Ryan Denning of 1Stream of bvoip

[00:00:02] Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to a January 23rd edition of the MSP Initiative, MSP Talk. It is almost the end of January. We got one more week and the first month of 2025 will be in the books. Some housekeeping, beginning of the year, so I'm not going to go there if you're watching on the video portion of this,

[00:00:28] but MSP Initiative.com, you'll find everything that we do there, including recorded versions of these podcast sessions. Let's go back to 2020. All of our upcoming events, which we're still formalizing some of them, so we'll be talking about them as they become live, including block parties and conferences and stuff like that. But you'll find all of that at MSP Initiative.com, including, and we constantly update this as we get more and more people putting stuff online,

[00:00:57] but an industry-wide calendar of everything that's going on out there. You'll find that in the upper right-hand corner of MSPinitiative.com, and there you go. Once you learn how to spell initiative, put MSP in front of it, add.com, press enter. Ta-da! You will find our page. So, today we bring on for the first time, I'm pretty sure this is his first time on here, Mr. Ryan Denning. How are you doing today, buddy? I'm doing good. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:26] Yeah. Although I kept on saying you're a Houston guy, but really San Antonio. Yeah, San Antonio. Texas is funny, you know. Each city is their own thing. Yeah. Well, cities are a thing, but apparently cities that are now under snow. Yeah. Yeah. It snowed here. I think I brought it back from upstate New York with me. Everything shut down.

[00:01:52] You know, school was canceled. Businesses said, you know, don't come in. Yeah. We don't know how to handle that stuff. Did the electric bill go up 4,000% like last time this happened down there? No. There were no power outages this time, as far as I know. Good. I'm glad to hear that. I'm glad to hear that. Well, as I always do with anyone that's never been on here,

[00:02:16] I love to, like, give people some time to talk about their, you know, journey through, you know, technology land. Like, how did you start and how did you get where you're at now? That way people can, you know, figure out your story before we get into the topics of the day. Oh, man. So, well, back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, I... Is that before or after Fred Flint's dad? No. Yeah. No, I was an MSP, you know, that's how I kind of started.

[00:02:46] I have a security background originally. I worked for MSP here in San Antonio that brought me in to grow their managed service business and to also kind of build a security stack called Computer Solutions here in San Antonio. They're still around. They're doing great. And, yeah, so fast forward, I built the security stack.

[00:03:13] We grew the MSP quite a bit and part of my security stack back in the day, there was this brand new product called Huntress that had just kind of come on the scene. I kind of understood early on how they were approaching, you know, hacking and finding the bad guys and really just love the technology.

[00:03:37] So, long story short, Kyle, Chris and John brought me on to lead their sales in the channel and kind of take them to market, which I did, you know, successfully, obviously. And, yeah, so that's how I kind of ended up on this side of it. You know, another company I was at for quite some time, I led their sales initiative, was Blackpoint Cyber.

[00:04:07] Also, amazing tech. And most recently, kind of went to a different side of things, but helped grow Crew Who, which is Employee Recognition Rewards. And, yeah, so that's kind of my journey. It's been, you know, gosh, 15 years plus. But, you know, just love the channel, love MSPs. You know, that's why we're all here, right?

[00:04:35] It's an amazing community, amazing entrepreneurs, inspiring, you know. And now I'm happy to be a Bevoip. Very happy. So it's a tremendous opportunity. And I'm just loving the things that Bevoip and OneStream can do for an MSP and how easy it is. And getting that word out and showing everybody kind of what that's about.

[00:05:04] It's exciting time. That's awesome. Well, you know, new administration rolled in just three days ago. They announced some outrageous, like it was like $500 billion investment in Project Stargate. I don't know if you watched the show Stargate. I watched it. I was a Stargate guy. I watched all of it. Yeah, even Atlantis, SG-1. I watched it all. So it's funny that they use that as the name of their program.

[00:05:33] But $500 billion into, it seems like the infrastructure to fast forward AI. Along with that, they changed all of the restrictions that were put in place by the last administration. Like, you know, it's just kind of press the gas pedal down from what I understand. So I want to take your opinion as a guy that's been in the sandbox for some time. A lot of shiny new toys come in all the time.

[00:06:01] I've been harping about this because everybody seems to put AI in their domain names now for some reason. Not saying that new tech and bleeding edge isn't there. Like, I think we all drink that Kool-Aid in MSP land for sure. But I've also seen a lot of people buy a lot of stuff and never turn it on or never get to the point where they were confident enough in it to do the job. You know, over the last couple of episodes, we've had multiple ideas around.

[00:06:30] It seems like over time, and you've been in the sandbox this whole time. That's what you just told us. But like, first they tried to outsource the frontline worker to overseas, right? And like, remember you used to call Dell and sometimes that didn't go so well. And then they tried to insource it, right? They brought that back to the shores. You know, not your people, but, you know, domestic, right? Here, at least in the U.S.

[00:06:56] Now it seems they're trying to automate that and just replace it with the computer. Not sure any of that goes well for whatever it's worth. But I would love to hear your opinion on, you know, why is it that nobody's really figured out the answer here? Or maybe the answer is don't take everybody as a customer. I don't know. But why can the MSP not profitably solve the frontline? Man, that's a big question.

[00:07:25] I think there was definitely a time where, you know, there was that bright, new, shiny object. And, you know, I was guilty of that, too, when I ran my MSP. You know, when I was there, we would kind of be like, oh, we got to look at this. We got to look at that. And, yeah, you would get it. And then you wouldn't fully implement it. Or you, you know, you partially implement it, but never kind of use its full functionality.

[00:07:53] And I think in a lot of ways, MSPs have matured away from that kind of model. I don't think they're doing it quite as much as they used to. But as far as, you know, fixing that kind of that frontline problem, it's pretty crazy. Like recently, I dumped a bunch of data in the chat GPT,

[00:08:20] and it basically created a webinar with the information. And it even had like voices. And it sounded like a real webinar. It was kind of freaky, though. Like you could tell it just, it was too polished. And it like came across really well. But the ability to be able to do that and get that webinar out. And the content was wonderful. And it had the voice. I mean, it was crazy.

[00:08:47] I sent that to some of my guys, and they listened to it. And were even like, Ryan, was that AI? I'm like, yeah, it was. So I think, you know, it's definitely useful. And it's got its points. But is it going to be able? I mean, just look at like Amazon now. Like, let's say you need to get support in Amazon. And you go into Amazon, and like you're chatting. And it's definitely an AI bot, you know.

[00:09:16] So I don't know that it's ever going to be good enough to replace a person. Because at some point, you want that human relationship, that human touch. And I don't think you'll ever get rid of it. At least for me. You know, I like talking to people. I'll pick up the phone. I'll, you know, I like that interaction better. Okay. So let me ask you this.

[00:09:44] You know, a couple of times in the last couple of weeks, we've thrown out the concept of a premium lane, right? It's like the Disney fast lane, the easy pass lane up here. And, you know, the tundra land, you know, where you don't want to, you know, you want to go on the, I don't want to stop for tolls lane or, you know, in other parts of the country, it's the carpool lane, right? That kind of thing.

[00:10:07] But bottom line is, you know, would you find, and again, maybe not everybody takes this option, but instead of everybody trying to lower their bottom line, their floor price, what if it's, hey, do you want someone to take your call? Then you need to pay for that. And if you want a good experience, then that's what it's going to take. Because like, I was talking to an end customer not long ago of an MSP.

[00:10:36] And my position to them was, hey, the six figure technologist that works for the people that you're trying to help run your business kind of get bored doing password resets. But if you're willing to pay them for that, and they're happily able to take your money doing it, it may be okay. But here's where the disconnect is, where you're unwilling to pay for it, but you expect that person to answer your call every time. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that's a real thing.

[00:11:05] People, they expect the world, but they don't always want to pay for it. And status is a thing. I mean, that's look at what the airlines do, you know? You've got, I mean, it's funny. The plane still gets to the place at the same time, whether you're in the front of the plane or the back of the plane, you're still going to get there. Now, there's difference in like service. And I understand that. I get that piece.

[00:11:31] But if you just take like the status lanes, for example, right? You get TSA, you got TSA pre-check, you got clear, you got like the normal line. I've seen people stand in the TSA pre like clear line because they pay for it, even though it's longer than like the normal line where there's nobody standing in that line. But they'll stand in the one that they paid for because of the status thing. So I think that's kind of funny and interesting.

[00:12:00] I just go in whatever lane is the shortest lane. I'm with you. Yeah, that's a thing, right? So maybe you set up something like a status for your MSP. I don't know if that would work or not, but it'd be like, oh, I'm gold with my provider. So I can talk to a human on the phone. I'm silver. So I have to use the AI bot. And then, you know, bronze, it's just like, yeah, a phone tree.

[00:12:28] Press three, press two, press one. And never get anywhere. Yeah. I get to that. Your call is being disconnected. I'll say this. Yeah, your TSA analogy might be different for me. But yeah, I get what you're saying there. Airplane, if it gets there, you know, if the plane actually leaves, yeah, you'll get there at the same time as everyone else, right? It'll be interesting to see. Like, I'm not even jumping so far into the future, right?

[00:12:58] Not going Star Trek on you, Star Wars, right? Stargate. How about like just three years from now? I think that a lot of people who play in this realm could get burned. That's just, I mean, listen, it could absolutely be a home run, but it could also crush your relationship and your perception versus customer expectation, you know, kind of balancing act.

[00:13:24] You know, like I think one of the reasons, and maybe your opinion is different. You'll tell me that the MSP business is largely regionalized is because once you try and nationalize that you lose the relationship part, right? Yeah. I mean, there's definitely a regional thing. You know, we were talking about Texas cities earlier, but I'll tell you, having lived in Texas

[00:13:51] and done business here a long time, you know, for a company that was based in Dallas, right? They like to do business with Dallas. Dallas does. And Houston likes to do business with Houston and San Antonio and Austin. We kind of trade back and forth. We're real close. But yeah, it's definitely like that. And I think you can do that and you can manage it pretty well.

[00:14:17] But as you start to go too far out, you know, you lose kind of that relationship, like you were saying, that kind of that local touch, right? Different customs, different cultures, all of that thing starts to play in. And yeah, you can try and cast a wide net. But yeah, at the end of the day, I think people want that, you know, interaction.

[00:14:44] Like you said earlier, that the Dell analogy, like that didn't work for very long and they had to switch it. So yeah, they might try this for a little while and then come to realize like, hey, that service delivery experience, that customer journey, you know, you're sacrificing a little bit on that side of things to, you know, do it cheaper, do it automated. So you kind of got to juggle that.

[00:15:11] But I think still in the end, people like to have that relationship with people. Oh, I agree. Did you hear, I think this past week, Verizon announced they were like adding a per line increase to a lot of their plans. And you go on all the forums, you know, it's funny. It's not just MSP land that has the discords and the reddits and the Facebooks and all this, whatever. So does everybody else. And I just happened to pop in there.

[00:15:38] And I was like, oh, ah, it's not going so good in here. But, you know, Verizon's like, hey, we're the big dog. We're at the top. This is what it is. If you don't like it, go somewhere else. I guess when you're, when you're, when you're the guy at the top of the food chain, you can play that game. Right. But I feel like a lot of MSPs feel like, you know, there's five MSPs trying to steal their one customer from out from underneath them. I don't know if that's true, but the perception is that that's good. Yeah.

[00:16:08] I mean, plus you get locked into those contracts with those guys. So Verizon knows like, hey, you can't go anywhere. I gotcha for a couple more years until you pay off your device or you got this, you know? Um, so yeah, I mean, I think, um, you see all these new commercials for like, uh, mobile phone companies now, like you've never heard of before popping up. Like if you watch football, there was one like last week.

[00:16:38] I'm like, who, who is that? I've never even heard of those guys before, but it's like $20 a line. Bring any phone you want. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's interesting. Um, I, in my opinion, you know, I think that, you know, you can, you can run a profitable MSP and you can pay your people. Well, if you're willing to force a standard, and when I say standard, this is Matt Lee security

[00:17:07] standard, although that's a thing. This is like, Hey, I want to sell you a premium service. And if you want to buy a premium service, I can do that for you. Otherwise I'm good. You know, there's a lot of other people out there that'll take your money and do less. The problem is for some reason, people view, view lawyers and doctors and architects and accountants differently than it specialists. And they'll pay a premium for those people, but not these people.

[00:17:35] And I, I never understood that disconnect. Yeah. You know, uh, and I'm sure you've had to go through this too, George. It's like, um, you know, you're having those QBR meetings or you're meeting with your customer and they're like, uh, Hey, I only opened three tickets, uh, you know, last month. Like I'm paying you a lot of money. Uh, and you have to have that weird, uncomfortable conversation where you're just like, yeah, because I worked out.

[00:18:05] You optimized it's working. You had no downtime. That's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. It sucks. And you know, it's funny where, um, the customer in the end is the one that pays a lot of money when they switch service providers. Right. Cause they got to go through, everybody's using something different, constantly reinstalling different versions of the same thing. And then if they don't like it, they do it all over again. And by the time it's done, it's like, you spent a lot of money moving around to get what it's like, no, no offense to the people.

[00:18:35] Like, you know, I usually don't lease cars, right? I'm a buy car guy, but if you buy a car and then sell it before, you know, you're, you know, you thought you were going to, you get really not, it's not good financially. Oh no, it's not. Uh, yeah. I mean, um, it drops in value the moment you drive it off the lot, like instantly. Um, for sure. So like, you know, if you, if you, if you bought a car and you thought you were going to, you know, pay it off over five years on a loan and two years in, you're like, I hate

[00:19:05] this car. I want another car. It's not good for you. Like it ends up being upside down. So same with service providers. It's expensive to move your ERP system, right? So if you're using Salesforce, you want to move the HubSpot. That's expensive move. You want to move from one MSP to another MSP. That's an expensive move. You want to move from one electronic health record to another electronic health record. That's an expensive mood.

[00:19:30] So why do MSPs move PSA so often and RMMs and security tools? Like what's the deal? Yeah. I think that there's pain there. Right. And it's like the pain of the, you know, moving is not as painful as staying. And so they go, all right, we're going to go through this. I recently was insurance shopping.

[00:19:55] So I have three kids, wife, an RV and a motorcycle. And so anyways, needless to say, they're all on my insurance. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. All right. So, but yeah, they, there's a lot of insurance. So I was actually looking and shopping this recently just to see like, you know, you want to do that. Everyone's more like, Hey, am I paying too much for this? Um, and I, I was looking at moving my insurance.

[00:20:24] Um, that ended up being not worth like, it's, it's tough. It's hard to switch, right? You've got all the premiums and the payments that you have to down pay to like make the move. And then you've got to make sure all the policies switch over. It's like a process. Like it's not easy to do. Yeah. But I feel like MSPs, maybe not the mature ones, but the guys who are less than the guy,

[00:20:52] the big boats that can't move very fast, you know, like new to new toy. Like I was, I just talked to somebody literally yesterday in Orlando. Yeah. It's like, Oh, I'm on my, you know, I've tried this vendor, this vendor, this vendor, this vendor. I was like, so when do you stop moving? Like just your time to move over and over. Like what didn't you like five vendors deep that you're still looking at? Yeah. So, I mean, so I'm curious, right.

[00:21:22] You know, there, there is a little bit of a, I don't know if you saw the Jay McBain and Canalis, you know, like the connect wise moved down in the chart for PSA, RMM, Kaseya, Datto moved up, right. They took the top spot. And then they kind of showed the rest of the guys in the list, you know, there's Ninja and Halo and all these other guys. So there definitely is a shift happening right now, right. You know, on those like core found, I call them foundational products, right. PSA, RMM documentation, that kind of thing.

[00:21:52] From products that have been in their categories for a decade, at least, you know, maybe more. Um, so like now you have all of that data, right. That doesn't necessarily move in between these systems. Now keep in mind, this is the MSPs backend system. It's not necessarily customer facing, maybe the portal changes that the customer has to interact with or whatever, but like, like them, you know, the customer, you know, customer, the customer, the MSP is not really in the middle of this. It's the MSPs internal movement here.

[00:22:23] Um, I think part of the problem is I've run into a lot of people who they back to the comment I made earlier. They bought a tool at a trade show. They never actually fully implemented it. And we're already moving to another vendor. So like, what's up? Yeah. I mean, well, um, first thing that pops in my mind is like Halo, you know, um, major shifts from, you know, the traditional kind of, uh, we're connect wise.

[00:22:53] Oh, we're, you know, um, cause say it in there. They're like, no, no, we're, we're moving to Halo. Um, so, you know, it goes to show you, like you can, uh, you can definitely, um, have somebody new come on the scene and, and make big enough splash or big enough noise to, to get people to shift over. Um, but yeah, I mean, that's funny.

[00:23:20] That just sounds very, uh, MSP, right? We didn't fully implement it, but we're moving to another tool. Right. I mean, it just seems, it seems silly to me, but I totally, you know, listen, is it good advertising? Is it good marketing? Is it just word of mouth? Is it influencers? What, what, what, what forces that? Is it all of it? What, what do you see?

[00:23:53] Did I, did I freeze or did, uh, did Ryan freeze there? Looks like we lost you there for a second. All right. I'm back. I'm back. Yeah. So last thing I said was, so what moves that needle? Is it influencers? Is it, uh, really good marketing? Is it people just getting paid to move? Is it, is it, uh, you know, the, the Xbox controller that they send you into me? What, what, what gets these people moving?

[00:24:23] I think it's a combination of, uh, all of those things at some level, right? It's not always just one. There's always like the, the, the new shiny object, um, the slick marketing, the, you know, the fancy, uh, you know, uh, I don't know, giveaways, doodads kind of attract people over there. Right. Um, but there's also gotta be a need, you know?

[00:24:51] Um, so there's, it's probably a little of all of those things I would say. Okay. What, what, you know, so now I'm going to flip over to the other side. So you've been an MSP, you've sold to MSPs. What's the best marketing promotion that you can remember? The best marketing promotion. So, you know, um, one that I've always really liked, and it's actually not from the channel,

[00:25:21] but I always like admired the marketing quite a bit. I thought it was kind of really slick. Um, have you ever heard of Dr. Squatch? No, I don't think so. All right. So it's soap. It's just, it's soap for dudes. It's like man soap. Um, and they, they have other things, but their ads and like, they did these like really funny kind of tongue in cheek. I call it kind of like guerrilla marketing videos.

[00:25:49] Um, I thought, I mean that it just worked really well. Um, it got my attention and a lot of other people that I know that were like, oh, have you seen this? Um, it works really well. And so, uh, if you get a sec, you can YouTube the old like Dr. Squatch commercials. They're really funny. Uh, but they had a really cool marketing. Um, and I thought that they stood, I mean, now they sell it at a Walmart target.

[00:26:17] Like you can get the Squatch stuff everywhere now. Um, but, uh, they, they kind of came on and, and had a, Hey, we're going to get in front of you. We're going to show you in a different way. And I thought it worked really well. They didn't get, they weren't on Shark Tank, right? I don't think they went on Shark Tank. No. Wow. Okay. They, so they, they, they, they, they, they gorilla marketed their way to the shelf. Yeah.

[00:26:42] It was a little bit like, um, sarcastic-y kind of like, you know, um, not traditional kind of in your face might've upset a couple of people potentially, but, uh, um, you know, uh, it was really clever what they did. Um, so in recent years, I'm like, yeah, you know, kind of step outside that and, you know, be a little, uh, you know, different with your marketing to stand out.

[00:27:11] Cause it's really easy to market the way everyone else does, you know? Um, but if you could do it clever and it's effective, right. At the end of the day, you've got to have the results from it. Um, but, uh, like I said, I was impressed with that, how they kind of came on and, you know, I mean, you're talking about soap. It's like a thing that's been around forever, right? How, how is your soap better than other soaps or how do you get people to look at that? Right. Um, they did a good job.

[00:27:40] Whoever they got to do their marketing was kind of genius in my opinion. That's interesting. Sarcastic marketing. I could work. I could work. Uh, yeah, I, you know, what's your, uh, what's your opinion on the, uh, I mean, I always thought some of the most creative commercials are the fast food commercials. You know, like I'm, I'm, I'm a Chick-fil-A guy. I think a lot of people know that about me, you know, eat more chicken and it's the cow, right? Yeah. Yeah. Those are good. Or the, or the, uh, the Burger King King. He's scary.

[00:28:10] Uh, there's just something wrong with that guy. The Burger King King. I'm, I don't, you don't see him so much anymore. And I think that's a good thing. That was just like, uh, he is kind of weird, man. What about Ronald McDonald? He was around for a while and he's the Hamburglar and all that. Hamburglar. Man. I haven't thought of those in so long since I was like a kid, but you know, when a kid, you knew all the characters, right? Well, not just that. If you were talking about kid stuff, I mean, the cereal, I mean, I feel like I don't see

[00:28:39] them as much anymore, but the cereal commercials are good. Well, yeah. They used to have Saturday morning cartoons, right? So you would be sitting there and they would get you with all of those. You just don't see that as much anymore, but. Yeah. It's a, yeah. I remember, I remember fruit loops and, you know, kicks or, uh, what was it? Um, lucky charms. Yeah. Yeah. Lucky charms. Right. Captain crunch. Yeah. And then what about the jingle? Does the jingle still work? I think the jingle works.

[00:29:09] Hmm. Yeah. As much as I hate, uh, the Burger King jingle, like when you watch football on Sundays and stuff and they get that, that it's like, it's not even good, but it's like, it sticks. That guy's doing pretty good. I think in the bank account. Yeah. That was the Burger King jingle. Uh, what about mascots? Is that a thing that works in MSP land?

[00:29:36] Like I see tigers and foxes and, you know, cheetahs. And well, you remember in the older days, I'm aging myself here a little bit, but remember the lab tech robot? Oh yeah. I still have lab tech robots. He always go out there and like break dance and like, you know, I think that worked. Okay. So, so you're down with the mascot. I think if it's done, uh, well the, like, um, like the cyber Fox, right.

[00:30:06] He walks around, you know, everyone's like, Oh, there's the Fox. But it felt like everybody went with the, with the, uh, the animal mascot. Like I remember the connect booster rooster. Did you, did you catch that one? No, I missed that one. You missed it. Yeah. I was like, okay. All right. I was like, it was, I think, I think it was like a short stint, two year run. Yeah. Back in the day, there was a dealing cat mascot named hubby.

[00:30:34] It was a hub and it was like a stuffed hub with a face on it. And he will walk around and pass out shots of Patron. It was pretty funny. Wow. It's an expensive mascot. That worked. Well, if that, I mean, we, we don't need a mascot. We already got a guy that can do that. Yeah. Uh, all right. So you're down with the mascot. All right. So you said, so, so a lot of guys has the owls, right? Remember they brought the owls? I remember the owl.

[00:31:03] I mean, you know, listen, the NFL teams all seem to have a mascot. Uh, you know, Mr. You know, we got an, we got an Eagle mascot over here called two. What's the Eagles name? Swoop. Swoop. Cause he flies around the playoff. They had him like flying around there. That was an actual Eagle though. Yeah. I thought that was like a, they have a guy in like a cartoon version of that. I mean, don't get me wrong. You have to admit from an opening, you know, you know, TV view, you got the, the, the, the

[00:31:32] flag that's, you know, the entire field. And then you got the Eagle flag. It's pretty good view, you know, from a cinematic standpoint. Um, I'm going to pivot real quick. So did you know? So Jason Kelsey, I think everybody knows who he is. He's the other brother of the non Taylor Swift variety, but I digress. Um, we love him here in Philadelphia. The rest of you can have Travis, even we know who Jen follows. It's fine.

[00:31:56] Um, he does, he's doing this late night ESPN show for the playoffs. And so he did like a price is right thing. Do you want to guess what the cost is of the flag that, you know, the one that, you know, the whole that covers the entire field, like take a guess how much that costs. Oh my gosh, man. I wouldn't even know where to start. Uh, what? Uh, 10 grand. Yeah.

[00:32:26] Try again. More more. I mean, it's a whole football field. It's a whole football field, man. Maybe 25, 30. Nope. So higher. Jeez. Yeah. All right. A hundred 45,000. Okay. Okay. It's a pretty expensive flag. Yeah. That's an expensive flag. And they got a bunch of them. Right.

[00:32:54] So he, so he did the rest of this segment. It was like a price is right segment. He's like, well, how much is one of those blocking sleds and how much are the goalposts? And like, it was actually kind of comical. Cause I, you never think about these things. You just expect that they're there. And I'm like, next time some college football team lets all the fans on the field, they knock down the goalposts. You know how much it costs to replace it? Yeah. Just saying. So we're still pretty early here in 2025. I always give everybody a chance to make some predictions.

[00:33:24] You know, like what do you think happens this year in MSP land? You know, they don't have to be bold. Some people have declined. Our buddy Kenny P is like, I don't make predictions. I was like, okay, I can. It's all good. We just drive on the bus. See where it gets us. But any bold predictions, prognostications for MSP land in 2025? Man, I would keep my eye on connect wise. I think there's something, something's going to happen there.

[00:33:54] Okay. Like a sale, a merger. They've got to make a move. They're going to do something. Okay. All right. It gives us a category. It's not very, it's not very clear, but it gives us a category. It's like a psychic, right? I'm going to keep it really general. So that I can be right. Whatever happens. Okay. Something is going to happen. All right. We're going to write that one down. We'll circle back and see how, what happens there.

[00:34:24] Any other predictions? No, I'll leave it at, at that one. Okay. All right. I have a feeling like, you know, one stream's probably going to just blow up this year, but you know, I'm biased. I hear you. I hear you. I hear you. The B-Boy one stream. Yes. Not a lot of competition for that one out there.

[00:34:53] What I asked our, our, our friend, Brookley, who's now over at Lion Guard. I said, what's your opinion of the bundling wars, right? Like, you know, everybody's now done this super skew that includes all of these things. You may or may not need it in order to kind of office 365, all of the products that you need to run your MSP.

[00:35:18] Obviously the Kaseya, Datto, Autotask, and the other 30 plus companies all roll up into one. And then you got ConnectWise, you know, trying to do something similar right here. Then you have vendors that are working together to create a super bundle like Halo Ninja came out with a super bundle that included, you know, Sentinel One and a bunch of other things. How do you think that all, you know, like, does that make a, a fundamental change in the sandbox and how things go?

[00:35:47] Man, that's a good question, George. I feel like, you know, there's a lot, there's, there's a lot of points just around that, right? You've got some that are bundling together because you can develop it yourself. It takes time. There's the, you know, the tech debt there. You've got to clean it up. You might get it halfway and not a hundred percent. So, well, do I build it or do I buy it?

[00:36:14] Or do I partner with somebody that kind of completes what I'm trying to do and we can partner and there's not a lot of overlap there, right? So it makes sense to, you know, partner up to get the bundle versus trying to build the bundle yourself. Then you've got the other side to that, which is, hey, I bundled everything with this one company, but now I got all my eggs in one basket. That's not always a great thing either because if they screw up or get it wrong, it's going

[00:36:43] to affect a lot of things, right? So there's a lot to it, you know? And then at the end of the day, why bundle? Well, it usually has to do with, hey, it's more affordable if I bundle it this way. It's cheaper. You know, it might not be as good as if I one-offed everything, which that has its downsides to sometimes as well. So there's a lot there.

[00:37:12] But hold on before you even complete your thought. So you have the bundling wars over here. So you have like, I own it all in the middle. I partnered to create a bundle. But all the way over on the left side is I'm the marketplace. I got everybody that you care about kind of thing in here. You just buy what you like. Amazon edition. So like, you know, it's almost like you almost have to decide what your business model is.

[00:37:41] You know, it's starting to get to that point now. Yeah, I agree. So from an MSP standpoint, you know, let's say you, you know, and that's where this is where I came from. I came from the, I picked the products that I liked in each category, best in class, that from my opinion, that I could afford or that I thought my customers were willing to pay for. So I want more of the, whether I bought it from a marketplace or I just sourced it from individual vendors, I pieced this whole thing together.

[00:38:11] To now I'm going to dump them all. I'm going to go to a sole vendor who theoretically should be able to provide me better support. But I also put all my eggs in one basket. Is this, this is no different than Microsoft, right? It's like, Hey, if I go to the highest possible skew in Microsoft, I could maybe eliminate all of my vendors, just keep everything in Microsoft land. But like now there's all, you know, something, you know, now it's all in one boat.

[00:38:39] The boat sinks and a boat sinks. Well, like, yeah. And I'll just pick on the security guys for a second. Cause I, you know, I was one for a long time. Even back to like, I'll just take like the next gen firewall days, like checkpoint Palo Alto, you know, Fortinet. They were trying to basically take your security stack and build it all into one, right? We can do it all.

[00:39:08] You know, just making fun of Fortinet for a minute. Cause they called it Forta everything, right? They even had Forta phones for a while. Um, you know, but you still, you put all your eggs in one basket. So if they screw up and especially from a security standpoint, I mean, you're kind of screwed because all your defenses are under that one in that one basket. So, you know, that's when I would say, Hey, I get it.

[00:39:36] You could be cheaper by putting it all over here, but you're also kind of, uh, weakening your defenses, like spread it around a little bit at least. Um, so bundle boards, you know, at the end of the day, it's cost savings. It's ease of doing business, but you kind of can't walk away from that. Hey, all my eggs are in that one basket and, uh, my risk. I think, you know, you've got to spread that risk out a little bit. Okay. That's fair. That's fair.

[00:40:06] So tell us a little bit more about what's going on now in your new gig, right? So, you know, I know communications is an interesting topic. Most MSPs, I'd say like 50, 50, right? Stay away from it. It's not our business. Like we, we do computers, not, not text, not phone, not messaging. Not, you know, and then you got to, you know, big chunk of the rest of the people were like, eh, I'll sign up as a partner of a big company.

[00:40:34] Let's just call it zoom teams, phone ring central. You know, whatever I can get from them, call it mailbox money, but hopefully I just point somebody in the direction they buy and I don't have to be in the middle of it. Although I don't think that ever actually happens. Uh, if you recommend something, you're always in the middle of it, whether you like it or not, especially if it's your customer, but I digress. But the PSAs and the RMMs and the ecosystems products never concentrated on communications either, right?

[00:41:02] Like from their stack standpoint, Hey, listen, it's not the only category they never checkboxed either, right? There's a lot of other areas that, I mean, hell half the vendors in the room plug things that the big companies never built out themselves. Right. But they never, they never dealt, you know, rarely handled communications from the MSPs point of view either because, you know, a button that clicks the dials is not new. I mean, my outlook from 1999 could do that.

[00:41:31] So what, why has this, you know, why has this category been neglected for so long in MSP land? Man, um, you know, they, I think part of it is, um, they kind of stay in their lane and they don't, you know, I mean, what, what we're actually talking about. Well, I got it. All right. There's two things.

[00:41:57] One, it goes back to kind of what we were talking about before I feel like, which is, um, you know, uh, the, the customer experience, right? Having the, you know, good customer experience. Right. And if you think about it, a lot of that is communication, right? You have to have excellent communication. You have to be able to, uh, be communicated to easily by your customer. Right.

[00:42:26] Um, and so you've got kind of that side of things, and then you've also got, um, the ease of doing that, right? It's not just about the phones anymore. It's about how that integrates in with all of my other stuff. Um, and so, yeah, you can start out just making the phone dial and, or ring, you know, but at the end of the day, um, the ease of that and making, and the end of the day, it

[00:42:54] translates to that customer experience. Right. Uh, if I'm like an MSP and, uh, you know, someone calls in, but I can have the ticket automatically pop up and I can have it talk to all my other systems. And, you know, I can easily allow, uh, my guys to verify that they're actually talking to the person that they're saying that it says they are right. Um, I mean, we talked about AI too.

[00:43:23] I mean, I know you've heard the stories about the AI voices, uh, you know, and all of that. I read in the news recent, well, it's not so recent now, but like USAA, um, for example, one of their employees got called by a guy who was not an employee of USAA claiming to be the help desk and gave them keys to the kingdom, you know, at least from, uh, from that aspect, cause they couldn't validate that. Right.

[00:43:52] So just having all of that in one place, having it all easily accessible and, and automated and, you know, you're bringing all these, uh, different things, but you're, you're bringing them together in a way that makes sense. Um, that makes it easy. Um, you know, that's communications. Hmm. So we're actually talking about two separate things. We're talking about here.

[00:44:17] You're talking about, Hey, the MSPs experience, you know, the tools that they use to run their business. What is their day-to-day look like? What is the customer experience they're delivering to their end customer? A little bit different from, Hey, I just need to phone the rent. Yeah. So from your aspect and listen, Salesforce didn't have an answer.

[00:44:41] You know, like a lot of these bigger companies outside of MSP land also kind of didn't pay attention to the communications category for some time. Has it just been a slow to find our sandbox? I don't, I don't understand why it took so long to get here. Yeah. I mean, I feel like, um, it's one of those things that maybe we take for granted because we've had phones for so long, but, um, they're not going away. I mean, we all carry them with us everywhere we go.

[00:45:11] Uh, we're constantly connected. Uh, you know, um, the fact that it all talks to each other, it makes that easier. I feel like, yes, you make the phone ring. Yes. You could have somebody just pick up the phone and do it all manually. But if you could become operationally excellent, you could make that be really easy. And, and I'm talking about internally for an MSP. If you make your life easier, right.

[00:45:38] That's going to translate to the customer experience, um, as well. Okay. That's fair. Um, but then what happens when your customer raises their hand and says, I just need to phone the ring. I've heard a lot of MSPs try team's phone and zoom phone. And I think ring central just had a major outage yesterday. It's only January 23rd. So like why are MSPs on the other side of the conversation, either a,

[00:46:07] A, not doing it or B, leaving the money on the table because there's, you know, you know, they don't find it as a, a, a legitimate profitable service to deliver or, or maybe it's just, they don't want to do with it because they don't think it's IT. They don't think it's technology, right. They just think it's something else. Yeah, that's definitely part of it. You know, I think there is some, uh, you know, in the short time that I've been over here,

[00:46:36] what I've noticed is, um, it is very profitable. There are MSPs making a ton of money, uh, reselling phones. And I think part of that too is, you know, it's been around for a long time. Are there innovations there? I know we have innovations there. Uh, but, uh, again, it's kind of old school and, you know, chasing the shiny object. What's the shiny object been for the last, I don't know, eight years, right?

[00:47:06] It's security. Um, so AI is probably displaced. Now it's a, uh, yeah, but, uh, you know, yeah, it's, it's kind of shifted focus, right? I mean, if you can get breached, um, and it's going to affect your business and your clients' businesses, right. That gets a lot more attention. Um, so I think that shift has kind of been in there, but, uh, it's, it's an interesting, uh, interesting thing.

[00:47:37] Yeah. Anytime I've ever seen the, you know, surveys that, you know, a lot of the publications put them out on a regular, right? Like, what are you using for this category, that category, what vendors, this, that, and the other, when it comes to this category, it looks like a thousand slices in the pie chart. Like, I don't even think Microsoft Teams phone or Zoom phone or, or, you know, has double digit percentages, to be honest. And, and what MSPs are, are using in this category.

[00:48:06] Um, you know, it's, it's very curious. I would say if you're, if you're running an MSP business and you haven't standardized on an ERP, we, we will call them PSA in our industry, but a tool to run a business operating system to run your business, probably not doing it at a volume. Right. But you made this investment in tools to run your business. I think the trade show circuit for a long time has been, well, we integrate into that tool and that's, what's gotten a lot of people swiping those credit cards.

[00:48:36] Right. Um, yep. It's curious though, that, um, you know, some of these tools get complicated and back to, they get half implemented, you know, how, how much effort needs to happen in order to connect all these dots though. Right. Isn't that a concern? Yeah. I, I feel like some, uh, some vendors get that better than others, right. Where the connecting of your tool into the other tools is a big heavy lift.

[00:49:04] And then you've got kind of the opposite side of that, where it's like, oh, just drop that API key in here and, you know, boom, it works. Um, so you've got kind of both sides of that, but I feel like, um, the, the MSPs that I've spoken to recently that, that get it right. I mean, the, the phones, it makes them sticky and their customers, um, and it's all kind of connected.

[00:49:31] Um, you can bring it all in together and, and make it a part of it. But I was, uh, surprised a little bit, I gotta say from just how much money is, can be had just on the phone side of things. And I think people take it for granted or kind of, it's not, um, not in forefront of their thoughts, but it's an area I feel like, uh, could definitely use more attention. Interesting. All right.

[00:50:00] Well, so I think the key, the key thing that you're putting out there seems to be integrated communications. Yeah. Integrated communications. Absolutely. That will translate over to a positive customer experience. So when I say, you know, if you're already on something like ConnectWise or Autotask, or I think you said Halo earlier, or what are the other ones in there? Synchro.

[00:50:28] Think of MSP tools that people are using today. Autotask. Am I missing any other big ones? I, it sounds like those on your list. Yeah. I mean, those are on the list. Absolutely. Okay. Cool. Well, that's interesting. So if somebody wanted to find more information out about that, where would they go? Um, as from. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:50:55] Just to get more information, figure out, you know, what you guys are cooking up over there. Talk to somebody. Oh, absolutely. They should. Yeah, absolutely. Go to, you can go to bevoip.com. Um, you know, you can reach anybody. I, you know, feel free to reach out to me directly as well. Uh, would, uh, would love to, uh, speak to you guys and just show you, uh, kind of how easy it is. Um, and how helpful.

[00:51:26] Awesome. So for the people that listen to this in audio format, it's Ryan, not anything crazy there. You know, normal spelling and then last name D E N N I N G. So I'm sure you'll find them pretty easily out there in social media world and all the various feeds. Uh, any predictions for the upcoming NFC AFC championship games this weekend? Oh man, there we're down to the last four, right?

[00:51:53] Um, personally, I would love to see the bills kind of, um, take the chiefs out. I feel like the chiefs have the referees on their payroll and Taylor Swift up in the booth. Oh, well, my favorite thing to do is, uh, you know, it's a drinking game. Every time they show Tay-Tay on TV, you take a shot. Uh, last week, last weekend, it would have been seven shots in case anyone. Jen wants to know, um, spread out the first half.

[00:52:22] They didn't show her as much, but that second half, man, it was like all the time. Uh, I would just like, I wonder if Jen plays that game. Yeah. Um, and I think, uh, I think the Eagles are going to take out the, uh, commanders. Jen says she doesn't watch. I'm surprised yet. Ah, the highlights. Swift. Oh, the highlights on Tik TOK. There it is. Oh, that's right.

[00:52:48] We totally whiffed on the fact that they, they shut Tik TOK down for 12 hours and brought it back. That's right. Uh, all right. So you got the Eagles and the bills in the Superbowl. Yeah. Bourbon street. Watch out. That's two fan bases that are rowdy. That for sure. Let's hope that they can dig all the snow out of bourbon street so that there is somewhere to be rowdy. Yeah. Yeah. That was crazy. Those pictures of new Orleans under snow.

[00:53:18] Like it's a swamp. I mean, how does that even happen? It snows in the swamp. I mean, it's there. I don't know where it's going, but it definitely made the ground. All right, guys, Ryan, thanks for joining us. This session was recorded. We park it in the same place. We parked the rest of them at MSP initiative.com under sessions, be on YouTube and our pod catcher. So, you know, consume on whatever platform fits you best.

[00:53:42] Sounds like you should check out be void.com or check out Ryan online and connect with him on, on whatever platform you can find him on and circle back with us as we do these every week at MSP initiative.com. Thank you very much, Ryan. Catch you on the next one. Thanks for having me. All right, guys. See ya. Bye guys.