The Power of Peer Groups

[00:00:00] Welcome to the SMB Community Podcast with hosts Amy Babinchik, James Kernan and Karl Palachek. Produced by Kernan Consulting and for the international MSB community, we are dedicated to making every IT professional a successful IT professional.

[00:00:20] Hey everybody, welcome back to the SMB Community Podcast. This is James Kernan with Kernan Consulting and I'm here again with my partner in crime, Amy Babinchik. Hey Amy, good morning. Good morning, James. Good morning from the border of Canada. Yeah, yeah. Why don't you give everybody a quick update of where you're at and what your current situation is.

[00:00:48] My current situation is that I'm on my boat and I am anchored out at Harbor Island Wildlife Refuge and it's over here pretty close to the border of Michigan and Canada and it is a kind of a gray day but it's actually just a light wind and kind of kind of pleasant. Nice.

[00:01:12] So I'm enjoying life right now but I'm also still here talking to you because it's also enjoyable. All right. Well, I think because you're out floating on the Great Lakes, that's why you have a big smile on your face. So awesome. Awesome.

[00:01:31] Well, hey, we have a ton of stuff to cover today so I'm going to dive right into things. We actually got a great question of the week and I'll just kind of tee that up but really the question that came in is do you recommend, you know, peer groups for MSP business owners? So do you recommend peer groups? And pretty sure I know what you're going to say. Well, I'm going to say obviously yes. I mean for you and I both run peer groups. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:02:00] Right. And I run mine in the mastermind style small groups where it groups of maximum six where they each person brings questions because running a business is just answering one question after the other.

[00:02:17] Yeah. And none of us are experts in that stuff. So, so yeah, everybody brings a question and talks about what's new in their business and then, you know, we use the hive mind of the group that really become your own personal trusted group of great business friends, you know, to help you solve those complicated problems that come up every day and while you're running your business.

[00:02:47] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then Amy, one thing maybe to elaborate on, I think all peer groups are different. I think they're incredibly valuable because of what you learn from your peers, but they're all different. And normally there's kind of an underlying theme like is it a growth group? Is it a business owners group? Is it a technical group? You know, where are you focused? And on your peer groups, where would you categorize yourself? Where would you guys focus?

[00:03:14] You know, our focus is mainly on operations, you know, a little bit of sales, a little bit of marketing, a little bit of hiring always creeps in there. But a lot of this is about operational issues, customer, customer complexities, you know?

[00:03:38] Yeah. Yeah. It sort of runs, runs the gamut, but it's really, you know, generally about the everyday activities of running a business. You're right though. There are, there are many groups out there that are focused on financials and growth, or they're focused on sales and marketing, or, you know, they have that. And those groups run differently too.

[00:04:02] They're usually led by an expert that's going to tell you how you should be running your business. In my case, everybody comes with their own idea of how they should run their business. And what they're looking for is just a little guidance in this direction or that direction. And that guidance isn't individually given by me. It's given by, by the group.

[00:04:27] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's very large peer groups. There's very small peer groups. The one thing I'll say to help everyone understand is I think they're all very, very different based on the company and the leadership team that's running those peer groups that you tend to adopt the personality of those leaders and the style.

[00:04:49] Amy, Amy, uh, to me, uh, to me, very intelligent, very experienced and knowledgeable, but comes more from the technical side, you know? So I've always thought of your groups being more technical oriented, but you know, if it's a business owners group, you're going to talk about everything. And, and my, uh, you know, my claim to fame has always been sales and marketing. So I, I run, uh, similar to Amy. I run small peer groups, our community.

[00:05:13] Um, we have groups, um, we have groups, no bigger than 10 and non-competitive geographies. We have multiple groups, but I always, my goal has always been, I wanted to keep my community under 50 people. So we could always over service, always over deliver. I want to know everything about everybody in our groups, you know, their families, what makes them tick.

[00:05:35] I think that's really important because some of the peer groups are thousands of people. Some of them dictate what tools you use. And, uh, I think both Amy and I kind of leave that up to you. We'll give you recommendations. Um, in my community, we've got strategic partners that I think add value into what we do. And, and, um, you know, a lot of our members are successful because of the partners, uh, that we've selected and the go-to-market partners.

[00:06:03] But, uh, I think all in all, I would just say, you know, you need to kind of check some out and see which one you feel like is the right fit for you. Some are virtual, some are in person. I kind of like doing a combination of, of that weekly meetings and then quarterly get togethers. Um, you know, I think those are, those are important and a lot of fun as well.

[00:06:24] Yeah. You'll have to really, uh, if you're thinking about joining a group, you want to really, uh, you know, find out those parameters, right? James just listed a bunch of them to be clear though, on the groups that I run, they're not technical. We don't, we don't talk about any technical issues. So we're not solving those kinds of problems. What we're really.

[00:06:46] Probably focused on mainly is most business owners in this industry do tend to be technical and it's learned the business, uh, you know, as the, as they go.

[00:06:59] Yeah. And so what we're doing is really filling those gaps on the, on the business side and helping each of those business owners reach the goals that they have not here to tell you what sort of business to run, how you should do it exactly. But, um, you know, ways that you can solve the problem that you have today. And we meet, we meet once a month and then we do meet in person once a year.

[00:07:24] Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. And one, one other thing I will say, you know, some peer groups restrict you from joining other ones. I love the idea of multiple peer groups. I love the idea of multiple communities, uh, cause that's how we learn. And many of my members are parts of several other communities. You know, good, good. I, I think we agree on that for sure. Awesome. Okay. Um, so great question. If you've got a question of the week like that, just email it over to James at

[00:07:53] Kernan consulting.com or if you have an opinion on anything Amy and I have talked about, uh, feel free to reach out. We'd love to hear from you. So, Hey, another thing I wanted to bring up, I don't know. It's a new book. Uh, just started reading it, but it was really the hot topic of conversation, uh, at an event I was at just this past week, but the book was called unreasonable hospitality.

[00:08:15] Okay. Okay. Unreasonable hospitality. And it's from a Will Godara and really the concept of the book was, um, in the restaurant industry. Uh, this, you know, successful business owner really focused their energy and training their team and their whole culture was really success by over delivering on services, giving customers more than what they expected.

[00:08:40] That's really the concept of the book, but it really bled through the conference. I was at several people were reading the book as well and talking about, um, you know, the importance of just giving outstanding customer service and training your entire team on being able to deliver that experience. Not just the business owner. We're not just the customer facing employees, but everybody.

[00:09:03] And, uh, I think we can all agree there. There's maybe certain employees in our organization that, that struggle with communicating properly and professionally to our customers. Sometimes they can be rude and come across as being brash and coarse. And you don't want that, uh, cause it, a bad phone call like that could end up in a, uh, end of contract and the customer moving on. So, um, I don't know if you've had a chance to, uh, to, to hear how to look or.

[00:09:32] I have, I have, I have not, but you know, everything you said, um, sounds like it's completely the way that, that I ran my business. Um, you can always teach someone a new technical skill, but a lot of that customer service skill is sort of inherent, you know, and you mentioned restaurants. There's a little, um, very small, uh, it's a little more than a hamburger joint.

[00:09:59] They have a slightly broader menu than they have. It's a small menu. Burgers are their main thing. And there's just something about being in there that is, um, you, you just, you notice the difference in the, in the waitstaff. And you just, it makes you feel more comfortable when you're there. You're feel, you feel like everything's taken care of. Clearly everything is running super smoothly.

[00:10:24] And I looked around one day. I'm like, why is, why are these people so good at, at what they do when in other, so many other restaurants, they just sort of seem to be winging it or they don't have that level of care.

[00:10:37] And I did notice that, um, this particular place tends to hire, um, older people. Like they're probably in their forties and fifties, most of their, their staff. And I was thinking, oh, they've got, they've got a lot of experience at this. And that's what, probably what it is that I'm, that I'm feeling, you know?

[00:10:56] Yeah. What, one, one other thing that came up and it was just during a discussion time about the book and why I wanted to bring this up today is, I don't know, growing up in the industry, I've been part of some bigger organizations. So some MSPs don't have salespeople, but my organizations always did. And I was, I was representing, you know, I was a leader in the company representing everybody, but the book talked about the conflict between the servers in the kitchen.

[00:11:25] Okay. There was always fighting and they used the analogy, like every, every restaurant has infighting between the servers and, and the, uh, in the kitchen. And it reminded me of the infighting of sales and technical people, uh, or sales and operations or sales and help desk, whatever you want to call it. But my whole career, I dealt with that, you know, and it was, it's hard to kind of bring those groups together and make it one big team instead of,

[00:11:55] you know, two separate teams that had different agendas. So they talked a lot about that. And I think there's a huge overlap, not just in the technology industry for us MSPs, but, you know, for other industries as well. So I thought that was, that was kind of a fun, fun point. Yeah. Sounds like a fun book, fun book to read.

[00:12:13] Yeah. Yeah. So check, check that out. Um, so a couple other things I wanted to dive into. So I have to tell you, I'm all smiles as well. I'm actually exhausted for a Monday. I think I'm on cup number three of coffee, but just had so much fun at the last mastermind event.

[00:12:29] There was a, and it was right here in Omaha, Nebraska. So we had 55 attendees. We had, uh, you know, probably 16 different speakers from all around the country, but I, because it was an Omaha, Nebraska and all the fun activities, we went to big Brazilian steakhouse.

[00:12:47] We had a happy hour event Wednesday night, Thursday night. We did a big Brazilian steakhouse as a group. And then Friday night, I actually had a big party at my house, you know, right after the end of the event, every, most everybody made it over to the house and entertained everybody till, uh, wee hours of the morning, I guess, uh, Friday. And I thought you were going to do something with baseball while you, while you were there. Wasn't there a baseball thing going on too?

[00:13:14] There was, yeah. The college world series actually ended up, uh, LSU pulled it out and kind of wrapped it up early. So, uh, we didn't get that opportunity, but there's still lots of other fun things to do. And I'll just say, this was probably the funnest event, uh, that I've seen that we've had in, in all the years of us doing it, but a lot of good, good learning, great speakers. You know, one comment I had from a first timer was that, Hey, all these big events that we go to, you know, from channel con to geek

[00:13:44] con and, you know, right of boom. He said, your lineup of speakers were every bit as good or better than those big events. And he just was really pleasantly surprised. So I was shocked by that because you weren't here, Amy. Yeah, I know. I mean, yeah, I don't know where he, where he's coming from with that. It was clearly a big, a big gaping hole.

[00:14:06] Well, you know, I, I, but I agree on the small events. I always liked the small events so much better because not only did he get a chance to hear them speak, but he got a chance to meet those people. Right. And to, and to, to mingle with them afterwards and, you know, ask those questions that occurred to you later, hear more about, hear more of the story. Yeah. Much more valuable than sitting in a crowd of a thousand people. Yeah. Yeah. All of our, all of our talks are very interactive.

[00:14:32] So in the size of the event makes it comfortable for the introvert to still want to raise their hand and ask questions and, and make it participative. So just, just outstanding event. I'm, I'm, um, I'm still got goosebumps on my neck. So fun, fun time. Our next one, I hope to have you on the lineup of speakers. It's going to be in Tampa, September 25th and 26th. So we'll be, uh, the end of, end of September. Hopefully you'll be back from your, your boat trip by then.

[00:15:02] Well, if I have to. So, Hey, so lots of other things in the news. I wanted to briefly talk about, you know, the Iranian Israel conflict. Um, Amy, you and I talked about this last week and really the key point was, you know, us as MSPs need to be on high alert. You know, what does that mean to us? You know, uh, obviously we're all kind of on standby, hoping and praying that this thing doesn't escalate.

[00:15:28] It, it seems like it's just kind of cooled off, you know, uh, hopefully the peace talks will continue and there will be no further, um, conflict. However, as, um, cybersecurity gurus out in the industry, we really need to be on high alert. So I know you, you saw that article too. What, what, what highlights, um, did you want to kind of point out?

[00:15:50] Yeah. So, so last week we talked about, uh, an alert that came out from CISA about the Iranian guard and their success in, in the cyber world. Um, particularly attacking various types of critical infrastructure. This week, um, the FBI, the NSA, um, another agency of the government, they all came out with another warning.

[00:16:17] It harkens back to that same one, but they did expand it to really all public facing, um, business structure. So, you know, yeah, you know, maybe, maybe the war doesn't look like it's, it's escalating, but, um, people have long memories. And, you know, once you, once you drop a bomb on somebody, they're something you're not going to forget.

[00:16:44] Yeah. So, you know, there may not be an immediate escalation, but there's quite likely to be a long tail cyber repercussions for this. And, um, it's definitely something that as, as MSPs and IT pros that you should be aware of and take a super special look at how you're, how you're guarding your clients and make sure everything is as buttoned up as you think it is.

[00:17:14] Yeah. Yep. Exactly. No, good point. Good point. Also in the news, another, you know, tech, um, tech company, one of my favorites, NVIDIA, uh, what kind of caught my eye on this article was that they were really talking about the opportunity, you know, for you to make a lot of money by buying their stock.

[00:17:34] But the article was really all about highlighting how the stock in five years has risen 1400%. Okay. However, there were some new executives and it seems like a lot of people are cashing out right now. So yeah, the insiders are cashing out. So I don't know if they're just trying to, some of those newer employees are trying to line their park pockets, uh, but look like quite a bit of volume has gone through.

[00:18:00] And normally that's not a good sign of if the insiders are actually selling stock instead of buying it. Uh, that. Yeah. Well, NVIDIA has a lot of competition now. They didn't have that competition five years ago. Now they, well, they have a lot of competition. Like you said, the stock's gone up 1400%. So how much higher can it go? Yeah. Go another 1400%. Probably not. You know, that's kind of a, a once in a lifetime deal. Right.

[00:18:29] So yeah, if you're sitting on a pile of, of that cash and this stock's going to probably go into a normal range rather than a speculative range is maybe what they're thinking. This would be a good time to, to get out.

[00:18:45] Yeah. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Oh, good point. Good point. Um, it's also in the news, uh, look like Canada is scrapping a tax that, uh, prompted, uh, the United States to suspend trade talks between Canada and, in the U S, um, just a few days ago.

[00:19:04] So this is a current event. They actually had a, um, a digital services tax that Canada made billions of dollars on from the U S from U S tech companies specifically, but it looked like they've scrapped that in the spirit of trying to, uh, put together a deal, a trade deal, uh, for both countries, which I think is great.

[00:19:23] And obviously us being, you know, in the tech side, you know, hopefully this is going to benefit us as well. So wanted to make sure we, we talked about that briefly and, and kind of highlighted it for our Canadian listeners. Um, and then there, there was another article too, that when we talk about kind of the shrinking footprint of desktops out there, Amy and I, I think even just last week, we talked about windows and 10 end of life coming up here in October.

[00:19:51] And, you know, use that to maybe communicate to your customers. But this article caught my eye. It was really talking about the significant decline of windows desktops. Um, and I saw the statistic that jumped out to me, Amy was, uh, I think what just three years ago, 1.4 billion Microsoft reported 1.4 billion desktops kind of in corporate America and the United States.

[00:20:16] And, uh, and, uh, and there's been a big decline. Now they're saying it's just, just went under a billion. So kind of a loss of 400 million desktops. Uh, and I wonder if windows 10 end of life is going to continue that trend. You know, it sure feels like it.

[00:20:34] I don't know. I don't know. But the question is, where did they go? Yeah. Right. They, uh, people don't need fewer computers today. So where did, where did they go? And they actually just went to different form factors. Yep. So, you know, instead of, instead of desktops, we have, we have laptops and we have other types of mobile devices. Uh, and you know, that trend has been, trend has been strong.

[00:20:59] And this trend got a big boost with COVID and it hasn't, hasn't reversed itself. It's just kept going. Yeah. So, and you know, I, um, if you're not managing those things, there tend to be often are personally owned businesses are letting much more personally owned devices come in. And I, I talked to MSPs who are like, yeah, we don't allow that. Or, you know, we, we refuse to manage those devices.

[00:21:29] Well, I don't think you can really refuse to do that anymore. You know, that's a part of, part of the network. That's basically saying that we're just going to allow this big gaping hole to exist. Right. Right. Yeah. Because we're just, we're stubborn that way. And you know, we don't own it. We're just going to ignore it and allow all the insecurities that that device poses, just allow those through to the network. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah.

[00:21:54] You have to do endpoint monitoring on, on every device that touches, touches your network. Yeah. Yeah. So that, uh, again, it kind of goes back to something we've talked about is, you know, the traditional managed services of us managing desktops and servers, you know, that market just kind of feels like it's slow and it's become very commoditized and kind of shrinking, but it is a missed opportunity.

[00:22:19] If you're not managing those mobile devices, um, you know, one as, um, you know, technologists, you know, one, we should at, at the bare minimum, help them with their, bring your own devices. To their network policy. And then after they determine yes or no, you know, how are you going to manage that? And then they, they've got a lot of mobile devices, you know, from iPads to surface pros and smartphones.

[00:22:47] You know, I think that's an opportunity for you to include those in your managed service offering, you know, and protect everything. Right. Protect everything. There isn't anything that doesn't need protecting. Right. You know, and this is sort of brings us back around to the peer group thing. Uh, you know, in my peer groups, this is actually the hottest topic for all size industries.

[00:23:09] You know, I, I break up my peer groups into the size of the company. So when you're in my peer groups, you're with businesses, they're your similar size, but regardless of the size right now, the topic is, um, what are we going to, what are we going to do besides the traditional MSP services? Because the traditional MSP services are not selling anymore? Right.

[00:23:32] The nurses are just, they're not as, they're not as interested. Um, and so this is one of those items that you have to bring in if you haven't already. Yeah. You know, the management of AI is a thing you have to bring in if you haven't already more, more training, more, you know, we have to broaden that definition of the, of the MSPs. The traditional MSP is not, is not going to survive in the AI era. Just, just won't.

[00:24:01] Yeah. It's an opportunity for more monthly recurring revenue, right? It is. More revenue, you know, we. Absolutely. Yep. Good. Yeah. I think the future is bright, but the future is not bright if you don't change. Right. You stay stagnant, you'll find a smaller and smaller narcotrary. That's always been true in our industry. Right. I mean, change is what we try by. True. Exactly. Exactly. Uh, so a couple other things real quick. Uh, you, you were,

[00:24:31] kind of sharing, I thought of a kind of funny, but a interesting article that you read on Reddit. Why don't you elaborate on that? There were against AI. Yeah. So Reddit is having a war against AI. They don't want AI posting. They don't want AI helping anybody post, doing any of the writing, doing anything to managing photos, whatever they want.

[00:24:56] No AI presence in Reddit, no AI presence in Reddit whatsoever. And they're spending a lot of money to develop software to detect it and, uh, prevent it from, from being used in Reddit.

[00:25:08] But, uh, from, uh, from open AI and from Google where they have contracts to allow them to train their LLMs on the content in Reddit. So when you post something in Reddit, it means being mined specifically then with permission from Reddit for those, for those LLMs.

[00:25:36] Um, and that's how Reddit's making a lot of their money today. Yeah. So it's important for them that, uh, that, you know, for them to have a good product to sell to those, you know, to open AI and Google that they don't have that AI, AI content. Because this, this may be a little bit bigger picture thing too, right? LLMs need fresh human content.

[00:26:02] And, uh, right now, you know, there was, uh, I think last time there's a, there's a system out there that can scan the entire internet, read the entire internet in 18 minutes. Hmm. Once you've ingested all that, where are you going to get the rest of your information tomorrow? Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah.

[00:26:24] Somebody, somebody has to generate something new and, um, current, the current status of AI is that it doesn't generate new stuff. You know, it, it finds things, it researches things, it puts things together that maybe you didn't think of that way, but it doesn't generate new stuff. It's the human brain that's generating the new stuff. And Reddit wants to make sure that they have a good source of the new stuff to be able to sell to those LLMs. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:54] Interesting. Interesting. All right. Uh, well, I think that's it for the news. Just one other industry update. I just wanted to highlight, we mentioned this last week, but it's going to continue to go. Uh, this promotion is, is actually running for the next couple months. So I wanted to highlight this one more time.

[00:27:11] Carl Polachek had put together a really cool program where he reached out to lots of industry experts and, and asked, uh, for them to put together some kind of promotion on free or heavily discounted offerings. And, uh, just a quick rundown.

[00:27:28] I'm going to, I'm going to drop this in the, in the show notes up on the website, but I want, there's great free stuff available, no strings attached, but things, you know, Carl Polachek is offering, you know, free downloads and discount coupons, uh, for everyone who reaches out. Eric Simpson has got some free downloads, uh, John Risco, Andrew Crawford, Bob Nitro, um, James Kernan.

[00:27:54] That guy has, uh, he's got a help with valuations. Um, Dave Sobel, uh, has some promotions out there. Michael Siggins, Chip Reeves with bigger brains. Um, I love, I love, uh, what he put together. Chip Reeves. We talked about this last week, the, the branded or co-branded, uh, co-pilot course for your clients. Yeah. Free, you know, you could, you could offer that, um, you know, free passes to technology events.

[00:28:24] It's coming up, uh, computer recycling and, uh, you know, discounts or, or free opportunities. Paul green on the marketing side, MSP marketing edge has got some, um, you know, free copies of, of white papers and campaigns. So there's all sorts of really cool, um, offerings here. Um, I don't have time to go through all of them. I'm just going to put the link into the show notes and you guys check them out, but take advantage of those.

[00:28:52] Cause that's, uh, that's a huge offering. That's a huge offering. And depends on where you're at in your business, whether they're applicable to you or not. But I would just say there's pretty much something for everybody there. Mm-hmm. Yep. I agree. So awesome. All right. Well, uh, Amy, any final words of wisdom you want to share with the group before we adjourn?

[00:29:12] You know, I just want to remind the group that, um, you know, at the top of the hour, we talked about the, uh, the cyber, cyber security issues coming out, coming out of Iran. I did talk about that too, in my, my Microsoft 365 newsletter. So if you guys aren't subscribed to that, head over to thirdtier.net, you'll get the little pop-up, you know, that you get on most websites, right? That's how you'll sign up for that newsletter.

[00:29:40] And then if you're interested in the mastermind groups, I actually have only two openings right now. So the first two people to come in, I, I don't expand these bigger than they are. We purposely keep like you, you keep yours to 50. I keep mine to 18. So this is a really, um, you know, limited, intimate, limited opportunity. And, uh, I've got two openings currently.

[00:30:05] So if, uh, you guys are interested in that, you can find the information over there on my website as well. Thirdtier.net. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. And if you're not a subscriber to her newsletter, please sign up. It, uh, it's one of my favorite emails that I get. On a consistent basis. It's great content. It's a great read. So check it out. All right, everybody. Uh, have a great week. Amy and I will see everyone back, uh, next week. And until then, sayonara.

[00:30:36] Thank you for tuning in to the SMB Community Podcast. If you found this interesting or fun, please subscribe, share with your friends and give us a thumbs up on your favorite social media. We would love to hear from you. So reach out anytime on the website at smbcommunitypodcast.com.