Listen to the podcast
Read Transcript
Erick and Rich discuss the easily overlooked opportunity for MSPs in AI prep work like implementing infrastructure and how MSPs can prepare themselves operationally to meet rising end user demand for AI services and solutions. Then they’re joined by Dave Sobel of The Business of Tech podcast to discuss his recent acquisition of an MSP community and education resource, and what it says about the current and future needs of smaller MSPs at a time when larger ones are commanding more attention. And finally, one last thing: How deepfake monkeys conquered St. Louis.
Discussed in this episode:
Ingram Micro’s Crawl, Walk, Run Strategy for Partner AI
Omdia: Data centre, AI services and cloud marketplaces to drive partner growth in 2026
MSP Radio Acquires Small Biz Thoughts and IT Service Provider University
A Welcome Investment in the Spirit of MSP Community
Monkeys are on the loose in St. Louis and AI is complicating efforts to capture them
Some guests on this podcast are clients of Channel Mastered. Compensation plays no part in their appearance or the content of the discussion unless the episode they appear on is a “bonus episode” explicitly labeled as sponsored.
Transcript:
Rich: [00:00:00] And 3, 2, 1. Blastoff, ladies and gentlemen, welcome from another episode of the MSP Chat podcast. Your weekly visit with two talking heads, talking with you. About the services, strategies, and success tips you need, make it big in managed services. My name is Rich Freeman. I’m chief analyst at Channel Master at the organization responsible for this show.
I am joined this week as I am every week virtually this time instead of in person by your other host. He’s our CEO and chief strategist at Channel Master. His name is Erick Simpson. Erick, how you doing?
Erick: I’m doing great, rich, and we’re off to a rollicking 2026, aren’t we? It’s already the middle of January as we record this, and it feels like we never slowed down.
I can’t, it [00:01:00] feels we didn’t even get a break over the holidays because things are popping.
Rich: It I will disagree partly with that. I got a great break and it felt like a breakthrough, but man, alive, you’re absolutely right. Did we hit the ground running? In 2026? The first working Monday of the year, I’m flying out to California and we were doing meetings last week and and in fact I spent a day at the headquarters of Ingram Micro, which is where our story of the week is inspired.
Erick: Oh, wow. Let us don’t keep us in suspense, rich. Let’s dive right in.
Rich: Yeah. Let me set this up a little bit by quoting some statistics here. So here are some it industry numbers for 2026 from Omnia. The industry as a whole, all sectors, all technology categories.
They’re projecting 10.2% growth in 2026, which is actually a. Pretty good number up a little bit from what you would typically expect to see. That’s the industry overall infrastructure. Within that, they’re projecting [00:02:00] 29.2% growth. In 2026. I’m looking at worldwide it spending forecast numbers from Gartner for 2026.
And they are projecting 19% year over year growth in data center systems. The only category of technology that they track within IT that even comes close is software. They’re projecting 15.2% growth for software, but far and away the big number for IT growth big category, growth category, according to Gartner, is going to be data center systems.
And the, what this sets up for us a little bit here, Erick, is the theme that came out of conversations. I met with a whole bunch of very senior leaders, Ingram Micro, at their headquarters last week on my way back home after our meeting. I thank everybody for their time for that. We came at this from a bunch of different angles, but the common theme basically is specifically within ai.
As Ingram Micro looks ahead to 2026, what they are really gonna be focused on helping their partners [00:03:00] with is what I in a a post on my blog channel holic called the Less Than Glamorous, blocking and Tackling of Building an AI business. Which includes infrastructure. There, there’s there, there’s work you’ve gotta do upfront.
And I liken this to a crawl, walk, run kind of process. We’re past the crawl now. Crawl is last year and the year before. This is folks in our audience figuring out what this AI stuff is, experimenting with it internally, beginning to roll out certainly copilot, but solutions as well. Maybe they’re just getting started.
They’re not quite ready to run though. Because there are all sorts of issues that a lot of the companies out there need to get behind them before they can run. Infrastructure is one of those. And that can be your own infrastructure or it could really just be cloud-based infrastructure from one of the hyperscalers.
As we all know, AI workloads have some very specific requirements around compute and storage and [00:04:00] networking. You can’t just take an AI workload, dump it into a hyperscale or environment and expect it to run optimally. You have to create what the Ingram folks like to call appropriate landing zones for that lift and shift process.
There are talent gaps that businesses need to fill that they can’t necessarily do quickly or easily on their own. There are financing issues sometimes where creating an AI infrastructure. Rolling out an AI solution to a customer requires some upfront spending. You’re gonna need some financing assistance with that.
They’re thinking about all this kind of stuff at Ingram right now. That’s really where they’re focused in 2026, is helping their partners address all of this prep work. This blocking and tackling that you’ve gotta done. Gotta do before you can really. Build momentum around delivering AI services and solutions to your customers.
And I would just encourage the folks in our audience to think along similar lines, not just in terms of taking [00:05:00] advantage of services like this from Ingram Micro or TD Synex, whoever it is that you do most of your distributor business with. But in terms of preparing your customers.
To run with ai. There is a lot of work around, that as we know around security and governance and aggregating data and cleaning data, there are infrastructure requirements. Sometimes. There’s training, there’s a lot of unglamorous blocking and tackling prep work that you need, your customers need to do, you need to do with them and for them, all of which.
Per the numbers I quoted you at the beginning here, they will all make, those are growth areas. In the business right now, I was focusing on infrastructure specifically, but all of this stuff is an opportunity for you to make money. It’s also I think, a good place to concentrate your attention in 2026, just like Ingram Micro is doing.
Erick: I what a turnaround, rich from a hardware and infrastructure sales. Decline year over [00:06:00] year. It’s almost like hashtag AI saves, hardware and infrastructure. 29% forecasted growth. I’ll bet you it, it’s probably higher than that at the end of the day because this data center push, everything, AI is propping up the economy right now.
If you think about the investments that are being made, you think about the numbers, and then you think about this, what are they calling it? The the growth without hiring trend that’s going on because folks are leveraging ai. I’m thinking about this, flood, that people are saying, oh AI is, gonna replace me.
I think I’m feeling more like it’s just slowing down new hiring because people are reinvesting in their existing staff. So it’s a different dynamic than what people were so fearful of. Boy, oh boy. If you’re a reseller today and an MSP, that yearns for the days of your, where you could make, some decent margins, selling infrastructure and gear and hardware and upgrades and it’s gonna be a happy 2026 [00:07:00] for those folks, it sounds like rich.
Rich: Just to add a little bit of a color to something that you just said there about is AI replacing people are layoffs happening? Because of that, if you look at some of the larger technology companies and there is some of that it, you can’t necessarily point your finger at ai, but we are seeing some of the.
Companies, the Microsoft Scale companies, not maybe needing certain roles as much as they did before, but investing heavily in new AI related roles. I’ll say I talk to MSPs a lot. Obviously as do you and I will often ask, has AI displaced, if you’re using AI to do all or a lot of your level one work, for example, are you.
Getting rid of those. I have yet to talk to anyone who has said this has allowed me to shrink my workforce to get rid of people who I no longer need. Everybody is taking advantage of the bandwidth. AI freeze up to reassign those people. And then you’re exactly right. The other thing I hear a bunch.
Is I’m [00:08:00] maybe not hiring as fast as I would have before because I no longer need to, but the good news, at least within MSPs is this AI so far is not from what I can make out costing anyone their job.
Erick: And the other aspect that I’m seeing is some of these roles that are being being filled, come with a very.
Healthy compensation package. If you are, if you really are skilling up to, to prepare yourself for a role in ai. I don’t have stats and figures, rich, that’s your gig. But from the folks that I’m talking to, from the things that I’m sensing, from what I’m seeing out there and folks that you know are, friends of mine that are saying, oh my goodness, yeah, we saw these job postings that.
Are advertising this role within AI in some form or fashion, and some serious comp is being doled out in some of those key positions.
Rich: Yeah. Yeah, I absolutely. And yeah, it would be [00:09:00] interesting to know, and maybe it’s a question I can ask the CEO of, ConnectWise or Kaseya companies that need to make and are making like serious r and d investments around ai.
Just to get in the ballpark of what are those people cost you and and where does that money come from? Interesting point. Erick, as long as we are talking about prep work. And blocking and tackling. We didn’t plan this folks, but it turns out your tip of the week is along similar lines.
Erick: Adjacent thanks Rich. Yeah. And this is another episode of what is the most noteworthy thing that is impacting MSPs in the channel right now? I’m not gonna say that AI is the most noteworthy thing, which, but boy oh boy. Like you say, you and I talk to a lot of MSPs and we work with a lot.
Of folks in the channel that are really focusing on how to skill up, how to take advantage, how to strategize on leveraging AI to help their businesses and by extension [00:10:00] their end customers businesses. So we know that AI is already reshaping operations for MSPs because the vendors that the MSPs rely on are integrating ai.
Thoughtfully into their products and services. We’re seeing, improvements being made in the PSA solutions, in the security solutions. My goodness in just about every aspect of and RMM solutions the opportunity for MSPs to take advantage and do what we just talked about is to integrate AI in a manner that allows them to get the most out of their staff.
So that they can become more efficient and more profitable and drive more company equity to the bottom line. That means that, they’ll be better positioned at a time of exit have they not taken these steps. Just three quick tips. The first one obviously is the one that we hear all the time, right?
Is like that. Eat your own caviar thing. So if you’re thinking about helping your clients with ai, the easy opportunities could [00:11:00] be some copilot. Training some data some data addressing to prepare the data for ai, some governance, some security, pulling through those cybersecurity services, using AI as the carrot for reticent clients that just, aren’t feeling that their data is valuable enough for them to protect.
Go figure. The easy low hanging fruit opportunities are the things, like I talked about Rich, that some of these vendors are already doing for MSPs is helping them in the service desk and kind of that service desk triage, that ticket classification documentation, maybe even some self-healing. A little bit of, I will say, we talk about AI Rich, we say, oh, we’ve seen the chat bot era.
We’ve seen the agent era coming, and then there’s more coming, right? So every opportunity here. Or MSPs to take advantage of these solutions that are being already integrated into the platforms that they’re using. I would be signing up every one of my [00:12:00] technicians and other resources that can leverage these new enhancements to the training and getting them skilled up and trained up so that we can scale more efficiently, deliver more consistent.
Service and outcomes to our clients and make it easier for us to measure performance and profitability when you know, because we’ve got this additional data. We talked on another show earlier, rich, about the value of the data that MSPs have about their customers. That gives them really deep insights into how to adapt their value proposition to be more of a business intelligence, more of a VC A IO.
Type of opportunity that they can, charge for on a recurring basis. So you’ve got your recurring, you’ve got your strategic business meetings, you’re gonna have your AI focused meetings as well, just like security focused meetings and build more value, strategic value, like being much more valuable to the business businesses that you [00:13:00] serve.
Meaning you might not have to serve as many businesses, right? So when we talk about the A, b, C kind of segmentation of our customer base. We wanna, transition out more of those CDNF customers over time as we move forward we’re earning more str if we’re delivering more strategic value to our a and b clients, that means that we can expand broader and earn more revenue from those folks that are in growth from a better, that are looking for the business outcomes that you can deliver Now, as is VC a IO rather than some of the technology outcomes that you were delivering as just their MSP or their IT provider.
Build a framework. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but build a framework that you can go to your customers with that you also adopt for governing AI and securing ai. Take that to your customers. Again, consuming your own caviar and then sharing it out with your clients so that you can justify these other strategic cybersecurity services and the time it takes for you to deliver these strategic meetings as their [00:14:00] V-C-A-I-O.
And then partner with vetted AI vendors rather than building from scratch. We always talk about Rich. You can either buy it or build it. Right now we know some MSPs Rich that are building their own services and solutions, and these are folks that are ahead of the curve. They’re, they see the opportunity, they’re taking advantage, they’re shifting strategically to become an AI first organization.
But for the majority of the MSPs that are not there yet. Consume and deploy some of these solutions until you get a sense or how to take that now to the next level. And if you decide you wanna build something for clients and you wanna build some agents and things like that, rich, you tell a story about, vibe, coding over the holidays and building stuff on your own.
Heck, have at it. But be mindful of keeping your eye on the store. What’s happening in the MSP practice? Don’t squirrel off and get, down into some rabbit holes like MSPs like me used to do. Stay critically focused on profitability, [00:15:00] performance, customer satisfaction, and then add to these services that you’re already delivering your core services to take those conversations from the server room to the boardroom, like I like to say.
Rich: A couple of thoughts there. F first of all as you talk about about this a little bit, it reminds me of a a conversation we had on the show here last year with art Gross of Breach Secure now, who has written a book about AI for MSPs and. How to embrace it, how to roll it out.
And one of the points that he makes that I think is really correct and effective basically is one of the early things you wanna do is build a culture of AI adoption and experimentation into the business where it becomes. Maybe not something people are commanded to do, but an expectation that everybody is doing this and and you create internal institutions or mechanisms for people to share information, share knowledge discuss roadblocks.
Maybe they’re running into it. I wish I could [00:16:00] remember who it was, but I was talking with the head of a fairly large MSP within the past few days. He was talking about at his company. Everybody is required to spend the, not a huge, but a certain amount of time every week working around ai.
There are meetings where people get together and they share what’s going on. They’ve embedded it within the culture. The other thing I’ll say, you were talking about don’t, go down the rabbit hole. Don’t don’t be the squirrel looking for the. Keep an eye on the business.
Don’t let this become a huge distraction. I totally agree with that. I will say and this is something I’m gonna be writing about in Channel Hallock coming up pretty soon. If you are thinking at any time, in the next few years about an exit and you might want to sell to a larger MSP or one of these private equity roll-ups and so on.
Those companies are very much looking at your AI maturity now. They care about ebitda, they care about your MRR percentage. They care a lot about your ai maturity as well. And like you said, you will [00:17:00] sell for more the more mature you don’t wanna spend 50% of your time focused on this thing, but 10%, 50, don’t set this to the side because you’re too focused on today to be thinking about tomorrow from a longer term perspective.
It’s important to be, build this into the culture and to run with this.
Erick: Yeah, and I think the last thing that I’ll add is a, afterthought is, we need to evolve from this MSP. Moniker this category and, PAX eight is promoting their managed intelligence provider kind of vision for their partners, right?
So the more AI first, you are again leveraging AI judiciously to deliver bottom line improvement. That’s what we’re talking about here. That’s what these folks that are looking to invest in and roll up and acquire. MSPs are really. Adding additional multiples and value to it, but it’s much more strategic to be an AI [00:18:00] first service provider than it is being, MSP.
So think of kind of this, and I don’t wanna paint this picture too harshly, but, var to reseller, to MSP to manage intelligence provider. Maybe there’s a pathway up there. It says, we now are delivering these business outcomes because of the intelligence that we provide for our clients to help them grow and expand their business and do the same thing that we do.
Oh, and of course, by the way, we manage all of the infrastructure and the cybersecurity and the services and things like that. I’m looking, I’m expecting, I’ll say Rich, to see more MSPs as they become more mature in this new arena of AI to begin shedding. Some of the MSP stuff, just like MSSP said I don’t wanna roll any more trucks anymore.
I don’t wanna deal with service desk. I’m just gonna focus on cybersecurity. So what do you think?
Rich: Yeah. No I think that’s spot on. And a quick little [00:19:00] way to maybe wrap that or summarize that is if I am a larger MSP in the market for smaller MSPs, I’m looking to make an acquisition and I’m choosing between an MSP and an MIPA managed intelligence provider.
There’s no question which one I, which deal I would rather make, and which company I would be willing to pay more for just because of the long-term durable value, the upside, the profit margin available, et cetera. Yeah, no, I think that’s spot on. And with that, we are gonna take a quick break when we come back.
Um, Erick and I will be joined by Dave Sobel. He is among other things as he’ll explain the host of the Business of Tech podcast, one of our favorites. Here at MSP Chat, he has also made an acquisition of his own recently. Ordinarily you would think, okay, good for Dave. But why are we talking about it on the show?
As you’ll see, we think this deal, actually, it has some interesting points to make shed some interesting [00:20:00] light on where we are in managed services right now. When there are these very big companies in existence getting bigger, when the vast majority of MSPs are not super big, what is it? That those smaller MSPs need right now.
How has the rise of the bigger ones changed the landscape? How could somebody like Dave Sobel make an impact there? Stick around folks. We’re gonna be right back and he’s gonna tell you for himself.
And welcome back to part two of this episode of the MSP Chat podcast, our spotlight interview segment where we are very pleased to be joined by one of the principal party. A very interesting transaction announcement in the MSP space, especially to old timers, uh, like Erick and myself, who have, known this gentleman and the person that he has partnered with now for a very long time.
This is not a [00:21:00] coincidence. The reason we have him here actually is because of that history and legacy in the channel and what this deal says about where we are in the MFP world right now and what MSPs need. His name is Dave Sobel. You might know him from the Business of Tech podcast. I hope you do.
It’s a great show. Dave, welcome.
Dave: Oh, thanks guys. Really excited to be here and chat about what we’re up to.
Rich: So ordinarily when we do an interview like this, I will breeze past the introductions at the beginning. I’ll just ask whoever our interview guest is, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
And then we’ll move on to the meat of of what we’re gonna be talking about. But in your case, who you are and what you do and who you arranged an acquisition with, that is the meat of the subject. So let’s get started. Specifically with you. Tell folks a little bit about yourself, about MSP Radio, about some of your history in the channel before MSP Radio.
Dave: Sure. So I am, I’m Dave Sobel. I own and operate MSP Radio, which is a company that now, as of [00:22:00] January 1st, owns three brands. Our flagship podcast is The Business of Tech. It’s a news commentary website. We do daily analysis of the IT services space. And frame it in the question, why do we care? We now own two other properties, the small biz.
Thoughts Community, which is an operator focused, community driven collaboration platform where operators can get together and talk about the best stuff going on and how they build business together. And we own and operate IT. Service Provider University, which is a training platform. For providers to hone their skills, take classes from other experts in the industry to provide educational content.
So that’s the three brands of MSP radio. I’ve been doing MSP radio about six years now, like going into my seventh. It’s been that long. I launched in 2019 with the basic idea of Hey, I think I can do something interesting in this new media space. Podcasting, YouTubing. And I like to think I was a really early mover on that [00:23:00] medium for MSPs and IT service providers because it had come from my two previous lives.
I like many owned and operated, a managed service provider. Mine was from oh two through going into 2012, and I always describe it as a moderately successful regional MSP. And the reason I describe it that way is I’m super proud of what I did, but. I don’t think owning and operating one makes you like the expert in everything.
And I did one I’m very proud of it it, was a finalist for Microsoft’s partner of the year in small business specialists. Won a bunch of awards. I was a Microsoft MVPA trainer, like all this other stuff. But when I had the opportunity to sell that business, I knew I wanted to learn more.
I spent another eight years on the vendor side. I ran community and partner engagement and training and marketing for an RMM provider called Level Platforms for almost two years, and then GFI Logic now for three. We were acquired by SolarWinds for another three years post [00:24:00] that. So it’s like a big, meaty career of MSP vendor and now analyst.
Rich: So for folks in, in the audience who aren’t clear you now, in addition to business of tech and MSP Radio, you’ve got small biz thoughts and IT service provider university within the family of brands and products that you offer. The deal that we’re talking about here involves you acquiring those brands from Carl Pal, Chuck.
So talk a little bit, for the three people in our audience who don’t know Carl and know about him very well. Talk a little bit about where those brands come from, who Carl is. ’cause what’s really interesting here is, two people who have been in this world for a long time, coming together in this way.
Dave: Carl’s the one of the OGs, right? So Carl was early mover on managed services, doing managed services before it was called managed services, and Carl is a prolific author and trainer. Like even writing during running his managed services business, he started [00:25:00] writing books. He ran, he had the opportunity to sell his business, but then leaned into, I wanna write books, I want to continue to teach people.
And if he told the story, it’s almost, he stumbled into his writing and education stuff, created these brands and these communities and this training opportunity as offshoots of the stuff he loved doing, which is the teaching and the writing. And he realized that he is wait a second.
I have these businesses on top of the stuff that I love doing, which is the writing. Small Biz Thoughts of course, started as his blog. He written Managed Services a Month, cloud Services in a month. He’s written SB agreements for, s and b consultant agreements. There’s a book around that.
He’s got four SOP books. He’s got 14 different books that I’m, I still have to realize that I have to memorize all the titles. So he’s got all these great resources that he’s done over his career and, he keeps continuing to train. He wants to write more. And what he doesn’t want to do is run operations [00:26:00] on community and publishing and all of that kind of stuff.
He doesn’t wanna do operations anymore.
Erick: Yeah. And we’ll get into the reasons why you decided to make this deal together later. But Dave, explain to folks what you and Carl officially announced on New Year’s Day and how this thing rolls out.
Dave: So what we announced on January 1st was that MSP radio purchased from Carl Small, the Small Biz Thoughts community, all of the resources around that and IT service provider university.
That includes, 14 new Carls books, 1500 training videos, 35 classes more handouts than you could possibly imagine. And the community operations themselves, so like the communities and the training and the platforms, all of that. Stuff now owned and operated by MSP Radio. Carl’s involved still.
He is he is founder and still involved to, as a [00:27:00] strategic advisor with MSP Radio and that way gives him the opportunity to spend some time on the next two books he wants to write. Which, we’re anticipating will be part of the small biz thoughts community going forward, but it’s those assets of Carl’s that he’s built over his career that are now, under the stewardship of MSP radio.
Rich: So MSP Radio business of Tech, these are news media small Biz Thoughts is a community and and a newsletter. It Service provider University is an educational resource. Talk a little bit about, you already talked a little about the opportunity for Carl in terms of how he wants to spend his time.
What’s the opportunity for you and what opportunity did you see for the MSP channel and combining that particular set of assets, which on the face of it don’t, intuitively go together.
Dave: So from when I looked at it, for me very much this, I always describe this as this is chocolate and marshmallow.
Like the two things separately are [00:28:00] awesome but you combine them together and you can make s’mores. And and I really looked at and I said these are way more complimentary than you think they are. So business or tech is all about news analysis. This the kinds of insights you need at an operational level daily to keep up with your business and make sure you’re making good decisions.
When you wanna work with others on that, you need a space for that. And that’s what small business thoughts is a community of peers coming together to talk about the way to do business together. And that’s that space. And then there are also times where you want to learn from the best in the business and take.
S classes on particular topics. That’s it. Service Provider university. And from my perspective, they actually are very complimentary in that they can feed one another. Business of tech can provide insights and analysis and news that is useful within the context of the small biz thoughts community. So one of the [00:29:00] things we’re in the process of doing right now is bringing all of business of techs.
Advanced vendor analysis data and channel research and all of our additional premium content is going right into the community so that those members of small biz thoughts get access to not only the incredible library that Carl’s built, but now the growing library of news and analysis.
And we’re working with some of these great instructors in IT Service Variety University, to continue to develop great new classes, and by the way, continue to offer the great classes that we have now on demand anytime you want them. So I look and say this is a really great opportunity to bring all the pieces together and let them work together, and then also to continue to grow a space for this kind of collaboration.
Erick: So Dave what you’re building the way I look at it is and guide me here, but it’s the long tail for smaller MSPs, you’re bringing more of [00:30:00] this news and analysis to help them mature. So is that part of a long-term strategy? And if you had your druthers. What would you like to deliver to a member of the existing community today?
What would you like to see them achieve as a result of this acquisition and your stewardship and growth of it?
Dave: Yeah, I push back a little bit on the long tail. I actually say this is the actual core of m the MSP community. Service leadership data will tell you 81% of the market does less than $10 million in revenue, and 67% of it does less than $5 million in revenue.
I love those are small businesses, those are generally owner operator or a team of operators working together, running a classic small business. I think we can deliver incredible value for those, for that community. And I do think that what we continue to do is just for those people.
One of the things that’s really valuable is the ability to deliver [00:31:00] independent analysis. I’m all for, this entire space growing as much as it can, but I think everybody does need to dig into the financial incentives of all the people that are working within it. And so I think you, for me, I wanna build a space that is all about owner operators.
Working in a space of other owner operators that can do that. And by the way, I’m one too. I’m clearly, an owner operator. So it allows us all to come together with very clear, aligned financial incentives and do all of that kind of stuff. I love doing the news and analysis because I can come with that really.
Crisp, independent perspective that you know what you’re getting. You know exactly how I make money off of the entire endeavor, and I want to continue to deliver that across the community and the training offerings as well.
Rich: It’s interesting. On the last week’s episode of the show, Erick and I spoke about some of the inherent, the sort of built in advantages that larger MSPs, [00:32:00] these MSP rollups being funded by private equity out there, enjoy in terms of the.
The volume and depth of data they can use in conjunction with ai, the financial resources, the in-house development sophistication. There’s an implied thesis in what you’re building here, Dave, in, in terms of what that 81% of the market out there that doesn’t fit into the the larger MSP category, what they need to remain competitive against those.
Disadvantages going forward and how you and MSP radio and IT service provider university small the business you are constructing goes to or underscores the stuff that’s gonna keep those 81% of MSPs competitive.
Dave: Yeah, that’s basically the idea. And again, that’s. The majority, right?
If you just, if you start smiling, you go. It’s fun. It’s great fun to talk about the PE back guys and the venture stuff and like I love it doing the analysis there and [00:33:00] we can learn a ton from what they’re doing, but that’s not most people. And that’s okay, right? That it’s totally okay. And in most spaces, this is very true.
We can replicate this in accounting, we can see this in construction. We can see this in, law firms. There is, there’s a lot of diversity of the different kinds. We have really big law firms and we have mid-market law firms, and we have boutique law firms. I see it services falling out much the same way.
And that’s we want is the health of everyone and we want to have spaces where we can have conversations that are inclusive of all the different pieces of that where we can learn from one another. And I tend to fall back on this idea of, I think small business owners do like to work together and collaborate on problems.
We’re a little bit of the unsung heroes of the economy in general, and I. I will always put my money where my mouth is, and I think this is a great space to continue to invest in.
Erick: I love that Dave, and, [00:34:00] you and I, we go way, way back and we are both, just participants and leaders and partic, and just love the MSP community.
It’s something that you know is near and dear to our hearts. It’s why we do what we do. All the way back, 20 years ago, we were thinking about ways to collaborate together. You and I worked together early on all these years. Do you feel today that MSP communities, there’s a lot more now than, when we were running our MSP practices and things like that, do you think they are more relevant now, not only to the members of the community, but also to the vendors that wanna reach those communities? If so, how do you see vendors adapting their approach to be more MSP friendly and building trust by engaging in these communities? And I’m not talking about the folks that are in there just spamming and things, but how have you seen that evolve from both a member of the community [00:35:00] perspective as well as the vendors that really understand it, the way MSP do MSPs do?
Dave: Yeah.
Erick: And. How that affects their success.
Dave: So it’s funny that you frame it that way, Kara. ’cause I think I would frame it a little bit differently. What I think has happened is that the core values of community have always have been pretty consistent and continue to deliver. But what’s also happened is as a lot of people have, see, have seen that and tried to replicate it, and there are lots of different versions of it out there.
That’s really healthy. One of the things when I set out to launch MSP radio was is I said, I what I didn’t need was J just another community. You’ll know. When I initially launched the podcast, was, the idea was I created resources that I thought would be useful for MSPs in general, and my hope was that they would take those in and start doing something with it and actually will point out that there was actually a flaw in my initial.
Spot. You actually do need to create some space around your own [00:36:00] content, that helps have that communication. And so for me, what I’m doing here was I actually went back to my basic premise of I don’t wanna build another one. That doesn’t mean that I can’t take one that exists and go deep with it and make it, continue to thrive and go in really great directions.
And so for me that was the focus on Small Biz Thoughts community was the, this is a great community. It’s one of the OG ones. So why not take one of the great ones and just continue to do with it? And I’ll smile and go like everyone else has got their own little flavor of it. I’m not gonna spend a bunch of time worrying about how vendors can do, that’s not my problem.
My problem is actually to focus on solution providers. IT services companies, MSPs, and what can I deliver for them that is better and I expect them to be members of lots of different communities. Like the same way that in life you’re members of lots of different communities, right? You’re not only in the MSP community, you live in your local community.
You’re probably aligned with a sports franchise and have a community [00:37:00] there. You may have local. You’re gonna be involved in lots of different communities. I want participation in small biz thoughts to be one of the best resources that you have.
Rich: Dave, the, the news item here involves an acquisition.
Acquisitions are a frequent topic of conversation in the world of managed services right now. Typically when an acquisition happens, though these days, more often than not an acquisition of an MSP, obviously private equity is involved in that deal. When you published the press release announcing this deal with Carl, and when we spoke about it subsequently.
You made a real point of emphasizing there isn’t a nickel of private equity involved in this deal. Talk a little bit about how the deal comes together from a financing perspective. Why it felt important to you to emphasize there was no PE involved and the lesson that the folks in our audience can learn from that.
Dave: Yeah I always say the classics are classics for a reason. The idea of [00:38:00] building a business plan and executing against that is a core business principle for a reason because it works, right? And banks are very used to the idea of growing a business through investment or acquisition. This is a very classic model.
You can do it by the way. The small Business Association has an entire process for helping in the us investing in growth of companies. What the other thing is if you look at what I’ve really str. Focused on building is, I’m really transparent about the ethics and the direction and the way financial incentives drive my business.
I’ve got a published ethics statement that we remind everyone in every single episode of the Business of Tech. You can understand my stock holdings and where I’m investing in those kinds of things because I think it’s important if I’m gonna analyze. The moves in the space that you understand my financial incentives.
And frankly, I wanted to keep them very clean. I [00:39:00] have a, I’m afforded a very great amount of freedom by being self-funded. The, again, I always quip like the one person I have to make happy is my wife, right? I have to make sure, and our business in Endeavor, my business endeavor is a solid well run business because that.
Know enables my life. That doesn’t mean I don’t wanna grow, it doesn’t mean I wanna do all those, I wanna do all of those things. I went with a classic model of this, of going to the bank and asking for a loan to do a, to do an expansion, because I wanted to maintain all of those elements and it allows me to continue to invest in the same way Carl was investing, because he was also, privately held and self, and self-funded. So for me to make all of these components work and grow the way that I wanted to keep those financial incentives super clear. And thus, I also wanted to be transparent about it. I lay it all out. If I have all these ideas of transparency in the ethics of way I execute, I want listeners, I want community members and the larger MSP community to know [00:40:00] this is how I did the deal.
Erick: Yeah. David sounds like you’re, maintaining your independence in terms of your voice and your directionality is key to your strategy. So we’re at, we’re here in January 20, 26. Fast forward us to January, 2027. Yep. And share with us a couple of things that reflect success for you in this new endeavor.
It’s work. It’s more work and more guidance management, leadership. Give us what success looks like to you. A couple of nuggets that as you reflect back in January, 2027 on the previous year.
Dave: So one of the key elements for me for success is I want the people in the small business thoughts community to go, this is great.
This the stewardship of MSP radio and what David’s doing has kept all of the things that we love about this community and we get extra stuff. [00:41:00] I’ll start that with a, my whole plan is really about, like I, Carl did a great job. It’s a great community and I want it to continue to be a great community and I want people to go, Dave’s brought more cool stuff to what we’re already doing.
I wanna, I think we already offer some really great classes in it, service provider university. I’ve got ideas on the way that we might look at additional classes and new topics. I also am looking at some additional we had a very a very well executed five week. Course plan. I think there’s opportunities to do different formats there.
Perhaps some more on demand, a little bit shorter, some seminar work. I think we can do some interesting pieces to that. I don’t mind saying I would like to continue to expand what I’m doing on the business of taxability to cover more stories in the space. I’m very proud of the work I did on researching the lawsuit between Datto and slide.
If those resources, by the way, everyone, this is an interesting space for media. Those require resources and if you believe in that kind of work, [00:42:00] I think joining the community is one of the great ways of making sure that work continues. So you ask about a year out. I don’t know.
There’s some court dates I’m keeping an eye on and I want us to look back and go, we did some really great coverage of what happened in the MSP space, but by the way, that we then also had some great space to talk about it and understand how to operationalize the insights from that news and analysis into people’s businesses.
So a year out for me, it looks wow, we’re doing some really cool stuff in terms of this community and the broader community going, I really wanna be part of that. It’s, you can join several communities, you can be part of a lot of different things, but I wanna be part of that one ’cause they’re doing some really interesting, insightful stuff and I get a lot of value out of my membership.
Rich: And I just wanna underscore something about what you were just saying there. ’cause there are going to be people in the audience here who are longtime members of the small business thoughts community, still waking up to the fact that there’s a change of ownership there [00:43:00] and wondering what that’s gonna mean.
And you really just now made a point of emphasizing. Nothing you like is going away. Like even Carl is still gonna be around, maybe not a, he’s not gonna be maybe as omnipresent as he was before, but he’s not going away. Whatever you liked about small B thoughts, you’re gonna continue to get, but now over time, you’re gonna, you’re gonna get more on top of that.
So there, there’s no and nothing to fear here around disruption of change.
Dave: And I’ll say specifically like my first quarter, I’m just doing a lot of listening. I’m spending a lot of time talking to the community members, understanding what really works, making sure that I don’t know all of the components, that we don’t change a thing to start.
Now, Carl himself would always say, he was always experimenting with new ideas. He try something out, test something out in the community, they breakouts that change around different formats that change around. I look forward to doing all of that experimentation but I’m also taking a lesson from my dad who always, when he did woodworking, would always tell me Dave.
You measure [00:44:00] twice, you cut once, and I’m spending a lot of time right now just measuring because I wanna understand like what are all the, what’s the magic, what are the bits that work really well so that we make sure that is the core value people are continuing to get.
Rich: Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us on the show, Dave, for for people who are maybe new to MSP Radio, new to small biz thoughts, et cetera first of all, where should they go to learn more about these various parts of the MSP radio family now, and then where do they go?
Maybe to just get in touch with you or learn more about you?
Dave: I am ubiquitous. I’m easy to find. So I’ll start with the flagship. You can visit business of.tech. That is the news and commentary, all of the pieces there. If you’re interested in what we’re doing with the small biz thoughts, go to small biz thoughts.com.
You’ll get all of the resources there. The last to be updated is the MSP radio website itself. As we bring in the new brands on board there, MSP radio.com, I’m easy to find. I’m very active on [00:45:00] LinkedIn. I know you guys can include the, in the show notes. I’m just Dave Sobel there, so I’m easy to find.
I’m practicing. My email address is [email protected]. I’m super easy to communicate with and I really do love hearing from people. By the way, if you’ve got information and stuff you wanna pass on, add business of tech. We have an entire page for submitting tips, adding question, all my context of you’ve got anonymous stuff you want to pass on, or if you want to reach out in a more secure manner for some of the stuff we’re covering, that’s all available there.
Rich: Okay. Alright we’ll include that information in the show notes. Once again, Dave, always a pleasure talking with you. We thank you in a busy time as your business grows for making some time to join us here on the show.
Dave: I’m, thanks for having me. Talking to the community really is the number one priority, so I’m really excited to continue those conversations.
Thanks for having me guys.
Rich: So folks, Erick and I are gonna take a quick break here right now. When we come back on the other side, we’re gonna share a few thoughts about the conversation we just had with Dave Swell and the business that he is building. Right now. We’re gonna have a little fun wrap up the [00:46:00] show, stick around.
We’re gonna be right back.
And welcome back to part three of this episode of the MSP Chat podcast. And one last thank you to Dave Sobel, who obviously is at a busy moment in his life right now. We thank him for making a little time to talk about this this very interesting deal and what’s behind it, his thoughts about it.
Lots of different ways we could probably fall onto that conversation. Erick, I’ll, I’ll just a few quick things that kind of come to mind. One is community and the concept of community and the benefits of community for MSPs. Were pretty much baked into the culture of managed services from the get go, and this very much continues.
To be the case. I, this week as we’re recording this, within, 24, 48 hours of recording the conversation with Dave SherWeb rolled out a cybersecurity community for its partners. [00:47:00] Pia reassigned, one of its C-level executives. He’s now, I think the chief community officer for, so we’re seeing these big companies just this week.
Investing in the concept of community because it continues to be something that’s very beneficial to MSPs and that they very much want, and vendors that wanna have a good relationship with their partners understand that. That said there, there’s plenty of benefit to communities from vendors.
But you know what Dave I think rightly understands is that there is also a need, an appetite for an independent source of insight and education and support of the kind of community can provide that’s been true before it continues to be true. It’s good to see somebody out there. Trying to play that role.
’cause there aren’t a lot of candidates for that role right now. And so Dave combining his media work now with some of Carl’s assets into something bigger, I think it, it sets him up to, to play that much needed role. The [00:48:00] last thing I’ll say and this came up when I interviewed him about this deal, actually before the holidays I wrote something about it.
After it became public information right at the beginning of the year, but we spoke about it right in December, and he made a point of saying, I have nothing against these big MSPs and the rollups, and private, God bless ’em. I hope they’re all successful. It’s just that. 81%, like he said, of the MSPs out there aren’t big MSPs and they have needs that are not maybe getting the kind of attention that they need and that they used to get before.
And somebody needs to pay attention to them as well.
Erick: Like you say Rich he, hats off to him for, he and Carl for carrying the torch. Moving forward here, I remember when there were no communities. I remember when, MSP University was the only place that folks could come and get that very deliberate independent help to build [00:49:00] their organizations.
We were not affiliated with any vendors. Yes, we sponsored bootcamps, but when a vendor. Came on, they agreed that they will not be pitching anything from the states. They had to educate and train the attendees in their session. Of course, they could engage with the folks, out in the exhibit hall and things like that, we were very adamant about that.
And so it’s really great that it’s sad too that there are only so few of us now today that still maintain that, that independence that says, Hey. We are here first for the MSPs. We are here first for the partners. And, that’s the type of philosophy that we carry through today at Channel Mastered and MSP mastered.
It’s gotta be good for the partners first because if it’s not, then no matter what you’re trying to engage them with, whether you’re a vendor, whether you’re a consultant or a coach or something like that, it’s just not gonna help anybody. Like I said, I’m really glad to see. [00:50:00] This next phase of Dave’s and Carl’s businesses and, ideology and methodology being much more powerful together, right?
It’s two plus two equals 10. So it’s exciting to see.
Rich: Go get ’em, Dave. We’ll be we’ll be rooting for you here on the sidelines. And folks, that leaves us with time for just one last thing, and we’ve spoken at some length just on this episode about the many ways you can use ai.
Here’s one that I would not necessarily have anticipated but probably should have. Turns out that on the city of St. Louis there are apparently vervet monkeys on the loose. They were spotted Thursday. That would be last week. As we’re recording this, uh, Erick, near apart in the northern part of the city, of course, authorities are trying to hunt down these rumors, find the monkeys.
No one. There is no zoo that’s missing. Monkeys no one quite knows where these monkeys might have come from. But a lot of folks trying to be [00:51:00] helpful to the Department of Health as it goes after those monkeys. Helpful, maybe not so helpful, just having some fun with it. They’ve been posting all sorts of pictures online.
Of the mon here are the monkeys. They’re at the football stadium. They’re at this, the arc. They’re at this major intersection here, except of course, they’re not there. These are AI generated fake images of monkeys on the loose in St. Louis. That are convincing enough that the folks in the St.
Louis department of Health are having trouble figuring out which of these reports is worth investigating and which isn’t. So an a an unanticipated application of deepfake technology. Erick
Erick: and I’m seeing videos now, which is their AI generated videos and the monkeys are and now I’m seeing videos of the reporter reporting about.
The monkeys and the monkeys are like crawling on, the building behind them and stuff. They’re the, so it’s, yeah. I’m afraid rich that this is now gonna be the thing, the norm. Any kind of [00:52:00] news story, anything, there’s gonna be these books that are just gonna jump on this AI bandwagon.
And, now it’s creating this, perception that maybe there were never monkeys. Maybe this was just something somebody started and. What a waste of of community effort and dollars trying to hunt down something that. We don’t know if it’s actually real yet,
Rich: and not to go down that depressing road, but yeah, the, the increasing difficulty of telling what is or isn’t real at all is definitely a sobering implication of of AI and image generation and video generation.
Topic for another show though. Folks, for now, we thank you very much for joining us. We’re gonna be back in a week’s time with another episode. Until then, we will remind you we are both a video and an audio podcast. So if you’re listening to us right now, but you’d like to check us out on video, go to YouTube, book up MSP chat.
If you are watching us on YouTube, but you’d like to listen to podcasts, go to Spotify, Google, apple, wherever you get your podcasts, you’re probably gonna find MSP chat there and whatever you find us, please [00:53:00] subscribe, rate, review, it’s gonna help other people. Enjoy the show just like you do. This show is edited by the great Riley Simpson.
He’s part of the team with us here at Channel Mastered. He and the rest of the folks here are ready to help you watch a podcast of your own if you’d like to. But podcasts really are one of the smallest things we do At Channel Mastered, we are all about helping vendors build, grow, and optimize effective MSP channels.
If you’d like to learn more, go to www.channel master.com. Channel Master has a sister organization, it’s called MSP Mastered. That’s Erick working one-on-one with MSPs to help them grow and optimize their business. You can learn more about that at www.mspmaster.com. So once again, we thank you for joining us.
We’ll see you in a week, folks. Until then, please remember, as we always urge you to, you can’t spell channel. Without [00:54:00] MSP.
Check out more episodes
