The Secret Ingredient Most MSPs are Missing... Hospitality

[00:00:00] Truth be told, there's 40,000 MSPs in the United States and I'm going to catch some flack for this. The majority of them suck. Yeah. Right? That's right. Because it's so easy to be this much better than the other person. And it's not about price and it's not about being more responsive. It's about giving a better customer experience.

[00:00:23] What's up everybody? Welcome to the MSP Mindset Podcast. I am not your host, Damien Stevens. He is to my left. I'm the host of another show, but I just figured I'd jump in and start the day right. What's up, dude? Hey, man. Thanks for joining me. Of course. It's awesome to be here in person. Yeah. At PAX 8. I don't think I said my name, though. Tell us your name. Hi, I'm Josh. You've discovered I'm not Damien Stevens. I'm not Damien Stevens. That's actually what it says on my PAX 8 badge. It just says not Damien Stevens. That way people don't get us confused.

[00:00:52] Yes. No, my name is Justin Esker. I'm the host of the All Things I'm a New Podcast, but I'm also the owner of Virtual Computers, an Apple-based MSP based in New York City, but worldwide. So what is an Apple-based MSP doing in PAX 8? What happened was we made a left at Albuquerque and just showed up here. No, you know, we use PAX 8 just like a lot of people that are here, but it's just that for us it's a little different. We're maybe not so deep into the system.

[00:01:19] And truth be told, this is a great place for us because I want to go to every PC MSP that's here and be like, hi, stop doing Macs. Yeah. Come talk to us. We're the professionals. We know what we're doing kind of thing. So that's our ultimate goal. And you know better than I do. Most of them kind of want that. Yeah, it's funny. Most of them do. Not all of them. But most of them are like, what do I do with this thing? You know, it's funny. It's like a lot of them get mad at us for saying that. We say, please don't do Macs. And they're like, no, no, we can do it. There's nuance. Ask them if they even know what MDM is. Yeah.

[00:01:49] Did you know what MDM was before Intune? No? Cool. Talk to us. We know we're doing that kind of thing. But yeah. And I love what you're doing with the community and the MSP Mindset show and stuff like that. Thank you. That means a ton. Yeah, yeah. So we were talking about this book. Yeah. And I wanted to kind of dig into that. So tell me about the book. And how did you even hear about the book?

[00:02:17] Yeah. So the book is Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Gadara. He used to be the owner or one of the owners of Eleven Madison Park, this like three-star, three-Michelin-star restaurant in New York City. Sounds better than three-star. Yeah, no, it was a three-star restaurant. Well, most restaurants in New York City are three-star, but we eat there anyway. This is how it is. Yeah, three-Michelin-star restaurant. And he wrote this book, Unreasonable Hospitality. And I got turned on to it from another Apple consultant who had just posted on LinkedIn that I read this book. And to be honest, this is the weird thing, right?

[00:02:46] I don't really read. So somebody posted on LinkedIn? Yeah. A friend of mine. A trusted colleague posted this on LinkedIn. Said, I just read this book. Blew my mind. I'm not a big reader. Like, my ADHD, dyslexia, whatever's wrong, whatever problem my wife tells me I have, right? And so we were on vacation. And I read this book straight through. Like, I was so enamored by what was going on in this book. I dog-eared every other page. I underlined stuff. I brought the book home.

[00:03:16] And I made it now mandatory reading for my team. Wow. And it's one of the two books we have. Our other one is The Phoenix Project, which is that DevOps book that everybody likes, right? Yeah. So this is a new book that I'm making everybody read. And we've started to write a hospitality playbook. What is that? So truth be told, there's 40,000 MSPs in the United States. And like, I'm going to catch some flack for this. The majority of them suck. Yeah. Right? That's right.

[00:03:45] Because it's so easy to be like this much better than the other person. And it's not about price. And it's not about being more responsive. It's about giving a better customer experience. Yes. And like, we do certain things to help our customers. And I give this one out freely because I stole this from Peter Shankman. Client of ours has a baby. We send them a onesie that says like, I don't cry. I don't cry when I spill milk. I call virtual computers. We have this really nice. It's like a bottle of milk spilled on a laptop kind of thing. Really cute. Actually, side note.

[00:04:12] One of my colleagues was at an office where someone had just had a kid. They sent the picture of the baby wearing the virtual onesie. And some woman there goes, oh, I want to have a baby to get a virtual onesie. And my staff member was like, that's not how this works. Like at all. He's like, you have a husband. Like, that's not how this works. But there's so much about the restaurant hospitality thing.

[00:04:37] Because what's really interesting in that book is one, it's not just about giving the customer the best experience that they can have. Yeah. It's about knowing the details. Like there's a takeaway in that book that says that to get where he got, he literally looked at his P&L statement every day. I don't know a single MSP that's looking at their P&L statement every day, let alone every week or even every quarter. They look at that P&L statement when the accountant goes, it's tax season. Yeah. Right?

[00:05:03] And a lot of, I've heard a lot of chatter about MSPs wanting to acquire. There's a lot of big M&As, seems to be big hot right now. Right? If you want to be acquired, you need customers. And if you want to acquire people, you need to prove that you can take care of those customers. And this kind of falls into that play as well. Knowing your P&L and understanding what you can do to provide that better customer experience. Now keep in mind, Eleven Madison Park, do you ever watch that show The Bear on FX? No. Oh, The Bear is a great show. You should watch The Bear. Okay.

[00:05:32] But there's a scene in The Bear which is taken right out of the story from Eleven Madison Park. Eleven Madison Park, one of the stories that's known is they knew if people were coming to the restaurant with luggage, that Eleven Madison Park was either the first or last food experience they're going to have in New York City on their trip. There's this family of Europeans and they had talked about how they didn't have a New York hot dog, which we call a dirty water dog being from New York.

[00:05:58] And they had honed in how the bussers and the waiters and the managers all knew how to talk to one another in secret language and could communicate across the restaurant. Because remember, this restaurant's huge. The word got to the guy who wrote it. And he went down the street and paid $3 for a hot dog and brought it back and had the Michelin star chef turn it into this crazy dish.

[00:06:25] He cut it into four little pieces, a swoosh of ketchup, a swoosh of mustard, some little garlic, little micro greens because it's fancy. And they went to the table and they're like, our chef has designed a very special dish for you. We didn't want your New York culinary experience to go without this. And obviously the only thing they're going to talk about for the rest of their lives is this freaking hot dog. Right. Right. There's nothing that MSPs can't do in that same regard. Yeah. Right. We always want to be like, we're proactive. We're on top of things. Yeah.

[00:06:54] Are you listening to the actual problems people are having? No. Beyond the technology? No. No. And so there's so much there. So this handbook, sorry, I diverged a little bit. Yeah. Just for the recording. It's 940 in the morning and I'm on a whopping 12 hours of sleep across 48 hours. So sorry, mom. Okay.

[00:07:15] We, what I've done is I've taken all the excerpts from the book that I think are important and we laid them out in a Google doc with what it is, why it's important, what can we do internally and an example of it. Hmm. And so I cheated a Hatch Apt helped format some of it. Sure. I took all my notes and now I'm having everyone else in my company read the book and supply their notes to our president who's putting it all together.

[00:07:40] And then we're going to like merge it all together and it's going to become a customer experience playbook. I love that. Right? It's more than just take care of a ticket before, you know, within X amount of hours. It's understand the customer better. Right? You have customers that you probably don't have recorded in your PSA that are call this customer. Don't email them back because they don't respond to emails. That's exactly right. You don't know when people's birthdays are. Send a handwritten birthday card.

[00:08:06] If you're going to send a gift, know that this person's allergic to chocolate and these people really like whatever it is. Yeah. Don't send them something they're allergic to on their birthday. Exactly. I want to back you up there because you said something pretty cool, right? You said everybody read it. I can't tell you how many CEOs I sit down, me included. I got this shiny new book and I'm all about it. Yeah. I'm like, everybody read it. And of course, they didn't talk to you or, you know, they didn't have the exact same experience. So they read it and they go, ah. And of course, I move on to some other shiny thing, right?

[00:08:35] So what I love about this is you're like, I put my notes in. Yeah. Other folks have. And everybody's contributing. So you're actually building something. You're not just reading something. You've gone from consumption to creation. Yeah. And get me wrong. Like, I'm a big, like, self-help guru. I've read every Vaynerchuk book and Alex Hermazi and, like, even friends in this industry, like Mark Wingspan from, or Mark Coleman from Wingspan has me in his book. And, like, no offense. I love you, Mark. But, like, I got halfway through the book and I couldn't keep going because it was just too repetitive.

[00:09:05] There was just something about the way this story was written. Yeah. That, like, I was literally at an all-inclusive restaurant, all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic with two other families. And my kids were like, Daddy, come in the pool. I'm like, I want to do one more chapter. Like, yes. I probably would have found some other excuse to not get in the pool with them. But in this case, it was a matter of, like, this book was – it just really pulled me in.

[00:09:29] And I think that's an attribution to the writer, the author, as well as the content. And going in with it with the mindset of how can I apply this to my business. Because it's not so straightforward. It's not like, well, if you, you know, cut 20% of your profit line and do this thing exactly like this. Like, this was a very abstract way to think because, like, whoever thought of comparing a restaurant to an MSP? Exactly.

[00:09:57] So why couldn't you put Unreasonable Hospitality down? What was it that pulled you in? I just – like, I think it really had to do with, like, how many notes I was really writing. Like, I literally went through two pens. Every page has been dog-eared. There's – I would say almost on every page there was something – not even the things that he bolded. Right? Because obviously there's notes that he wants you to take. But, like, even beyond the stuff that he marked was important. I was like – that P&L one was like, know your P&L.

[00:10:24] It's like, well, that's such an easy-to-understand sentence. And then I was like, wait, not only do we need to know our P&L, you need to know this, this, and this. And I was like, go check on that software online. Why are we – which software are we spending too many licenses on? So take me back to that because you're talking about Unreasonable Hospitality. Yeah. And I get the differentiator because here's the thing. Every MSP, what are you best at? Service. Yeah. Okay. We're not. You're not. Yeah. You're lying. But I also get Unreasonable Hospitality tying into service.

[00:10:52] Okay, so I'm kind of – I'm on the same page. Where does P&L come into that? That just – Yeah. This seems like an M&A discussion, not a service delivery. So the P&L thing really comes into that if you can lock in your P&L, you can figure out where you have room in your budget to do the extraordinary. So in his book – I don't remember if it's 90-10 or 95-5 or whatever it was. It was like lock in the bigger number, 90 or 95. And the rest of that money is like fun money.

[00:11:22] And they use that to create these experiences for customers, right? To the point where like they ended up hiring people. They called them Dreamweavers, like the song, right? Yeah. And if there was a story about a girl – like there was a story in the book about like a little girl who didn't get a stuffy or something like that and was upset. Like the Dreamweavers had everything in this little office to build stuff, like a cricket and a song machine and all that stuff.

[00:11:47] And they took napkins, clean ones obviously, and they made a little stuffed animal for this girl. Yeah. Who's in this very stuffy New York restaurant with her parents, clearly wanting like chicken fingers, I'm sure. Yeah. That money came from the 5%.

[00:12:06] So it was lock in what you know, get that 100%, get that 95%, 100% locked in, and then use this extra to create like crazy experiences for your customers. Hey guys, Damian here. As I continue to interview the top MSPs in the world, one thing has become incredibly clear. It's time that we let go.

[00:12:29] Even more than that, every time I focus on my zone of genius and get out of the way and do the very few things I'm good at and delegate to others, I'm ready for that next level of growth. One way that I could help you is with Servocity. We co-manage more backups and disaster recovery so you can focus on what you do best, let us do the rest. And then what we do is we test the backups every single day so you never have to worry. If you'd like to engage us or just learn more, click the link below. Yeah.

[00:12:59] Well, so just yesterday I'm traveling. I brought my son to this event for the first time. And we're crossing time zones in different airports and different cities and all kinds of different experiences, right? Where we should see good examples. Yeah. Maybe not in the airports, but maybe in other places. That's the worst. And so, you know, speaking of, we're in a very nice, you know, Gaylord Rockies Resort. It's kind of an all-inclusive. And we'd go to a restaurant, you know, we've been traveling all day, kind of like you.

[00:13:25] We're like exhausted or like just want to have some nice food and kind of get ready for today. And, you know, we had a nice meal. Two things stuck out to me. One is we were going to get kind of an appetizer and two entrees. Seems reasonable, right? And they're like, this appetizer is huge. Like it's enough for two people by itself. Like it went out of its way to talk us out of getting two entrees. Yeah. Get one entree and split it and get one out. And we did.

[00:13:51] So like when's the last time a server talked me into spending less money when they're usually getting a percentage? Right. Right. So that, I was like, okay, I'm leaving a much bigger percentage tip here. Yes. And then the other thing that was totally unexpected is so we, the food was really good. We got done and, you know, we were thinking about dessert and we walked in by the end. We're like, no, I'm done. Yeah. And they come afterwards and, you know, it gets cool here in Denver, even in, even in June.

[00:14:18] And so he brings out these long sticks and a little kit. And he's like, here is a, is a s'mores kit. We're nice. He's like, there's a fire pit, go outside, do the whole thing. So we just turned down dessert. Right. Yeah. But they come out and they're like, here, go experience this. Yeah. Right. And so like, the funny thing is we call home, talk to mom and the rest of the family. And like, that's the thing. That's all you're going to talk about. That's the thing. Yeah. Right. Right. Now, how much did, you know, a chocolate bar and a couple of mushrooms, a couple of mushrooms.

[00:14:47] What kind of s'mores kit are you doing? That was the adult version. Yeah. I haven't seen mine set after dark. Marshmallows, maybe. Marshmallows. Yeah. Yeah. But how much did that cost? Right. Yeah. Experience. It was, it probably cost them at the store, it's three bucks. So they're buying it in bulk. 98 cents. Right. Right. 98 cents for you to have this experience that you're going to go and you called home and you're going to remember this trip for two reasons. One, me and two, that s'mores kit you had.

[00:15:17] Right. Because like you come to an industry event at some point they all blur. Yeah. But you come to a hotel where they do something like that. That's what's going to be memorable. And that's kind of where I think the idea of what we can do better, you know, when I talked about the birthday card thing earlier, you know, it's not just a birthday card that comes in. Like we handwrite those birthday cards. I don't because my handwriting is atrocious. It's been the same since third grade. Yeah. But like we handwrite those birthday cards.

[00:15:45] Actually, our president's daughter, who's a junior in high school, has amazing penmanship. So we put her to work and she just stacked them all. Right. Those it's those little touches that really make things better for the for the customer. So did you start doing that since reading this book? We've always kind of done it a little bit, but now I want to take it to the next level. What is always kind of a little? We've always done that. We've done the onesie thing for a long time. OK, that's awesome. And we've done the birthday card for a long time. That's for the kid, not the adult.

[00:16:15] So the yeah, the onesie, the onesies for the baby, not the adult. OK. We are looking at expanding the program. But in order to do that, we've been looking at our P&L a lot and seeing where we we just found like this is going to sound so stupid. But like we were paying for a Google license because we're a Google reseller. We're paying for a Google license for a domain that's been dead for years. And granted, we're talking about $15 a month, but that's $15 a month that could be used to buy somebody a small something.

[00:16:45] Yeah. That will blow their mind. Mm hmm. Right. Like we're not talking about tens of thousands of dollars. Yeah. You find out that the like the CEO of one of your companies, you find it a parent of theirs passed away. You send flowers. Yeah. Because they're not expecting it from you. You know when they are expecting it from you around the holidays. Yes. Oh, my gosh. I'm so glad you brought that up because I couldn't even put my finger on it because I've had some of my team come and like, hey, it's Thanksgiving. Yeah.

[00:17:14] Or Christmas or whatever. Or one of the more common, we need to send some, they don't say piece of crap, piece of crap to our customer. You know what I mean? I'm like, I'm not doing it. It's not that I don't care. It's just that that says I don't care. Yeah. You don't have to send yet another little thing. No one wants another mug and pens with your logo on it. Right. Actually, I'll tell you, we used to do holiday gifts. Um, and I've always tried to do like special ones. And I didn't even realize how this kind of plays into hospitality until we started talking about it right now.

[00:17:43] But like there are two best gifts we have ever sent somebody. One is, um, I got custom Lego figures of me and my team. Granted, there were only three of us at the time, but it's this really great little Lego set with my two guys and me being like, ah, and a desk and a computer. And I got custom Virtua bricks. So it has like our logo on the front of it. People loved that. And then the following year, I found a company that will let us do custom wine bottles.

[00:18:07] So my wife, who is a designer by trade designed us a Virtua red and we got custom wine bottles and we sent everybody wine. Now we tried the wine. I'm not a wine person. My wife's a wine person. And she's like, this wine is garbage, um, which was fine. But the best part was the next year. Everyone was like, are we getting more wine? Are you sending us more wine? Yeah. It obviously hit, right? It's those things. It's understanding. It's always being there. I think one really easy one that people can do is, um, when you're onboarding a new customer,

[00:18:37] because when you onboard a new customer, every customer goes, well, how do we know what's covered under the contract? How do we know when to send you a ticket? This is such an innocuous sentence. It's so easy. It costs zero dollars. I don't care what the problem is. I don't let us be the one to tell you we can't fix it, but send us anything. If you're not sure that the smart toaster is covered under your contract, send us an email. Yeah. We'll either try to help because that was the Zappos model, right? Yeah. Or we'll tell you we can't help you with the smart toaster. We won't be snarky about it.

[00:19:07] Maybe we'll laugh behind your back, but like, right. It's one of those things. It's providing that. And it takes, it pisses me off, Damien, because it takes so little to be so much better. There's 3,000 people here and I sending a birthday card to my customers. I'm already better than 60 to 70% of the people that are there. I'm not tooting my own horn. I'm just saying like, that is literally what it is. Yeah. And if you want customer retention. Yeah. That's how you do it.

[00:19:33] You keep customers for years and then you could talk M&A, going back to that for a second. Because one of the, one of the multipliers is how long you've had your customers for. Yeah. Boom. So it all stems from this. It's just, and it's such an easy book to read and it makes so much sense. Honestly, unreasonable hospitality is like my new go-to. So how long has it been since you've read that or share that with your team? Yeah. So it's been, uh, I want to say just maybe four to six weeks total. Okay. It hasn't been that long. So kind of at the beginning. Kind of dipping in the beginning.

[00:20:03] Um, actually here's a great story. One of my team members took the audio book. We, and by the way, we paid for the book for obviously for everyone, right? One of my team members took the auto book because he does a lot of our wiring. He was on a scissor lift, like doing something in the client ceiling, listening to the whole book, listened to the book in a day, loved it. And then texted me on a Friday at 9 PM with, Hey, by the way, 11 Madison park is on a show called seven days on Netflix from like six years ago. I just found it. It's awesome. You should watch it.

[00:20:30] The book resonated so well that he went and did more research on this. Wow. Storyline. Yeah. To find this 45 minute documentary about, which is something that's actually in the book. It's about the reopening. It hit. Yeah. It hit hard and it hit well. And everyone on my team is reading it right now and getting through it. And every week I'm like, all right guys, where are you at? And people are like, Oh, I got like 14 more pages to go. I got, and like, we're ready for this next meeting that we have to talk about and go through

[00:20:57] what everybody else's tips are so we can build this like ultimate CX playbook. Really? Yeah. Well, it's funny you say that because I get to, uh, I've been to not only MSP events, but to software as a service industry events. Uh, cause you know, I get lumped in that category nowadays. And so in the SAS industry, like CX is huge and there's always the director or C level of CX that, you know, it's just like a built in because you're building, you know, software and you want to try to build this experience, but it's missing.

[00:21:26] Like, Oh my God, it's missing. There's none of it here. Oh, you hit a nerve. I'm so sorry. It's too early in the morning to get angry, but you hit a nerve because it's missing from every vendor, right? Every channel vendor. I'm going to talk some, I'm going to talk some real, I'm going to curse. I apologize. I'm going to talk some real shit right now. Okay. Every channel vendor who tells me that they have to lock me into a contract for a year for my MSP clients. When I have zero control on whether or not that MSP tanks his own, or sorry, that client tanks their own business for their own mistakes. Yet I'm on the hook.

[00:21:56] Please stop doing it. That is not customer experience at all. I have a, I can't say which vendor it is, but I had a vendor one time who one of my clients has a direct contract with. They had three months left on their contract and they were over indexed on the number of users. And we were like, we want to bring it down now and we'll, we'll re-sign a contract for another year. And the account manager was like, no. And we're like, what? I'll even get a two year contract signed. If you can bring them from 30 to 16, they took a hit in their business and they're a nonprofit. Nonetheless, do something for them.

[00:22:25] I'll give you a two year contract. If you can drop the last three months from 30 to 16. And, and the account manager's like, our contract team won't allow that. I'm like, okay, cool. Thanks so much. And I went on LinkedIn and I found the CEO of the customer and I explained the entire story. And two days later, a new account manager called and was like, hi, we have a new contract for your nonprofit. We've lowered it. We've lowered the price. Um, and I was like, oh, thanks. And then I heard through the grapevine that the CEO had a town hall all about customer experience

[00:22:55] being like, why would you piss them off with 90 days out to not do this contract? The channel needs so much help. I, I, I, and I'm half in it, right? Like running my own conference and doing the other show and whatever. Like I'm half in the channel, half as MSP. Yeah. And it, it bugs the, it bugs me so bad. Like I, that's why I want everyone to read this book. I literally want to be Will Goddard as publicist and just blow it up here and like make it,

[00:23:23] make it the thing for MSPs to read his book. Like I want to make him a millionaire off this book because I think everyone should read this book. Unreasonable hospitality. Huge, huge, uh, plug obviously, but I want to take this another way. Like probably at one of these stages at any event, not just here, they're going to talk about retention, right? As a way to, to be more powerful. They're going to talk stickiness and part of the time they're going to talk about the

[00:23:51] lifetime value, increasing the order value. They're going to talk about linking the contract because at the end of the day, like financially that makes it worth more. Like I get it, but somewhere like where do we lose sight? They're like just financial engineering, moving the contract out. Like that makes that look good to us, but that like, there's no, nowhere in the discussions of, uh, customer retention, churn, um, increasing lifetime value. That sort of thing does customer experience show up?

[00:24:20] I think it's, this is going to be a crappy pun, but I think we've become ones and zeros when it comes to financing, right? Like there's 40,000 MSPs in the United States, right? I don't know if that number has gone up or down in the last couple of years, but I can And, and much like how I said earlier, like MNA is now like the big hot topic. I think there's like three topics over the next few days about MNA. Yeah. You either want to be a bigger fish or you want to sell and get out.

[00:24:50] But the other thing is, and I don't mean any offense to you or anyone else, but like the amount of people who I've met who were like, I had a $10 million MSP and now I do, you know, marketing or podcasting or I'm going to, I'm helping the channel. Yeah. And then you hear stories about those people and you're like, you didn't have your MSP because of other reasons and now you're doing this and you're kind of like, I've had this conversation. Every, I'm going to, I'm going to just, I'm going to get so many people to hand me with this one.

[00:25:18] Every company who says we help MSPs do marketing, snake oil. I ran an MSP and now I'm going to, I'm going to teach you. You're the Don LaPrie of, of MSP. We lost customer experience because now everybody just cares about gaining more customers because they think that's the only way to do it. They don't really think about the full lifetime. I mean, I have customers, I'm going in 17 years of business and we're talking about this pre-show, right? I'm in 17 years of business.

[00:25:46] I have clients that are with me from the company I worked at before and I have clients that are 21 years with me, right? Because we provide good service, good experience, good everything else and almost, I would like to say great experience for so many things. There needs to be a mindset shift. There you go. See? See how I'm bookending this one for you, Rob? I'm glad you're hosting this. Thanks. Stay tuned next time.

[00:26:17] But yeah, that mindset shift needs to happen. And I think more people like yourself or me need to be able to get on these stages to be like, please wake up and realize what's happening here. This isn't about cleaning and manipulating your list. This isn't about going and getting more customers. This isn't even about selling the latest in Microsoft 365 security. Because if you don't have any customers, this is why, and I'll tote a little for myself here, this is why I started ACES Conference.

[00:26:46] ACES Conference is built on the business side of IT consulting. Even vendors who come to our conference are not allowed to talk about their tool set, their technology, nothing. One of my greatest stories, we had an MDM come up and he did an entire presentation on mobile security. And he says, I don't care if you use my MDM or the other two MDM providers that are here as sponsors. Just do this. You can make money doing this. And then he threw his QR code up there with everyone to get his contact.

[00:27:13] And then he QR, and then he rickrolled everybody. He's like, I just taught you guys not to do that. That's funny. Those things, right? Those lessons to be learned. The business side of stuff. Because you come to an event like this. It's always like security and AI. Yeah. The soft skills. Yes. The mindset stuff. Yes. The wellness stuff. The work-life balance. The hospitality. The reality. That is what's needed at things like this. You hear that, Rob Ray? I don't know.

[00:27:43] Who's in charge of PAX 8? I just don't know Rob Ray's name. I've never even met that guy. Yeah. He's not going to meet me now. Drop down a few tears before you meet. Yeah. Well, the thing is, when the transcript of this is going to come out, it's going to say Rob Ray. And I'm sure he's got a Google alert for his own name. And now I've said it three times. There you go. So now it's definitely going to show up on his radar. That's hilarious. I'll get you exposure. But I've definitely just tanked myself. No, no. Like, this is his event to run, right? Because he's over community, right? Yeah. And so at least they're thinking in terms of community.

[00:28:12] Not just thinking in terms of like, how do we push more units? Yeah. And I think that's where we can get stuck, right? And the thing is, like, even at Strabosity, we used to have a one-year agreement. And frankly, I did it because kind of everybody else did. Right. It's not a great reason. I just did because everybody else did. The thing I found is whenever I had an MSP that they had the kind of issue you did, they went from 30 to 16, the end client, and they came to me, I was like, yeah, we'll let you out of that. So the point is, I was like, I'm just going to avoid my own contract.

[00:28:42] Like, it's kind of worthless. Yeah. So I'm like, why don't we just do month to month? Because that's really, I just hadn't thought through that. Yeah. And so we've done month to month, right? And that way you're like, you're not on the hook because you can't control the end user. Correct. And even if you think you can, they're going to go out of business or they're going to do something else that's going to impact you. And you can't control your end user's customers. Right. As an Apple person, we're very big on the design firms. Design firms work with big companies.

[00:29:07] That company, one of my clients takes care of a very large pharmaceutical company. That pharmaceutical company gets in trouble, has problems. My client loses 90% of their revenue. What do you think they're going to cut first? Yeah. How is it my, why am I on the hook to my vendors now for that? Right. Right. So yeah, that's the thing. I think this is a, it's a, it's a very top down needs to be, the mindset needs to be changed from the channel.

[00:29:36] I think community is a part of it. Truthfully, I think community is starting to become a little bit of a buzzword. Honestly, like we have our ACES community where we talk business and we have, you know, you have your community where we talk about mindset and we have the ATMSP and the PACS community and all these other things. Sure. But I don't want community to become the next AI thing or the next dark, everyone's got dark mode. Everybody's got a community. Sure. But are you using it properly? Are you doing stuff with it?

[00:30:06] Are you providing the tools to let your community grow their business the right way by offering the things that they need to offer? You want to do better, better customer experience. Yeah. Stop saying you're proactive because truthfully, no one in our industry is proactive. Even proactive people are, you're reactive to something. Yeah, that's right. Like provide a better customer experience. Explain to them why you are the best you are, not just because you can fix widgets faster,

[00:30:32] but because you care about them as a customer, as a person. That's right. That's huge. That's the difference that I think we miss too often. And with all the technology going faster, you know, you're just going to see more and more people miss it. Right. It's down to that relationship because they don't fire a company. They fire an individual. Right. Because there's that relationship or lack. Right. If you don't have that relationship, you're going to get rid of it. I was thinking, actually you're talking about, one of the things that came up was another big one is zero touch, right?

[00:31:01] Like everyone wants zero touch, especially post COVID. There's no one in offices. Everyone's zero touch. You realize how zero touch is like so anti-customer experience. Here's your laptop. It'll just turn on and do what it needs to do. And you call me when you need me. Why would they ever want to talk to you? Who are you? How do you know who I am? Like there's no relationship there. Therefore, there's no customer experience. You want to be like, here's your laptop. I put a bow on it. Here's our water bottle. Here's our pad. Here's our pencil. This way you can keep notes.

[00:31:31] I'm going to walk you through what setup is. I'll help you sign into Slack. Excuse me. Zach, I'll cut that part out. I'll help you sign into Slack or into your email. I'll help you set up your signature. I'll walk you through the entire experience. So day one, you feel like you were coddled, but in a good way. Yeah. Customer experience. That's something a lot of people, we're not doing that, right? To that full extent. But it's those kinds of experiences that you want to give customers. It's not just about gifts, right?

[00:32:01] I think I've said this before. Like it's not just about gifts. That helps. But there's plenty of times where you can jump in. Being available to talk to a customer about a non-tech thing. I have a client right now who's recently become an entrepreneur. Yeah. PE money, has a 20-person staff, is so out of their element. My calls with them are not about their computers. Right. They're like, you've been in business longer than I have. What do I do about HR? What do I do about legal?

[00:32:31] What do I do about this? And I'll either A, help or B, connect them with someone who can help. Yeah. Right. That could be considered community to a degree, but it's also like, I want that customer to trust me as an advisor to more than just computers, more than just their technology. Because you know who gets paid the most? Friends. Yeah. It just is. Yeah. I couldn't agree more.

[00:32:59] Like, I will still call one of my MSPs and talk to them and talk to CO to CO. And then they're like, no, no, we're fine. We love your team. Like, the backups and stuff's working. I'm like, yeah. Wonderful. Thank you. You know, and I'm trying to jump past that. Thank you. Let me know if it's not. But it's always like, what's really going on? And they're like, well, no, no, everything's fine. I'm like, you're an MSP. By definition, things are not fine. Tell me what's going on. And then they're like, oh, well, X is the biggest issue. Like, I'm, you know, this year, a lot of them are like, things have slowed down.

[00:33:28] Like, I don't know what to do. Or whatever it is. And I'm like, I can't promise you to fix it. But maybe I know the guy that is crushing it. Yeah. Would an introduction help? Or just whatever it is. It's like, I just want to know what's going on in your world. Because that way, we're speaking as humans. It's not like, I have this widget to sell you. Wouldn't you like to buy the latest one? I need to upsell you by a certain percent to meet my quarterly number. Right. It's what's going on in your world. And that's 100% true. And keep in mind, as the owner of the MSP, I got to play both sides.

[00:33:57] Like, I have a client who I'm, like, doing IT audits for. And I was like, maybe we should get a NIST thing. And we should get you Blackpoint. And we should get you this. And we should get you that. Like, that's part of my job. The other part of my job is to go, why are you getting so many IT audits from these companies? And who are you going after? And how can we make that process easier for you? Yeah. And let me connect you with the right people. Whether I'm getting paid from that or not, irrelevant. Obviously, it helps. But, like, if there's a case where, like, we don't do any marketing whatsoever. Right?

[00:34:26] If I have a firm that needs marketing help, like, I got a book of people I can talk to. I'm not a business coach for everybody. I'm a business coach for MSPs. But when I have people... Actually, this is a great story. I have a business coach, right? This is where I'm going with this. A client who's the personal assistant of the CEO. This is going to be a weird... This is going to be one of those, like, my father's roommate. You know, who makes that us? Nothing. All right.

[00:34:51] Client of mine, CEO, his personal assistant, her brother's best friend is in IT. Twice removed. Twice removed, yeah. Right. They had a fight in college, but they made up over it. He's in IT. Yeah. He's pretty fresh at it. He's young enough, but not too young. Like, he's, I think, in his late 20s, early 30s. And he doesn't... And he's finishing a six-month contracting stint. And he calls me. He's like, I don't know what to do. Mm-hmm. And I say, cool.

[00:35:20] I'm going to hook you up with my business coach, and I'm going to pay for your session. Wow. Because, like, it was 300 bucks. Yeah. Whatever. The amount of gratitude I got from this guy, and the amount of times that I know that if I do need something, he's, you know, I know I can... Not that I'm saying it's a favor, but, like, I can call on that if I need something, if I do need somebody eventually, like, he was just like, this is helping me change the way I'm doing things so well, or whatever. Who would have ever thought to do that? Yeah.

[00:35:50] Like, why would you ever pay? And I don't want to hire this guy. Right. I don't need to hire this guy. I don't have any positions right now. Mm-hmm. But, like, why would I go and spend $300 of my own money on my CEO's personal assistant's brother's friend? Right. That's never going to get back to him either. That's right. It may get back to the personal assistant, but it's never going to get back to the CEO. And the personal assistant's not paying me, the CEO's paying me. That's right.

[00:36:15] So, like, the altruism, the hospitality, like, it all kind of blends in this pool, you know? But I love that because I think you either became an MSP, most of us, because you love helping people and or you love technology, maybe some of both. Yeah. Right? And that hospitality really speaks to it. I find that... I'm going to take your sentence. I find, like, a lot of MSPs got into the business because they love technology and then became an MSP, I think a lot of them don't realize that they are now business owners. Yes.

[00:36:44] And they need to think that way. Like, I was always an entrepreneur. I think I've told you this before. Like, I was the number one candy seller of FBLA in high school. I was like, you want some power restaurants? I got nerds for you. Like, I was all about that, right? Yeah. And I'm always trying to come up with new business things. That's why if you compare me to another MSP, like, I look very different. Yes. Fine. Whatever. It's not about me. But the MSPs that got in because they liked technology need to really start thinking about the business side of it. Customer experience.

[00:37:14] Customer retention. Yeah, sure. Call Brad Gross. Get him to write your contracts. We all have. He makes billions of dollars in this industry. I love Brad, by the way. But, like, understand what your voice is going to be and how you're going to make your customers like you, Damien, and all of your staff. Right? I love that. We're doing a reintroduction email to our entire staff this coming summer, to everybody, because I know there's people. We have new people.

[00:37:41] We have old people that maybe some people have never interacted with. We're adding that as part of our hospitality guideline, that whenever there's new people, we're going to send out an email. Even if you're never face-to-face, because, like, sometimes we get interns that are just turning screws at our shop. They're never going to interact with these CEOs of my MSPs. But you know what? I want you to know that they exist. Because that's hospitality on both sides. That's right. I want to help grow these people, and I want these people to understand what we're doing. And I want them to realize that we're always here for you, and we're expanding our business for you, the customer.

[00:38:11] But, like, these MSPs really need to, I think they need to dive headfirst into the business world. Yes. And I think that this particular book, also another really good book, Apitalize on Your Idea by Justin Escar, 999. I'm just kidding. Had to throw a plug. But this book, The Unreasonable Hospitality, really will change the mindset for so many people. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know you're joking, but as you're closing out, tell everybody about Virtua, your book,

[00:38:41] your community. Yeah. So, Virtua Consulting Group, which is our bigger company, is made up of Virtua Computers, an Apple-authorized consultant, and an Apple-authorized service provider. What should MSPs that are maybe Microsoft-centric think about? The C-suite who has Macs that you don't know how to deal with, that's where we shine. That marketing department inside that big corporation you take care of that you don't know how to deal with all their Macs in Photoshop, that's where we come in.

[00:39:06] We do a lot of co-managed IT in positions like that, helping them figure out the Macs stuff. I want to stop you right there. If you're listening, you're probably not a Mac MSP. You're not Mac Farkus. You've got a few people that know. The point is, you do business with a ton of Microsoft-focused on its piece. And at the end of the day, you can make them better and look better. We can either white-label it. We can do it under our name. We're fully certified in all things from Apple. And you're not Microsoft at all. So, there's no...

[00:39:35] Don't worry about, like, you're coming for them. Let's do full transparency, Damon. The few PCs that we have, which is maybe 1 32nd of our business, is the bookkeeper because Excel is different at that design firm. Yep. So, like, we're not treading on the Microsoft thing. I couldn't program my way into a Windows update if I tried. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. So, if you're at Microsoft, you may want to reach out to Justin at Virtua for that. And so, then tell us about your conference and your book. Yeah.

[00:40:04] So, ASUS Conference, we just spent our 11th year, which is amazing because every year I said to my wife, I'm never doing this again. And every year she goes, okay, we'll see what happens. It's for Apple. It's the business side of IT consulting. It's not necessarily for Apple consultants, but the majority of the people who do come are Apple consultants because that's my community. Gotcha. Marketing, management, sales, customer experience, price models, life balance, things like that. No technical. Nice.

[00:40:30] If someone talks about MDM, we Oscar hook them off the stage, you know, that kind of thing. So, we just had our 11th year in Austin. It was actually, this year was really awesome because we actually added a half day because Apple invited us to come to their campus in Austin to do a training with them. Nice. So, like, for me, it's really special that I get, I'm getting approval from the company that I do work for in a way. Because remember, Apple consultants are independent.

[00:40:58] We're not part of Apple, but for Apple to recognize ACEs was kind of huge for us. So, that's the conference. The hardware provisioning. So, we do repair in our shop in Columbia, Missouri. And then I have, like, a lot of little side stuff. I got a funny t-shirt store. I have that book that I told you about earlier. I have a children's book on Amazon. This is a funny story. I have a t-shirt that says, you're muted, that we put out in, like, the beginning of COVID. And I'm not kidding you. Some dude bought on Amazon and left a picture review of himself wearing it.

[00:41:27] I have no idea who this dude is. That's awesome. But there's a picture of this guy being like, everybody loves this shirt. Like, what is, who is this person? That's awesome. It's amazing. Yeah. We dabbled in hardware. We have a couple software programs for MSPs, things that, like, tie into FreshBooks and Zendesk. And we're writing a lot of third-party stuff for Halo and things like that. So, we kind of dabble in a lot of little stuff. But our primary is being an Apple consultant. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. Justin, thanks for joining me again. Thanks for being on MSP. That's it. I love being here, man. This was awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much, Damon. Yeah, man.