brought that up because that is probably one of the best ways to get recognition faster. Yeah.

[00:15:04] Because there are a limited number of those speaking opportunities available, right? Now, if you look hard, there's more, but yeah, they're, they're going to be less opportunities there than say online or on social media. Social media is very diluted. You can build a, a personal brand, especially by doing video on social media, but you have to be prepared to put in a little more work consistently.

[00:15:32] Over time to make sure that, that, that builds the kind of notoriety that you would get from a speaking spot. Now, I will also say there are a lot of great places to submit, especially in this industry, your, you know, request to be a speaker. And if you've ever been rejected before, and I know a lot of us have, because that's part of it, right? You put in a presentation and they're like, nope, sorry, we're not interested.

[00:16:02] Well, there is an event that happens now called Rejection Con. It is put on by the guys over at Empath. Okay. So Wes Spencer, Alex and, and Kyle. Okay.

[00:16:20] That allows people who have been rejected before or have a presentation that's never been submitted anywhere else to do these presentations online. And so there's lots of, of different opportunities. And I think that the public speaking is probably one of the ones that's the hardest, just because so many people really don't like public speaking.

[00:16:48] And my solution to that, I mean, Justin's is the, the right solution. You just have to do it right. Because that is going to be the fastest way to get over it. However, if you just aren't willing with making that jump off of the boat, you can do, you know, some video. And I saw those eyebrows, Justin. Because that's not an expression. I know. I was trying to fit the crews in there still. I got it. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:17:16] Doing video for social media is probably a intermediary step to speaking in front of people live and in person. And in fact, you can even take that an extra step and go from recorded video to doing live streams. And that's a little more intimidating, but still a little less intimidating than being on stage.

[00:17:41] And if you take these little steps, you can eventually get yourself to the point where you are on stage. But when we're talking about branding, Justin, you talked about telling your story. And I think that's where your brand comes from. You know, I kind of have built this pirate kind of theme around my personal brand.

[00:18:06] You know, and it's not something that is really overboard. See, another boat reference. It's better than the pie references. It's fine. It's fine. And but it gives you a way to have a standard theme across all of your content that makes you memorable.

[00:18:33] And it ties into it works best if it ties into some type of personal passion, belief, whatever. Like, I just believe in the independence of pirates. I obviously don't condone going out and buying a boat and, you know, trying to seize other boats. That's not the point.

[00:18:56] The point of piracy for me was just that renegade rogue independence that they showed as part of, you know, their character. So, so many things that you can do for personal branding. And I think, Justin, you made a good point about the difference between corporate branding and personal branding.

[00:19:21] And that personal branding, you have the opportunity to bring much more personality and character and fun, almost, to your personal brand that I think makes you unique and individualistic. That's harder to do with a company. No, 100 percent. Because like when you're doing it for your company, right, you're trying to put out the message that the company puts out.

[00:19:49] And that's not always like your personal message, right? Like, you have your values of your company and your niche and your ICP and you're trying to talk directly to them. Whereas if you're building a personal brand, you don't need an ICP. Me personally, like, I don't care who I'm talking to. I've spoken at events for tech people. I've spoken at events at colleges. I've spoken at events for like lawyers.

[00:20:15] Like, it doesn't matter the audience in that regard when it's a personal brand as long as what you're doing is you're telling a story that reflects your truth and who you are. So like, whereas with a corporate one, you're trying to reflect the truth of the business and put that out there. And so you want to make sure that that business message fits within the realm of the business. And I think that's where, like, you get to play a little outside the sandbox.

[00:20:41] But going on to the speaking thing, whether you're doing it as video, live stream, or on stage, you know, one of the things that got me when I first started doing stage shows, one of the things that got me through was like my, I kind of, and I'll be honest, like I emulated people who I saw on stage. I emulated Gary Vaynerchuk. Like, if you look at my oldest stuff, you can see even like to my hand motions, like, you know, I throw the five up that he does all the time.

[00:21:11] And I, like, my hands would move. Because I would watch so much of his content, my body kind of just got into that. And then when I, like, graduated past that, and I started listening to, like, a Lewis Howes or a Grant Cardone or whatever, I started to incorporate pieces of that into it until I finally was able to, like, Voltron this thing together to make it me.

[00:21:34] And now, you know, what you see here on a show, especially like this, when it's just Eric and I talking to one another, and you're listening, but we don't see you. Or I'm on stage, and I can see people's reactions. Like, I'm, this is my, this is showbiz, Justin, is what I call, it's what I tell my son, right? Like, there's three me's. There's like, there's like showbiz me, work me, and home me, which is usually crying on that couch.

[00:21:57] Um, but, but showbiz me, like, there's how I just, how I describe things, how I talk, how my mouth moves, how my arms move, how I articulate ideas and hold back on other things. And I, I mean, I've been speaking professionally, semi-professionally for, for close to 14 years now. So, like, you know, you build it up.

[00:22:22] But I can tell you, like, you mentioned live streams, and the first thing that came to my mind was, do, I think doing live stream is so much harder than public speaking. And I'll tell you why. Because when we did ACES during the COVID years, right? Yes, I had an audience in Slack, or I can, like, see a couple people on Zoom. But it's nothing like getting real-time feedback from people's faces. And so, basically, I'm, like, just screaming into the ether, hoping that they hear.

[00:22:49] And when you do a live stream, like, I want, if you ever think about doing live streaming, I, you, you need to understand something. You're going to have zero views. You're going to have zero people who watch you live the majority of the time. And you have to be okay with that. And that's where it is. It gets so disheartening. And I, trust me, I, I feel you. I know where you're coming from. It's so disheartening when you're, like, on a Wednesday at 7, trying to do a live stream on LinkedIn.

[00:23:20] Zing. And there's no one there. Which, by the way, I always join your live, whenever I see the pop-up, I always join the live stream. And then I just completely turn into a hole. But, like, because that's not showbiz me. That's- Well, but there have been those times when you didn't show up. And it was- Because I don't get nobody. You know why? Because I get so much stuff on LinkedIn. All that stuff goes into my spam. Send me a calendar, everybody. I'll join you. But my point here is that, like, those lives- And actually, I'll tell a funny story about this, about live streaming, okay?

[00:23:49] And this is not really my personal rant, but this is an actual story that happened. It was pre-COVID. I was in the Fort Lauderdale airport, and I was trying to get home. And my flight was delayed. My flight was delayed. My flight was delayed. And so I decided to go on Facebook Live and just complain about it. And I would go back on Facebook Live every couple hours being like, there's my plane. It's sitting at the gate. We can't leave because it's raining in Newark. And, like, finally, like- And, like, every now and then, like, my mom would join. My mother-in-law-in-law was like, go to JFK. I'm like, that's not how planes work. You can't just decide where the plane goes.

[00:24:20] Like, and, you know, and then I land- We ended up landing at Dulles, and I had to take another train to get to a car to get me to a hotel. And then I stay- And I woke up in another town, and then I had to get to Union Station. And it was this, like, long, drawn-out thing. And I Facebook streamed in live most of this. And my wife, who's in marketing, is like, why would you live stream this? No one gives a shit about this. And not kidding you, for the next, like, two months, everyone who came over was like, Justin, I saw your live stream about you getting home from Florida. It was the funniest thing ever.

[00:24:50] And she kept going, what the hell? Right. Because they didn't see it live. They saw it after. And that's okay. And that's the difference between what I'll call traditional marketing and the authentic, just off-the-cuff stuff that you never know, honestly, if it's going to land. Okay? Yeah, 100%.

[00:25:15] But when you are yourself, which you were very much being yourself when you were doing that, people relate. People think it's funny. People get engaged. And it's that kind of stuff that they remember. And that's what a lot of becoming, you know, having a personal brand means. It means becoming memorable.

[00:25:40] And then, you know, because other people are going to say, well, Justin, Eric, I don't care about my personal brand. I'm not in this to be you or Justin or Jay McBain or any of the other personalities that have podcasts or a large presence in this space. And to that, I say, but if you do that and you get that popularity for yourself, it does

[00:26:08] transfer over to the business. Mm-hmm. And especially the more of it that you do locally, the more people are going to see you as a thought leader in your space. And if they think of you as a thought leader and they connect you to the business and you're doing that consistently, who are they going to call when they have an IT problem or their current MSP screws it up? Yeah. They're going to call you. You know what?

[00:26:37] And the other thing is you mentioned locally, and this actually gave me a good idea. Just because you have a personal brand doesn't mean you have to go do all the stuff we're talking about. Most of you are probably in a bunch of networking groups like B&I and things like that. Like bring your personal brand there. Chambers. When it's your turn at B&I to do your presentation or even when you're just doing your elevator pitch, right? Because for those who don't know, B&I is a group for networking and then everyone goes

[00:27:07] around the table, does an elevator pitch, and then there's like one person who gets to do a presentation that week. Your personal brand needs to be there and show off because you're tying the two together. You're tying your personal brand because they're going to go, I like Mark. I like Jamie. I like Susan. And if I like them as a person, I'm going to want to do business with them. So even if it's, even if we're not even like, like, yeah, we'll bring it all the way down.

[00:27:36] Like any of those networking meetings, that's where that personal brand comes into play. And it does grow your business, right? Not that I want to talk about the conference that much, but like ACES works because people trust me and my personal brand to put on a show of, you know, thought leaders and important people in the industry. And it's not like those people, and I'm not calling them out, but like in the 11 years

[00:28:05] we're doing this, it's not like a lot of the speakers go out and start emailing all of their lists. It's always on me. So it comes down to me, the quote unquote hype train guy, which is a whole nother story. But like, it's me and my word and my brand that I'm putting on the line to show these people. And that's how the conferences kept going. And that's how we keep getting people. And if you take that to a micro, it's the same thing.

[00:28:30] If you have one shot, one opportunity, Eminem, to like give your elevator pitch about your business, like you need to know how to nail that. And if you can nail that and like put your personal twist on it to make it better, people are going to remember that and want to do business with you. People, despite we say don't do business with friends and family, people tend to do business

[00:28:58] with friends or people they're friendly with. You're never going to do business with somebody you hate. That's why nobody works with Kaseya anymore. Well, and I think they don't sponsor. Yeah, they'll never be a sponsor now. Great point. And it's something that I actually wanted to bring up and I had forgot about earlier. And that is one of the reasons to do a personal brand is because people relate easier to people. Yeah.

[00:29:28] And if there's no better way to explain this, then look at different companies and the companies that you know best and you probably like best probably have a mascot. And that mascot has a personality that you have created some type of connection to. And that's kind of the point of the personal brand. You almost become the mascot of your business.

[00:29:58] Not in the same way. I don't want to, you know. And not in like a furry kind of way either. We're not. Exactly. Not in a Tony the Tiger way. Okay. But in a professional, people know you, like you, and can get to know you. It's very hard to get to know a corporation. It's much easier to get to know Justin or one of Justin's employees that might be working on their personal branding. Yeah.

[00:30:27] It just, that's the way we're wired. And think about like, if you want to take that a little further, right? Think about like the reason you work with the vendors you work with is like you have an account manager who you like. That's the mascot that Eric's talking about, right? That account manager has built their brand up enough, hopefully, to like want to do things. There's great examples of this on LinkedIn. Like I know plenty of people on LinkedIn who post about not just work things, but personal things as well.

[00:30:55] But also help foster community and bring people together and things like this. Those are the people that like you want to work with. And those are the people who can establish their brand, their personal brand, to like bleed into the corporate side of things. So like you as an owner operator of a MSP should really consider what this looks like. And I don't mean like, I don't know. Let me ask you a question, Eric. What's your feeling?

[00:31:25] Like a lot of our friends, a lot of the people who do quote unquote marketing in our industry all offer the ability to white label an e-book, right? They wrote the e-book. You get to white label it and stick your name on it and say that you wrote it. Like what? I don't, I kind of want to say no to this as part of the personal brand, but I feel like it's a good stepping stone for a lot of people. I don't know. What do you think? Okay.

[00:31:45] So I think this is something that has changed recently because this is something that absolutely writing a book and publishing it is a great way to build personal brand. Now, writing a book used to be hard and it still is to write a good book, right?

[00:32:09] But you have this tool now called ChatGPT, which can make it a heck of a lot faster to write a book and make it more specific to you. I don't disagree with what they were doing in the past of a marketing expert would write a book and then white label it and allow you to sell it under your brand with your cover art, right? Yeah. But you don't need to do that anymore. That's right.

[00:32:38] Because it's too easy to come up with 150, 250 page book. Yeah. I can tell you, like I wrote, I wrote Apitalize on Your Idea back in 2011-ish, right? This is so pre-ChatGBT. And I, it was, it was hard to write. Like I, I happened to have been on vacation in Japan and I was on like the three hour Shinkansen and I had nothing else to do. And I just sat, I just wrote it out.

[00:33:05] And yeah, the book doesn't sell. Like I sell it on Amazon. You can go buy it if you want to go spend $9.99 to support a brother. But like, I don't, it's not there for that. It's there to say that I have a book behind my name that I wrote that's not somebody else's material. And yeah, ChatGBT, you can definitely, don't, first off, by the way, just as a point of reference, if you use ChatGBT to write this stuff, you have to give credit to ChatGBT as an author nowadays. There's like a new legal thing.

[00:33:34] We'll get into that another day. But use ChatGBT to help build out some ideas or ideation chapter ideas, things like that. And then put your own words to it. Really, you can bang out a book and upload it to KDP, the Kindle Direct Publishing on Amazon, and have it, and have it out there in hours. And if you really want help, a little asterisk, side note here.

[00:33:59] Go to Fiverr and find someone who can edit for KDP so they can like reformat the book in the right format. Because that allows you to do print on demand and digital in one move, which is really, really helpful. Exporting right from Word doesn't always work. But having a book is a great way to build your brand because it's just another notch in that belt, as we say.

[00:34:24] The other thing I want to say about personal brand, this is going to be my last piece, is don't be afraid to showcase everything you do. If you go to virtualconsulting.com and you look at About, you'll see stuff about Virtua. And then if you scroll down, you'll see a big old section about Justin, and it says Host of the All Things MSP. And here are all the podcasts and interviews I've done below it, right? Like, be okay with throwing a little ego in there, right?

[00:34:52] And that's a hard thing for a lot of people. But you got to be like just a tad Dutch egotistical to do something like this and build your name out there. Every now and then, I'll just throw on LinkedIn like, hey, remember that time I did XYZ show? And I'll just throw an old post from a show I did sometime in the last 10 years. I'm not caring about giving credit to the people who did the show. That's fine, whatever.

[00:35:22] But like, it's just to keep building that momentum behind. Because if someone looks for me on LinkedIn and I'm looking for potential new business and they see my post and they go, Hey, Justin's been interviewed a lot. There must be a reason why that can translate into business for me. Yep. 100% agree. So we've talked a lot about today. So real quick, let's recap, right? Try to do videos. Try to do live streams.

[00:35:51] Try to do public speaking. If you're afraid of all of that, please take like a public speaking class. Go to do an amateur comedy class. Try Toastmasters. There's plenty of ways to like learn to hone that skill. Watch other speakers. See who you like. Mimic of them, right? Fake it till you make it. I'm all about that. And then think about what your story is. What makes you special? What makes you unique?

[00:36:17] What unique perspective do you have on something else, right? If you look at my 2023 Mac admins presentation, which is up on YouTube, I talk about documentation, which is like the world's most boring topic. But I found a way to make it more interesting by making people make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And we had fun with it. And like I learned about that peanut butter and jelly thing in like ninth grade biology. I was just, I was, by the way, I've been dying to do the peanut butter and jelly thing.

[00:36:47] For years after seeing that, I finally got to do it, you know, at the age of 43. So it's been that long since ninth grade, right? But like have that unique perspective on things, even if it's 1% different than what the thing is and get that out there, have an opinion about things, have an opinion on everything

[00:37:14] that's happening with AI, with Office 362, called it that on purpose. Have an opinion on, you know, the industry, podcasting. Have an opinion on what the industry looks like for your clients, right? Especially if you're niched into a particular vertical. Be okay with getting it out there and be okay with not hearing anything back from anyone. Because again, rejection sucks and it hurts. That's why I cry on the couch.

[00:37:43] But like know that we've all been rejected. I have been rejected from speaking at plenty of things. But like you gotta take the bad. What's the, what's the, you take the good, you take the bad, the facts of life. Something like that. Something like that. Like you gotta be okay with that. If you're not okay with it, find a way to be okay with it. I know I'm like, I'm being such like a hard ass guy. But like, just do it. This is the, what's that Shia LaBeouf? Just do it.

[00:38:13] Just do it. Okay. Just do it. Like that thing. Like that's what this is about. This really is. Yeah. Yeah. And, and if you've made it this far in the show. Okay. You always say that. I am going to now talk to the nine out of 10 of you who suffer from imposter syndrome, right? Because Justin said something and I know you all cringed because I did too. When he said, fake it till you make it. And you're not faking it until you make it.

[00:38:42] It's all just practice. Okay. That leads up to making it. And the other thing with imposter syndrome is you don't think your opinion matters. Trust me. I know because I have felt that way. But your opinion is going to resonate with somebody else. One of two things is going to happen. Your opinion is going to resonate with somebody else and it's going to give them validation.

[00:39:10] Or your opinion is going to be contrary to somebody else, but may make them think in ways that they didn't think before. And that also has value. So never, never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever think your opinion doesn't matter because it absolutely does. I do like that. I did a presentation actually really now 2024 Mac admins. I did a presentation on imposter syndrome and we'll end it on this story real quick.

[00:39:37] I always like to do interactions with whenever I'm doing a presentation. And so for the group that I did the presentation for, I was like, listen, look around the room and snapshot what everybody looks like because there's a lot of people at this conference. And if you see one of these other people somewhere else in the conference, do one of these. And I made everybody make the letter I, like the sign language for the letter I, which is holding your pick up and double tap your heart. That's it. Simple enough. This way you can say like, I recognize you and you recognize me and you just do this.

[00:40:06] And later that night, I'm at the bar, like we're all at a bar and I'm with a bunch of my friends. And from across the room, I hear, hey, Justin. And they did the I thing. And my friends that were with me were like, did that guy just throw a gang symbol at you? What is that? No, I recognized he felt like an imposter being there and he learned to grow from it. So I 100% feel you on the imposter syndrome.

[00:40:34] And there's plenty of times I've been doing this a long time. There are plenty of times where I feel like even I am an imposter and should not be doing it. I feel that way about this show a lot too. Like, let's pull the curtain back for a quick second. Like, there's plenty of times I've been on this show and you, the listener, know damn well that I am out of my world. I am out of my league. I am out of my realm. And I am talking out my butt, right?

[00:41:02] But if you work on it and you plow through it and you believe that you're a success or you have someone come to you after and go, I do agree with you or I don't agree with you, but they still listened to what you said, that's where you've gotten. And so you can build a brand off of this. You can build your personal brand off of your story, your opinions that matter. And you can like really skyrocket your business that way. Yep. That's it. Personal brands.

[00:41:32] I will just say one last note. Do not let perfect be the enemy of good when it comes to this kind of thing. It's trial and error. And most importantly, it's about consistency. Because if you don't have consistency, you'll never build that personal brand. Just look at this show. Well, I mean, this is episode 104. Yeah. Which means we have done this episode as of this episode right here.

[00:42:01] We have done this podcast for two solid years for every single week in a row. Yeah. Yeah. Which is nuts. Yeah. Think about that. Think about that at home. Like think like that Eric and I, and I'm not asking you for like praise. I'm just saying like, think about that. Like we put the time in and the show just keeps getting better and better and better. At least we hope it does. Let us know what you think about whether or not the show has gotten better. Facebook.com slash group slash all things MSP.

[00:42:29] Check us out in all of this high def glory, 4K, 5K, 8K. I saw a TV that they do 16K. That TV was $187 million. No one needs that. But if you do have that and you have this, go to the YouTube app. Watch it there. YouTube.com slash all things MSP. Leave a review. Let us know what you think. That's Eric. I'm Justin. Bye.

[00:42:59] 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 Escar and myself, Eric Anthony, your humble producer and all things MSP founder. Thank you very much for spending your time with us. If you are not aware, all things MSP started as a Facebook group and now supports over 6,000 members.

[00:43:26] 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. And thank you to the rest of our sponsors. Without sponsors, we could not do what we do for the MSP community.

[00:43:56] 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.

[00:44:16] 3.14-159-265-358-979-3238-4626-433-83279-502-884-197-169-399-375-10582. I forget it. I forget it.